The most recent cutting-edge scholarship on the tenth, eleventh and
twelfth centuries.
The essays collected here demonstrate the rich vitality of scholarship
in this area. This volume has a particular focus on the interrelations
between the various parts of north-western Europe. After the opening
piece on Lotharingia, there are detailed studies of the relationship
between Ponthieu and its Norman neighbours, and between the Norman and
Angevin duke-kings and the other French nobility, followed by an
investigation of the world of demons and possession in Norman Italy,
with additional observations on the subject in twelfth-century England.
Meanwhile, the York massacre of the Jews in 1190 is set in a wider
context, showing the extent to which crusader enthusiasm led to the
pogroms that so marred Anglo-Jewish relations, not just in York but
elsewhere in England; and there is an exploration of poverty in London,
also during the 1190s, viewed through the prism of the life and
execution of William fitz Osbert. Another chapter demonstrates the power
of comparative history to illuminate the norms of proprietary queenship,
so often overlooked by historians of both kingship and queenship. And
two essays focusing on landscape bring the physical into close
association with the historical: on the equine landscape of eleventh and
twelfth-century England, adding substantially to our understanding of
the place of the horse in late Anglo-Saxon and early Anglo-Norman
societies, and on the Brut narratives of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, and
Laȝamon, arguing that they use realistic landscapes in their depiction
of the action embedded in their tales, so demonstrating the authors'
grasp of the practical realities of contemporary warfare and the role
played by landscapes in it.
