Theodore Evergates has assembled, translated, and annotated some two hundred documents from the country of Champagne into a sourcebook that focuses on the political, economic, and legal workings of a feudal society, uncovering the details of private life and social history that are embedded in the official records.

Medieval society was dominated by its knights and nobles. The literature created in medieval Europe was primarily a literature of knightly deeds, and the modern imagination has also been captured by these leaders and warriors. This book explores the nature of the nobility, focusing on France in the High Middle Ages (11th-13th centuries). Constance Brittain Bouchard examines their families; their relationships with peasants, townspeople, and clerics; and the images of them fashioned in medieval literary texts. She incorporates throughout a consideration of noble women and the nobility's attitude toward women. Research in the last two generations has modified and expanded modern understanding of who knights and nobles were; how they used authority, war, and law; and what position they held within the broader society. Even the concepts of feudalism, courtly love, and chivalry, once thought to be self-evident aspects of medieval society, have been seriously questioned. Bouchard presents bold new interpretations of medieval literature as both reflecting and criticizing the role of the nobility and their behavior. She offers the first synthesis of this scholarship in accessible form, inviting general readers as well as students and professional scholars to a new understanding of aristocratic role and function.

This is a comparative study of the role of English and French towns in feudal society in the middle ages. In bringing together much material which dissolves old categories and simplifications in the study of medieval towns, Professor Hilton provides an important new perspective on medieval society and on the nature of feudalism. He argues that medieval towns were not, as is often thought, the harbingers of capitalism, and emphasises the way in which urban social structures fitted into, rather than challenged, feudalism.

Annotation. Feudal Society discusses the economic and social conditions in which feudalism developed providing a deep understanding of the processes at work in medieval Europe.

Tripartite construct of medieval French society.

Dominique Barthélemy presents a sharply revisionist account of the history of France around the year 1000, challenging the traditional view that France underwent a kind of revolution at the millennium which ushered in feudalism.

A primer on medieval justice, this book focuses on France, Germany and England and covers the thousand years between the transformation of the Roman world in Western Europe, which took place around the 4th and 5th centuries, and the European Renaissance of the 14th and 15th centuries. It highlights key elements in the intricate, overlapping legal systems of the Middle Ages and describes a wide range of contemporary laws and cases. A discussion of the modern legacies of medieval law is included, as are a brief overview of the Inquisition, the 27 articles of Joan of Arc and useful commentary on many other topics. Illustrations range from the earliest known depictions of English courts and illuminations of torture to pictures of important sites, events, and instruments of punishment in medieval law.

Originally published in 1940. Chivalry denotes the ideals and practices considered suitable for a noble. The word itself is reminiscent of the aristocratic society of medieval France dominated by mounted warriors. As early as the eleventh century, several different views of chivalric standards and behavior had appeared. During the next four hundred years, these conceptions of the ideal nobleman were developed by and for the feudal ruling class. French Chivalry studies chivalry from the perspectives of both social history and the history of ideas. The first chapter provides readers unfamiliar with medieval history the background required for understanding the chapters on chivalry.

"Uses a feudal model to analyze contemporary American society, comparing its essential characteristics to those of medieval European societies"--Provided by publisher.

Were aristocratic women in medieval France little more than appendages to patrilineal families, valued as objects of exchange and necessary only for the production of male heirs? Such was the view proposed by the great French historian Georges Duby more than three decades ago and still widely accepted. In Aristocratic Women in Medieval France another model is put forth: women of the landholding elite—from countesses down to the wives of ordinary knights—had considerable rights, and exercised surprising power. The authors of the volume offer five case studies of women from the mid-eleventh through the thirteenth centuries, and from regions as diverse as Blois-Chartres, Champagne, Flanders, and Occitania. They show not only the diversity of life experiences these women enjoyed but the range of social and political roles open to them. The ecclesiastical and secular sources they mine confirm that women were regarded as full members of both their natal and affinal families, were never excluded from inheriting and controlling property, and did not have their share of family property limited to dowries. Women across France exchanged oaths for fiefs and assumed responsibilities for enfeoffed knights. As feudal lords, they settled disputes involving vassals, fortified castles, and even led troops into battle. Aristocratic Women in Medieval France clearly shows that it is no longer possible to depict well-born women as powerless in medieval society. Demonstrating the importance of aristocratic women in a period during which they have been too long assumed to have lacked influence, it forces us to reframe our understanding of the high Middle Ages.