Violence And The State In Languedoc 1250 1400

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

The Jacquerie of 1358 is one of the most famous and mysterious peasant uprisings of the Middle Ages. Beginning in a small village but eventually overrunning most of northern France, the Jacquerie rebels destroyed noble castles and killed dozens of noblemen before being put down in a bloody wave of suppression. The revolt occurred in the wake of the Black Death and during the Hundred Years War, and it was closely connected to a rebellion in Paris against the French crown. The Jacquerie of 1358 resolves long-standing controversies about whether the revolt was just an irrational explosion of peasant hatred or simply an extension of the Parisian revolt. It shows that these opposing conclusions are based on the illusory assumption that the revolt was a united movement with a single goal. In fact, the Jacquerie has to be understood as a constellation of many events that evolved over time. It involved thousands of people, who understood what they were doing in different and changing ways. The story of the Jacquerie is about how individuals and communities navigated their specific political, social, and military dilemmas, how they reacted to events as they unfolded, and how they chose to remember (or to forget) in its aftermath. The Jacquerie of 1358 rewrites the narrative of this tumultuous period and gives special attention to how violence and social relationships were harnessed to mobilize popular rebellion.

This study of Scottish royal government in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries uses untapped legal evidence to set out a new narrative of governmental development. Between 1124 and 1290, the way in which kings of Scots ruled their kingdom transformed. By 1290 accountable officials, a system of royal courts, and complex common law procedures had all been introduced, none of which could have been envisaged in 1124.

Explains the history of England's northern borderlands in the fifteenth century within a broader social, political and European context.

This collection of essays offers a unique contribution to the study of violence and justice in a late medieval and early modern Italy by combining a multivocal perspective with a case-study focus on the city-state of Bologna. Drawing on the city’s singularly rich archival resources, the authors explore various facets of violence—ranging from the interpersonal to the less frequently studied typologies of blasphemy, rape, political rebellion, and student brawls—and set the institutions of the police and law courts into their socio-political and cultural contexts. They also apply a broad variety of quantitative and qualitative approaches—processual, microhistorical, legalism, comparative and criminological—to their assessments of the procedures and practices of criminal justice and the experiences of violent behavior, providing both short-term, in-depth analyses of specific events and over-arching reviews of long-term trends. Bologna itself, with its renowned university, economic innovations, strategic importance as a commercial and cultural crossroads, its political volatility and experiments with diverse constitutional structures, provides a rewarding laboratory for analyzing changes and continuities in late medieval and early modern violence and justice. From these studies emerges a narrative that challenges the traditional portrayal of those periods as eras when brutality and rage were “normal” in social relations and criminal justice was characterized mainly by punitive strategies of torture and repression.

State Formation in Europe, 843–1789 follows the formation and development of the European state from the division of the Carolingian Empire to the French Revolution. The book’s primary focus is on Europe’s patterns of internal and external development in comparison to political organization in other parts of the world. By analysing Europe as a single unit, rather than dividing it into nation states, it reveals the broader historical connections within the Continent. Bagge takes the reader through a discussion of how kingdoms evolved into states, introducing the influence of the Church and the town on these state structures. The relationship between state, Church and town is traced to explain how these different power struggles played out and why the territorial state became the dominate form of organization. Finally, the book clarifies why Europe developed in this way and the global consequences of this development. By observing Europe through the perspective of the rest of the world, readers gain insight into trends common to the whole Continent while crossing the traditional border between the Middle Ages and early modern period. This book is essential reading for students studying medieval and early modern political history, state formation and Europe in a global context.

The Routledge Companion to Cultural History in the Western World is a comprehensive examination of recent discussions and findings in the exciting field of cultural history. A synthesis of how the new cultural history has transformed the study of history, the volume is divided into three parts – medieval, early modern and modern – that emphasize the way people made sense of the world around them. Contributions cover such themes as material cultures of living, mobility and transport, cultural exchange and transfer, power and conflict, emotion and communication, and the history of the senses. The focus is on the Western world, but the notion of the West is a flexible one. In bringing together 36 authors from 15 countries, the book takes a wide geographical coverage, devoting continuous attention to global connections and the emerging trend of globalization. It builds a panorama of the transformation of Western identities, and the critical ramifications of that evolution from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, that offers the reader a wide-ranging illustration of the potentials of cultural history as a way of studying the past in a variety of times, spaces and aspects of human experience. Engaging with historiographical debate and covering a vast range of themes, periods and places, The Routledge Companion to Cultural History in the Western World is the ideal resource for cultural history students and scholars to understand and advance this dynamic field.

This new Companion introduces the most important medieval vernacular literary genre in Britain and continental Europe.