Pristina libertas: liberty and the Anglo-Saxons revisited
By Julia Crick
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vol.14 (2004)
Abstract: The association between liberty and the Anglo-Saxons has been rendered mythical by later retellings, both in the Middle Ages and afterwards. This later history notwithstanding, it is argued here that liberty occupied a significant place in the early English documentary record.
Originally part of the cultural and linguistic inheritance from late antiquity, the notion of liberty was deployed by English churchmen in defence of monastic freedom from the eighth century onwards, creating an archival legacy which was rewritten and imitated in later centuries, becoming fixed in institutional memory as fiscal and legal freedoms bestowed on the populations of monasteries and towns by pre-Conquest kings.
A Mirror for Princes? A Textual Study of Instructions for Rulers and Consorts in Three Old French Genres
By Erin Morgan
MA Thesis, University of Canterbury, 2008
Abstract: This study focuses on the literary subgenre of Mirrors for Princes. A number of twelfth-century works from three genres of Old French literature are examined in order to ascertain what forms any didacticism takes, and whether the texts can be read as Mirrors for Princes. The three genres studied are epic, romance and pseudo-historical chronicle. From epic, I discuss La Chanson de Roland, Le Voyage de Charlemagne, La Chançun de Willame and Le Couronnement de Louis. Chrétien de Troyes forms the study of Mirrors for Princes in romance, and for pseudo-historical chronicle I examine Wace’s Roman de Brut.
The didacticism present in the studied texts assumes two forms. The first is direct didacticism, in which the narrator or a character portrays an instruction or moral lesson through “speech”. This gives extra emphasis to the message, whether addressed directly to the audience or to another character within the narrative. The second form is indirect didacticism, which is more common in these texts. It consists of exemplary characters, their actions, behaviour and reputations. The Mirrors for Princes aspects of these texts provide not only examples of successful kings, but also of excellent vassals and queens. The mirrors for the women involve virtuous characteristics, where they fulfil their wifely and noble duties. They are addressed to regents and queens consort more so than to queens regnant, who were uncommon figures in the twelfth century.
As well as providing examples and lessons on what is optimal behaviour for the ruling class, there are characters who supply examples of behaviour that is to be avoided. With these ignoble characters, common methods of transmitting the didactic messages are through their lasting reputation, the consequences of their actions, or the nature of their deaths.
The study concludes that the examined texts can be read as Mirrors for Princes, despite most of them not being originally conceived as belonging to this subgenre. Lessons for vassals, noblemen and noblewomen, queens and kings are present to varying extents throughout these works using both forms of didacticism outlined above.
Introduction: Despite the growth of ‘scientific’ analysis in the study of the past, it is still rare to find any frankness among historians concerning their own motives and preconceptions. Most historical work is based on remarkably unsophisticated conceptual apparatus, whatever the technical expertise with whicb written sources are treated.
Nowhere is the barren nature of most historical work more clearly exposed than in the study of politics and political ideas. Despite the awareness in some circíes that history as an intellectual discipline must die, even though it responds to a fundamental human demand br knowledge and understanding of man’s past, if it fails to learn from and absorb other disciplines and their discoveries, it is still in fact, though never explicitly, assumed that men’s motives for political actions in past ages can be adequately explained by the use of a few naive and fairly crude concepts.
In exploring the theory and the practical results of politics in one late medieval Spanish town, it may be possible to reflect, rather more accurately than is customary, both the reality of a certain context in the past and the ideas and prejudices of one historian. This article will not begin from wholly materialistic assumptions or from the converse belief that the only true reality is non-material.
It will however use the knowledge which has been gleaned from a decade of research into the archives of Córdoba in order to undertake a journey which will, it is hoped, go through various ‘archaeological layers’ of historical understanding to reach a more rounded view of what some men aspired to do and what they actually did.
