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Medieval Polities And Modern Mentalities
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Book Synopsis Medieval Polities and Modern Mentalities by : Timothy Reuter
Download or read book Medieval Polities and Modern Mentalities written by Timothy Reuter and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-11-02 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a collection of influential and challenging essays by British medievalist Timothy Reuter, a perceptive and original thinker with extraordinary range who was equally at home in the Anglophone or German scholarly worlds. The book addresses three interconnected themes in the study of the history of the early and high Middle Ages. Firstly, historiography, the development of the modern study of the medieval past. How do our contemporary and inherited preconceptions and pre-occupations determine our view of history? Secondly, the importance of symbolic action and communication in the politics and polities of the Middle Ages. Finally, the need to avoid anachronism in our consideration of medieval politics. Throwing light both on modern mentalities and on the values and conduct of medieval people themselves, and containing articles, at time of publication, never previously been available in English, this book is essential reading for any serious scholar of medieval Europe.
Book Synopsis The Languages of Gift in the Early Middle Ages by : Wendy Davies
Download or read book The Languages of Gift in the Early Middle Ages written by Wendy Davies and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-02 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of original essays on gift in the early Middle Ages, from Anglo-Saxon England to the Islamic world. Focusing on the languages of gift, the essays reveal how early medieval people visualized and thought about gift, and how they distinguished between the giving of gifts and other forms of social, economic, political and religious exchange. The same team, largely, that produced the widely cited The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1986) has again collaborated in a collective effort that harnesses individual expertise in order to draw from the sources a deeper understanding of the early Middle Ages by looking at real cases, that is at real people, whether peasant or emperor. The culture of medieval gift has often been treated as archaic and exotic; in this book, by contrast, we see people going about their lives in individual, down-to-earth and sometimes familiar ways.
Book Synopsis Officers and Accountability in Medieval England 1170-1300 by : John Sabapathy
Download or read book Officers and Accountability in Medieval England 1170-1300 written by John Sabapathy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-13 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The later twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a pivotal period for the development of European government and governance. A mentality emerged that trusted to procedures of accountability as a means of controlling officers' conduct. The mentality was not inherently new, but it became qualitatively more complex and quantitatively more widespread in this period, across European countries, and across different sorts of officer. The officers exposed to these methods were not just 'state' ones, but also seignorial, ecclasistical, and university-college officers, as well as urban-communal ones. This study surveys these officers and the practices used to regulate them in England. It places them not only within a British context but also a wide European one and explores how administration, law, politics, and norms tried to control the insolence of office. The devices for institutionalising accountability analysed here reflected an extraordinarily creative response in England, and beyond, to the problem of complex government: inquests, audits, accounts, scrutiny panels, sindication. Many of them have shaped the way in which we think about accountability today. Some remain with us. So too do their practical problems. How can one delegate control effectively? How does accountability relate to responsibility? What relationship does accountability have with justice? This study offers answers for these questions in the Middle Ages, and is the first of its kind dedicated to an examination of this important topic in this period.
Book Synopsis Debating medieval Europe by : Stephen Mossman
Download or read book Debating medieval Europe written by Stephen Mossman and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-07 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debating medieval Europe serves as an entry point for studying and teaching medieval history. Rather than simply presenting foundational knowledge or introducing sources, it provides the reader with frameworks for understanding the distinctive historiography of the period, digging beneath the historical accounts provided by other textbooks to expose the contested foundations of apparently settled narratives. It opens a space for discussion and debate, as well as providing essential context for the sometimes overwhelming abundance of specialist scholarship. Volume I addresses the early Middle Ages, covering the period c. 450–c. 1050. The chapters are organised chronologically, and cover such topics as the Carolingian Order, England and the ‘Atlantic Archipelago’, the Vikings and Ottonian Germany. It features a highly distinguished selection of medieval historians, including Paul Fouracre and Janet L. Nelson.
Book Synopsis Rulers and Rulership in the Arc of Medieval Europe, 1000-1200 by : Christian Raffensperger
Download or read book Rulers and Rulership in the Arc of Medieval Europe, 1000-1200 written by Christian Raffensperger and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-08-24 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rulers and Rulership in the Arc of Medieval Europe challenges the dominant paradigm of what rulership is and who rulers are by decentering the narrative and providing a broad swath of examples from throughout medieval Europe. Within that territory, the prevalent idea of monarchy and kingship is overturned in favor of a broad definition of rulership. This book will demonstrate to the reader that the way in which medieval Europe has been constructed in both the popular and scholarly imaginations is incorrect. Instead of a king we have multiple rulers, male and female, ruling concurrently. Instead of an independent church or a church striving for supremacy under the Gregorian Reform, we have a pope and ecclesiastical leaders making deals with secular rulers and an in-depth interconnection between the two. Finally, instead of a strong centralizing polity growing into statehood we see weak rulers working hand in glove with weak subordinates to make the polity as a whole function. Medievalists, Byzantinists, and Slavists typically operate in isolation from one another. They do not read each other’s books, or engage with each other’s work. This book requires engagement from all of them to point out that the medieval Europe that they work in is one and the same and demands collaboration to best understand it.
