Begegnungen zwischen dem ostfränkisch-deutschen Reich und England (850–1100)

This book unfolds with a vignette. In 1062/66, Otloh of St Emmeran undertook to write a new life of Boniface, basing his text on the earlier life by Willibald of Mainz. However, where Willibald had included letters from Boniface to Anglo-Saxon recipients, Otloh diverged from his exemplar, explicitly noting that he would not burden his readers with foreign affairs, but rather concentrate on domestic matters. For a book which is concerned with contacts between England and East Francia, this may seem a strange ‘hook’—and indeed it recurs as the note on which the book ends, some 500 pages later. Yet it is representative of Andreas Bihrer’s central thesis: that contacts between England and East Francia in this period (850–1100) have been grossly exaggerated in recent scholarship. Over the next chapters, Bihrer puts forward a meticulously researched, politely engaged but ultimately negative argument: a rarity in academic publishing, but no less valuable for it. With exhaustive detail, he seeks to demolish the idea that contact between England and East Francia was consistent, intensive, or in any way perceived as important by contemporaries. The book’s coverage is not just thorough, but staggering in its scope: Bihrer considers contact between England and East Francia in terms of mobility with especial focus on individual and institutional actors; in terms of social boundaries and communication strategies; in terms of traded artefacts, whether physical goods, ideas, or representations of rulership; and, finally, in terms of memories and later representations of contact (pp. 38–41). On all of these levels, he concludes that contact in either direction was marginal. This is a useful corrective, and one which undercuts many assumptions. Yet, as has already been noted in an earlier review (by Levi Roach, Francia-Recensio, 2012/4), Bihrer goes too far in claiming that he has disproved Karl Leyser (p. 510) and other scholars who had postulated intensive contacts between the regions. A lack of evidence, particularly given the problems in the source base that Bihrer frequently notes, cannot be equated with the absence of contacts: it should, however, encourage caution

Argument (complex analysis · Art · Humanities · Locale (computer software · Media studies · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · Classics · Historical and Archaeological Studies · Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies · History · Law · Medieval Literature and History