In this search, it will be assumed that those things which are conventionally described as ‘material’ or’spiritual’, whether in metaphors derived from that traditional source of imagery, the human body, so beloved of Biblical writers and medieval and Renaissance political theorists, or in those other images which Man and his followers have found in the spheres of building and manufacture, are merely different facets of one human nature and one world. Whatever distinctions and divisions may have to be made for purposes of analysis, it must never be forgotten that none of these facts or factors can exist for long without reference to the others.
Introduction: While the study of early medieval kingship and king-making rites has generated an extensive literature, scholarship on contemporary queenship has concentrated on themes of authority and power in religious and political contexts, and queen-making rites have received only passing mention. Beginning in the late ninth and early tenth centuries it became customary in England and Francia for a queen to be ritually inaugurated to her position. The rite of consecration endowed her with a new persona, entailing the attributes and virtues of queenship. Of course, sources reveal that kings’ wives had been considered queens and significant members of royal households from at least the sixth century.
The nature of queenship changed gradually over the period. Initially marriage to a king made a queen, and this position appears to have been quite satisfactory until the late eighth century, when Bertrada was consecrated queen in 751 or 754. Regular consecrations of queens, which included unction, began in the mid- to late eighth century.
Since the queen was not a ruler, the theology and ideology of rulership could not be applied to her inauguration rites. Her installation had different purposes and ideology, thus requiring other characteristics to underpin her new life and new significance. The ritual actions of queen-making resembled some of those in king-making, but they held different symbolism when applied to the king’s wife. The queen-making protocols of Charles the Bald’s reign mark a crossroads in developing ideas of queenship in the early medieval period. They are the earliest documented queen-making rites for which the protocols have survived and they incorporate elements of anointing and imposition of insignia.
This essay will analyze the language and structure of these rites in order to understand their religious and political nature and purpose and to place them in their historical context. From the mid-ninth century, queen-making rites impinged upon ideas and attributes which began to coalesce about the king’s wife, and reflected issues of royal dynastic virtue and political integrity and security. The liturgical evolution of these rites encompassed a variety of marital and spiritual blessings determined by changing courtly personalities and political realities.
From God’s Peace to the King’s Order: Late Medieval Limitations on Non-Royal Warfare
By Justine Firnhaber-Baker
Essays in Medieval Studies, Vol.23 (2006)
Introduction: One of the fundamental tasks of medieval kings was to be a peacemaker, that is, to settle disputes and to prevent new ones from arising. The later medieval kings of France, whose councilors probably thought more about kingship than anyone else would ever care to, took this task very seriously. Throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the kings of France presented themselves to the world and to their subjects as arbiters of discord and guardians of peace. They did this through their personal work and that of their administrators and institutions in settling conflicts, but they also proceeded prescriptively by promulgating prohibitions or limitations of non-royal warfare. These ordinances outlawing the so-called “private” wars of nobles and other magnates have been considered, most notably by Aryeh Graboïs, as the culmination of a centuries-long development in the maintenance of order, one that began with the Peace of God Movement around the millennium and evolved into a royally directed program in the reigns of Louis VI and Louis VII.
But if development and change have been observed in the ideas and practices intended to maintain peace from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, this group of ordinances has not received as nuanced a treatment. Traditionally, in an approach that dates from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these texts were considered a single body of legislation representing a coherent and consistent ideological program directed by the crown. Yet, these ordinances were issued over the course of more than a century, during which time eight kings held the scepter of France. Moreover, as Raymond Cazelles has argued, there is considerable evidence for disjuncture among these texts. Indeed, Cazelles went so far as to assert that the ordinances against non-royal warfare were not at all indicative of a consistent program but rather only ad hoc, unconnected measures meant to deal with temporarysituations. His take on the ordinances has been lauded as a refreshing counterpoint to the supposedly “statist” bias of much of French institutional historiography. Yet, although it is true that the scholarship to which Cazelles was reacting partook of an anachronistic understanding of law in the Middle Ages, a closer look at the texts suggests that he went too far to the other extreme.
