Province and Empire: Brittany and the Carolingians

by Julia M. H. Smith

• ISBN13: 9780521382854
• ISBN10: 0521382858
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1992-01-31
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book offers ideas about the processes of political and cultural change in the early Middle Ages. The main focus is on relations between the centre and periphery of the Carolingian empire, in particular on the development of Brittany as a territorial principality in the ninth and tenth centuries. A major theme is the interaction of Carolingian imperial policies, Frankish aristocratic feuding, and local Breton communities. Other issues discussed include economy and society in Brittany and Neustria, the impact of Carolingian imperialism on local Breton communities, changes in the political, ecclesiastical and social structures arising from Carolingian overlordship of Brittany, the interaction of Celtic and Carolingian culture, and the construction of an early medieval ethnic identity. The book shows how regional autonomy and self-regulating villages were as integral to the Carolingian world as court politics, cultural imperialism and frontier strife, and it argues that, in order to understand both the establishment and the collapse of the Carolingian empire, politics at the periphery demand as much attention as politics at the centre.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations

Acknowledgements

List of abbreviations

Note on nomenclature

Introduction

1. Settlement and society in dark age Brittany

2. Neustria and the Breton march

3. The Bretons in the Christian empire of Louis the Pious

4. Carolingian hegemony and Breton revolts, 840-874

5. An anatomy of power

6. Churches and learning in Carolingian Brittany

7. The end of Carolingian Brittany

Bibliography

Index.