This is a collection of influential and challenging essays by British medievalist Timothy Reuter, a perceptive and original thinker with extraordinary range who was equally at home in the Anglophone or German scholarly worlds. The book addresses three interconnected themes in the study of the history of the early and high Middle Ages. Firstly, historiography, the development of the modern study of the medieval past. How do our contemporary and inherited preconceptions and pre-occupations determine our view of history? Secondly, the importance of symbolic action and communication in the politics and polities of the Middle Ages. Finally, the need to avoid anachronism in our consideration of medieval politics. Throwing light both on modern mentalities and on the values and conduct of medieval people themselves, and containing articles, at time of publication, never previously been available in English, this book is essential reading for any serious scholar of medieval Europe.
Editor's note; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Editor's introduction; Part I. Modern Mentalities: Historiographies, Methodologies, Preconceptions: 1. Modern mentalities and medieval polities; 2. Medieval: another tyrannous construct?; 3. The insecurity of travel in the early and high Middle Ages: criminals, victims and their medieval and modern observers; 4. Debating the 'feudal revolution'; 5. Pre-Gregorian mentalities; 6. Whose race, whose ethnicity? Recent medievalists' discussion of identity; Part II. The Symbolic Language of Medieval Political Action: 7. Nobles and others: the social and cultural expression of power relations in the Middle Ages; 8. Regemque, quem in Francia pene perdidit, in patria magnifice recepit: Ottonian ruler representation in synchronic and diachronic comparison; 9. Contextualising Canossa: excommunication, penance, surrender, reconciliation; 10. Velle sibi fieri in forma hac: symbolic action in the Becket dispute; Part III. Political Structures and Intentions: 11. Assembly politics in western Europe from the eighth century to the twelfth; 12. Sex, lies and oath-helpers: the trial of Queen Uota; 13. Plunder and tribute in the Carolingian empire; 14. The end of Carolingian military expansion; 15. The Ottonians and Carolingian tradition; 16. The making of England and Germany, 850-1050: points of comparison and difference; 17. Kings, nobles, others: 'basis' and 'superstructure' in the Ottonian period; 18. The 'imperial church system' of the Ottonian and Salian rulers: a reconsideration; 19. Peace-breaking, feud, rebellion, resistance: violence and peace in the politics of the Salian era; 20. The medieval German Sonderweg? The empire and its rulers in the high Middle Ages; 21. Mandate, privilege, court judgement: techniques of rulership in the era of Frederick Barbarossa; 22. All quiet except on the Western Front? The emergence of pre-modern forms of statehood in the central Middle Ages; Index.
