This is a study of the place of patron saints in Frankish society during the Carolingian and early Capetian periods. The book focuses on the composition of works in praise of dead holy people - hagiography - and the veneration of their physical remains - the cult of saints. It examines the patrons of a single diocese, Orleans, because a saint's power of patronage was defined in terms of a particular locale. Beyond the documentation of this region's textual and institutional traditions, the book explores the uses made of sanctity and patronage by the Franks. These so-called 'fathers' protected...

This study of the social, geographical, and disciplinary composition of the University of Paris in the early fourteenth century--the most detailed of its kind ever attempted--is based on the reconstruction of a remarkable document: the financial record of tax levied on university members in the academic year 1329-1330. After a thorough examination of this document, the book explores residential patterns, the relationship of students, masters, and tutors, social class and levels of wealth, interaction with the royal court, and the geographical background of university scholars.

This book consists of a study of two important and related pieces of thirteenth-century English legislation--the Provisions of Westminster of 1259 and the Statute of Marlborough of 1267. In establishing the political and legal context of these statutes and examining the process of drafting them, the volume utilizes an exceptionally wide range of manuscript sources. Revealing how the legislation was used and interpreted up to 1307, it is the first major work on any of the statutes in this period of major legislative change.

If the medieval king was the helmsman of the ship of state, the royal household was the ship's engine. It comprised men from most ranks of society, from the great magnates of the realm to simple servants who looked after the day-to-day needs of the king and his court. This is the first full-length study of the most important group of the court household, the king's knights: socially é lite, militarily preeminent, and indispensable for the workings of English medieval government.

This is a political history of Brittany between 1158 and 1203, when it was ruled by the Angevin king of England, Henry II, and his successors. The book examines the process whereby Henry II gained sovereignty over Brittany, and how it was governed thereafter. This is the first study of this subject, offering an important contribution to the historiography of both Brittany and the "Angevin empire." It also offers a corrective to previous scholarship by suggesting that the Angevin regime in Brittany was neither alien nor opppressive to the Bretons.

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,...

The monastic life was of central importance in the Middle Ages. In one sense, monasteries were cut off from the world; in another, they forged vital links with it. This is a study of the regional growth of monasticism between 1069 and 1215, in what was the largest county in England. It studies those who entered monastic communities, and the impact of the growth of monasticism on the aristocracy (who founded and patronized monasteries) and the local community, on the landscape and economy of the county, and on regional identity.

This book offers a new approach to the problem of Slavic ethnicity in southeastern Europe between c. 500 and c. 700. The author shows how Byzantine authors "invented" the Slavs, in order to make sense of political and military developments taking place in the Balkans. Making extensive use of archaeology to show that such developments resulted in the rise of powerful leaders, responsible for creating group identities and mobilizing warriors for successful raids across the frontier. The author rejects the idea of Slavic migration, and shows that "the Slavs" were the product of the frontier.

This revisionary study of Muslims living under Christian rule during the Spanish "reconquest" delves into the subtleties of identity under the thirteenth-century Crown rule of Aragon. Brian Catlos uncovers a social dynamic in which sectarian differences comprise only one of the many factors in the causal complex of political, economic and cultural reactions. Beginning with the final stage of independent Muslim rule in the Ebro valley region, he traces the subtle and often surprising transformation of Islamic society into mudejar society under Christian domination.

This book examines the role of written agreements in eleventh- and twelfth-century Catalonia, and how they determined the social and political order. In addition to offering insights into subjects as diverse as the power of counts and bishops and the organization of rural societies, it addresses several current debates in medieval studies: the question of feudalism, the "transformation of the year 1000," medieval literacy, and the nature of Mediterranean societies. It is thus a local study that has wide implications for the history of medieval Europe.