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Essays on the connections between politics and society in the
middle ages, showing their interdependence. Christine Carpenter's
influential work on late-medieval English society aspires to
encompass a wide spectrum of human experience. Her vision of
"total" history embeds the study of politics in a multi-dimensional
social frameworkwhich ranges from mentalities and ideology to
economy and geography. This collection of essays celebrates
Professor Carpenter's achievement by drawing attention to the
social underpinning of political culture; the articles reflectthe
range of her interests, chronologically from the thirteenth century
to the sixteenth, and thematically from ideology and culture,
through government and its officials, the nobility, gentry and
yeomanry, the law and the church, to local society. The connection
between centre and locality pervades the volume, as does the
interplay of the ideological and cultural with the practical and
material. The essays highlight both how ideas were moulded in
political debate and action, and how their roots sprang from social
pressures and interests. It also emphasises the wider cultural
aspects of topics too-easily conceived as local and material.
BENJAMIN THOMPSON is Fellow and Tutor in History at Somerville
College, Oxford; JOHN WATTS is Professor of Later Medieval History
at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Tutor of Corpus Christi
College, Oxford. Contributors: Jackson Armstrong, Caroline Burt,
Tony Moore, Richard Partington, Ted Powell, Andrea Ruddick, Andrew
Spencer, Benjamin Thompson, John Watts, Theron Westervelt, Jenny
Wormald.
This comparative study explores three key cultural and political
spheres - the Latin west, Byzantium and the Islamic world from
Central Asia to the Atlantic - roughly from the emergence of Islam
to the fall of Constantinople. These spheres drew on a shared pool
of late antique Mediterranean culture, philosophy and science, and
they had monotheism and historical antecedents in common. Yet where
exactly political and spiritual power lay, and how it was
exercised, differed. This book focuses on power dynamics and
resource-allocation among ruling elites; the legitimisation of
power and property with the aid of religion; and on rulers'
interactions with local elites and societies. Offering the reader
route-maps towards navigating each sphere and grasping the
fundamentals of its political culture, this set of parallel studies
offers a timely and much needed framework for comparing the
societies surrounding the medieval Mediterranean.
This is the first book-length study in English of the Byzantine
emperor Basil II. Basil II, later known as 'Bulgar-slayer', is
famous for his military conquests and his brutal intimidation of
domestic foes. Catherine Holmes considers the problems Basil faced
in governing a large, multi-ethnic empire, which stretched from
southern Italy to Mesopotamia. Her close focus on the surviving
historical narratives, above all the Synopsis Historion of John
Skylitzes, reveals a Byzantium governed as much by persuasion as
coercion. This book will appeal to those interested in Byzantium
before the Crusades, the governance of pre-modern empires, and the
methodology of writing early medieval political history.
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