Book Synopsis The Shape of the State in Medieval Scotland, 1124-1290 by : Alice Taylor
Download or read book The Shape of the State in Medieval Scotland, 1124-1290 written by Alice Taylor and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of Scottish royal government in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries uses untapped legal evidence to set out a new narrative of governmental development. Between 1124 and 1290, the way in which kings of Scots ruled their kingdom transformed. By 1290 accountable officials, a system of royal courts, and complex common law procedures had all been introduced, none of which could have been envisaged in 1124.
Book Synopsis Kingship and Consent in Anglo-Saxon England, 871–978 by : Levi Roach
Download or read book Kingship and Consent in Anglo-Saxon England, 871–978 written by Levi Roach and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-17 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This engaging study focuses on the role of assemblies in later Anglo-Saxon politics, challenging and nuancing existing models of the late Anglo-Saxon state. Its ten chapters investigate both traditional constitutional aspects of assemblies - who attended these events, where and when they met, and what business they conducted - and the symbolic and representational nature of these gatherings. Levi Roach takes into account important recent work on continental rulership, and argues that assemblies were not a check on kingship in these years, but rather an essential feature of it. In particular, the author highlights the role of symbolic communication at assemblies, arguing that ritual and demonstration were as important in English politics as they were elsewhere in Europe. Far from being exceptional, the methods of rulership employed by English kings look very much like those witnessed elsewhere on the continent, where assemblies and ritual formed an essential part of the political order.
Book Synopsis History and the Written Word by : Henry Bainton
Download or read book History and the Written Word written by Henry Bainton and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2020-01-24 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking look at the Angevin aristocracy's literary practices and historical record Coming upon the text of a document such as a charter or a letter inserted into the fabric of a medieval chronicle and quoted in full or at length, modern readers might well assume that the chronicler is simply doing what good historians have always done—that is, citing his source as evidence. Such documentary insertions are not ubiquitous in medieval historiography, however, and are in fact particularly characteristic of the history-writing produced by the Angevins in England and Northern France in the later twelfth century. In History and the Written Word, Henry Bainton puts these documentary gestures center stage in an attempt to understand what the chroniclers were doing historiographically, socially, and culturally when they transcribed a document into a work of history. Where earlier scholars who have looked at the phenomenon have explained this increased use of documents by considering the growing bureaucratic state and an increasing historiographical concern for documentary evidence, Bainton seeks to resituate these histories, together with their authors and users, within literate but sub-state networks of political power. Proposing a new category he designates "literate lordship" to describe the form of power with which documentary history-writing was especially concerned, he shows how important the vernacular was in recording the social lives of these literate lords and how they found it a particularly appropriate medium through which to record their roles in history. Drawing on the perspectives of modern and medieval narratology, medieval multilingualism, and cultural memory, History and the Written Word argues that members of an administrative elite demonstrated their mastery of the rules of literate political behavior by producing and consuming history-writing and its documents.
Book Synopsis Kingship and Justice in the Ottonian Empire by : Laura Wangerin
Download or read book Kingship and Justice in the Ottonian Empire written by Laura Wangerin and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2019-04-12 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laura E. Wangerin challenges traditional views of the Ottonian Empire’s rulership. Drawing from a broad array of sources including royal and imperial diplomas, manuscript illuminations, and histories, Ottonian kingship and the administration of justice are investigated using traditional historical and comparative methodologies as well as through the application of innovative approaches such as modern systems theories. This study suggests that distinctive elements of the Ottonians’ governing apparatus, such as its decentralized structure, emphasis on the royal iter, and delegation of authority, were essential features of a highly developed political system. Kingship and Justice in the Ottonian Empire provides a welcome addition to English-language scholarship on the Ottonians, as well as to scholarship dealing with rulership and medieval legal studies. Scholars have recognized the importance of ritual and symbolic behaviors in the Ottonian political sphere, while puzzling over the apparent lack of administrative organization, a contradiction between what we know about the Ottonians as successful rulers and their traditional characterization as rulers of a disorganized polity. Trying to account for the apparent disparity between their political and military achievements, cultural and artistic efflorescence, and relative dynastic stability, which seemingly accompanied a disinterest in writing law or creating a centralized hierarchical administration, is a tension that persists in the scholarship. This book argues that far from being accidental successes or employing primitive methods of governance, the Ottonians were shrewd rulers and administrators who exploited traditional methods of conflict resolution and delegated jurisdictional authority to keep control over their vast empire. Thus, one of the important things that this book aims to accomplish is to challenge our preconceived notions of what successful government looks like.
