Innes Matthew. State and society in the Early Middle Ages: The Middle Rhine Valley, 400-1000

Cambridge University Press, 2000. — 336 p. — (Cambridge studies in medieval life and thought. Fourth series, 47).This book, first published in 2000, is a pioneering study of politics and society in the early Middle Ages. Whereas it is widely believed that the source materials for early medieval Europe are too sparse to allow sustained study of the workings of social and political relationships on the ground, this book focuses on a uniquely well-documented area to investigate the basis of power. Topics covered include the foundation of monasteries, their relationship with the laity, and their role as social centres; the significance of urbanism; the control of land, the development of property rights and the organization of states; community, kinship and lordship; justice and dispute settlement; the uses of the written word; violence and the feud; and the development of political structures from the Roman empire to the high Middle Ages.List of figures page
List of abbreviations
A note on nomenclature and citations
Acknowledgements
Region, sources and scope
Early medieval politics: problems of approach
Gifts to the church: patterns and potential
Spiritual patronage and gifts to the church
Funerary ritual, inheritance and gift exchange
Gifts of land and social power
The implications of monastic landholding
The elite: kinship, land and inheritance
Lorsch’s founders
The family of Otakar
The family of Hraban Maur
Land as property
The exploitation of land and the organisation of estates
Vertical integration: social status
Vertical integration: kinship and lordship
The relationship between land and power
Patterns of public action
Cities, monasteries and collective action
Rural settlements
Scribes as guardians of legal tradition
Counts and public meetings
Local political leadership
Violence, ritual and dispute settlement
The texture of local power
Approaching early medieval government
Military service
The army tax
Royal leviesRoman to Merovingian
The Merovingian middle Rhine
Forging the pax Karolina
Maintaining the pax Karolina
The politics of division
The zenith of Carolingian politics
Crisis, conflict and consolidation
The transformation of the early medieval polity
Structural characteristics of early medieval politics
Public and private, state and society
Interpreting the early medieval west
List of primary sources
Bibliography of secondary works