Medieval Lordship

The Peace of God

“…Without overarching Carolingian rule, the lines between noble and banal lordship blurred. The proliferation of individuals claiming political authority of some sort was an “explosive phenomenon” (Bisson 1995: 749; also see Cowdrey 1970: 45–46; Sargent 1985: 219). This proliferation was not limited to secular claimants: “Bishops, cathedral chapters, and monasteries were also establishing more coherent lordships” (Koziol 2018: 3).…”

“…Notwithstanding the lack of legitimacy, these lords saturated the countryside with fortified castles, from which they could reach out to dominate the peasantry. Jurisdictions were poorly defined; conflict and violence were widespread (Bisson 1994, 1995, 2009).…”

Hospitalitas: Barbarian settlements and constitutional foundations of medieval Europe

“…More generally, reciprocal relationships that resembled Carolingian vassalage predated Charles Martel and had precedents in the institutions of loyalty within Germanic war bands (e.g. Bisson, 1995: 746–7; Riché, 1993 [1983]: 37–9; Stephenson, 1941; Wickham, 1984: 25) 17 . The Carolingian enterprise, then, exploited well-established institutions.…”

The Medieval State: The Tyranny of a Concept?*

“…American medievalists – far less fixated with the state than their English or even French counterparts – took up the cudgels. F. L. Cheyette in his provocatively entitled “The Invention of the State” asserted that Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries “lacked the realm of discourse, the set of distinctions that are the foundation of the modern state” (Cheyette, 1978, p. 156); Patrick Geary had no doubts about referring to pre‐1200 France as “a stateless society” (Geary, 1986); and in a series of recent writings Tom Bisson has called in question the appropriateness for the early medieval period of notions such as “government”, “politics” and “administration” preferring to concentrate on “lordship”, “patrimonial domination”, and “power” (Bisson, 1989, 1995).…”