William Chester Jordan is anย authorย and award-winningย historianย of medievalย Europe. Jordan was born in Chicago,ย Illinois, on July 4, 1948, to Johnnie Parker Jordan and Marguerite Jane Mays Jordan. He graduated with a bachelorโs degree from Ripon College in Wisconsinย in 1969 and earned his doctorate from Princeton University inย New Jersey in 1973. He immediately beganย teaching at Princeton, where he would spend his entire career.
Jordan published several books on the history of medieval Europe throughout his career. In 1976, he dedicated his first book,ย Order and Innovation in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Joseph R. Strayer, to his academic advisor. His second book, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade: A Study in Rulership,ย examined the life of the French king who fought in two Holy Crusades.ย In 1989, Jordan wroteย From Servitude to Freedom: Manumission in the Sรฉnonais in the Thirteenth Century, a case study of serfdom in the medievalย French city of Sens. His book ย The French Monarchy and the Jews: From Philip Augustus to the Last Capetiansย explored the investigation of discriminatory treatment, exploitation, and expulsion of Jews from 1179 to 1328. In his 1993 work,ย Women and Credit in Pre-Industrial and Developing Societies, he focused on medieval Christian women and Jewish moneylenders in postcolonial Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa. In 1996, he examined famine, starvation, epidemic, and inflation that afflicted the region between 1315 and 1320 in his book Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century.
Briefly, Jordan turned his attention to educating children about medieval history. He served as editor-in-chief of the four volumes ofย The Middle Ages (1996) and one volume ofย The Middle Ages: A Watts Guide for Childrenย (1999). He focused thereafter on academic publications including a collection of essays inย Ideology and Royal Power in Medieval: Kingship, Crusades, and the Jewsย (2001).ย Other works includeย Europe in the High Middle Agesย (2003), an introductory work for college students;ย Unceasing Strife, Unending Fear: Jacques de Therines and the Freedom of the Church in the Age of the Last Capetiansย (2005), a portrayal of church-state relations essentially from the point of view a Cistercian monk;ย The Tale of Two Monasteries: Westminster and Saint-Denis in the Thirteenth Centuryย (2009), a comparison between influentialย Englishย and French abbeys and two men who headed them, to name a few. He was the principal editor ofย The Capetian Century: 1214-1314, published in 2017.
Jordan became co-editorย of two unexpected titles,ย Human/Animal Boundary: Historical Perspectivesย (2003) andย Corrupt Histories (2006), a collection of essays on government corruption worldwide over the past three centuries. Jordan has served as chairman of the history department at Princeton. He has also served as president of the Medieval Academy of America and the American Catholic Historical Association. Jordan has received several prestigious fellowships, grants, and awards, including the Haskins Medal in 2000.
Jordan resides with his wife, Christin Kenyon Hershey, in Princeton, New Jersey. They have three daughters and a son.
