Queens, Consorts, Concubines: Gregory of Tours and Women of the Merovingian Elite

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Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 900429466X
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Queens, Consorts, Concubines: Gregory of Tours and Women of the Merovingian Elite by : E. T. Dailey

Download or read book Queens, Consorts, Concubines: Gregory of Tours and Women of the Merovingian Elite written by E. T. Dailey and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gregory of Tours hoped to inspire the believers in sixth-century Gaul with examples of righteous and wicked deeds and their consequences. Critiquing his own society, Gregory contrasted vengeful queens, rebellious nuns, and conniving witches with pious widows, humble abbesses, and tearful saints. By examining his thematic treatment of topics including widowhood, marriage, sanctity, authority, and political agency, Queens, Consorts, Concubines reassesses the material shaped by such concerns, including e.g. Gregory’s accounts of Brunhild, Fredegund, Radegund, and other important elite women, Merovingian political policies (marital alliances, ecclesiastical intrigue, even assassinations), and seemingly unrelated topics such as Hermenegild’s rebellion and the career of Empress Sophia. The result: a new interpretation of an important witness to the transformations of Late Antiquity.

Radegund

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197656129
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (976 download)

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Book Synopsis Radegund by : E. T. Dailey

Download or read book Radegund written by E. T. Dailey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A princess born to the Thuringian royal house. A captive in war, forced to marry the Frankish king who killed her family. A queen, who renounced her position, received consecration as a deaconess, and took monastic vows. A religious leader, who acquired a fragment of the Cross of the Crucifixion for her convent of Holy Cross in Poitiers. And, lastly, a saint, remembered for her healings, exorcisms, and extreme self-mortification. Such was Radegund, a woman who lived through an era defined by headlong change. Honored as a "mother" by subsequent Frankish kings and as a holy woman by her nuns and devotees, Radegund enjoyed a reputation for righteousness that spread throughout the whole of medieval Europe, with later queens emulating her pious achievements. For generations, she defined medieval queenship, female monastic practice, and the expectations associated with holy women. Today, she is often envisioned as a pan-European saint. Radegund presents a new interpretation of this remarkable woman, examining her vibrant life and legacy. E. T. Dailey shows how she succeeded in establishing a place for herself within this difficult and dangerous world, despite the trials she faced. He also demonstrates how Radegund achieved a position of prominence as a woman in a foreign land without resorting to the violence and intrigue that characterized the lives of other prominent women during this period. Based on a wealth of English, French, and German scholarship, this book will equip experts and lay readers with a concise, authoritative, and accessible portrait of Radegund.

Writing Normandy

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429642563
Total Pages : 266 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (296 download)

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Book Synopsis Writing Normandy by : Felice Lifshitz

Download or read book Writing Normandy written by Felice Lifshitz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-19 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing Normandy brings together eighteen articles by historian Felice Lifshitz, some of which are published here for the first time. The articles examine the various ways in which local and regional narratives about the past were created and revised in Normandy during the central Middle Ages. These narratives are analyzed through a combination of both cultural studies and manuscript studies in order to assess how they functioned, who they benefitted, and the various contexts in which they were transmitted. The essays pay particular attention to the narratives built around venerated saints and secular rulers, and in doing so bring together narratives that have traditionally been discussed separately by scholars. The book will appeal to scholars and students of cultural history and medieval history, as well as those interested in manuscript studies. .

