William North

Education & Professional History

Princeton University, BA; University of California-Berkeley, MA; PhD

Fellowships

NEH Summer Seminar. NEH Summer Seminar. Reform and Renewal in Medieval Rome. 21 June 2014-25 July 2014. Co-director with Professor Maureen Miller (UC Berkeley).

NEH Teaching Enhancement Grant 2010-2011 (to improve History 233: Cultures of Empire: Byzantium 717-1453 through research and extended travel in Syria, Turkey and Greece)

Fellow in Post-classical Humanistic Studies, American Academy in Rome, 1995-1996

Fellow in Byzantine Studies, Dumbarton Oaks, 1998-1999

Highlights & Recent Activity

Editor, Haskins Society Journal, 2007-2015; 2023-; Associate Editor, 2015-2023.

Visiting Docente, Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche, Geografiche, e dell’Antichità, Università degli Studi, Padova (Spring 2020)

Forthcoming Publications

• Peter the Venerable. Two Books on Miracles. Trans. Read Wilder & W.L. North. (Under contract with Western Michigan University Press-Varia Series, forthcoming 2027).
• The Life of Bishop Benno of Osnabruck, trans. W. North & L. Wolverton, in Lords and pastors: Lives of German bishops, 950-1250, ed. Jonathan Lyon & Simon MacLean (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2026).
• Mastering the Streets of Rome:  A Documentary History of the Management of Waste, Space, and People, 1200-1625. Ed & trans. Chiara Bariviera, Pamela Long, William North. (In preparation–under contract with Italica Press)

Organizations & Scholarly Affiliations

American Historical Association

Byzantine Studies Association of North America

Episcopus

Haskins Society 

International Society of Medieval Canon Law (ICMAC)

International Center for Medieval Art

Medieval Academy of America

Society for Italian Historical Studies

Società Internazionale degli storici medievisti

Work in Progress

Recent and Current Courses

GEO 245 “When the Earth Shook…” Earthquakes in Human History

GRK 285 Weekly Greek

HIST 100 Immigration, Conversion and Cultural Change in Early England and Ireland

HIST 131 Saints and Society in Late Antiquity

HIST 137 Early Medieval Worlds

HIST 201 Building Power and Piety in Medieval Italy, CE 300-1150 (OCS Rome)

HIST 233 Cultures of Empire: Byzantium, 710-1453

HIST 235 Making and Breaking Institutions in the Middle Ages

HIST 288 Reason, Authority, and Love in Medieval France

HIST 289 Gender and Ethics in Late Medieval France

HIST 298 Junior Colloquium

HIST 330 Ideas Incarnate: Institutional Formation, Reform, and Governance in the Middle Ages

HIST 336: Controversial Histories

IDSC 100 Civil Discourse in a Troubled Age

LATN 243 Medieval Latin

LATN 285 Weekly Latin

RELG 235  Religion and Identity in the Medieval Middle East

Articles, Book Chapters, and Translations (last 10 years)

• “Abbot Hariulf of Oudenburg at the Curia of Pope Innocent II (1141): A Curial Drama.” Festschrift für Sabine von Heusinger, hrsg. von Julia Bruch, Eva-Maria Cersovsky und Andreas Lehnertz (Mittelalter. Interdisziplinäre Forschung und Rezeptionsgeschichte, Beihefte 5,2).(Winter 2025). doi: https://doi.org/10.26012/mittelalter-34569
• “The Reichskirche, clerical mobility and the making of the Ottonian world: the case of Saint Wolfgang of Regensburg (c.934-994).” Medieval Worlds 20.1 (2024), 54-68. doi:10.1553/medievalworlds_no20_2024s54
• Translation of Arnulf of Milan, Chronicle of Recent Events (selections), in The Medieval Clergy, c. 800-1200: A Sourcebook. ed. John Ott and Anne Trumbore Jones (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2024).
• The Floods of the Tiber by Luis Gómez, ed. and trans. Chiara Bariviera, Pamela O. Long, and William L. North (New York, NY: Italica Press, 2023).
• Translation (from Italian) of Giovanna Casagrande, “Mendicant orders, their settlements, and the laity,” in People’s Church: The Care of Souls in Medieval Italy, 1051-1300, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023. Pp. 189-221.
• “Erudition, Documentation, and Organization in the Making of Early Modern Byzantine Studies. The Case of Martin Hanke’s De Byzantinarum rerum scriptoribus Graecis liber (1677).” In Inventing Byzantium in Early Modern Europe, ed. Nate Aschenbrenner and Jake Ransohoff (Washington, DC,  2021).
• “Reforming Readers, Reforming Texts: The Making of a Discursive Community in Gregorian Rome.” in Urban Developments in Late Antue and Medieval Rome: Revising the Narrative of Renewal, ed. Gregor Kalas and Ann van Dijk (Amsterdam, 2021).
• “Bonizo of Sutri, the Dicta Bonizonis, and the Development of the Jurisprudence of Canon Law before Gratian.” In The Use of Canon Law in Ecclesiastical Administration, 1000-1234 (Leiden, 2018), 159-184.
• “Bonsai of the Consanguinities: The Control of Incest as a Problem of Understanding in Bonizo of Sutri’s Liber de Vita Christiana.” Early Medieval Europe 23:4 (2015), 478–499.
• Translation of Bartolomeo da Giano, Letter on the Cruelty of the Turks, in Perspectives on the Past, ed. James Brophy et al. (6^th ed., New York: WW Norton, 2016).
• Translation of Agobard of Lyon, “On the Insolence of the Jews,” in The Jew in the Middle Ages, ed. Jacob Marcus & Marc Saperstein (rev. ed. Hebrew Union College Press, 2015).

Subjects:  History (all periods and regions), Late Antiquity, medieval history, transmission of classical culture, history of monasticism & asceticism, history of Christian thought, sociology, esp. sociology of institutions and cognitive sociology, history of business and economic thought/method; manuscript studies and paleography, history of libraries, continental philosophy, classics, translation studies, radio/podcasting, all things Italian (music, food, history, language, art), history of medieval and Byzantine Studies, the history of the Bollandists

Languages: Latin, Greek, Italian, French, German, Spanish, some Modern Greek and Turkish

Other Involvements: Friends and Foundation of the Northfield Public Library (since 2006)

Hobbies: Hiking & walking, reading, talking with people about their lives, playing with pets, guitar, being with family, anything involving Italian.