“…While the interpretation of charters has remained a key plank of the debate, some historians have looked to Flodoard for evidence of violence, lordship, and political order, or at least contemporary attitudes to such things. Thomas Bisson highlighted a number of Flodoard's reports on the deeds of West Frankish kings in order to argue that violence was already an institutionalized component of a “public,” “Carolingian” order in the early tenth century (Bisson, , pp. 10, 13, 25; Bisson, , pp.…”
Section: Flodoard and Tenth‐century Changementioning
Flodoard of Rheims is one of the most important authors of tenth‐century Europe, and the only contemporary historian to document the momentous struggles between kings and nobles in Francia in the wake of the demise of the Carolingian Empire. Flodoard's era stands at the center of major historiographical debates concerning the nature of political and social change and the origins of European institutions. Yet, despite his singularity, his substantial histories have received little attention from scholars examining the profound transformations of the period. Exploring this discrepancy, this article offers an overview of Flodoard's career and reviews how his histories have been invoked in some of the great scholarly debates about tenth‐century Europe. It further proposes to recontextualize Flodoard and to reread his histories from the bottom up in order to gain a subtler understanding of how one contemporary perceived and represented the dramatic events and changes taking place around him.
“…While the interpretation of charters has remained a key plank of the debate, some historians have looked to Flodoard for evidence of violence, lordship, and political order, or at least contemporary attitudes to such things. Thomas Bisson highlighted a number of Flodoard's reports on the deeds of West Frankish kings in order to argue that violence was already an institutionalized component of a “public,” “Carolingian” order in the early tenth century (Bisson, , pp. 10, 13, 25; Bisson, , pp.…”
Section: Flodoard and Tenth‐century Changementioning
Flodoard of Rheims is one of the most important authors of tenth‐century Europe, and the only contemporary historian to document the momentous struggles between kings and nobles in Francia in the wake of the demise of the Carolingian Empire. Flodoard's era stands at the center of major historiographical debates concerning the nature of political and social change and the origins of European institutions. Yet, despite his singularity, his substantial histories have received little attention from scholars examining the profound transformations of the period. Exploring this discrepancy, this article offers an overview of Flodoard's career and reviews how his histories have been invoked in some of the great scholarly debates about tenth‐century Europe. It further proposes to recontextualize Flodoard and to reread his histories from the bottom up in order to gain a subtler understanding of how one contemporary perceived and represented the dramatic events and changes taking place around him.
“…Secondly, and related to the first, they had no ideological ground recognized by law on which they could declare their obscure status as hereditary, with the qualification that a limited number of new families might be admitted to their ranks. What mattered more than the legal gap in local knowledge about the honorific status of these new lords, as Bisson (: 14, 16) puts it, was the violence ‐“spoken so frankly” amongst the castellans‐ that “came to effect relations of lordship and dependence. For it is in this respect the violence had the potential to mold a new order of power”: The violence of castellans and knights was a method of lordship.…”
Section: Feudal Society: a Frankly Predatory And Servile Establishmentmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…It had neither political nor administrative character, for it was based on the capricious manipulation of powerless people. (Bisson, :18)…”
Section: Feudal Society: a Frankly Predatory And Servile Establishmentmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…What was at stake in this insatiable hunger for luxury and waste was “a quest for status. Only lords could be noble, only nobles could govern: could exercise the powers of justice and command that created the presumption of nobility” (Bisson, : 18).…”
Section: Feudal Society: a Frankly Predatory And Servile Establishmentmentioning
Using Veblen's status emulation theory in the background, but essentially engaged in theoretical debates on the transition to capitalism and modernity, this paper attempts to provide a comparative account of different forms of domination in Western European feudal society and the Ottoman Empire. In contrast, an individualistic representation of reality gained prevalence in social conflicts in Western Europe, precisely because forms of exploitation associated with European serfdom were far more severe and un‐tempered than was true for the Ottoman Empire. Due to being short of a legitimate claim to genuine nobility, Western European feudal aristocracy was driven into an insatiable hunger for luxury and waste. In the absence of a powerful central authority, members of this class “turned inward” for their ever‐increasing exploits and waged war against their servants, living and working under their private jurisdictions. The peasants, both free and serf, not only revolted repeatedly, but also ran into the cities to have “fairly secure property rights” so that they would be “the lord” or “dominus” of their own lives and morality. Out of this, a new justice notion had grown, that of natural rights law, which equated all human individuals within one single concern, that of “the right to self‐preservation,” eventually dragging the whole social fabric into heightened self‐centeredness. The Ottoman ruling class could not turn inward and wage an open class war against its servants. This was the land of peace, dar‐al Islam. All people, Muslim and non‐Muslim lived, or were supposed to live, in peace and harmony under the supreme order of Hakk. The transition to an individualistic justice notion along the lines of natural rights law was on the whole clogged in Turkey.
“…32 Violence emanating from these castles is said to have brought down the old rural order. In fact, scholars describing a 'feudal revolution' almost always document their cases with anecdotal reports of violence, 33 even though some skeptics question whether it might not also have been possible to collect similar tales of woe from other time periods such as the ninth century, or whether the clergymen reporting 'violence' were always disinterested witnesses, or whether an alleged increase in accounts of violence might reflect changes in the processes of reporting rather than in the underlying conduct. 34 In the film The Wild One (1954), Marlon Brando, challenged to name what he was rebelling against, asked 'What have you got?'…”
Section: Did the Ancient Economic Order Survive Until A Millennial 'Fmentioning
The tenth century, once dimissed as an unpleasant ‘Age of Iron’, now receives increased attention as an important age of transition. Historians are attempting to understand how it fits into the broader narrative of Western Civilization. Some have identified it as the last act of the post‐Roman world. They identify its economy and social structures as Late Antique – at least until a ‘feudal revolution’ around the year 1000 suddenly swept them away. More professional soldiers based in new forts are said to mark the sudden advent of a new, more chaotic order. Church and state, rebuilding together after the invasions and civil wars of the late ninth century, self‐consciously attempted, with varying degrees of success, to model themselves on Roman precedents. This movement culminated in the reign of Emperor Otto III (983–1002), who relocated the capital to Rome and dedicated himself ‘to renew the ancient customs of the Romans’. The points of tangency cited between the Later Roman world and the tenth century are impressive, but a definitive judgement also requires that the century’s novel aspects be considered.
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