Explore the vast range of titles available.

Traditional scholarship argues that the changes fostered by the growth of royal power and feudalism in Western Europe directly impacted women's public power and authority in the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Focusing on the inheriting countesses of Boulogne (1160-1260) and their neighbours in northern France, this monograph investigates the influence of the rise of centralized government on elite women's power. This chronological and comparative analysis highlights successive countesses' governance of inherited lands, the roles they played in their spouses' lands and in political affairs outside their inherited lands, along with crucial assessments of the social identity and status of the family. It challenges the established interpretation and shows that the establishment of feudalism and the elaboration of bureaucracy did not curtail elite women's access to or exercise of lordship to any significant degree.

Day of Reckoning: Power and Accountability in Medieval France applies recent approaches to literacy, legal studies, memory, ritual, and the manorial economy to reexamine the transformation of medieval power. Highlighting the relationship of archives and power, it draws on the rich documentary sources of five of the largest Benedictine monasteries in northern France and Flanders, with comparisons to others, over a period of nearly four centuries. The book opens up new perspectives on important problems of power, in particular the idea and practice of accountability. In a violent society, medieval lords tried to delegate power rather than share it-to get their men to prosecute justice or raise money legitimately, rather than through extortion and pillage. Robert F. Berkhofer III explains how subordinates were held accountable by abbots administering the extensive holdings of Saint-Bertin, Saint-Denis, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Saint-Père-de-Chartres, and Saint-Vaast-d'Arras. As the abbots began to discipline their agents and monitor their conduct, the \"day of reckoning\" took on new meaning, as customary meeting days were used to hold agents accountable. By 1200, written and unwritten techniques of rule developed in the monasteries had moved into the secular world; in these practices lay the origins of administration, bureaucratic power, and governance, all hallmarks of the modern state.

Joan of Arc and Richard III loom large in the histories of their countries, but the myths surrounding them have always obscured just who they were and what they hoped to accomplish. In this book, medieval historian Charles Wood brings these fascinating figures to life through an original combination of traditional biography and wide-ranging discussion of the political and social world in which they lived. Wood draws on a range of unusual sources--from art and legal codes to chronicles and lives of saints--to present a new picture of medieval people and their concerns. Focusing on topics often neglected by other historians, he includes lively discussions of royal adultery scandals, child-kings and the problems they posed, and earlier people and crises that helped to shape the culture of sex and sainthood that was profoundly that of the Middle Ages. In so doing, he clarifies the historical contributions of Richard and Joan, and sheds new light on the political, social, and religious forces that shaped medieval government and made France and England such widely different countries.

This first edition of the cartulary contains 121 letters received from the barons and prelates of the county during the rule of Count Thibaut III (1198-1201) and the first decade of the regency of his widow, Countess Blanche (1201-22).

Extrait : \"En toutes choses et en tout temps, on doit eviter de confondre le fait avec le droit : cette distinction est surtout necessaire quand on s'occupe de l'histoire du moyen age, qui est l'epoque ou la force exercait un empire presque souverain, et ou l'abus, quand il pouvait prouver une longue existence, s'erigeait en droit.\"

Day of Reckoning: Power and Accountability in Medieval Franceapplies recent approaches to literacy, legal studies, memory, ritual, and the manorial economy to reexamine the transformation of medieval power. Highlighting the relationship of archives and power, it draws on the rich documentary sources of five of the largest Benedictine monasteries in northern France and Flanders, with comparisons to others, over a period of nearly four centuries. The book opens up new perspectives on important problems of power, in particular the idea and practice of accountability. In a violent society, medieval lords tried to delegate power rather than share it-to get their men to prosecute justice or raise money legitimately, rather than through extortion and pillage. Robert F. Berkhofer III explains how subordinates were held accountable by abbots administering the extensive holdings of Saint-Bertin, Saint-Denis, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Saint-Père-de-Chartres, and Saint-Vaast-d'Arras. As the abbots began to discipline their agents and monitor their conduct, the \"day of reckoning\" took on new meaning, as customary meeting days were used to hold agents accountable. By 1200, written and unwritten techniques of rule developed in the monasteries had moved into the secular world; in these practices lay the origins of administration, bureaucratic power, and governance, all hallmarks of the modern state.

This collection of essays makes an important contribution to our knowledge of feudalism and finance in France and Spain. Divided into four sections, it covers the use rulers made of courts, parlements, and assemblies for ceremonial, political and fiscal purposes; the institutional formation of Catalonia; comparative studies of France, Catalonia and Aragon in the twelfth century; and monetary and fiscal policies of contemporary rulers.

Translations and adaptations of Jesuit works in all languages are also included.The complete Jesuit Series will comprise some 1700 entries: about 500 first editions, and a further 1200 subsequent editions, issues and translations.

This book provides a new model of political development in late ninth through mid-twelfth century through an examination of the interrelationships among the counts of Boulogne and the neighboring counts of Picardy, Flanders, Normandy and England.