Medieval Polities and Modern Mentalities

by Timothy Reuter , Edited by Janet L. Nelson

• ISBN13: 9780521168632
• ISBN10: 0521168635
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-09-09
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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 2006 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.

Table of Contents

Editor's note

Acknowledgements

List of abbreviations

Editor's introduction

Modern Mentalities: Historiographies, Methodologies, Preconceptions:

Modern mentalities and medieval polities

Medieval: another tyrannous construct?

The insecurity of travel in the early and high Middle Ages: criminals, victims and their medieval and modern observers

Debating the 'feudal revolution'

Pre-Gregorian mentalities

Whose race, whose ethnicity? Recent medievalists' discussion of identity

The Symbolic Language of Medieval Political Action:

Nobles and others: the social and cultural expression of power relations in the Middle Ages

Regemque, quem in Francia pene perdidit, in patria magnifice recepit: Ottonian ruler representation in synchronic and diachronic comparison

Contextualising Canossa: excommunication, penance, surrender, reconciliation

Velle sibi fieri in forma hac: symbolic action in the Becket dispute

Political Structures and Intentions:

Assembly politics in western Europe from the eighth century to the twelfth

Sex, lies and oath-helpers: the trial of Queen Uota

Plunder and tribute in the Carolingian empire

The end of Carolingian military expansion

The Ottonians and Carolingian tradition

The making of England and Germany, 850-1050: points of comparison and difference

Kings, nobles, others: 'basis' and 'superstructure' in the Ottonian period

The 'imperial church system' of the Ottonian and Salian rulers: a reconsideration

Peace-breaking, feud, rebellion, resistance: violence and peace in the politics of the Salian era

The medieval German Sonderweg? The empire and its rulers in the high Middle Ages

Mandate, privilege, court judgement: techniques of rulership in the era of Frederick Barbarossa

All quiet except on the Western Front? The emergence of pre-modern forms of statehood in the central Middle Ages

Index

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