Alexander Murray

This list of books are ONLY the books that have been ranked on the lists that are aggregated on this site. This is not a comprehensive list of all books by this author.

  1. 1. Suicide In The Middle Ages

    The Curse on Self-Murder

    A comprehensive study of how medieval European societies understood and responded to self-killing, weaving together theology, canon and secular law, literature, and coroners’ records to trace definitions, motives, and social reactions. It charts the shift from classical inheritances to Christian moral frameworks, detailing sanctions, burial practices, and property forfeiture alongside illustrative case histories. The result reveals nuanced, regionally varied attitudes shaped by pastoral concerns and institutional power rather than a single, unchanging taboo.

  2. 2. Suicide In The Middle Ages I

    The Violent against Themselves

    This first volume reconstructs the incidence and patterns of self-killing in medieval Europe by mining coroners’ rolls, legal and ecclesiastical records, chronicles, and literary sources. It weighs definitional problems and reporting biases while analyzing regional and temporal variation, methods, gender and age profiles, and seasonal rhythms. The outcome is a cautious, quantitative portrait that situates statistics within theological, legal, and communal contexts, showing both the apparent rarity of the act and the elusiveness of the evidence.