This collection of essays from both established and emerging scholars analyses the dynamic connections between conflict and violence in medieval Italy. The contributors present a new critique of power that sustained both kingship and locally based elite networks throughout the Italian peninsula. A broad temporal range, covering the sixth to the twelfth centuries, allows this book to cross a number of 'traditional' fault-lines in Italian historiography - 774, 888, 962 and 1025. The essays provide wide-ranging analyses of the role of conflict in the period, the operation of power and the development of communal consciousness and collective action by individuals and groups. It is thus essential reading for scholars, students and general readers who wish to understand the situation in medieval Italy.

This book presents a detailed study of the Hucpoldings, an elite group in Carolingian and post-Carolingian Italy. Though the Hucpoldings have not received extensive treatment in previous anglophone scholarship, they had a key influence in much of what was happening in this period. Manarini's groundbreaking study highlights the dramatic geopolitical changes surrounding this kinship group in the kingdom of Italy across three crucial centuries. The research reconstructs political events associated with every identifiable member of the kinship, as well as inquiring into their patrimony and their networks of relationships and patronage. Finally, it examines the distinctive characteristics of the group to gain a clearer picture of the nature of their power, their memory strategies and the shared perceptions and self-awareness of group members.