文档介绍：This book is a pioneering study of politics in the early middle ages,
based on the middle Rhine valley.
Whereas it is believed widely that the source materials for early
medieval Europe are too sparse to allow sustained study of the
workings of social and political relationships on the ground, this
book focuses on a uniquely well-documented area to investigate the
basis of power. Topics covered include the foundation of monaster-
ies, their relationship with the laity, and their role as social centres;
the significance of urbanism; the control of land, the development
of property rights and anisation of estates; community,
kinship and lordship; justice and dispute settlement; the uses of the
written word; violence and the feud; and the development of polit-
ical structures from the Roman Empire to the high middle ages.
Although a local study, the book offers persuasive and challeng-
ing generalisations about the nature of power in the early middle
ages. It places its findings in an parative perspective,
identifying the peculiarities of the early medieval west and their
implications for the broader sweep of European history.
M I is Lecturer in History, Birkbeck College,
University of London
Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought
STATE AND SOCIETY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES
Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought
Fourth Series
General Editor:
. .
Leverhulme Personal Research Professor of Medieval History,University of Sheffield
Advisory Editors:
Reader in Medieval English History,University of Cambridge, and Fellow of New Hall
Professor of Medieval History,University of Cambridge,
and Fellow of Newnham College
The series Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought was inaugurated
by G. G. Coulton in ; Professor D. E. be now acts as General Editor
of the Fourth Series, with Dr Christine Carpenter and Professor Rosamond
McKitterick as Advisory Edito