Violence in Medieval Europe, by Warren C. Brown

Warren C. Brown sets out two objectives for this study: to address the evolving understanding of violence in medieval Europe through the primary sources, and to act as a ‘gateway’ to the study of ‘conflict, power and political order’ for students (p. ix); both aims are achieved. An introductory chapter offering an excellent overview of scholarship on violence is followed by eight case-studies spanning the sixth to fourteenth centuries, each exploring a source or group of sources in depth, primarily legal and normative sources. France dominates with Gregory of Tours and the Pactus Legis Salicae, Charlemagne’s capitularies, the Peace of God movement and finally Froissart’s history of the Hundred Years War. The development of royal justice is explored in the chapters on royal law in Angevin England, and the thirteenth-century world of the Sachsenspiegel (with six black and white illustrations). Two chapters focus on narrative sources, with Flanders represented by Galbert of Bruges’ account of the murder of Charles the Good (1127) and Thietmar of Merseburg introducing both Ottonian Germany and the study of ritual. As the conclusion acknowledges (pp. 289–90), these choices mean that the world south of the Alps and other potential case-studies, such as late Roman France, have had to be omitted. The approach does allow the evidence to be explored in detail, revealing how violence was embedded in social norms and illustrating how it was deployed by rulers and aristocrats (and occasionally by towns and peasants, when the sources permit us to see them) in pursuit of their aims. It also permits Brown to present an overarching argument concerning the development of violence.

Ancient history · Art · Economic Justice · Literature · Middle Ages · Narrative · Normative · Order (exchange) · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Scholarship · Sociology · White (mutation) · Classics · Historical and Archaeological Studies · Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies · History · Law · Medieval Literature and History