Adam J. Davis
Adam J. Davis is a medieval historian and Professor of History at Denison University. From 2019 to 2024, he was Director of Denison’s Lisska Center for Intellectual Engagement. In that role, he developed new programs to deepen intellectual life across campus, create research opportunities, and help prepare students for meaningful post-graduate careers. In 2016 he was awarded Denison University’s Charles A. Brickman Teaching Excellence Award, “given each year to a faculty member who is a master craftsman in the profession.” From 2011 to 2014, he served as Chair of Denison’s History Department. Davis has been the recipient of a year-long Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Bourse Chateaubriand (given by the French Embassy), a William G. Bowen Faculty Fellowship, two Robert C. Good Fellowships, as well as grants from the Mellon Foundation and the Lilly Endowment. From 2022-25, he held the John and Christine Warner Professorship, and he held the William T. Utter/Clyde E. Williams, Jr. Professorship from 2013-18. He is a “life member” of Clare Hall, Cambridge University, where he was a Visiting Fellow in 2017-18.
Learning & Teaching
- HIST 152: The Roman World After Empire: Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (c. 200–1000)
- HIST 153: Monasteries, Monarchs, and Markets: Medieval Europe (c. 1000–1453)
- HIST 201: Doing History - Medieval Mythbusters: Crusade, Plague, and Heresy
- HIST 205: What is Education For? The Liberal Arts, from Plato to the Present
- HIST 251: Sacred Violence: The Crusades and the World They Made
- HIST 253: The Renaissance and Reformation of the Twelfth Century
- HIST 255: Neighbors and Strangers: Jews and Christians in Premodern Europe
- HIST 350: Plagues and Peoples: From the Black Death to Covid-19
- HIST 430: Senior Seminar: Religion and Society in Medieval Europe
- W101: Writings About the Self
Research
A historian of medieval Europe, Davis’s scholarship spans a range of topics, including ecclesiastical reform, medieval religious life, attitudes toward commerce, wealth, and poverty, the history of charity and charitable institutions, and the complex role of ambition within the medieval Christian moral tradition. His most recent book, The Medieval Economy of Salvation: Charity, Commerce, and the Rise of the Medieval Hospital (Cornell University Press, 2019; paperback 2021; open access ebook 2023), examines the intersection of the medieval commercial economy and the rise of hospitals as new charitable institutions in the Latin West. This work sheds new light on the nature of Christian charity during Europe’s first great age of commerce and was honored with the Ohio Academy of History’s Publication Award for the best history book by an Ohio author (2021). Davis’s first book, The Holy Bureaucrat: Eudes Rigaud and Religious Reform in Thirteenth-Century Normandy (Cornell UP, 2006), explores the intersection of intellectual and theological currents at the University of Paris with the practical challenges faced by a Franciscan archbishop seeking to reform the clergy and laity in Normandy. He is currently working on a new book, Medieval Ambitions: A Cultural History of a Virtuous Vice.
Works
Books
- The Medieval Economy of Salvation: Charity, Commerce, and the Rise of the Medieval Hospital (Cornell University Press, 2019; pbk 2021; Open Source ebook 2023)
- The Holy Bureaucrat: Eudes Rigaud and Religious Reform in Thirteenth-Century Normandy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).
Recent articles and book chapters
- “The Aristocratic Culture of Charity in Medieval Champagne,” in On the Borders of the Realm: Aristocratic Culture in Medieval France, edited by Randall Pippenger and Anne Lester (Brepols, submitted)
- “La nature des soins hospitaliers en milieu urbain aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles,” in Infirmeries et Hospices: Lieux de soins du Moyen Age à l’époque moderne, edited by Susan Boynton and Isabelle Cochelin (Brepols, 2026)
- “Eudes Rigaud et Louis IX: une relation étroite fondée sur des idéaux religieux et politiques similaires,” in Eudes Rigaud en son temps, edited by Elisabeth Lalou (Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, in press)
- “La politique de la charité des comtes de Champagne: hôpitaux et léproseries,” in the catalogue for the 2026 exhibition in Troyes, Passavant le meilleur! Fastes de Champagne au temps des comtes, edited by Arnaud Baudin (Silvana Editoriale, 2026), pp. 287-291
- “Poverty, Charity and Spirituality,” in A Cultural History of Poverty: The Middle Ages, edited by Eliza Buhrer (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026), pp. 49-70.
- “Three Visionary Women Hospital Founders, c. 1300,” in Medieval Work, Worship and Power: Persuasive and Silenced Voices, edited by Tanya Stabler Miller, Nancy McLaughlin, and Abigail P. Dowling (Routledge, 2025), pp. 176-188.
- “Servants and Service in Twelfth and Thirteenth-Century French Hospitals,” in “We Are All Servants”: Servants and Service in Premodern Europe, edited by Isabelle Cochelin and Diane Wolfthal (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2022): 215-33.
- “Hospitals, Charity and the Culture of Compassion in Medieval Europe,” in Approaches to Poverty in Medieval Europe: Complexities, Contradictions, Transformations, c. 1100-1500, edited by Sharon Farmer (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016): 23-45.
Other
- William G. Bowen Faculty Fellowship (Spring 2025)
- Braver Angels College Debates and Discourse, John Templeton Foundation (2023-25), Faculty Fellow
- Ohio Academy of History’s 2021 Publication Award for The Medieval Economy of Salvation as the best history book in any region/time period published by an Ohio author the previous year
- Visiting Fellow, Clare Hall, Cambridge University, 2017-18 (Life Member, Clare Hall)
- R. C. Good Fellowship, research sabbatical, 2017-18
- Charles A. Brickman Teaching Excellence Award, Denison University, 2016
- National Endowment for the Humanities, Fellowship, 2014-15
- R. C. Good Fellowship, Research sabbatical 2009-10: Visiting Scholar at Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
- Lilly Endowment Fellowship, research sabbatical, Fall 2006
- Mellon Cluster Grant for “World of Byzantium” travel study project
- Bourse Chateaubriand, French government fellowship for year-long doctoral dissertation research and academic study in France, 1998-1999.
