Paul Freedman recognized for lifetime contributions to Catalan history

Paul Freedman, Chester D. Tripp Professor of History, has been awarded the 39th Joan B. Cendrós International Prize by Òmnium Cultural, a Catalan nonprofit organization that promotes Catalan language and culture.  

Freedman received the award for his lifetime contributions to the study of Catalonia's medieval history and the international impact of his work. The prize committee said that Freedman's work had made Catalonia’s historical heritage more visible, put that history in conversation with European and global historical debates, and enriched the Catalan identity.  

Freedman, who specializes in medieval social history, the history of Catalonia, comparative studies of the peasantry, and the history of cuisine, is the author of numerous books on Catalan history.  

His most recent book, The Splendor and Opulence of the Past: Studying the Middle Ages in Enlightenment Catalonia (Cornell University Press, 2023), earned a 2024 publication award from the North American Catalan Society. He is also the author of Images of the Medieval Peasant (Stanford University Press, 1999), Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia (Cambridge University Press ,1991), and The Diocese of Vic: Tradition and Regeneration in Medieval Catalonia (Rutgers University Press, 1983), among others.

Freedman has also published several books on the history of food, including Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (Yale University Press, 2008).  

The prize committee wrote that Freedman’s writings on cuisine, particularly Out of the East, “make it possible to intertwine research on medieval Catalonia and studies on the evolution of cuisine, showing the continuity between identity, culture and food.”  

The award was presented on March 14 at a gala for the 75th Night of Catalan Letters.