Lordship in the County of Maine, c. 890–1160

Bibliographic Data

ID9801948
AuthorsJean Dunbabin (St. John's College, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume120
Issue488
Pages1036-1037
Publication date2005-09-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe English Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-8266 • E-ISSN: 1477-4534
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ehr/cei337
OpenAlexW2081424881
LanguageEN
Citations received5

Lordship in the County of Maine, c. 890–1160, by RICHARD E. BARTON (Woodbridge: Boydell P., 2004; pp. 255. £45). THE appeal of the medieval county of Maine as an object of study is clear from the number of recent works (notably those by Daniel Pichot, La Bas-Maine du Xe au XIIIe siècle: étude d'une société (Laval, 1995) and Bruno Lemesle, La société aristocratique dans le Haut-Maine (XIe-XIIe siècles) (Rennes, 1999) devoted to it. Squeezed between the duchy of Normandy and the county of Anjou, its counts had difficulty in imposing their authority on the much contested area, and by about 1030 had become no more powerful than several other lords in the county. Barton makes a good case that neither the dukes of Normandy nor the counts of Anjou were able—at least before 1160—to exert any consistent centralising authority there either. This led him to choose Maine as a case-study, a particularly revealing area in which to analyse lordship. His book demonstrates clearly the important contribution made by American scholars to the debate about La mutation féodale that has occupied scholars on both sides of the Atlantic since the first publication of Georges Duby's La société aux XIe et XIIe siècles dans la région mâconnais in 1953. Although Barton's views and interests coincide with Lemesle's at many points, his book is very different. His chief arguments are: that lordship before 1160 was affective rather than juridical in nature; that it evolved slowly during this period rather than undergoing a radical, even revolutionary, change around the year 1000, as Duby originally argued; and that the violence evident in eleventh-century charters, far from being a new social phenomenon, was a sign that society was still governed by ancient methods of negotiating peace, ‘peace in the feud’. All three of these arguments are, of course, long familiar to medievalists, expounded as they have been by Leyser (not mentioned in the bibliography), Reynolds, Barthélemy, Magnou-Nortier, Geary and White among others. Barton's contribution lies in combining all three propositions into one coherent thesis, putting the case for each extremely clearly, and finding telling illustrations from Maine material to substantiate each. The result is a stimulating work, which deserves to be widely read. It will do much to familiarise English-speaking historians with sources from Maine, particularly the fascinating Actus Pontificum Cenomannis in Urbe Degentium. Whether it will convince those who disagree with any one of these propositions is, however, somewhat doubtful. After all, Duby's disciples only briefly succeeded in convincing the academic world that his results for the Mâconnais could be applied to the rest of France. Those who, after a careful study of the Catalan evidence, have come to believe in ‘the feudal revolution’ are not likely to change their minds because the Maine evidence, much of which, as Barton admits, can be read to support ‘feudal revolution’, can also be read to undermine it. Equally, those who argue that in much of southern France the comital mallus continued to operate in the first half of the eleventh century are not necessarily to be persuaded that the concept of public power is more appropriate to the twentieth century than to the tenth. Barton's conviction that malae consuetudines were not new seems rather out of kilter with his further assertion that they were being exacted by many more people in the eleventh century than before; a tax that is gathered by a neighbouring lord is more likely to be gathered efficiently and regularly than one which is the responsibility of a distant count, and therefore is probably new in its effect if not in its cause. Some readers may find Barton's social anthropology rather odd: it allows him to criticise other historians for reifying vassalage or kinship; yet it permits him, while insisting on the fluidity of lordship ties in all known instances, to argue that the essential nature of lordship did not change over nearly two centuries. But all Barton's readers will surely enjoy being provoked into rethinking their own positions in response to the cases he makes so energetically

Ancient history · Appeal · Duchy · Genealogy · Political science · Politics · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Medieval and Early Modern Justice · Medieval Literature and History

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