Saxon Identities, AD 150–900

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350019461
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis Saxon Identities, AD 150–900 by : Robert Flierman

Download or read book Saxon Identities, AD 150–900 written by Robert Flierman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-07-13 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study is the first up-to-date comprehensive analysis of Continental Saxon identity in antiquity and the early middle ages. Building on recent scholarship on barbarian ethnicity, this study emphasises not just the constructed and open-ended nature of Saxon identity, but also the crucial role played by texts as instruments and resources of identity-formation. This book traces this process of identity-formation over the course of eight centuries, from its earliest beginnings in Roman ethnography to its reinvention in the monasteries and bishoprics of ninth-century Saxony. Though the Saxons were mentioned as early as AD 150, they left no written evidence of their own before c. 840. Thus, for the first seven centuries, we can only look at the Saxons through the eyes of their Roman enemies, Merovingian neighbours and Carolingian conquerors. Such external perspectives do not yield objective descriptions of a people, but rather reflect an ongoing discourse on Saxon identity, in which outside authors described who they imagined, wanted or feared the Saxons to be: dangerous pirates, noble savages, bestial pagans or faithful subjects. Significantly, these outside views deeply influenced how ninth-century Saxons eventually came to think about themselves, using Roman and Frankish texts to reinvent the Saxons as a noble and Christian people.

Women in the Piast Dynasty

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Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004508538
Total Pages : 582 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (45 download)

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Book Synopsis Women in the Piast Dynasty by : Grzegorz Pac

Download or read book Women in the Piast Dynasty written by Grzegorz Pac and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-03-07 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive study of the role of women in the Polish Piast dynasty from 965 until c.1144, comparing them with female members of other contemporary medieval dynasties.

Heirs of Roman Persecution

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351240676
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (512 download)

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Book Synopsis Heirs of Roman Persecution by : Éric Fournier

Download or read book Heirs of Roman Persecution written by Éric Fournier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The subject of this book is the discourse of persecution used by Christians in Late Antiquity (c. 300–700 CE). Through a series of detailed case studies covering the full chronological and geographical span of the period, this book investigates how the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity changed the way that Christians and para- Christians perceived the hostile treatments they received, either by fellow Christians or by people of other religions. A closely related second goal of this volume is to encourage scholars to think more precisely about the terminological difficulties related to the study of persecution. Indeed, despite sustained interest in the subject, few scholars have sought to distinguish between such closely related concepts as punishment, coercion, physical violence, and persecution. Often, these terms are used interchangeably. Although there are no easy answers, an emphatic conclusion of the studies assembled in this volume is that “persecution” was a malleable rhetorical label in late antique discourse, whose meaning shifted depending on the viewpoint of the authors who used it. This leads to our third objective: to analyze the role and function played by rhetoric and polemic in late antique claims to be persecuted. Late antique Christian writers who cast their present as a repetition of past persecutions often aimed to attack the legitimacy of the dominant Christian faction through a process of othering. This discourse also expressed a polarizing worldview in order to strengthen the group identity of the writers’ community in the midst of ideological conflicts and to encourage steadfastness against the temptation to collaborate with the other side. Chapters 15 and 16 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Authorship, Worldview, and Identity in Medieval Europe

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000548341
Total Pages : 429 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis Authorship, Worldview, and Identity in Medieval Europe by : Christian Raffensperger

Download or read book Authorship, Worldview, and Identity in Medieval Europe written by Christian Raffensperger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-03-03 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What did medieval authors know about their world? Were they parochial and focused on just their monastery, town, or kingdom? Or were they aware of the broader medieval Europe that modern historians write about? This collection brings the focus back to medieval authors to see how they described their world. While we see that each author certainly had their own biases, the vast majority of them did not view the world as constrained to their small piece of it. Instead, they talked about the wider world, and often they had informants or textual sources that informed them about the world, even if they did not visit it themselves. This volume shows that they also used similar ideas to create space and identity – whether talking about the desert, the holy land, or food practices in their texts. By examining medieval authors and their own perceptions of their world, this collection offers a framework for discussions of medieval Europe in the twenty-first century.

The Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197510809
Total Pages : 1056 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (975 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World by : Bonnie Effros

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World written by Bonnie Effros and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-01 with total page 1056 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Merovingian era is one of the best studied yet least well known periods of European history. From the fifth to the eighth centuries, the inhabitants of Gaul (what now comprises France, southern Belgium, Luxembourg, Rhineland Germany, and part of modern Switzerland), a mix of Gallo-Roman inhabitants and Germanic arrivals under the political control of the Merovingian dynasty, sought to preserve, use, and reimagine the political, cultural, and religious power of ancient Rome while simultaneously forging the beginnings of what would become medieval European culture. The forty-six essays included in this volume highlight why the Merovingian era is at the heart of historical debates about what happened to Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. The essays demonstrate that the inhabitants of the Merovingian kingdoms in these centuries created a culture that was the product of these traditions and achieved a balance between the world they inherited and the imaginative solutions they bequeathed to Europe. The Handbook highlights new perspectives and scientific approaches that shape our changing view of this extraordinary era by showing that Merovingian Gaul was situated at the crossroads of Europe, connecting the Mediterranean and the British Isles with the Byzantine empire, and it benefited from the global reach of the late Roman Empire. It tells the story of the Merovingian world through archaeology, bio-archaeology, architecture, hagiographic literature, history, liturgy, visionary literature and eschatology, patristics, numismatics, and material culture.

The Merovingian Kingdoms and the Mediterranean World

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350048402
Total Pages : 275 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis The Merovingian Kingdoms and the Mediterranean World by : Stefan Esders

Download or read book The Merovingian Kingdoms and the Mediterranean World written by Stefan Esders and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-05-02 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the Merovingian kingdoms in Gaul within a broader Mediterranean context. Their politics and culture have mostly been interpreted in the past through a narrow local perspective, but as the papers in this volume clearly demonstrate, the Merovingian kingdoms had complicated and multi-layered political, religious, and socio-cultural relations with their Mediterranean counterparts, from Visigothic Spain in the West to the Byzantine Empire in the East, and from Anglo-Saxon England in the North to North-Africa in the South. The papers collected here provide new insights into the history of the Merovingian kingdoms by examining various relevant issues, ranging from identity formation to the shape and rules of diplomatic relations, cultural transformation, as well as voiced attitudes towards the “other”. Each of the papers begins with a short excerpt from a primary source, which serves as a stimulus for the discussion of broader issues. The various sources' point of view and their contextualization stand at the heart of the analysis, thus ensuring that discussions are accessible to students and non-specialists, without jeopardizing the high academic standard of the debate.

The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691255598
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages by : Shane Bobrycki

Download or read book The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages written by Shane Bobrycki and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-11-19 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The importance of collective behavior in early medieval Europe By the fifth and sixth centuries, the bread and circuses and triumphal processions of the Roman Empire had given way to a quieter world. And yet, as Shane Bobrycki argues, the influence and importance of the crowd did not disappear in early medieval Europe. In The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages, Bobrycki shows that although demographic change may have dispersed the urban multitudes of Greco-Roman civilization, collective behavior retained its social importance even when crowds were scarce. Most historians have seen early medieval Europe as a world without crowds. In fact, Bobrycki argues, early medieval European sources are full of crowds—although perhaps not the sort historians have trained themselves to look for. Harvests, markets, festivals, religious rites, and political assemblies were among the gatherings used to regulate resources and demonstrate legitimacy. Indeed, the refusal to assemble and other forms of “slantwise” assembly became a weapon of the powerless. Bobrycki investigates what happened when demographic realities shifted, but culture, religion, and politics remained bound by the past. The history of crowds during the five hundred years between the age of circuses and the age of crusades, Bobrycki shows, tells an important story—one of systemic and scalar change in economic and social life and of reorganization in the world of ideas and norms.

Becoming a Queen in Early Modern Europe

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Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3030118487
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (31 download)

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Book Synopsis Becoming a Queen in Early Modern Europe by : Katarzyna Kosior

Download or read book Becoming a Queen in Early Modern Europe written by Katarzyna Kosior and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-03-18 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Queens of Poland are conspicuously absent from the study of European queenship—an absence which, together with early modern Poland’s marginal place in the historiography, results in a picture of European royal culture that can only be lopsided and incomplete. Katarzyna Kosior cuts through persistent stereotypes of an East-West dichotomy and a culturally isolated early modern Poland to offer a groundbreaking comparative study of royal ceremony in Poland and France. The ceremonies of becoming a Jagiellonian or Valois queen, analysed in their larger European context, illuminate the connections that bound together monarchical Europe. These ceremonies are a gateway to a fuller understanding of European royal culture, demonstrating that it is impossible to make claims about European queenship without considering eastern Europe.