The ordinances are a heterogeneous mix of documents. While some of them do seem to have been measures of momentary political expediency, others evince a conscious connection to previous legislation and to the policies of predecessor kings. Those that do exhibit interrelatedness, however, do not manifest a consistent ideological program. Rather from the mid-thirteenth to the mid-fourteenth century, the intellectual content of peace-keeping prohibitions underwent extensive modification. Although early efforts under Louis IX inherited much from the ideological and administrative aspects of the Peace and Truce of God, his successors, particularly Philip IV and John II, increasingly deemphasized the sacral aspects of peace even as they found new rationales for peacekeeping that inhered in new political realities and newly elaborated theories of kingship and governance.
Byzantines in the Florentine polis: Ideology, Statecraft and Ritual during the Council of Florence
By Stuart M. McManus
Journal of the Oxford University History Society, Vol.6 (2008)
Introduction: In 1439 Leonardo Bruni, the Chancellor of the Florentine Republic, wrote a treatise about the political system of his adopted homeland which has perplexed scholars. In it, he seems to deny the assumption upon which the majority of his previous political works is based: that Florence’s government had a popular basis. However, a few months before the presumed date of composition of the treatise, the elected rulers of the city went on foot to the gates of the city to meet an Emperor, a ritualistic act designed to underline their humble origins as representatives of a popular republic. This seems to represent a discrepancy. Why would representatives of the same mercantile Republic present their polity at one point as ‘popular’ and anti-aristocratic, and soon after claim that this was not in fact the case? The beginnings of an answer may be found in the fact that both these events took place during the Council of Florence, an ecumenical council, which had been transferred from Basle to Ferrara, before finally arriving in Florence in 1439.
The Council of Florence was the culmination of attempts by the Byzantine Orthodox Church, based in Constantinople, to unite in faith with the Catholic Church in the West, in order to secure a crusade to save Constantine’s ‘Second Rome’ from the onslaught of the Ottoman Turks. This Council was also the last in a series of ecumenical Councils in the West in the first half of the Quattrocento which had sought to deal with the problems of schism and disorder which afflicted the western Church. This multifaceted Council naturally has as many interpretations as it does historians, with the authoritative voice of the British Jesuit Joseph Gill rightly soaring above the rest. All students of the Council must make recourse to Gill and his expert historical and theological study, and it was only by building on his study that a variety of more recent interpretations have emerged, which interpret the Council as the ‘magna carta della restaurazione pontificia’, or the defining moment in the birth of renaissance Platonism. However, if we attempt to define the Council at a fundamental level, it was simply a diplomatic encounter between Latin and Greek ecclesiastics and secular potentates within the territory of a third entity, the Florentine polity.
More than the biographies of the kings and queens of England, this lecture is an in depth examination of what the English monarchy has meant, in terms of the expression of the individual, the Mother of Parliaments, Magna Carta, the laws of England and the land of England. The importance of the rich heritage of the Anglo Saxon kings is featured but it does not stop there. This is the history of ideas and ideals, as well as colourful characters.
Abstract: This paper offers a brief overview of my preliminary M.A. thesis research into the lives of Byzantine imperial women and their political authority and influence. While identifying the lack of attention Byzantinists past and present have paid to these women, and redefining the notion of what constitutes “power,” this article aims to incorporate the important experiences of Byzantine imperial women into the larger historical narrative.
Introduction: When examining the political power and position of Byzantine imperial women from the sixth until the twelfth century, it becomes quite apparent that there is a clear omission of powerful imperial women within contemporary Byzantine historiography. Despite their visibility within the primary sources, the traditional definition of “power” within the current field overwhelmingly places legitimate authority solely in the hands of a male, while the lives of imperial women remain absent within most texts. Through this exclusion a distorted version of history has been created, where the considerable position and influence of imperial women in politics has been largely ignored. Rather than being relegated to a specialized field, or chronological compilations of biographies, the lives of imperial women need to be made visible once again and incorporated into the larger historical narrative. It is in this way that their authority and political involvement can finally be recognized as being integral to the history of the Byzantine Empire as a whole.
