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13 results

  • Introduction

  • Nicole von Germeten, Oregon State University
  • Book:
    Death in Old Mexico
    Published online:
    02 March 2023
    Print publication:
    09 March 2023, pp 1-8

  • Summary

    This introduction frames the crime at the heart of the book with vignettes of historical and textual background, adding a few additional fragments to the kaleidoscope of murder and its aftermath in late-eighteenth-century Mexico City. It proposes the 1789 murders, which are the topic of this book, as early examples of Mexican True Crime. The introduction also includes select critiques regarding this genre and other comments on the different genres of literature depicting murder in Mexico. This book recreates a paper trail of Enlightenment-era greed and savagery which began with a brutal massacre. The events which took place on the night of October 23, 1789, led to politicized depictions in different fiction and nonfiction writings for the next century.

Royal Childhood and Child Kingship
  • Boy Kings in England, Scotland, France and Germany, c. 1050–1262
  • Emily Joan Ward
  • Published online:
    04 August 2022
    Print publication:
    04 August 2022
  • Refining adult-focused perspectives on medieval rulership, Emily Joan Ward exposes the problematic nature of working from the assumption that kingship equated to adult power. Children's participation and political assent could be important facets of the day-to-day activities of rule, as this study shows through an examination of royal charters, oaths to young boys, cross-kingdom diplomacy and coronation. The first comparative and thematic study of child rulership in this period, Ward analyses eight case studies across northwestern Europe from c.1050 to c.1250. The book stresses innovations and adaptations in royal government, questions the exaggeration of political disorder under a boy king, and suggests a ruler's childhood posed far less of a challenge than their adolescence and youth. Uniting social, cultural and political historical methodologies, Ward unveils how wider societal changes between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries altered children's lived experiences of royal rule and modified how people thought about child kingship.

  • 3 - Becoming King

  • from Part II - Creating Kingship
  • Björn Weiler, University of Wales, Aberystwyth
  • Book:
    Paths to Kingship in Medieval Latin Europe, c. 950–1200
    Published online:
    24 September 2021
    Print publication:
    14 October 2021, pp 67-94

  • Summary

    How did medieval observers imagine kingship to be created? How did they apply biblical, classical and patristic models when writing about the origins of their own communities? The period c. 1000–c.1200 witnessed the emergence of several new realms. They fall into three broad, overlapping categories. Some were forged by conquest (like Sicily, Jerusalem and Cyprus). Some were established communities whose rulers, in the process of converting to Christianity, adopted the language and framework of Christian kingship (Denmark, Norway, Hungary, Poland). In a third group, powerful local or regional rulers assumed or were awarded the title of king (Bohemia, Portugal, Sicily). All faced a similar problem: in some ways, they violated the right order of the world by assuming a title that, in theory, only god could grant. How did contemporaries get around this problem? Chapter 3 answers this question partly by sketching a general pattern of emerging kingship, partly by focussing on two especially well documented case studies: Poland and Sicily. The defining themes in these accounts are virtuous rule, equitable justice, the consent of the ruled, power greater than that of any mere duke or prince and divine backing.

  • Late Medieval Dress Accessories in Rural Communities in Central-Eastern Europe

  • Jakub Sawicki, Kateřina Levá
  • Journal:
    European Journal of Archaeology / Volume 25 / Issue 1 / February 2022
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    20 August 2021, pp. 61-79
    Print publication:
    February 2022

  • In this article, the authors discuss the standard of living in medieval villages in central Europe on the basis of accessibility to dress, which is usually represented by the only archaeological material remaining—dress accessories, including buckles, strap ends, and rings. They attempt to establish a method of determining the value of the finds based on the different technological qualities of their material, decoration, and types of artefacts, and then discuss the dress accessories from selected village sites with complementary data from rural cemeteries dating from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. Their overview shows that there was a large degree of similarity between the finds from rural areas and typical urban assemblages.

