This book, first published in 2000, is a pioneering study of politics and society in the early Middle Ages. Whereas it is widely believed 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 monasteries, 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 the organization of states; community, kinship and lordship; justice and dispute settlement; the uses of the written word; violence and the feud; and the development of political structures from the Roman empire to the high Middle Ages.

Originally published in 1966. The Individual and Society in the Middle Ages, based on three guest lectures given at Johns Hopkins University in 1965, explores the place of the individual in medieval European society. Looking at legal sources and political ideology of the era, Ullmann concludes that, for most of the Middle Ages, the individual was defined as a subject rather than a citizen, but the modern concept of citizenship gradually supplanted the subject model from the late Middle Ages onward. Ullmann lays out the theological basis of the political theory that cast the medieval individual as an inferior, abstract subject. The individual citizen who emerged during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, by contrast, was an autonomous participant in affairs of state. Several intellectual trends made this humanistic conception of the individual possible, among them the rehabilitation of vernacular writing during the thirteenth century and the growing interest in nature, natural philosophy, and natural law. However, Ullmann points to feudalism as the single most important medieval institution that laid the groundwork for the emergence of the modern citizen.

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

In popular imagination few phenomena are as strongly associated with medieval society as knighthood and chivalry. At the same time, and due to a long tradition of differing national perspectives and ideological assumptions, few phenomena have continued to be the object of so much academic debate. In this volume leading scholars explore various aspects of knightly identity, taking into account both commonalities and particularities across Western Europe. Knighthood and Society in the High Middle Ages addresses how, between the eleventh and the early thirteenth centuries, knighthood evolved from a set of skills and a lifestyle that was typical of an emerging elite habitus, into the basis of a consciously expressed and idealised chivalric code of conduct. Chivalry, then, appears in this volume as the result of a process of noble identity formation, in which some five key factors are distinguished: knightly practices, lineage, crusading memories, gender roles, and chivalric didactics.

This book portrays the great variety of work that medieval English juries carried out while highlighting the dramatic increase in demands for jury service that occurred during this period.

Discusses the social and economic development of Italy

"The Medieval Risk-Reward Society" offers a study of adventure and love in the European Middle Ages focused on the poetry of authors such as Marie de France, Chretien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Gottfried von Strassburg-showing how a society based on sacrifice becomes one of wagers and investments. Will Hasty's sociological approach to medieval courtly literature, informed by the analytic tools of game theory, reveals the blossoming of a worldview in which outcomes are uncertain, such that the very self (of a character or an authorial persona) is contingent on success or failure in possessing the things it desires-and upon which its social identity and personal happiness depend. Drawing on a diverse selection of contrasting canonical works ranging from the "Iliad" to the biblical book of Joshua to High Medieval German political texts to the writings of Leibniz and Mark Twain, Hasty enables an appreciation of the distinctive contributions made in antiquity and the Middle Ages to the medieval emergence of a European society based on risks and rewards. "The Medieval Risk-Reward Society: Courts, Adventure, and Love in the European Middle Ages" takes a descriptive approach to the competitions in religion, politics, and poetry that are constitutive of medieval culture. Culture is considered always to be "happening, " and to be happening on the cultural cutting edge as competitions for rewards involving the element of chance. This study finds adventure and love--the principal concerns of medieval European romance poetry--to be cultural game changers, and thereby endeavors to make a humanist contribution to the development of a cultural game theory. Will Hasty is Professor of German and Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Florida, Gainesville."

Early medieval women exercised public roles, rights, and responsibilities. Women contributed through their labor to the welfare of the community. Women played an important part in public affairs. They practiced birth control through abortion and infanticide. Women committed crimes and were indicted. They owned property and administered estates. The drive toward economic growth and expansion abroad rested on the capacity of women to staff and manage economic endeavors at home. In the later Middle Ages, the social position of women altered significantly, and the reasons why the role of women in society tended to become more restrictive are examined in these essays.

The concept of an ordered human society, both religious and secular, as an expression of a divinely ordered universe was central to medieval thought. In the West the political and religious community were inextricably bound together, and because the Church was so intimately involved with the world, any history of it must take into account the development of medieval society. Professor Southern's book covers the period from the eighth to the sixteenth century. After sketching the main features of each medieval age, he deals in greater detail with the Papacy, the relations between Rome and her rival Constantinople, the bishops and archbishops, and the various religious orders, providing in all a superb history of the period.

This comprehensive survey synthesises a quarter of a century of pathbreaking research in an accessible manner for undergraduate students. Matthew Innes combines an account of the historical background of the period with discussion of the social, economic, cultural and political structures within it.