David Herlihy

This article is about the historian who wrote on medieval and renaissance life. For the historian who writes about bicycles, see David V. Herlihy.

David Herlihy (May 8, 1930 – February 15, 1991) was an American historian who wrote on medieval and renaissance life. He was married to historian Patricia Herlihy. Particular topics of his included domestic life, especially the roles of women, and the changing structure of the family. He studied for his bachelor's at the University of San Francisco, received a doctoral degree from Yale University and taught at Bryn Mawr College, Wisconsin, Harvard and Brown.

His study of the Florentine and Pistoiese Catasto of 1427 is one of the first statistical surveys to use computers to analyse large amounts of data. The resulting book examines statistical patterns in tax-collecting surveys to find indications of social trends.

The University of San Francisco history department named their annual award for the best student-written history paper the David Herlihy Prize, and Brown University has established a David Herlihy University Professorship.

Quotes

“It is not at all certain that the diseases we observe today are the same that troubled our ancestors.”

Bibliography

• Pisa In The Early Renaissance; A Study Of Urban Growth, 1958
• Medieval And Renaissance Pistoia; The Social History Of An Italian Town, 1200-1430, 1967
• Medieval Culture and Society, 1968 (compiler)
• The History of Feudalism, 1970 (compiler)
• Women in Medieval Society, 1971
• The Social History Of Italy And Western Europe, 700-1500, 1978
• Les Toscans Et Leurs Familles : Une étude Du "Catasto" Florentin De 1427, 1979 (with Christiane Klapisch-Zuber)
• Cities And Society In Medieval Italy, 1980
• Medieval Households, 1985
• The Black Death and the Transformation of the West,1985
• Tuscans and their Families, 1985
• Opera Muliebria : Women And Work In Medieval Europe, 1990

Sources

• New York Times Obituary