Book Synopsis The Carolingian World by : Marios Costambeys
Download or read book The Carolingian World written by Marios Costambeys and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-12 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive and accessible survey of the great Carolingian empire, which dominated western Europe in the eighth and ninth centuries.
Book Synopsis Charlemagne's Practice of Empire by : Jennifer R. Davis
Download or read book Charlemagne's Practice of Empire written by Jennifer R. Davis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-20 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revisiting one of the great puzzles of European political history, Jennifer R. Davis examines how the Frankish king Charlemagne and his men held together the vast new empire he created during the first decades of his reign. Davis explores how Charlemagne overcame the two main problems of ruling an empire, namely how to delegate authority and how to manage diversity. Through a meticulous reconstruction based on primary sources, she demonstrates that rather than imposing a pre-existing model of empire onto conquered regions, Charlemagne and his men learned from them, developing a practice of empire that allowed the emperor to rule on a European scale. As a result, Charlemagne's realm was more flexible and diverse than has long been believed. Telling the story of Charlemagne's rule using sources produced during the reign itself, Davis offers a new interpretation of Charlemagne's political practice, free from the distortions of later legend.
Book Synopsis Penance in Medieval Europe, 600-1200 by : Rob Meens
Download or read book Penance in Medieval Europe, 600-1200 written by Rob Meens and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-17 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An up-to-date overview of the functions and contexts of penance in medieval Europe, revealing the latest research and interpretations.
Book Synopsis Commemorating Power in Early Medieval Saxony by : Sarah Greer
Download or read book Commemorating Power in Early Medieval Saxony written by Sarah Greer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Commemorating Power looks at how the past was evoked for political purposes under a new Saxon dynasty, the Ottonians, who came to dominate post-Carolingian Europe after 888 as the rulers of a new empire in Germany and Italy, focusing on two convents of monastic women who played a significant role in Ottonian politics.
Book Synopsis Kingship, Rebellion and Political Culture by : B. Weiler
Download or read book Kingship, Rebellion and Political Culture written by B. Weiler and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-01-05 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking as its starting point two uprisings in England and Germany (Richard Marshal in 1233-4 and Henry (VII) in 1234-5), this book offers a new take on the political culture of high medieval Europe. Themes include: the role of violence; the norms of political behaviour; the public nature of politics; and the social history of political exchange.
Book Synopsis The Origins of the German Principalities, 1100-1350 by : Graham A. Loud
Download or read book The Origins of the German Principalities, 1100-1350 written by Graham A. Loud and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-07-06 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of medieval Germany is still rarely studied in the English-speaking world. This collection of essays by distinguished German historians examines one of most important themes of German medieval history, the development of the local principalities. These became the dominant governmental institutions of the late medieval Reich, whose nominal monarchs needed to work with the princes if they were to possess any effective authority. Previous scholarship in English has tended to look at medieval Germany primarily in terms of the struggles and eventual decline of monarchical authority during the Salian and Staufen eras – in other words, at the "failure" of a centralised monarchy. Today, the federalised nature of late medieval and early modern Germany seems a more natural and understandable phenomenon than it did during previous eras when state-building appeared to be the natural and inevitable process of historical development, and any deviation from the path towards a centralised state seemed to be an aberration. In addition, by looking at the origins and consolidation of the principalities, the book also brings an English audience into contact with the modern German tradition of regional history (Landesgeschichte). These path-breaking essays open a vista into the richness and complexity of German medieval history.
Book Synopsis Empress Adelheid and Countess Matilda by : Penelope Nash
Download or read book Empress Adelheid and Countess Matilda written by Penelope Nash and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-02-15 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book compares two successful, elite women, Empress Adelheid (931-999) and Countess Matilda (1046-1115), for their relative ability to retain their wealth and power in the midst of the profound social changes of the eleventh century. The careers of the Ottonian queen and empress Adelheid and Countess Matilda of Tuscany reveal a growth of opportunities for women to access wealth and power. These two women are analyzed under three categories: their relationships with family and friends, how they managed their property (particularly land), and how they ruled. This analysis encourages a better understanding of gender relations in both the past and the present.
Book Synopsis The Favor of Friends by : Sean J. Gilsdorf
Download or read book The Favor of Friends written by Sean J. Gilsdorf and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-03-06 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Favor of Friends offers the first book-length exploration of intercession—aid and advocacy by one individual or group in behalf of another—within early medieval aristocratic societies. Drawing upon a variety of disciplines and historiographical traditions, Sean Gilsdorf demonstrates how this process operated, and how it was ideologically elaborated, in Carolingian and Ottonian Europe, allowing individuals and groups to leverage their own, limited interpersonal networks to the fullest, produce new relationships, gain access to previously closed spaces, and generate interest in their agendas from those able to effect change. The Favor of Friends enriches our understanding of early medieval politics and rulership, offering a model of political interaction in which hierarchy and comity do not stand in ideological and pragmatic tension, but instead work in integrated and mutually-reinforcing ways.
