What intellectual and practical tools did medieval peoples employ in situations of disorder? How did they attempt to maintain cultural stability? Arguing against the common notion of a static medieval society organized along kinship and feudal lines, the contributors to Ordering Medieval Society--among them some of Germany's most influential medieval historians--reveal the diverse egalitarian and hierarchical forms of organization that medieval societies used to forge group structure.

In the book's first section, "Conceiving," the authors examine intellectual modes of ordering...