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50 results in The New Cambridge Medieval History

Page 1 of 3

  • 11 - Spain: the northern kingdoms and the Basques, 711–910

  • from PART I - POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT
  • Edited by Rosamond McKitterick, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    14 September 1995, pp 272-289

  • Summary

    Christian writers, such as the anonymous author of the so-called 'Prophetic Chronicle' of 883/4, could look forward to the expulsion of the Arabs from Spain, and a sense of both an ethnic and a religious-cultural divide between the inhabitants of the small northern kingdoms and the dominant elite in the south was marked in the writings of both sides. On the other hand, it is unwise to be too linear in the approach to the origins of the 'Reconquista', as tended to be the way with Spanish historiography in the earlier part of the twentieth century. Periods of peaceful co-existence or of limited and localised frontier disturbances were more frequent than ones of all-out military conflict between al-Andalus and the Christian kingdoms. As in the case of relations between the Arista dynasty in Pamplona and the Bānū Qasī, mutual interest could be a stronger bond than ideological divisions based on antagonistic creeds.

  • 19 - Rural society in Carolingian Europe

  • from PART II - GOVERNMENT AND INSTITUTIONS
  • Edited by Rosamond McKitterick, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    14 September 1995, pp 510-537

  • Summary

    In the Carolingian period, from 750 or so onwards, people began, for the first time in European history, to see rural society more directly. This chapter provides an understanding of how rural social relationships actually worked in practice, on the ground. It talks about four areas as brief examples of the local societies, and discusses what their similarities and differences might tell us about the vast range of small-scale realities that made up Europe as a whole. The four are two small Catalan counties, Urgell and Pallars; the villages north of the Breton monastery of Redon; Dienheim in the middle Rhine, just upstream from Mainz; and Cologno Monzese, a settlement just east of Milan: from, respectively, a marginal frontier area, a more prosperous marchland, a core area for Frankish political power, and the urbanised heartland of the Lombard-Carolingian kingdom of Italy.

  • 27 - The Carolingian renaissance: education and literary culture

  • from PART IV - CULTURE AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS
  • Edited by Rosamond McKitterick, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    14 September 1995, pp 709-757

  • Summary

    The Carolingian renaissance appears as a well-organised programme. Observers from the time of Notker Balbulus and Heiric of Auxerre to the present day have been impressed by the Carolingian achievement. Much of the variety inherent in Carolingian learning can be attributed to differences in resources, talents and interests across the cultural landscape. Only a few of the Carolingian schools have been studied systematically. Books were at the heart of Carolingian education. The most original development in Carolingian rhetorical studies linked rhetoric with rulership. Carolingian poetry was a ubiquitous feature of Carolingian literary culture and one of its most impressive achievements modern collection, was an ubiquitous feature of Carolingian literary culture. The example Carolingian leaders provided in their courts and legislation and which Notker Balbulus enshrined in his emblematic account of Charlemagne's life was not lost on later politicians who believed that learning was important for the spiritual health of the individual and also for Christian society.

  • 17 - Social and military institutions

  • from PART II - GOVERNMENT AND INSTITUTIONS
  • Edited by Rosamond McKitterick, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    14 September 1995, pp 451-480

  • Summary

    Military institutions are a vivid reflection of social order and social change, particularly in eighth and ninth centuries. Social history, more than any other branch of historiography, is compelled to adopt explicative theories which often remain hypothetical. With a knowledge of medieval social concepts, one can better understand the thought of the former times. Social order represented the theoretical and structural classification of medieval society, social life was rather determined by the various relations between people or classes, by natural or 'artificial' bonds between human beings and groups on an equal as well as on a hierarchical level. The family was the most natural and primary social institution at all levels of society. The household and manorial systems were more than mere social bonds in so far as they at the same time represented forms of community life within a certain social context: on the one hand the family, on the other the seigneurial familia.

  • 29 - Book production in the Carolingian empire and the spread of Caroline minuscule

  • from PART IV - CULTURE AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS
  • Edited by Rosamond McKitterick, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    14 September 1995, pp 786-808

  • Summary

    The choice of scripts, and the extent and nature of book production in Spain, Britain and southern Italy, serve as a reminder of what might have happened without the resources of Carolingian faith and Carolingian power. The evidence for the manuscripts which could be used by Carolingian readers is twofold: manuscripts which have survived in whole or in part, and the few Carolingian catalogues of libraries. Book production throughout the empire on a scale required an increase in the number of scribes, and the formalisation of their training. Carolingian scriptoria developed a uniform script, Caroline minuscule, which could be used to copy texts in Greek, Latin, Old Irish, Old Saxon, and what one regards as the different dialects of German and Romance. Carolingian scribes used enlarged letters to indicate the start of a new section, and punctuation marks to guide the reader in different kinds of graded pause and in recognising questions. The Carolingians secured their classical and patristic heritage.

