State and Society in the Early Middle Ages: The Middle Rhine Valley, 400–1000

by Matthew Innes

• ISBN13: 9780521027168
• ISBN10: 0521027160
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-11-02
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book is a pioneering study of politics and society in the early Middle Ages. Whereas it is widely believed that the source materials for early medieval Europe are too sparse to allow sustained study of the workings of social and political relationships on the ground, this book focuses on a uniquely well-documented area to investigate the basis of power. Topics covered include the foundation of monasteries, their relationship with the laity, and their role as social centres; the significance of urbanism; the control of land, the development of property rights and the organization of states; community, kinship and lordship; justice and dispute settlement; the uses of the written word; violence and the feud; and the development of political structures from the Roman empire to the high Middle Ages.

Table of Contents

List of figures	ix
List of abbreviations	x
A note on nomenclature and citations	xiii
Acknowledgements	xiv
1 INTRODUCTION
Region, sources and scope	1	(3)
Early medieval politics: problems of approach	4	(9)
2 MONASTICISM, SPIRITUAL PATRONAGE AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE	13	(38)
Gifts to the church: patterns and potential	13	(5)
Spiritual patronage and gifts to the church	18	(16)
Funerary ritual, inheritance and gift exchange	34	(6)
Gifts of land and social power	40	(7)
The implications of monastic landholding	47	(4)
3 LAND, KINSHIP AND STATUS	51	(43)
The elite: kinship, land and inheritance	51	(1)
Lorsch's founders	51	(14)
The family of Otakar
The family of Hraban Maur	65	(3)
Land as property	68	(9)
The exploitation of land and the organisation of estates	77	(5)
Vertical integration: social status	82	(3)
Vertical integration: kinship and lordship	85	(8)
The relationship between land and power	93	(1)
4 LOCAL POWER: COLLECTIVE ACTION, CONFLICT AND CONSENSUS	94	(47)
Patterns of public action	94	(1)
Cities, monasteries and collective action	95	(10)
Rural settlements	105	(6)
Scribes as guardians of legal tradition	111	(7)
Counts and public meetings	118	(6)
Local political leadership	124	(5)
Violence, ritual and dispute settlement	129	(10)
The texture of local power	139	(2)
5 LOCALITY AND CENTRE: MECHANISMS OF EXTRACTION	141	(24)
Approaching early medieval government	141	(2)
Military service	143	(10)
The army tax	153	(3)
Royal levies	156	(9)
6 POLITICAL POWER FROM THE FIFTH TO THE ELEVENTH CENTURY	165	(86)
Introduction	165	(1)
Roman to Merovingian	165	(7)
The Merovingian middle Rhine	172	(8)
Forging the pax Karolina	180	(8)
Maintaining the pax Karolina	188	(7)
The politics of division	195	(15)
The zenith of Carolingian politics	210	(12)
Crisis, conflict and consolidation	222	(19)
The transformation of the early medieval polity	241	(10)
7 CONCLUSION: STATE AND SOCIETY IN THE EARLY MEDIEVAL WEST	251
Structural characteristics of early medieval politics	251	(3)
Public and private, state and society	254	(5)
Interpreting the early medieval west	259
List of primary sources	208	(66)
Bibliography of secondary works	274	(33)
Index	307