Carl Stephenson, regarded as one of America's foremost medievalists at the time of his death in 1954, had a long and significant scholarly career. A student of Charles Gross and Charles Homer Haskins at Harvard, he later studied with the renowned Henri Pirenne of Belgium. Most of his teaching was done at the University of Wisconsin and Cornell University. His other books include Borough and Town (1933) and Medieval History: Europe from the Fourth to the Sixteenth Century (1935).