The origins of the large estate of Carolingian Europe and the role it played in the evolution of Frankish society and economy are the themes of this volume. The first group of articles focus on documentary evidence, especially the polyptychs and their interpretation. Though there is insufficient material for any true quantitive history, Professor Devroey argues that the evidence points to demographic expansion, coupled with the exploitation of new agricultural methods and crops, and a reliance on the family as the unit of production. Further studies relate these estates to the commercial networks of the area, from a local to an international level. A final concern is to demonstrate that the large estate formed a key component of the Carolingian rulers’ aim to establish the ’bonum commune’ and a stable society, with assured food supplies, regulated markets and a just system of weights and measures. L’origine du grand domaine de l’Europe carolingienne et le rôle qu’il jouait dans l’évolution de la société et de l’économie du monde franc sont les thèmes de ce volume. Le premier groupe d’articles se concentre sur des documents et plus spécialement sur les polyptyques et leur interprétation. Bien qu’il n’y ait pas de matériel suffisant pour une histoire quantitative, le professeur Devroey soutient que tout indique une expansion démographie, à laquelle viennent s’ajouter l’exploitation de nouvelles méthodes agricoles et de récoltes, ainsi qu’une dépendance vis-à-vis de la famille en tant qu’unité de production. Des études supplémentaires font le lien entre ces propriétés et les réseaux commerciaux de cette partie du monde, du niveau local au niveau international. L’auteur s’efforce finalement de démontrer que le grand domaine était un des facteurs à la base de la volonté des dirigeants carolingiens d’instaurer le ’bonum commune’ et une société stable avec des approvisionnements assurés, des march

Provocative interrogation of how the Ottonian kingdom grew and flourished, focussing on the resources required.

At its height, the Carolingian empire spanned a million square kilometres of western Europe - from the English Channel to central Italy and northern Spain, and from the Atlantic to the fringes of modern Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. As the largest political unit for centuries, the empire dominated the region and left an enduring legacy for European culture. This comprehensive survey traces this great empire's history, from its origins around 700, with the rise to dominance of the Carolingian dynasty, through its expansion by ruthless military conquest and political manoeuvring in the eighth century, to the struggle to hold the empire together in the ninth. It places the complex political narrative in context, giving equal consideration to vital themes such as beliefs, peasant society, aristocratic culture and the economy. Accessibly written and authoritative, this book offers distinctive perspectives on a formative period in European history.

The 19 papers presented in this volume by North American and European historians and archaeologists discuss how early medieval political and religious elites constructed ‘places of power’, and how such places, in turn, created powerful people. They also examine how the ‘high-level’ power exercised by elites was transformed in the post-Roman kingdoms of Europe, as Roman cities gave way as central stages for rituals of power to a multitude of places and spaces where political and religious power were represented. Although the Frankish kingdoms receive a large share of attention, contributions also focus on the changing topography of power in the old centres of the Roman world, Rome and Constantinople, to what ‘centres of power’ may have meant in the steppes of Inner Asia, Scandinavia or the lower Vistula, where political power was even more mobile and decentralised than in the post-Roman kingdoms, as well as to monasteries and their integration into early medieval topographies of power.

Thinkers in medieval France constantly reconceptualized what had come before, interpreting past events to give validity to the present and help control the future. The long-dead saints who presided over churches and the ancestors of established dynasties were an especially crucial part of creative memory, Constance Brittain Bouchard contends. In Rewriting Saints and Ancestors she examines how such ex post facto accounts are less an impediment to the writing of accurate history than a crucial tool for understanding the Middle Ages. Working backward through time, Bouchard discusses twelfth-century scribes contemplating the ninth-century documents they copied into cartularies or reworked into narratives of disaster and triumph, ninth-century churchmen deliberately forging supposedly late antique documents as weapons against both kings and other churchmen, and sixth- and seventh-century Gallic writers coming to terms with an early Christianity that had neither the saints nor the monasteries that would become fundamental to religious practice. As they met with political change and social upheaval, each generation decided which events of the past were worth remembering and which were to be reinterpreted or quietly forgotten. By considering memory as an analytic tool, Bouchard not only reveals the ways early medieval writers constructed a useful past but also provides new insights into the nature of record keeping, the changing ways dynasties were conceptualized, the relationships of the Merovingian and Carolingian kings to the church, and the discovery (or invention) of Gaul's earliest martyrs.

Exploring the Low Countries at a regional level, van Bavel highlights the importance of localized structures for determining the nature of social transitions and economic growth.

The eighth century has not been analysed as a period of economic history since the 1930s, and is ripe for a comprehensive reassessment. The twelve papers in this book range over the whole of Europe and the Mediterranean from Denmark to Palestine, covering Francia, Italy and Byzantium on the way. They examine regional economies and associated political structures, that is to say the whole network of production, exchange, and social relations in each area. They offer both authoritative overviews of current work and new and original work. As a whole, they show how the eighth century was the first century when the post-Roman world can clearly be seen to have emerged, in the regional economies of each part of Europe.