  • Chapter 7 - The New Odysseus

  • Siren Çelik
  • Book:
    Manuel II Palaiologos (1350–1425)
    Published online:
    25 February 2021
    Print publication:
    11 March 2021, pp 213-258

  • Summary

    The chapter focuses on Manuel's travels in Western Europe (1399–1402). It discusses at length the political aspects of his presence at the English, French and Italian courts, offering new interpretations of the events. Other topics are Manuel's personal experiences in Europe, and his letters and interactions with prominent European figures of the time. Manuel's use of relics as diplomatic gifts receives further attention. The Procession of the Holy Spirit, a theological treatise penned by the emperor at time, is analysed at length with regard to its literary features, connections to the other treatises of time and Manuel's theological thought. Other shorter writings from the same period are also investigated. The chapter ends with the defeat of the Ottomans by Tamerlane and Manuel's subsequent return to Constantinople.

  • The Collapse of State Power, the Cluniac Reform Movement, and the Origins of Urban Self-Government in Medieval Europe

  • Jonathan Stavnskær Doucette, Jørgen Møller
  • Journal:
    International Organization / Volume 75 / Issue 1 / Winter 2021
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    07 September 2020, pp. 204-223
    Print publication:
    Winter 2021

  • Several generations of scholarship have identified the medieval development of urban self-government as crucial for European patterns of state formation. However, extant theories, emphasizing structural factors such as initial endowments and warfare, do little to explain the initial emergence of institutions of urban self-government before CE 1200 or why similar institutions did not emerge outside of Europe. We argue that a large-scale collapse of public authority in the ninth and tenth centuries allowed a bottom-up reform movement in West Francia (the Cluniac movement), directed by clergy but with popular backing, to push for ecclesiastical autonomy and asceticism in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. These social realignments, facilitated by new norms about ecclesiastical office holding, stimulated the urban associationalism that led to the initial emergence of autonomous town councils. Using a panel data set of 643 towns in the period between 800 and 1800, we show that medieval towns were substantially more likely to establish autonomous town councils in the period between 1000 and 1200 if they were situated in the vicinity of Cluniac monasteries. These findings are corroborated by regressions that use distance from Cluny—the movement's place of origin—to instrument for proximity to Cluniac monasteries.

Blood Royal
  • Dynastic Politics in Medieval Europe
  • Robert Bartlett
  • Published online:
    09 July 2020
    Print publication:
    09 July 2020
  • Throughout medieval Europe, for hundreds of years, monarchy was the way that politics worked in most countries. This meant power was in the hands of a family - a dynasty; that politics was family politics; and political life was shaped by the births, marriages and deaths of the ruling family. How did the dynastic system cope with female rule, or pretenders to the throne? How did dynasties use names, the numbering of rulers and the visual display of heraldry to express their identity? And why did some royal families survive and thrive, while others did not? Drawing on a rich and memorable body of sources, this engaging and original history of dynastic power in Latin Christendom and Byzantium explores the role played by family dynamics and family consciousness in the politics of the royal and imperial dynasties of Europe. From royal marriages and the birth of sons, to female sovereigns, mistresses and wicked uncles, Robert Bartlett makes enthralling sense of the complex web of internal rivalries and loyalties of the ruling dynasties and casts fresh light on an essential feature of the medieval world.

  • 18 - The political economy of rising capitalism

  • Edited by Larry Neal, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Jeffrey G. Williamson, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Capitalism
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    23 January 2014, pp 574-599

  • Summary

    Medieval Europe was literally built on the ruins left by the disintegrated Roman empire. But during that long period of recovery up to the early modern period Europe was transformed from an economic backwater into the most advanced region in the world. The medieval economy witnessed first the rise and then the decline of unfreedom, which is essentially the denial of the right of free contracting in markets. Serfdom was clearly associated with a concentration of ownership of land in the hands of the lay and ecclesiastical elites. The labor market had been growing continuously since the revival of the European economy and by the fourteenth century it was considerable. Money markets became increasingly well integrated over time. The medieval period was a period of slow productivity growth, but there is no evidence that productivity growth in the guild-run urban sector was slower than in the agrarian sector.

