Debating the Middle Ages

Barbara H. Rosenwein is Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago. Her previous publications include To Be the Neighbor of Saint Peter (1989). She has recently completed a book on early medieval political culture and strategies, Negotiating Space: Early Medieval Immunities and Other Entry Prohibitions (1999).

Lester K. Little is Dwight W. Morrow Professor of History at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. He previously taught at Princeton University and the University of Chicago. His most recent publication is Benedictine Maledictions: Liturgical Cursing in Romanesque France (1993).

Acknowledgments to Sources v

Contents

Editors' Acknowledgments Acknowledgments to Sources A Note on Format List of Abbreviations Introduction 1

Part I The Fate of Rome's Western Provinces 5

Editors' Introduction 7

1 Conceptions of Ethnicity in Early Medieval Studies
Walter Pohl 15

2 The Barbarians in Late Antiquity and How They Were Accommodated in the West Walter Goffart 25

3 The Fall of Rome Will Not Take Place Chris Wickham 45

4 The Decline of the Western Empire Richard Hodges and David Whitehouse 58

5 Gregory of Tours and Clovis Ian N. Wood 73

6 Missionaries and Magic in Dark-Age Europe Alexander Murray 92

Part II Feudalism and Its Alternatives 105

Editors' Introduction 107

7 The Banal Seigneury and the "Reconditioning" of the Free Peasantry Pierre Bonnassie 114

8 The Year 1000 Without Abrupt or Radical Transformation
Dominique Barthélemy 134

9 The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe Elizabeth A. R. Brown 148

10 Giving Each His Due Fredric L. Cheyette 170

11 Strangers and Neighbors Monique Bourin and Robert Durand 180

12 Amicitiae [Friendships] as Relationships Between States and People Gerd Althoff 191

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Part III Gender 211

Editors' Introduction 213

13 Queens as Jezebels: the Careers of Brunhild and Balthild in Merovingian History Janet Nelson 219

14 Women and the Norman Conquest Pauline Stafford 254

15 The "Cruel Mother": Maternity, Widowhood, and Dowry in

Florence in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
Christiane Klapisch-Zuber 264

16 Men's Use of Female Symbols Caroline Walker Bynum 277

17 Burdens of Matrimony: Husbanding and Gender in Medieval Italy Susan Mosher Stuard 290

Part IV Religion and Society 299

Editors' Introduction 301

18 The Evangelical Awakening Marie-Dominique Chenu 310

19 The Use and Abuse of Miracles in Early Medieval Culture
Sofia Boesch Gajano 330

20 The Dead in the Celestial Bookkeeping of the Cluniac Monks Around the Year 1000 Dominique Iogna-Prat 340

21 Literacy and the Making of Heresy, c.1000-c. 1150
R. I. Moore 363

22 Religion, Folklore, and Society in the Medieval West
Jean-Claude Schmitt 376

Index of Persons and Places 388

Brings together work in the field of medieval history. This book provides an overview of medieval historiography, demonstrating that history is not a collection of static facts, but rather a dynamic process of interpretation. It is structured thematically under four key areas of scholarly discussion.