The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950–1350

The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950–1350 PDF Author: Robert F. Berkhofer III
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351889966
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 453

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Book Description
Taking their inspiration from the work of Thomas N. Bisson, to whom the book is dedicated, the contributors to this volume explore the experience of power in medieval Europe: the experience of those who held power, those who helped them wield it, and those who felt its effects. The seventeen essays in the collection, which range geographically from England in the north to Castile in the south, and chronologically from the tenth century to the fourteenth, address a series of specific topics in institutional, social, religious, cultural, and intellectual history. Taken together, they present three distinct ways of discussing power in a medieval historical context: uses of power, relations of power, and discourses of power. The collection thus examines not only the operational and social aspects of power, but also power as a contested category within the medieval world. The Experience of Power suggests new and fruitful ways of understanding and studying power in the Middle Ages.

The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950–1350

The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950–1350 PDF Author: Robert F. Berkhofer III
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351889966
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 453

Get Book

Book Description
Taking their inspiration from the work of Thomas N. Bisson, to whom the book is dedicated, the contributors to this volume explore the experience of power in medieval Europe: the experience of those who held power, those who helped them wield it, and those who felt its effects. The seventeen essays in the collection, which range geographically from England in the north to Castile in the south, and chronologically from the tenth century to the fourteenth, address a series of specific topics in institutional, social, religious, cultural, and intellectual history. Taken together, they present three distinct ways of discussing power in a medieval historical context: uses of power, relations of power, and discourses of power. The collection thus examines not only the operational and social aspects of power, but also power as a contested category within the medieval world. The Experience of Power suggests new and fruitful ways of understanding and studying power in the Middle Ages.

Paths to Kingship in Medieval Latin Europe, c. 950–1200

Paths to Kingship in Medieval Latin Europe, c. 950–1200 PDF Author: Björn Weiler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316518426
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 493

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Book Description
What did kingship mean to medieval Europeans - especially to those who did not wear a crown? From the training of heirs, to the deathbed of kings and the choosing of their successors, this engaging study explores how a ruler's subjects shaped both the idea and the reality of power.

Introduction to Medieval Europe 300–1500

Introduction to Medieval Europe 300–1500 PDF Author: Wim Blockmans
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317934253
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 508

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Book Description
Introduction to Medieval Europe 300-1500 provides a comprehensive survey of this complex and varied formative period of European history. Covering themes as diverse as barbarian migrations, the impact of Christianization, the formation of nations and states, the emergence of an expansionist commercial economy, the growth of cities, the Crusades, the effects of plague, and the intellectual and cultural life of the Middle Ages, the book explores the driving forces behind the formation of medieval society and the directions in which it developed and changed. In doing this, the authors cover a wide geographic expanse, including Western interactions with the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic World. Now in full colour, this second edition contains a wealth of new features that help to bring this fascinating era to life, including: A detailed timeline of the period, putting key events into context Primary source case boxes Full colour illustrations throughout New improved maps A glossary of terms Annotated suggestions for further reading The book is supported by a free companion website with resources including, for instructors, assignable discussion questions and all of the images and maps in the book available to download, and for students, a comparative interactive timeline of the period and links to useful websites. The website can be found at www.routledge.com/cw/blockmans. Clear and stimulating, the second edition of Introduction to Medieval Europe is the ideal companion to studying Europe in the Middle Ages at undergraduate level.

Contested Treasure

Contested Treasure PDF Author: Thomas W. Barton
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271066261
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
In Contested Treasure, Thomas Barton examines how the Jews in the Crown of Aragon in the twelfth through fourteenth centuries negotiated the overlapping jurisdictions and power relations of local lords and the crown. The thirteenth century was a formative period for the growth of royal bureaucracy and the development of the crown’s legal claims regarding the Jews. While many Jews were under direct royal authority, significant numbers of Jews also lived under nonroyal and seigniorial jurisdiction. Barton argues that royal authority over the Jews (as well as Muslims) was far more modest and contingent on local factors than is usually recognized. Diverse case studies reveal that the monarchy’s Jewish policy emerged slowly, faced considerable resistance, and witnessed limited application within numerous localities under nonroyal control, thus allowing for more highly differentiated local modes of Jewish administration and coexistence. Contested Treasure refines and complicates our portrait of interfaith relations and the limits of royal authority in medieval Spain, and it presents a new approach to the study of ethnoreligious relations and administrative history in medieval European society.

The Cultural Power of Medieval Monarchy

The Cultural Power of Medieval Monarchy PDF Author: Manuel Alejandro Rodríguez de la Peña
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000959007
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
This book focuses on why the diffusion of the political theology of royal wisdom created “Solomonic” princes with intellectual interests all around the medieval West and how these learned rulers changed the face of Western Europe through their policies and the cultural power of medieval monarchy. Princely wisdom narratives have been seen simply as a tool of royal propaganda in the Middle Ages but these narratives were much more than propaganda, being rather a coherent ideology which transformed princely courts, shaped mentalities, and influenced key political decisions. This cultural power of medieval monarchy was channelled mainly through princely patronage of learning and the arts, but the rise of administrative monarchy and its bureaucracy are equally related to these policies. This can only be understood through a cultural approach to the history of medieval politics, that is, a history of the relationship between knowledge and power in the Middle Ages, a topic much analyzed regarding the medieval church but sometimes neglected in the princely sphere. This volume is a study that supplies an important comparative study of the reception in princely courts of a key aspect of European medieval civilization: The ideal of Christian sapiential rulership and its corollary, rationality in government. This volume is essential reading for students and scholars interested in understanding the medieval roots of the cultural process which gave rise to the modern state.

