This book looks at family-based political power in three south Italian cities--Gaeta, Amalfi and Naples--and examines the ways in which medieval families can be reconstructed and their relationships with each other studied. It analyzes the changes that took place in these cities, particularly in the eleventh century, and their reactions to the Norman conquest of southern Italy in the latter part of the century. This is the first comparative study of the three cities and it is of special relevance to European studies of the early medieval family and state structures.

This is the first biography of one of the wealthiest and most influential bishops of medieval Europe, who for a period of over thirty years exercised a degree of power over the thirteenth-century Plantagenet court second only to that of the king. The career of Peter des Roches and the activities of his fellow aliens are fundamental to an understanding of the process by which England and France developed as two separate kingdoms. The book also sheds new light on such hotly-debated issues as the role of aliens in English politics, the reception of Magna Carta, the loss of Normandy, and the...

This book is based on the biographies of some 1400 individuals who lived in three northern English towns during the later Middle Ages. It analyzes the many aspects of merchant society: achievements in politics, attitudes toward religion, the family, wider circles of friends and business acquaintances, and the nature and conduct of trade. Merchants were at the core of urban society and played a central role in the development of urban mentalite. This is one of the broadest studies of them yet published, integrating a very wide range of original sources.

Focusing on Yorkshire, by far the largest English county, this book examines three of the most important themes in the period described by Sir Frank Stenton as "the first century of English feudalism": the Norman conquest, the anarchy of Stephen's reign, and the nature of lordship and land tenure. In each case the book offers a strong challenge to dominant and accepted historical interpretations that will alter significantly our conception of Anglo-Norman politics and government.

This book examines the fifteenth-century gentry of Leicestershire under five broad headings: as landholders, as members of a social community based on the county, as participants in and leaders of the government of the shire, as members of the wider family unit and, finally, as individuals. Economically assertive, they were also socially cohesive, this cohesion being provided by the shire community. The shire also provided the most important political unit, controlled by an oligarchy of superior gentry families who were relatively independent of outside interference. The basic social unit was...

To understand Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire properly it is necessary to have knowledge of his historiographical and philosophical context. Gibbon is considered here not just for what he reveals of eighteenth-century intellectual attitudes, but for his forceful interpretation of the period. Leading experts in the field about which Gibbon himself wrote enter into dialogue with historians of the eighteenth century. New light is thereby thrown not only on Gibbon's text, but also on the degree to which he can be regarded as a trustworthy guide to late antiquity and...

Based on extensive archival research, this volume examines the early growth of Barcelona in order to understand the causes of the European economic take-off. The city did not at first grow because of overseas trade but because of market-oriented agriculture and tribute from Islamic Spain. Only after a difficult adjustment did the city develop the commercial foundations that would later ensure its prosperity. Barcelona's patriciate rose to prominence during the second stage of growth, also a period dominated by a struggle for power in Catalonia. Here, the family structure of the patriciate...

This history of the English royal manor of Havering, Essex, illustrates life at one extreme of the spectrum of personal and collective freedom during the later Middle Ages, revealing the kinds of patterns which could emerge when medieval people were placed in a setting of unusual independence. As residents of a manor held by the crown, they profited from royal administrative neglect. As tenants of the ancient royal demesne, they had special legal rights and economic privileges. Havering's dominant families controlled the legal and administrative life of their community through the powerful...

The barbarians of the fifth and sixth centuries were long thought to be races, tribes or ethnic groups who toppled the Roman Empire. This book proposes a new view, through a case study of the Goths of Italy between 489 and 554. The author suggests wholly new ways of understanding barbarian groups and the end of the Western Roman Empire. The book also proposes a complete reinterpretation of the evolution of Christian conceptions of community, and of so-called "Germanic" Arianism.

The liturgy of the medieval church has been little studied in its relation to medieval thought and society. It has often been taken for granted that the Latin liturgy was understood by the priest, but to his congregation was only a spectacle of authority. This book begins with the hypothesis that the liturgy was, in some senses, understood by its congregations, and it attempts to discover what this understanding might have been. Through studies of the sermons and writings of Tertullian, Ambrose, Augustine, Bede, Abelard and others, of the practice of infant baptism, and of the art and...