  • 1 - Introduction

  • Edited by David Luscombe, University of Sheffield, Jonathan Riley-Smith, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    14 October 2004, pp 1-10

  • Summary

    This introduction presents an overview of the concepts discussed in this book. The book presents a broad view of what mattered in the relationships between western and eastern Europe, and also between Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. It focuses on themes in economic, social governmental, ecclesiastical and cultural history, and discusses the government on a territorial or institutional basis. Governmentally, the period is broadly one of progress within western Europe in the sense that many lordships and kingdoms grew together in solidarity and developed a stronger sense of community. Royal government in France and England was immeasurably stronger at the end of the eleventh century, but in Germany, the position of the monarchy was more ambiguous and complex. The eleventh and twelfth centuries are the time when Romanesque art and architecture reached their zenith in all parts of western Europe; the twelfth is the century when the Gothic style began to flourish in the north.

  • 20 - Bohemia and Poland: two examples of successful western Slavonic state-formation

  • from PART III - NON-CAROLINGIAN EUROPE
  • Edited by Timothy Reuter, University of Southampton
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    13 March 2000, pp 514-535

  • Summary

    From the end of the fifth century or the early sixth century the presence of Slavs in the central European area is indisputable. The western Slavs included the ancestors of the peoples known later as Poles, Pomerani, Czechs, Slovaks and Polabi. The Bohemian Plain is blessed by its convenient position in the centre of Europe and by natural conditions which favour human settlement. In Bohemia there was one significant political centre in the middle of the country, reflecting the position of Prague in the Bohemian state. The clan as the fundamental unit of social organisation existed in both societies long before the tenth century. The beginnings of Christianity in Poland, leaving aside the puzzling and disputed origins of Christianity in southern Poland in the Moravian period, are connected with Bohemian and Bavarian influences. The church played a common role in the early phases of the development of societies and states in central Europe.

  • (b) - Flanders

  • from 14 - Germany and Flanders
  • David Abulafia, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    21 October 1999, pp 405-416

  • Summary

    Under Count Philip of Alsace, Flanders had become one of the mightiest and most progressive principalities of western Europe. In 1191, the power relations between Flanders and France had been reversed: the king now constantly undermined the counts' power. The highest governmental organ, the count's curia, showed a clear tendency towards professionalisation. Since the first half of the eleventh century, the county of Flanders had been subdivided into castellanies, chatellenies, districts under the control of the viscounts residing in a central borough. The Flemish nobility was primarily determined by birth; free status, vassalage, the ownership of allodia and the possession of seigneurial rights were further but not essential characteristics. The continuous population growth increased pressure on the land as a response to the high demand for agrarian products. The intensive use of the land is only one aspect of the highly developed Flemish economy. After northern Italy, Flanders was the earliest and most densely urbanised area of medieval Europe.

  • 6 - Urban Europe

  • from PART II - ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS
  • Edited by Christopher Allmand, University of Liverpool
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 June 1998, pp 121-144

  • Summary

    The vagaries of record survival still make it impossible, and perhaps pointless, to try to estimate the total number of urban communities in late medieval Europe as a whole. Several fifteenth-century towns were sufficiently large and self-possessed to create an urban society capable of articulating its own communal values in religious, ceremonial, literary and artistic form. As the civic councillors of Florence, Venice, Bruges and Barcelona were alike aware, both urban self-expression and urban political power were always dependent on a local economy prosperous enough to generate exceptional wealth, albeit always unequally, among their citizens. The limitations of German urban political and military power, even when towns associated themselves with one another in so-called leagues, were already becoming obvious by the end of the century. The Italian humanists who began by creating the most explosive new urban ideology in European history eventually helped to destroy the community of tastes and interests upon which a common civic mentality must ultimately rest.

  • 33 - Conclusion

  • from PART IV - THE DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN STATES
  • Edited by Christopher Allmand, University of Liverpool
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 June 1998, pp 831-840

  • Summary

    The diversity of European experience at the end of the Middle Ages could also be seen in the changing role played by nobilities, now increasingly national, in a rapidly altering world. The economic history of Europe was affected by famine and even more by war, although it is claimed that war did not have as ruinous an effect on international trade as might be expected. The rise of the state, which historians of recent years have traced back to the thirteenth century, took on different forms and emerged at different tempi in different parts of Europe. Royal intervention in England against the subversive activities of the Lollard heretics in the century's early years, and the establishment, by royal request in 1478, of the Inquisition in Castile, originally to deal with converted Jews who renounced their Christianity. The development of taxation, already advanced in many territories by 1400, was now becoming a marked feature of life over the whole of Europe.