Abbatial Authority and the Writing of History in the Middle Ages

Abbatial Authority and the Writing of History in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Benjamin Pohl
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198795378
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
This book argues that abbatial authority was fundamental to monastic historical writing in the period c.500-1500. Writing history was a collaborative enterprise integral to the life and identity of medieval monastic communities, but it was not an activity for which time and resources were set aside routinely. Each act of historiographical production constituted an extraordinary event, one for which singular provision had to be made, workers and materials assigned, time carved out from the monastic routine, and licence granted. This allocation of human and material resources was the responsibility and prerogative of the monastic superior. Drawing on a wide and diverse range of primary evidence gathered from across the medieval Latin West, this book is the first to investigate systematically how and why abbots and abbesses exercised their official authority and resources to lay the foundations on which their communities' historiographical traditions were built by themselves and others. It showcases them as prolific authors, patrons, commissioners, project managers, and facilitators of historical narratives who not only regularly put pen to parchment personally, but also, and perhaps more importantly, enabled others inside and outside their communities by granting them the resources and licence to write. Revealing the intrinsic relationship between abbatial authority and the writing of history in the Middle Ages with unprecedented clarity, Benjamin Pohl urges us to revisit and revise our understanding of monastic historiography, its processes, and its protagonists in ways that require some radical rethinking of the medieval historian's craft in communal and institutional contexts.

Open Access

Open Access PDF Author: Mickey Abel
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443835900
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Open Access: Contextualizing the Archivolted Portals of Northern Spain and Western France within the Theology and Politics of Entry explores the history, development, and accrued connotations of a distinctive entry configuration comprised of a set of concentrically stepped archivolts surrounding a deliberate tympanum-free portal opening. These “archivolted” portals adorned many of the small, rural ecclesiastical structures dotting the countryside of western France and northern Spain in the twelfth century. Seeking to re-contextualize this configuration within monastic meditational practices, this book argues that the ornamented archivolts were likely composed following medieval prescriptions for the rhetorical ornamentation of poetry and employed the techniques of mnemonic recollection and imaginative visualization. Read in this light, it becomes clear that the architectural form underlying these semi-circular configurations served to open the possibilities for meaning by making the sculptural imagery physically and philosophically accessible to both the monastic community and the lay parishioner. Pointing to an Iberian heritage in which both light and space had long been manipulated in the conveyance of theological and political ideologies, Abel suggests that the portal’s architectural form grew out of a physical and social matrix characterized by pilgrimage, crusade, and processions, where the elements of motion integral to the Quadrivium sciences of Math, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music were enhanced by a proximity to and cultural interaction with the Islamic courts of Spain. It was, however, within the politics of the Peace of God movement, with its emphasis on relic processions that often encompassed all the parishes of the monastic domain, that the “archivolted” portal, with its elevated porch-like space, are shown to be the most effective.

Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900436076X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
The authors bring fresh approaches to the subject of royal and noble households in medieval and early modern Europe with a focus on the nuclear and extended royal family, their household attendants, noblemen and noblewomen as courtiers, and physicians.

Queenship in Medieval Europe

Queenship in Medieval Europe PDF Author: Theresa Earenfight
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1137303921
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Medieval queens led richly complex lives and were highly visible women active in a man's world. Linked to kings by marriage, family, and property, queens were vital to the institution of monarchy. In this comprehensive and accessible introduction to the study of queenship, Theresa Earenfight documents the lives and works of queens and empresses across Europe, Byzantium, and the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages. The book: - Introduces pivotal research and sources in queenship studies, and includes exciting and innovative new archival research - Highlights four crucial moments across the full span of the Middle Ages – ca. 300, 700, 1100, and 1350 – when Christianity, education, lineage, and marriage law fundamentally altered the practice of queenship - Examines theories and practices of queenship in the context of wider issues of gender, authority, and power. This is an invaluable and illuminating text for students, scholars and other readers interested in the role of royal women in medieval society.

The Palgrave Handbook of Masculinity and Political Culture in Europe

The Palgrave Handbook of Masculinity and Political Culture in Europe PDF Author: Christopher Fletcher
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137585382
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
This handbook aims to challenge ‘gender blindness’ in the historical study of high politics, power, authority and government, by bringing together a group of scholars at the forefront of current historical research into the relationship between masculinity and political power. Until very recently in historical terms, formal political authority in Europe was normally and ideally held by adult males, with female power being perceived as a recurrent aberration. Yet paradoxically the study of the interactions between masculinity and political culture is still very much in its infancy. This volume seeks to remedy this lacuna by considering the different consequences of the masculinity of power over two millennia of European history. It examines how masculinity and political culture have interacted from ancient Rome and the early medieval Byzantine empire, to twentieth-century Germany and Italy. It considers a broad variety of case studies from early medieval Iceland and late medieval France, to Naples at the time of the French Revolution and Strasbourg after the Franco-Prussian War, with a particular focus on the development of political masculinities in Great Britain between the sixteenth century and the present day.