When a field of historical study has been carved out, the frameworks chosen to represent it are arguably more important than the material itself. Analytical structures can either provide a path into an expanded understanding of the subject or they can misrepresent the material by subordinating it to the scholar’s preconceived ideas. This can lead to the unfortunate result of a field remaining saturated by an exclusive mentality and a narrowly defined perspective. It is from the inception of the Byzantine historical discipline that the Byzantines and their Empire began to be constructed as something other than what they actually were.
The “Byzantine Empire” is a historiographical label that was created in the seventeenth century, and has been used since that time to describe the fluctuating territory of the Eastern Roman Empire. The people of this Empire, which existed from 330 A.D. to 1453 A.D., considered themselves to be Romans, called themselves Romans, and believed their Empire to be the Roman Empire. However, much scholarship has worked to separate the Byzantines and their history from its Roman legacy and has created an image of the Empire as a creatively sterile, Orthodox Christian, military state. However, there exist today many Byzantinists who are working hard to refashion a more accurate representation of the Byzantine Empire and its people. Although their success has been tremendous, the lives of imperial women and women in general continue to be underexplored and are still in serious need of acknowledgement.
Geopolitical Relations in the European Middle Ages: History and Theory
By Benno Teschke
International Organization, Vol. 52:2 (1998)
Introduction: Uncertainty about the future of the contemporary states system, yet apparent certainty about the ‘‘decaying pillars of the Westphalian temple,’’ has rekindled interest among international relations (IR) scholars in the meanings of sovereignty. Such renewed problematization of this core concept of IR has translated into greater historical sensitivity to forms of geopolitical social organization that arose before modern statehood. Dissatisfaction with universalizing IR theories has made room for arguing the historicity of international organization by inquiring into the nature of the political order that preceded the European absolutist and capitalist states systems. What was the nature of feudalism in the European Middle Ages? How did the specicity of the feudal mode of social organization inform wider forms of medieval geopolitical relations? What distinguishes them from modern and early modern interstate relations? What are the implications for IR theory?
By elaborating on Robert Brenner’s theory of social property relations, I offer a distinct approach to theorizing changing geopolitical orders. This historically informed and theoretically controlled interpretation constitutes a concrete substantiation of the principles of dialectical thinking, which Hayo Krombach, Christian Heine, and I have recently developed in a series of discussion papers. I argue that the nature and dynamics of international systems are governed by the character of their constitutive units,which, in turn, rests on specific property relations prevailing within them. Medieval ‘‘international’’ relations and their alterations over the centuries preceding the rise of capitalism have to be interpreted on the basis of changing social property relations. The dynamics of medieval change, however, are bound up with contradictory strategies of reproduction between and within the two major classes, the lords and the peasantry.
I argue that, due to peasant possession of the means of subsistence, the feudal nobility enforced access to peasant produce by political and military means. Since every lord reproduced himself not only politically but also individually on his lordship, control over the means of violence was not monopolized by the state, but oligopolistically enjoyed by a landed nobility. Consequently, the medieval ‘‘state’’ constituted a political community of lords with the right to armed resistance. Interlordly relations were therefore inherently nonpaci ed and competitive. Forced redistribution of peasant surplus and competition over land occurred along three axes: (1) between peasants and lords, (2) among lords, and (3) between the collectivity of lords (the feudal ‘‘state’’ ) and external polities. Consequently, the type of geopolitical system that emerged was one of constant military rivalry over territory and labor between lords, and within and between their ‘‘states.’’ The geopolitical dynamic of medieval Europe followed the zero-sum logic of territorial conquests. The form and dynamic of the medieval ‘‘international’’ system arise directly out of the generative structure of social property relations.
