Power and Its Problems in Carolingian Europe

Power and Its Problems in Carolingian Europe PDF Author: Stuart Airlie
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351219243
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 515

Get Book

Book Description
A key theme in this collection of thirteen essays is the creative tension between the Carolingian dynasty and its aristocratic followers across 250 years. The first section explores the rising dynasty's attempts to consolidate its power through war and rewards. The second section focuses on the exercise of authority through a complex system of governance and representation, and the pivotal role played by the courts of Charlemagne and his successors. In the third section, we see the Carolingian system undergoing a crisis of legitimacy, challenged by civil war, royal divorce, and aristocratic encroachment on dynastic exclusivity. These essays anatomise the dynamics of power relations in the greatest empire of the early medieval west.

Power and Its Problems in Carolingian Europe

Power and Its Problems in Carolingian Europe PDF Author: Stuart Airlie
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351219243
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 515

Get Book

Book Description
A key theme in this collection of thirteen essays is the creative tension between the Carolingian dynasty and its aristocratic followers across 250 years. The first section explores the rising dynasty's attempts to consolidate its power through war and rewards. The second section focuses on the exercise of authority through a complex system of governance and representation, and the pivotal role played by the courts of Charlemagne and his successors. In the third section, we see the Carolingian system undergoing a crisis of legitimacy, challenged by civil war, royal divorce, and aristocratic encroachment on dynastic exclusivity. These essays anatomise the dynamics of power relations in the greatest empire of the early medieval west.

Making and Unmaking the Carolingians

Making and Unmaking the Carolingians PDF Author: Stuart Airlie
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786726408
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 789

Get Book

Book Description
How does power manifest itself in individuals? Why do people obey authority? And how does a family, if they are the source of such dominance, convey their superiority and maintain their command in a pre-modern world lacking speedy communications, standing armies and formalised political jurisdiction? Here, Stuart Airlie expertly uses this idea of authority as a lens through which to explore one of the most famous dynasties in medieval Europe: the Carolingians. Ruling the Frankish realm from 751 to 888, the family of Charlemagne had to be ruthless in asserting their status and adept at creating a discourse of Carolingian legitimacy in order to sustain their supremacy. Through its nuanced analysis of authority, politics and family, Making and Unmaking the Carolingians, 751-888 outlines the system which placed the Carolingian dynasty at the centre of the Frankish world. In doing so, Airlie sheds important new light on both the rise and fall of the Carolingian empire and the nature of power in medieval Europe more generally.

Charlemagne's Practice of Empire

Charlemagne's Practice of Empire PDF Author: Jennifer R. Davis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316368599
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 553

Get Book

Book Description
Revisiting one of the great puzzles of European political history, Jennifer R. Davis examines how the Frankish king Charlemagne and his men held together the vast new empire he created during the first decades of his reign. Davis explores how Charlemagne overcame the two main problems of ruling an empire, namely how to delegate authority and how to manage diversity. Through a meticulous reconstruction based on primary sources, she demonstrates that rather than imposing a pre-existing model of empire onto conquered regions, Charlemagne and his men learned from them, developing a practice of empire that allowed the emperor to rule on a European scale. As a result, Charlemagne's realm was more flexible and diverse than has long been believed. Telling the story of Charlemagne's rule using sources produced during the reign itself, Davis offers a new interpretation of Charlemagne's political practice, free from the distortions of later legend.

Epitaph for an Era

Epitaph for an Era PDF Author: Mayke de Jong
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110701431X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Get Book

Book Description
Challenges the divide between political and literary history, in an analysis of a major polemical text from mid-ninth century Europe.

Using and Not Using the Past after the Carolingian Empire

Using and Not Using the Past after the Carolingian Empire PDF Author: Sarah Greer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429683030
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book

Book Description
Using and Not Using the Past after the Carolingian Empire offers a new take on European history from c.900 to c.1050, examining the ‘post-Carolingian’ period in its own right and presenting it as a time of creative experimentation with new forms of authority and legitimacy. In the late eighth century, the Frankish king Charlemagne put together a new empire. Less than a century later, that empire had collapsed. The story of Europe following the end of the Carolingian empire has often been presented as a tragedy: a time of turbulence and disintegration, out of which the new, recognisably medieval kingdoms of Europe emerged. This collection offers a different perspective. Taking a transnational approach, the authors contemplate the new social and political order that emerged in tenth- and eleventh-century Europe and examine how those shaping this new order saw themselves in relation to the past. Each chapter explores how the past was used creatively by actors in the regions of the former Carolingian Empire to search for political, legal and social legitimacy in a turbulent new political order. Advancing the debates on the uses of the past in the early Middle Ages and prompting reconsideration of the narratives that have traditionally dominated modern writing on this period, Using and Not Using the Past after the Carolingian Empire is ideal for students and scholars of tenth- and eleventh-century European history.

"The Making of Europe"

Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900431136X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 327

Get Book

Book Description
In "The Making of Europe”: Essays in Honour of Robert Bartlett, a group of distinguished contributors analyse processes of conquest, colonization and cultural change in Europe in the tenth to fourteenth centuries.

Medieval Europe

Medieval Europe PDF Author: Chris Wickham
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300208340
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377

Get Book

Book Description
Chapter nine 1204: the failure of alternatives -- chapter ten Defining society: gender and community in late medieval Europe -- chapter eleven Money, war and death, 1350-1500 -- chapter twelve Rethinking politics, 1350-1500 -- chapter thirteen Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Confronting crisis in the Carolingian empire

Confronting crisis in the Carolingian empire PDF Author:
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526134837
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book

Book Description
This book presents a new and accessible translation of a well-known yet enigmatic text: the ‘Epitaph for Arsenius’ by the monk and scholar Paschasius Radbertus (Radbert) of Corbie. This monastic dialogue, with the author in the role of narrator, plunges the reader directly into the turmoil of ninth-century religion and politics. ‘Arsenius’ was the nickname of Wala, a member of the Carolingian family who in the 830s became involved in the rebellions against Louis the Pious. Exiled from the court, Wala/Arsenius died in Italy in 836. Casting both Wala and himself in the role of the prophet Jeremiah, Radbert chose the medium of the epitaph (funeral oration) to deliver a polemical attack, not just on Wala’s enemies, but also on his own.

Flodoard of Rheims and the Writing of History in the Tenth Century

Flodoard of Rheims and the Writing of History in the Tenth Century PDF Author: Edward Roberts
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316510395
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 283

Get Book

Book Description
A major re-assessment of the Frankish historian Flodoard of Rheims, one of the tenth century's most intriguing but neglected narrators.

Making and Unmaking the Carolingians

Making and Unmaking the Carolingians PDF Author: Stuart Airlie
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786736462
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456

Get Book

Book Description
How does power manifest itself in individuals? Why do people obey authority? And how does a family, if they are the source of such dominance, convey their superiority and maintain their command in a pre-modern world lacking speedy communications, standing armies and formalised political jurisdiction? Here, Stuart Airlie expertly uses this idea of authority as a lens through which to explore one of the most famous dynasties in medieval Europe: the Carolingians. Ruling the Frankish realm from 751 to 888, the family of Charlemagne had to be ruthless in asserting their status and adept at creating a discourse of Carolingian legitimacy in order to sustain their supremacy. Through its nuanced analysis of authority, politics and family, Making and Unmaking the Carolingians, 751-888 outlines the system which placed the Carolingian dynasty at the centre of the Frankish world. In doing so, Airlie sheds important new light on both the rise and fall of the Carolingian empire and the nature of power in medieval Europe more generally.