Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900-1300 PDF Download

Author: Susan Reynolds
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 526

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Book Description
Reynolds focuses on the collective values and activities of lay society over several centuries, offering a new approach to the history of medieval Europe. This edition incorporates a new introduction which amplifies the arguments of recent research.

Author: Susan Reynolds
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807833533
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
In this concise history of expropriation of land for the common good in Europe and North America from medieval times to 1800, Susan Reynolds contextualizes the history of an important legal doctrine regarding the relationship between government and the in

Author: Susan Reynolds
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0198206488
Category : Civilization, Medieval
Languages : en
Pages : 557

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Book Description
Fiefs and Vassals has changed our view of the medieval world. It offers a fundamental challenge to orthodox conceptions of feudalism. Susan Reynolds argues that the concepts of the fief and of vassalage, as understood by historians of medieval Europe, were constructed by post-medieval scholarsfrom the works of medieval academic lawyers and tha they provide a bad guide to the realities of medieval society.This is a radical new examination of relations between rulers, nobles, and free men, the distillation of wide-ranging research by a leading medieval historian. It has revolutionized the way we think of the Middle Ages.

Author: Robin W. Winks
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Medieval Europe and the World: From Late Antiquity to Modernity, 400-1500 examines the development of western European social, political, economic, and cultural institutions during one of the most complex and creative periods the world has ever known. The book looks at the history of Medieval Europe in relation to its links with the rest of the world, exploring the interaction of western Europe with Islam, the Far East, Africa, and such outlying areas as Scandinavia, Iberia, and Eastern Europe. It considers the genesis and shaping of distinct western ideals, social affairs, economic patterns, and new cultural forms in relation to Islam and Byzantium--two other great civilizations that deeply influenced the growth of western Europe's unique history. Placing emphasis on medieval Europe's social and economic transformations and the diversity of social orders, the book analyzes the ways in which these elements interconnected during the formation of medieval society. It also gives special consideration to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, an era that serves as a bridge between the cultural developments of the early and central Middle Ages and the emergence of new patterns of thought and social organization in the late medieval period. Featuring nine maps, numerous illustrations, a chronological table, and a detailed list of suggested further readings, this brief but comprehensive narrative is an ideal text for undergraduate courses in medieval history.

Author: George Molyneaux
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192542931
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
The central argument of The Formation of the English Kingdom in the Tenth Century is that the English kingdom which existed at the time of the Norman Conquest was defined by the geographical parameters of a set of administrative reforms implemented in the mid- to late tenth century, and not by a vision of English unity going back to Alfred the Great (871-899). In the first half of the tenth century, successive members of the Cerdicing dynasty established a loose domination over the other great potentates in Britain. They were celebrated as kings of the whole island, but even in their Wessex heartlands they probably had few means to regulate routinely the conduct of the general populace. Detailed analysis of coins, shires, hundreds, and wapentakes suggests that it was only around the time of Edgar (957/9-975) that the Cerdicing kings developed the relatively standardised administrative apparatus of the so-called 'Anglo-Saxon state'. This substantially increased their ability to impinge upon the lives of ordinary people living between the Channel and the Tees, and served to mark that area off from the rest of the island. The resultant cleft undermined the idea of a pan-British realm, and demarcated the early English kingdom as a distinct and coherent political unit. In this volume, George Molyneaux places the formation of the English kingdom in a European perspective, and challenges the notion that its development was exceptional: the Cerdicings were only one of several ruling dynasties around the fringes of the former Carolingian Empire for which the late ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries were a time of territorial expansion and consolidation.

Author: Pauline Stafford
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526148285
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
The primary focus of this collection by leading medieval historians is the laity, in particular the ideas and ideals of lay people. The contributors explore lay attitudes as expressed in legal cases, charters, chronicles and collective activities. Highlights the centrality of kinship, whilst stressing its limitations as an all purpose social bond. Ranges chronologically and geographically from the seventh century to the eve of the Reformation, from Western Britain to papal and urban Italy, from Carolingian dynastic politics to the decline of medieval pilgrimage in the sixteenth century, and from the courts of twelfth-century France to the fifteenth-century wards of London.

