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In Memorandum Zvi Razi

By the Editorial Team

Past & Present was sorry to learn of the recent death of the esteemed medievalist Professor Zvi Razi.

Zvi, whose field was the English peasantry in the later medieval period, worked at Tel-Aviv University for over four decades. He rose to especial prominence with the publication of his monograph Life, Marriage and Death in a Medieval Parish : Economy, Society and Demography in Halesowen 1270-1400 in 1980. Life, Marriage and Death in a Medieval Parish was described by Paul Slack, who singled out his “exhaustive” scholarship and “novel and sophisticated methodology”, as making “a large and fundamental contribution to our knowledge of medieval English demography”.

Zvi’s involvement in the debates surrounding the nature of medieval peasant society extended from time-to-time to the pages of Past & Present. In his memory, and in honour of the contribution that he made to our understanding of past societies, we have made the three substantive articles that he published with us between 1979 and 1993 free to access between now and the 31st December 2016:

“The Toronto School’s Reconstitution of Medieval Peasant Society: A Critical View”, Past & Present (1979) 85 (1): 141-157 (Review Article)

“Family, Land and the Village Community in Later Medieval England”, Past & Present (1981) 93 (1): 3-36

“The Myth of the Immutable English Family”, Past & Present (1993) 140 (1): 3-44

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