Reframing the Feudal Revolution

Charles West is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Sheffield.

• Introduction; Part I. The Parameters of Carolingian Society: 1. Institutional integration; 2. Networks of inequality; 3. Carolingian co-ordinations; Part II. The Long Tenth Century, c.880–c.1030: 4. The ebbing of royal power; 5. New hierarchies; Part III. The Exercise of Authority through Property Rights, c.1030–1130: 6. The banality of power; 7. Fiefs, homage, and the 'investiture quarrel'; 8. Upper Lotharingia and Champagne around 1100: unity and diversity; Conclusion; Bibliography.

'The case is made for specialists, but the depth and subtlety of its analysis give it much wider relevance. West's argument … is scrupulously conducted … it bears forcefully on many central issues, including the nature of feudalism and the dynamics of papal reform. Its reconciliation of the tension between continuity and change which is at the centre of this debate, as of so many others, shows how much has been lost in the hardening of a division between the early and the central Middle Ages. It evokes an even larger debate by implying that the European future was built not on the achievements of the Romans but on starting again at a level of society which they had failed to penetrate.' The Times Literary Supplement