  • 30 - Art and architecture

  • from PART IV - CULTURE AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS
  • Edited by Rosamond McKitterick, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    14 September 1995, pp 809-844

  • Summary

    The eighth and ninth centuries were a formative period for medieval art. Court patronage was scarcely new to this period, but its focus and character had shifted with the decline of the cities. The expanded role given to images during the seventh and early eighth centuries led in the Byzantine world to the sharp reaction known as Iconoclasm, and ironically gave new force and definition to religious images. An important example of new forms and interpretations of traditional iconography is the image of the Crucifixion. The study of western European church architecture of the eighth and ninth centuries has been dominated for the past half-century by Richard Krautheimer's great article treating 'the Carolingian revival of early Christian architecture'. Sculpture in ivory and rock crystal was associated with Carolingian Francia during this period, but the other major medium for what may be thought of in the context of sculptural art, various kinds of metalworking, was widely employed across western Europe.

  • 18 - Economic Organisation

  • from PART II - GOVERNMENT AND INSTITUTIONS
  • Edited by Rosamond McKitterick, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    14 September 1995, pp 481-509

  • Summary

    A sensitivity to grain crises and the rapid and dynamic reactions may be responsible for the apparently somewhat chaotic and uneven growth. Such a characteristic of early medieval demographic evolution is probably partly responsible for the fact that these fluctuations cannot be determined or delimited chronologically. The prevalence of pigs in comparison to sheep and especially to cattle, on both desmesne land and farms held in tenure, points to mixed farming in which the stock economy was subordinate to an agricultural economy centred on grain production. From about the middle of the eighth century onwards, the structure and exploitation of land ownership in the Frankish empire between Loire and Rhine, between Rhine, Elbe and Alps, and in northern and central Italy underwent profound changes. As a result of the dominant role of manorial organisation in agrarian and industrial production, the exchange of goods and trade were also to a large extent dependent on the large estate and its production.

  • 23 - Carolingian monasticism: the power of prayer

  • from PART III - CHURCH AND SOCIETY
  • Edited by Rosamond McKitterick, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    14 September 1995, pp 622-653

  • Summary

    This chapter talks about the impact of the powerful, kings and aristocrats, on the inner world of the cloister. Monastic life was lived in close contact with the world outside, and responded to its needs. This constant proximity necessitated a repeated redrawing of boundaries and renewal of distance, which is usually called 'monastic reform'. The tension between separation and integration is a recurrent theme in the writings of Carolingian monastic authors, precisely because their communities were so much at the centre of social and political life. The architectural solution to this problem was the claustrum, an inner enclosure within the monastery which should keep the outside at bay. The first section of the chapter deals with the demands of society on monks and nuns, and with the political function of monasteria. The second section treats the way in which these demands shaped the vita communis, the persisent ideal of a communal life within the cloister.

  • 20 - Money and coinage

  • from PART II - GOVERNMENT AND INSTITUTIONS
  • Edited by Rosamond McKitterick, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    14 September 1995, pp 538-560

  • Summary

    Europe in the eighth and ninth centuries can be divided into two broad regions, the coin-producing areas in the west and south where coinage circulated in specie, being normally counted out in transactions, and the areas to the north and east with their bullion economies in which imported coinage and other forms of precious metal were used together by weight. The boundary between the two regions remained remarkably static between the eighth and eleventh centuries, although by the end of the twelfth century most of Europe had some form of regulated currency system. During the first two centuries following the collapse of the western empire, the currencies of the new barbarian kingdoms were based largely on locally produced gold coins. After the reconquest of the Danelaw in the middle of the tenth century, the new unified kingdom devised perhaps the most sophisticated fiscal currency system medieval Europe would see.

  • 1 - Introduction: sources and interpretation

  • from PART I - POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT
  • Edited by Rosamond McKitterick, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    14 September 1995, pp 1-17

  • Summary

    A hierarchy of scripts, descending from the capitals of the Roman script system, through uncials and half-uncials to minuscule scripts, flourished triumphantly in Carolingian manuscripts of the ninth century, though is to be observed in English and Frankish manuscripts of the eighth century as well. Fundamental changes in the rites associated with an individual's last illness and death, for example, culminated in the creation of a common and coherent, if complex, death ritual throughout the Frankish realm. To appreciate as well as to assess the accuracy of the early medieval historiographers' interpretation of their own past, it is needed to bring in other categories of source material, as well as non-Frankish perspectives on the progress of events to balance the predominance of the Frankish versions. The Carolingians established the principle of the personality of the law in the early ninth century.

  • 26 - Language and Communication in Carolingian Europe

  • from PART IV - CULTURE AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS
  • Edited by Rosamond McKitterick, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    14 September 1995, pp 695-708

  • Summary

    This chapter focuses on the application of modern socio-linguistic advances to the Carolingian period. From the socio-linguistic point of view, the transition from different kinds of spoken Latin to the Romance languages, and the corresponding wreck of general Latin communication, led, from the 750s onwards, to the establishment of a situation of diglossia. The end of the Merovingian centuries and the whole of the Carolingian period in the linguistic and cultural history of Europe can be described in a way which, however complex its elements, reveals a creative development, much less confused than appeared at first sight; the ills and the disorders which the language of the Merovingian charters appears, time and time again, to display are the indirect sign of an intense linguistic activity, from which would emerge the new and unforeseen perfection of the Romance dialects, fruit of a process by which final order was born of apparent chaos.

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