"Fichtenau delivers a fascinating view of tenth-century Europe on the eve of the second millenium. He writes this hoping we, on the eve of the third millennium, will take time also to look at who we are and at our world. . . . This engaging book lucidly carries the reader through an amazing amount of material. Medieval scholars will find it resourceful and challenging; the nonscholar will find it fascinating and enlightening."—A. L. Kolp, Choice "Living in the Tenth Century resembles an anthropological field study more than a conventional historical monograph, and represents a far more ambitious attempt to see behind the surface of avowals and events than others have seriously attempted even for much more voluminously documented periods. . . . It is remarkably rich and readable."—R.I. Moore, Times Higher Education Supplement "Fichtenau offers a magnificent survey of all the main spheres of life: the social order, the rural economy, schooling and religious belief and practice in both the secular and monastic church. His command, especially of the narrative sources, their fine nuances of attitude emotion and underlying norms, is masterly and he employs them here with all the sensitiveness and feel for the subject that have always been the hallmarks of his work."—Karl Leyser, Francia

A vivid portrait of political and cultural life in the 10th century

The central argument of The Formation of the English Kingdom in the Tenth Century is that the English kingdom which existed at the time of the Norman Conquest was defined by the geographical parameters of a set of administrative reforms implemented in the mid- to late tenth century, and not by a vision of English unity going back to Alfred the Great (871-899). In the first half of the tenth century, successive members of the Cerdicing dynasty established a loose domination over the other great potentates in Britain. They were celebrated as kings of the whole island, but even in their Wessex heartlands they probably had few means to regulate routinely the conduct of the general populace. Detailed analysis of coins, shires, hundreds, and wapentakes suggests that it was only around the time of Edgar (957/9-975) that the Cerdicing kings developed the relatively standardised administrative apparatus of the so-called 'Anglo-Saxon state'. This substantially increased their ability to impinge upon the lives of ordinary people living between the Channel and the Tees, and served to mark that area off from the rest of the island. The resultant cleft undermined the idea of a pan-British realm, and demarcated the early English kingdom as a distinct and coherent political unit. In this volume, George Molyneaux places the formation of the English kingdom in a European perspective, and challenges the notion that its development was exceptional: the Cerdicings were only one of several ruling dynasties around the fringes of the former Carolingian Empire for which the late ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries were a time of territorial expansion and consolidation.

Æthelflæd (c. 870–918), political leader, military strategist, and administrator of law, is one of the most important ruling women in English history. Despite her multifaceted roles and family legacy, however, her reign and relationship with other women in tenth-century England have never been the subject of a book-length study. This interdisciplinary collection of essays redresses a notable hiatus in scholarship of early medieval England. Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, and Women in Tenth-Century England argues for a reassessment of women’s political, military, literary, and domestic agency. It invites deeper reflection on the female kinships, networks, and communities that give meaning to Æthelflæd’s life, and through this shows how medieval history can invite new engagements with the past.

Secular priests occupied a central place within thirteenth-century European society, carrying out important duties within the institutional Church, as well as participating in the lay and religious communities around them. This dissertation uses secular sources--the private registers of public notaries--to show that priests in the port city of Genoa entered into economic, spiritual, and social transactions with a wide range of people. In doing so, they built complex and durable relationships that provided ample opportunities for the exchange of ideas and values with the women, men, and other clerics with whom they shared their lives. If a major trend in scholarship on the Middle Ages over the past seventy years has been to emphasize the religiosity of lay people's everyday world, then this dissertation looks the other direction, to explore the so-called secularity of religious institutions and their priests. Ultimately, the notarial registers prove that Genoa's priests were not mere facilitators of lay religiosity or agents of ecclesiastical power; rather they played a multivalent role in the intermediary space between "lay" and "religious" communities. Chapter One provides an overview of Genoa's ecclesiastical structure and demonstrates how private notarial registers can provide useful perspectives on secular priests' lives. Chapter Two investigates how priests' participation in the real estate and credit markets helped weave them into the fabric of Genoese neighborhoods. Chapter Three uses the notarial registers to show priests carrying out their core professional duties: tending to the health of souls in their communities. Chapter Four demonstrates priests' important intermediary position by examining their service as executors, agents, arbiters, and judges. Chapter Five explores how secular priests embodied the Genoese Church overseas in Genoa's network of trading settlements around the Mediterranean and Black Seas. Finally, the Conclusion considers the broader contours of priests' social networks, identifying trends that cut across the heuristic boundaries that structure earlier chapters. It also summarizes the value of the private registers as sources for ecclesiastical and clerical history.

This book studies the Counsel for Kings as an illuminating commentary on the milieu and polity in which it was written and as a composition that seeks to persuade by drawing allusions between the diverse repertoire of wisdom literature available to the author and his audience and the circumstances of the author’s time and place.