This work begins with the premise that the violence of life in the Middle Ages is nowadays both taken for granted and misunderstood. The essays in this collection all suggest or explore reasons why violent acts might have been perpetrated, and attempt to understand the social priorities which governed such acts. The studies aim to clarify a range of issues including the creation of political identities and the establishment of social order, matters of administration, colonisation, religious ritual, and gender.

Warfare was an integral part of early medieval life. This book looks at warfare in a rounded context in the British Isles and Western Europe between the end of the Roman Empire and the break-up of the Carolingian Empire.

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.

Violence in Late Antiquity brings together a selection of the papers delivered at the fifth biennial 'Shifting Frontiers' conference with others specially commissioned for the volume. The four sections on Defining Violence, 'Legitimate' Violence, Violence

Studies of ways in which the rapidly evolving society of medieval Europe developed social, legal and practical responses to public and private violence. Violence was endemic in the medieval world, to an extent most modern people find shocking. Violence was part and parcel of the public world of institutions [church, state, chivalry] and the private world of households. In an age of dynamic expansion it was present everywhere, and contemporary response to it was contradictory: it was both wrong and at the same time a regulatory feature of society. This book brings together the views of a number of scholarson aspects of violence in medieval society, in England and the larger canvas of western Europe, from the eleventh to the fifteenth century. There is analysis of the tension between the practice of violence and hopes for reform; discussion of violence in literature; examination of assertive political acts and judicial duels and tournaments; and observations on the domestic scene and resistance to seigneurial impositions. Professor RICHARD W. KAEUPER teaches in the Department of History at the University of Rochester. Contributors: SARAH KAY, RICHARD W. KAEUPER, MATTHEW STRICKLAND, SEYMOUR PHILLIPS, M.L. BOHNA, PAUL HYAMS, AMY PHELAN, JULIET VALE, MALCOLM VALE, JAMES A.BRUNDAGE, BARBARA A. HANAWALT, EDMUND FRYDE

Exploration of the mechanisms of violence in the medieval West, and their legacy for the structure of the modern state.

The passage from Antiquity to the Middle Ages has been largely studied in the light of the thesis of a gradual transformation, which is in contradiction of the previous assumption of an abrupt break due to war and general calamity. Perceiving War and the Military reassesses this historical period of transition by an investigation of the contemporary world of thought that examines the impact and significance of a permanently increasing contact with warfare and armed violence. Her studies confirm the assumption of a gradual shift, but they most of all show that the irrevocable end of the Roman Peace was a crucial factor in the late Roman world becoming gradually “medieval”.

Charlemagne's Early Campaigns is the first book-length study of Charlemagne at war. The neglect of this subject has truncated our understanding of the Carolingian empire and the military success of its leader, a true equal of Frederick the Great and Napoleon.

A spirited history of the changes that transformed Europe during the 1,000-year span of the Middle Ages: “A dazzling race through a complex millennium.”—Publishers Weekly The millennium between the breakup of the western Roman Empire and the Reformation was a long and hugely transformative period—one not easily chronicled within the scope of a few hundred pages. Yet distinguished historian Chris Wickham has taken up the challenge in this landmark book, and he succeeds in producing the most riveting account of medieval Europe in a generation. Tracking the entire sweep of the Middle Ages across Europe, Wickham focuses on important changes century by century, including such pivotal crises and moments as the fall of the western Roman Empire, Charlemagne’s reforms, the feudal revolution, the challenge of heresy, the destruction of the Byzantine Empire, the rebuilding of late medieval states, and the appalling devastation of the Black Death. He provides illuminating vignettes that underscore how shifting social, economic, and political circumstances affected individual lives and international events—and offers both a new conception of Europe’s medieval period and a provocative revision of exactly how and why the Middle Ages matter. “Far-ranging, fluent, and thoughtful—of considerable interest to students of history writ large, and not just of Europe.”—Kirkus Reviews, (starred review) Includes maps and illustrations

Far from the oral society it was once assumed to have been, early medieval Europe was fundamentally shaped by the written word. This book offers a pioneering collection of fresh and innovative studies on a wide range of topics, each one representing cutting-edge scholarship, and collectively setting the field on a new footing. Concentrating on the role of writing in mediating early medieval knowledge of the past, on the importance of surviving manuscripts as clues to the circulation of ideas and political and cultural creativity, and on the role that texts of different kinds played both in supporting and in subverting established power relations, these essays represent a milestone in studies of the early medieval written word.