In high medieval France, men and women saw the world around them as the product of tensions between opposites. Imbued with a Christian culture in which a penniless preacher was also the King of Kings and the last were expected to be first, twelfth-century thinkers brought order to their lives through the creation of opposing categories. In a highly original work, Constance Brittain Bouchard examines this poorly understood component of twelfth-century thought, one responsible, in her view, for the fundamental strangeness of that culture to modern thinking.

Scholars have long...

The monastery of Montier-en-Der, on the border between Champagne and Lorraine, was one of the most important monasteries of the Middle Ages. Its cartulary, put together in the 1120s at the height of the monastery's prestige and wealth, is a crucial source of information for the history of west Francia before the twelfth century and is here published in full for the first time.

Constance Brittain Bouchard begins the edition with a concise history of the monastery, codicological information on the cartulary and the other manuscripts that contain copies of charters from Montier-en-Der,...

Medieval society was dominated by its knights and nobles. The literature created in medieval Europe was primarily a literature of knightly deeds, and the modern imagination has also been captured by these leaders and warriors. This book explores the nature of the nobility, focusing on France in the High Middle Ages (11th-13th centuries). Constance Brittain Bouchard examines their families; their relationships with peasants, townspeople, and clerics; and the images of them fashioned in medieval literary texts. She incorporates throughout a consideration of noble women and the nobility's...

In Sword, Miter, and Cloister, Constance Brittain Bouchard provides a fresh perspective on social and ecclesiastical life in the High Middle Ages. Drawing on a vast range of primary sources, she reveals the surprisingly close relationship between the nobility and reformed monasteries in Burgundy. By focusing on a region considered to be the heart of aristocratic and monastic Europe during this era, Bouchard is able to develop themes and reach conclusions that can be applied to much of Europe.

Thinkers in medieval France constantly reconceptualized what had come before, interpreting past events to give validity to the present and help control the future. The long-dead saints who presided over churches and the ancestors of established dynasties were an especially crucial part of creative memory, Constance Brittain Bouchard contends. In Rewriting Saints and Ancestors she examines how such ex post facto accounts are less an impediment to the writing of accurate history than a crucial tool for understanding the Middle Ages.

Working backward through time, Bouchard...

In high medieval France, men and women saw the world around them as the product of tensions between opposites. Imbued with a Christian culture in which a penniless preacher was also the King of Kings and the last were expected to be first, twelfth-century thinkers brought order to their lives through the creation of opposing categories. In a highly original work, Constance Brittain Bouchard examines this poorly understood component of twelfth-century thought, one responsible, in her view, for the fundamental strangeness of that culture to modern thinking.

Scholars have long...