Feud Violence And Practice

This collection presents an innovative series of essays about the medieval culture of Feud and Violence. Featuring both prominent senior and younger scholars from the United States and Europe, the contributions offer various methods and points of view in their analyses. All, however, are indebted in some way to the work of Stephen D. White on legal culture, politics, and violence. White's work has frequently emphasized the importance of careful, closely focused readings of medieval sources as well as the need to take account of practice in relation to indigenous normative statements. His work has thus made historians of medieval political culture keenly aware of the ways in which various rhetorical strategies could be deployed in disputes in order to gain moral or material advantage. Beginning with an essay by the editors introducing the contributions and discussing their relationships to Stephen White's work, to the themes of the volume, to each other, and to medieval and legal studies in general, the remainder of the volume is divided into three thematic sections. The first section contains papers whose linking themes are violence and feud, the second section explores medieval legal culture and feudalism; whilst the final section consists of essays that are models of the type of inquiry pioneered by White.

This collection presents an innovative series of essays about the medieval culture of Feud and Violence. Featuring both prominent senior and younger scholars from the United States and Europe, the contributions offer various methods and points of view in their analyses. All, however, are indebted in some way to the work of Stephen D. White on legal culture, politics, and violence. White's work has frequently emphasized the importance of careful, closely focused readings of medieval sources as well as the need to take account of practice in relation to indigenous normative statements. His work has thus made historians of medieval political culture keenly aware of the ways in which various rhetorical strategies could be deployed in disputes in order to gain moral or material advantage. Beginning with an essay by the editors introducing the contributions and discussing their relationships to Stephen White's work, to the themes of the volume, to each other, and to medieval and legal studies in general, the remainder of the volume is divided into three thematic sections. The first section contains papers whose linking themes are violence and feud, the second section explores medieval legal culture and feudalism; whilst the final section consists of essays that are models of the type of inquiry pioneered by White.

This book explores how eleventh- and twelfth-century Anglo-Norman ecclesiastical authors attributed anger to kings in the exercise of their duties, and how such attributions related to larger expansions of royal authority. It argues that ecclesiastical writers used their works to legitimize certain displays of royal anger, often resulting in violence, while at the same time deploying a shared emotional language that also allowed them to condemn other types of displays. These texts are particularly concerned about displays of anger in regard to suppressing revolt, ensuring justice, protecting honor, and respecting the status of kingship. In all of these areas, the role of ecclesiastical and lay counsel forms an important limit on the growth and expansion of royal prerogatives.

This groundbreaking book explains the widely accepted practice of feuding amongst noblemen and princes in its social context.

Interest in the history of violence has increased dramatically over the last ten years and recent studies have demonstrated the productive potential for further inquiry in this field. The early modern period is particularly ripe for further investigation because of the pervasiveness of violence. Certain countries may have witnessed a drop in the number of recorded homicides during this period, yet homicide is not the only marker of a violent society. This volume presents a range of contributions that look at various aspects of violence from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, from student violence and misbehaviour in fifteenth-century Oxford and Paris to the depiction of war wounds in the English civil wars. The book is divided into three sections, each clustering chapters around the topics of interpersonal and ritual violence, war, and justice and the law. Informed by the disciplines of anthropology, criminology, the history of art, literary studies, and sociology, as well as history, the contributors examine all forms of violence including manslaughter, assault, rape, riots, war and justice. Previous studies have tended to emphasise long-term trends in violent behaviour but one must always be attentive to the specificity of violence and these essays reveal what it meant in particular places and at particular times.

A reconsideration of aristocratic violence and the rise of the royalist French state from the Albigensian Crusade to Agincourt.

Examines the fundamental question of what held the societies of the post-Roman world together.