The Counts of Anjou in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries: Understanding Power and Authority in the High Middle Ages

Abstract

The county of Anjou has a central place in French and English historiography as one of the main territorial principalities that emerged in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The power and authority of Angevin counts in the tenth and eleventh centuries make the county central to debates over public and private authority -violence, coercion, and cooperation -and the continuity or discontinuity of Carolingian institutions in the early Capetian era. Its rich primary source record has allowed numerous studies to address these questions, but more work needs to be done making use of the methodology of emerging fields within medieval studies and with a focus on how the lesser nobility functioned in Anjou.