Kingship, Rebellion and Political Culture

In recent years Björn Weiler has been at the forefront of those scholars who have sought to give new dimensions to the study of English politics in the thirteenth century. He has put those politics into a wider European context and has also sought to apply to them ideas of continental scholars, such as Gerd Althoff, about the importance of gesture and ritual as a means of communication and governance. His book Henry III of England and the Staufen Empire (2006; rev. ante, cxxii [2007], 737–9) and such articles as ‘Symbolism and Politics in the Reign of Henry III’ (Thirteenth Century England IX) are testimony to this activity and achievement. Weiler's new book fruitfully combines both approaches. Essentially, it is a study of two rebellions; in Germany, that of King Henry VII against his father, the emperor Frederick II, which ended in Frederick's triumph, and in England, that of Richard Marshal, earl of Pembroke, against King Henry III, which ended in Henry's humiliation. Such a study is prompted by the convergence of dates (the rebellions embraced the years 1233 to 1235) and also by the opportunity to test out contrasts conventionally emphasised by historians between England as ‘the purest form of bureaucratic kingship’ and Germany which is regarded as ‘a loose assemblage of territories’ with government ‘focusing largely on ritual or other forms of symbolic communication’. After an initial examination of the structures and framework of the revolt, the book focuses on the ideals and norms of politics and on its ‘ways and means’. Chapters on loyalty, justice and honour are thus combined with ones on ‘creating a public’, ‘addressing the public’ (through rituals, gestures and charters), and ‘the public (that is clergy, townsmen and knights) in politics’

Ancient history · Archaeology · Context (archaeology · Emperor · Empire · Monarchy · Political science · Politics · Reign · Sociology · Classics · History · Law · Medieval Literature and History