Bishops and the Politics of Patronage in Merovingian Gaul

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Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501739352
Total Pages : 161 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Bishops and the Politics of Patronage in Merovingian Gaul by : Gregory I. Halfond

Download or read book Bishops and the Politics of Patronage in Merovingian Gaul written by Gregory I. Halfond and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-15 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire, local Christian leaders were confronted with the problem of how to conceptualize and administer their regional churches. As Gregory Halfond shows, the bishops of post-Roman Gaul oversaw a transformation in the relationship between church and state. He shows that by constituting themselves as a corporate body, the Gallic episcopate was able to wield significant political influence on local, regional, and kingdom-wide scales. Gallo-Frankish bishops were conscious of their corporate membership in an exclusive order, the rights and responsibilities of which were consistently being redefined and subsequently expressed through liturgy, dress, physical space, preaching, and association with cults of sanctity. But as Halfond demonstrates, individual bishops, motivated by the promise of royal patronage to provide various forms of service to the court, often struggled, sometimes unsuccessfully, to balance their competing loyalties. However, even the resulting conflicts between individual bishops did not, he shows, fundamentally undermine the Gallo-Frankish episcopate's corporate identity or integrity. Ultimately, Halfond provides a far more subtle and sophisticated understanding of church-state relations across the early medieval period.

The Merovingians in Historiographical Tradition

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1009285017
Total Pages : 343 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (92 download)

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Book Synopsis The Merovingians in Historiographical Tradition by : Yaniv Fox

Download or read book The Merovingians in Historiographical Tradition written by Yaniv Fox and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-31 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Merovingian centuries were a foundational period in the historical consciousness of western Europe. The memory of the first dynasty of Frankish kings, their origin myths, accomplishments, and failures were used by generations of chroniclers, propagandists, and historians to justify a wide range of social and political agendas. The process of curating and editing the source material gave rise to a recognisable 'Merovingian narrative' with three distinct phases: meteoric ascent, stasis, and decline. Already in the seventh-century Chronicle of Fredegar, this tripartite model was invoked by a Merovingian queen to prophesy the fate of her descendants. This expert commentary sets out to understand how the story of the Merovingians was shaped through a process of continuous historiographical adaptation. It examines authors from across a millennium of historical writing and analyses their influences and objectives, charting the often-unexpected ways in which their narratives were received and developed.

The Rebel Nun

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Publisher : Blackstone Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1094092770
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (94 download)

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Book Synopsis The Rebel Nun by : Marj Charlier

Download or read book The Rebel Nun written by Marj Charlier and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marj Charlier’s The Rebel Nun is based on the true story of Clotild, the daughter of a sixth-century king and his concubine, who leads a rebellion of nuns against the rising misogyny and patriarchy of the medieval church. At that time, women are afforded few choices in life: prostitution, motherhood, or the cloister. Only the latter offers them any kind of independence. By the end of the sixth century, even this is eroding as the church begins to eject women from the clergy and declares them too unclean to touch sacramental objects or even their priest-husbands. Craving the legitimacy thwarted by her bastard status, Clotild seeks to become the next abbess of the female Monastery of the Holy Cross, the most famous of the women’s cloisters of the early Middle Ages. When the bishop of Poitiers blocks her appointment and seeks to control the nunnery himself, Clotild masterminds an escape, leading a group of nuns on a dangerous pilgrimage to beg her royal relatives to intercede on their behalf. But the bishop refuses to back down, and a bloody battle ensues. Will Clotild and her sisters succeed with their quest, or will they face excommunication, possibly even death? In the only historical novel written about the incident, The Rebel Nun is a richly imagined story about a truly remarkable heroine.

