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  • 3 - Authority over Men and the Allocation of Riches:

  • from Part I - Entwined Lives and Multiple Identities
  • Edited by Julie Barrau, University of Cambridge, David Bates, University of East Anglia
  • Book:
    Lives, Identities and Histories in the Central Middle Ages
    Published online:
    24 September 2021
    Print publication:
    07 October 2021, pp 42-55

  • Summary

    Anglo-Norman sources often ignore what we call the economy, or only make very quick allusions to it, thus leaving in the shadows the most dynamic moment of economic growth that this space has ever known. The narrative texts nevertheless make it possible to approach the representations that the clerics of the twelfth century had of the concrete problems of the satisfaction of needs and of the socially useful and morally virtuous use of natural wealth. The theme of hunger, common in the sources of the Rhenish regions, does not appear very frequently, and most often in connection with war. But the reading of texts by William of Malmesbury relating to the reign of William Rufus and the life of Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester also shows that the value of rulers, whether king or bishop, was measured by the subsistence of the inhabitants, especially the poorest. The question of the relationship between resources and needs, and more generally that of livelihood, thus appears to be a major political problem.