William Chester Jordan, the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, transferred to emeritus status on July 1, 2024, after fifty years of distinguished service and teaching at the University. Bill’s first monograph, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade (1979), remains the most important study of the Seventh Crusade (1248-54). The book laid the foundation of Bill’s international reputation early in his career, displaying his phenomenal grasp of administrative detail, his complete control of the scholarly literature, and, above all, a nuanced understanding of the nature and limits of rulership in medieval Europe. It was quickly recognized by some of the finest scholars in Europe. Even in France, medievalists appreciated the innovative take of this young American scholar. Among these historians was none other than Jacques LeGoff, one of the country’s most eminent medievalists. Bill never let go of Louis IX, and Louis IX never let go of Bill. Many more studies on the king and his fundamental impact on the French kingdom, society, and history would follow. 

Raised on the West Side of Chicago, the youngest of seven siblings, Bill attended Ripon College, where he studied Russian, mathematics, and history, graduating with honors in 1969. In the same year, he was accepted into Princeton’s Department of History. He wrote his dissertation under the supervision of Joseph Strayer, a medieval historian who played a fundamental role in transforming Princeton’s history department into a great center for historical research. Strayer soon recognized the enormous talent of his student, and after Bill defended his dissertation and earned his Ph.D. in 1973, Strayer convinced him to stay in Princeton despite job opportunities elsewhere.

Louis IX was far from the only topic Bill explored. His work on the French king was strongly inflected by the nouvelle histoire, a scholarly impulse that demanded a fresh, more dynamic take on political and institutional history focusing on actual people. Bill belonged to a new generation that shifted attention away from administrative structures and political and institutional history to a “history from below.” If his first book had looked at the center of the medieval French monarchy, his second, From Servitude to Freedom: Manumission in the Sénonais in the Thirteenth Century (1986), was a thorough archival study of people often left out of historical accounts of the medieval French past. His next two books looked at two groups at the margins of most medieval histories: Jews and women. The French Monarchy and the Jews (1989) demonstrated how Jews were critical to the centralizing mission of the medieval French monarchy while Women and Credit in Pre-Industrial and Developing Societies (1993) demonstrated that women had left ample traces of their agency and centrality on the medieval economy. 

In many of his twenty published books (fourteen authored and six edited), as well as numerous articles, Bill continued to explore social strata beyond rulers, princely courts, and the governing classes. He has looked at marginalization and persecution, the history of credit, and the social and economic effects of famines. Bill’s ability to write arresting social history, underpinned by meticulous and painstaking archival work and expressed in an elegant and pellucid prose that is a joy to read, has made his wide-ranging publications enduring and fundamental contributions to our knowledge of the Middle Ages.

Bill’s masterful synthesis Europe in the High Middle Ages, first published in 2001, was recently translated into Chinese and instantly became a bestseller in China. The importance and excellence of Bill’s scholarship have been widely recognized, with his publications winning many prizes and awards. His 2000 monograph, The Great Famine: Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century, won the Haskins Medal of the Medieval Academy of America. 

Bill has not only shaped the field of medieval studies through his publications, he has also been a charismatic and energetic teacher and mentor. At Princeton he has supervised thirty-one dissertations, sharing with his advisees his own expansive vision of the medieval world. Among his former students are leading scholars now teaching at Yale, Johns Hopkins, and Dartmouth. Another is the director of the Institute for Advanced Study. Beyond those students for whom he served as a dissertation adviser, Bill has worked closely for decades with nearly every graduate student in the history department who has done a dissertation on premodern history, serving on an enormous number of dissertation committees. This work of teaching, mentoring, and reading dissertations and chapters has meant that Bill has also influenced adjacent fields, including late antiquity, the medieval Islamic world, and early modern Europe. 

Bill has been an enthusiastic undergraduate teacher as well, especially well-regarded for his lectures. Alumni have kept their notes of the Civilization of the High Middle Ages, or English Constitutional History, over many decades. To say that he has taught generations of Princeton students is not metaphorical; he has had students take the same class their parents took with him years earlier. During his time as chair of the Committee on Medieval Studies (1983-93), and later as director of the Program in Medieval Studies (2001-05), medieval studies became one of the most popular and lively undergraduate programs in the humanities at Princeton. 

As director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies (1994-99), Bill ran a seminar that was a model of scholarly civility and rigorous exchange. The research themes he designed—such as “Animals and Human Society”—were at the cutting edge of new directions in historical inquiry, sometimes even pioneering new areas of research. 

During his tenure as department chair, from 2008 to 2017, Bill led the department into a new era after many of the most prominent faculty of the last decades of the twentieth century had retired or were about to retire. About half of the current history faculty were hired under his aegis. This new generation has successfully continued and, indeed, expanded Princeton’s reputation for having the best history department in the United States. Moreover, throughout his tenure as chair, he continued to produce a steady stream of scholarship, including A Tale of Two Monasteries (2009), an important exercise in comparative history, as well as Men at the Center (2012), a work that studied the theme of redemptive governance at the court of Louis IX.

When Bill stepped down as chair, the department’s advisory board expressed an interest in showing their gratitude to Bill by commissioning an oil painting of him as chair. In his characteristic modesty, Bill declined, suggesting instead they fund the history department’s softball team. Bill had cofounded the team, known as “The Revolting Masses,” in the early 1980s, one of his lesser-known contributions to Princeton. 

Bill’s energy and radius of action were never restricted to Princeton. He has served on numerous editorial boards and on important boards of directors and trustees in Europe, Israel, and North America, and in 2014 and 2015 he served as president of the Medieval Academy of America. His outstanding achievements have also been recognized with honorary doctorates from Oxford University (2022), the Catholic University of America (2021), Harvard University (2019), Bard College (2016), and Ripon College (2001). 

For five decades, Bill has profoundly shaped the study of medieval and premodern history at Princeton and elsewhere. We count ourselves lucky to have worked with Bill and to have learned from his experience, wisdom, and razor-sharp mind. Thankfully, he will continue to serve as director of the Program in Medieval Studies and teaching next year as he takes on his new mantle as the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Emeritus. 

Written by members of the Department of History faculty.