Author: Fiona Edmonds
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783273364
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
WINNER OF THE FRANK WATSON BOOK PRIZE 2021. SHORTLISTED IN SCOTLAND'S NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS 2021 The first full-scale, interdisciplinary treatment of the wide-ranging connections between the Gaelic world and the Northumbrian kingdom.

Author: Andrew Sargent
Publisher: Univ of Hertfordshire Press
ISBN: 1912260379
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description
This book focuses on the period from the seventh to eleventh centuries that witnessed the rise and fall of Mercia, the great Midland kingdom, and, later, the formation of England. Specifically, it explores the relationship between the bishops of Lichfield and the multiple communities of their diocese. Andrew Sargent tackles the challenge posed by the evidential 'hole' at the heart of Mercia by synthesising different kinds of evidence - archaeological, textual, topographical and toponymical - to reconstruct the landscapes inhabited by these communities, which intersected at cathedrals and minsters and other less formal meeting-places. Most such communities were engaged in the construction of hierarchies, and Sargent assigns spiritual lordship a dominant role in this. Tracing the interconnections of these communities, he focuses on the development of the Church of Lichfield, an extensive episcopal community situated within a dynamic mesh of institutions and groups within and beyond the diocese, from the royal court to the smallest township. The regional elite combined spiritual and secular forms of lordship to advance and entrench their mutual interests, and the entanglement of royal and episcopal governance is one of the key focuses of Andrew Sargent's outstanding new research. How the bishops shaped and promoted spiritual discourse to establish their own authority within society is key. This is traced through the meagre textual sources, which hint at the bishops' involvement in the wider flow of ecclesiastical politics in Britain, and through the archaeological and landscape evidence for churches and minsters held not only by bishops, but also by kings and aristocrats within the diocese. Saints' cults offer a particularly effective medium through which to study these developments: St Chad, the Mercian bishop who established the see at Lichfield, became an influential spiritual patron for subsequent bishops of the diocese, but other lesser known saints also focused c

Author: Joseph Patrick Huffman
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472024183
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
Late nineteenth- and twentieth-century political and intellectual boundaries have heavily influenced our views of medieval Germany. Historians have looked back to the Middle Ages for the origins of modern European political crises. They concluded that while England and France built nation-states during the medieval era, Germany--lacking a unified nation-state--remained uniquely backward and undeveloped. Employing a comparative social history, Huffman reassesses traditional national historiographies of medieval diplomacy and political life. Germany is integrated into Anglo-French notions of western Europe and shown to be both an integral player in western European political history as well as a political community that was as fully developed as those of medieval England or France. The Social Politics of Medieval Diplomacy offers a study of the social dynamics of relations between political communities. In particular, the Anglo-French political communities do not appear as state and constitution builders, while the German political community is not as a state and constitution destroyer. The book concludes by encouraging medievalists to integrate the German kingdom into their intellectual constructs of medieval Europe. This book is an essential history of medieval Germany. It bridges the gaps between Anglo-French and German scholarship and political and social history. Joseph Huffman makes available German-language scholarship. Both English and German history is integrated in an accessible and interesting way. The historiographical implications of this study will be far-reaching. Joseph P. Huffman is Associate Professor of History and Political Science, Messiah College.

Author: Ian Peter Grohse
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004343652
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
In Frontiers for Peace in the Medieval North. The Norwegian-Scottish Frontier c. 1260-1470, Ian Peter Grohse examines social and political interactions in Orkney, a Norwegian-held province with long and intimate ties to the Scottish mainland. Commonly portrayed as the epicentre of political tension between Norwegian and Scottish fronts, Orkney appears here as a medium for diplomacy between monarchies and as an avenue for interface and cooperation between neighbouring communities. Removed from the national heartlands of Scandinavia and Britain, Orcadians fostered a distinctly local identity that, although rooted in Norwegian law and civic organization, featured a unique cultural accent engendered through Scottish immigration. This study of Orcadian experiences encourages greater appreciation of the peaceful dimensions of pre-modern European frontiers.