David Crouch

Professor of Early Medieval History Rosamond McKitterick

Christine Carpenter, Ba Ma Dippt

This book combines a study of Waleran of Meulan and Robert of Leicester with an exploration of the exercise of power in twelfth-century Normandy and England.

The Roots and Branches of Power in the Twelfth Century

The Beaumont Twins

Rosamond McKitterick

The writing and reading of history in the early Middle Ages form the key themes of this 2004 book. The primary focus is on the remarkable manifestations of historical writing in relation to historical memory in the Frankish kingdoms of the eighth and ninth centuries. It considers the audiences for history in the Frankish kingdoms, the recording of memory in new genres including narrative histories, cartularies and Libri memoriales, and thus particular perceptions of the Frankish and Christian past. It analyses both original manuscript material and key historical texts from the Carolingian period, a remarkably creative period in the history of European culture. Presentations of the past developed in this period were crucial in forming an historical understanding of the Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian past and, in subsequent centuries, of early medieval Europe. They also played an extraordinarily influential role in the formation of political ideologies and senses of identity within Europe.

History and Memory in the Carolingian World

Mark Bailey

A theory of the margin has long featured in the work of medieval historians. Marginal regions are taken to be those of poor soil or geographical remoteness, where farmers experienced particular difficulties in grain production. It is argued that such regions were cultivated only when demographic pressure intensified in the thirteenth century, but that a combination of soil exhaustion and demographic decline resulted in severe economic contraction by the end of the fourteenth century. Marginal regions are seen not just as sensitive barometers of economic change but as important catalysts in that change. Despite the importance placed by historians on the general theory of the margin, this book represents the first detailed study of a 'marginal region'. It focuses upon East Anglian Breckland, whose blowing sands are among the most barren soils in lowland England. Drawing upon a wide range of sources, this study reconstructs Breckland's late medieval economy, and shows it to be more diversified and resilient than the stereotype depicted in marginal theory.

East Anglian Breckland in the Later Middle Ages

A Marginal Economy?

Rosamund Mc Kitterick

Functional analysis of the written word in eight and ninth century Carolingian European society demonstrates that literacy was not confined to a clerical elite, but dispersed in lay society and used administratively as well.

Professor of Early Medieval History Rosamond McKitterick

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