Routledge Handbook of Character Assassination and Reputation Management

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 135136832X
Total Pages : 512 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (513 download)

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Book Synopsis Routledge Handbook of Character Assassination and Reputation Management by : Sergei A. Samoilenko

Download or read book Routledge Handbook of Character Assassination and Reputation Management written by Sergei A. Samoilenko and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-05 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In modern politics as well as in historical times, character attacks abound. Words and images, like symbolic and psychological weapons, have sullied or destroyed numerous reputations. People mobilize significant material and psychological resources to defend themselves against such attacks. How does character assassination "work," and when does it not? Why do many targets fall so easily when they are under character attack? How can one prevent attacks and defend against them? The Routledge Handbook of Character Assassination and Reputation Management offers the first comprehensive examination of character assassination. Moving beyond studying corporate reputation management and how public figures enact and maintain their reputation, this lively volume offers a framework and cases to help understand, critically analyze, and effectively defend against such attacks. Written by an international and interdisciplinary team of experts, the book begins with a theoretical introduction and extensive description of the "five pillars" of character assassination: (1) the attacker, (2) the target, (3) the media, (4) the public, and (5) the context. The remaining chapters present engaging case studies suitable for class discussion. These include: Roman emperors; Reformation propaganda; the Founding Fathers; defamation in US politics; women politicians; autocratic regimes; European leaders; celebrities; nations; Internet campaigns. This handbook will prove invaluable to undergraduate and postgraduate students in communication, political science, history, sociology, and psychology departments. It will also help researchers become independent, critical, and informed thinkers capable of avoiding the pressure and manipulations of the media.

Amalasuintha

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Author :
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 081224947X
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Amalasuintha by : Massimiliano Vitiello

Download or read book Amalasuintha written by Massimiliano Vitiello and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2017-11-03 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As mother, as regent, and as queen, Amalasuintha struggled at the palace of Ravenna to maintain the Ostrogothic dynasty. Massimiliano Vitiello demonstrates the ways in which her life shows the influence of both Western and Eastern imperial models on the formation of female political power in the post-Roman world.

Ottonian Queenship

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192520504
Total Pages : 400 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (925 download)

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Book Synopsis Ottonian Queenship by : Simon MacLean

Download or read book Ottonian Queenship written by Simon MacLean and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-31 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first major study in English of the queens of the Ottonian dynasty (919-1024). The Ottonians were a family from Saxony who are often regarded as the founders of the medieval German kingdom. They were the most successful of all the dynasties to emerge from the wreckage of the pan-European Carolingian Empire after it disintegrated in 888, ruling as kings and emperors in Germany and Italy and exerting indirect hegemony in France and in Eastern Europe. It has long been noted by historians that Ottonian queens were peculiarly powerful - indeed, among the most powerful of the entire Middle Ages. Their reputations, particularly those of the empresses Theophanu (d.991) and Adelheid (d.999) have been commemorated for a thousand years in art, literature, and opera. But while the exceptional status of the Ottonian queens is well appreciated, it has not been fully explained. Ottonian Queenship offers an original interpretation of Ottonian queenship through a study of the sources for the dynasty's six queens, and seeks to explain it as a phenomenon with a beginning, middle, and end. The argument is that Ottonian queenship has to be understood as a feature in a broader historical landscape, and that its history is intimately connected with the unfolding story of the royal dynasty as a whole. Simon MacLean therefore interprets the spectacular status of Ottonian royal women not as a matter of extraordinary individual personalities, but as a distinctive product of the post-Carolingian era in which the certainties of the ninth century were breaking down amidst overlapping struggles for elite family power, royal legitimacy, and territory. Queenship provides a thread which takes us through the complicated story of a crucial century in Europe's creation, and helps explain how new ideas of order were constructed from the debris of the past.