Series:

Variorum Collected Studies

1 primary work • 3 total works

Book 1084

Cover of Christian Spain and Portugal in the Early Middle Ages

A collection of papers in English by one of the foremost historians of the social and economic structure of medieval rural communities, who here examines local societies in rural northern Spain and Portugal in the early middle ages. Principal themes are scribal practice and the analysis of charter texts; gift, sale and wealth; justice and judicial procedures. Always with a concern for personal relationships and interactions, for mobility, for decision-making and for practice, a sense of land and landscape runs throughout. The Spanish and Portuguese experience has seemed irrelevant to the great debates of early medieval European history that occupy historians. But Spain and Portugal shared the late Roman heritage which influenced much of western Europe in the early middle ages, and by the tenth century records and practice in Christian Iberia still shared features with the Carolingian world. This book offers a substantial corpus of Iberian evidence to set beside Frankish, Italian, English and Scandinavian material and thereby makes it possible for northern Iberia to play a part in these great debates of medieval European history. (CS1084).

Cover of Brittany in the Early Middle Ages
This volume focuses on Wendy Davies's work on early medieval Breton texts and their implications. Beginning with core analyses of the Redon and Landevennec cartularies, it continues with papers that tease out some of the key social implications of the 9th-century Redon material - on the nature of political power, on rural communities, on the settlement of disputes, and on transmission of property. While the Redon charters have long been known as a source of fundamental importance for Breton history, the author's database (established in the 1980s) allowed much greater understanding of the role of individuals - at all social levels, and particularly peasant level - than had previously been possible. Attention to the detail of the east Breton past also includes papers on some of the results of her fieldwork, on building stone in particular. Early medieval Brittany is not merely interesting in itself (and it is certainly not some Celtic backwater): Breton evidence can usefully be differentiated from the evidence of other Celtic areas and has a significant role in wider issues of European history. As well as papers on the familiar themes of kingship, rulership, cult sites and cemeteries, the final section highlights the distinctive quality of the Breton evidence for the protection of sacred and personal space, for slavery and serfdom and for village-level courts.

Cover of Welsh History in the Early Middle Ages
This volume brings together Wendy Davies's pioneering early studies on the text of the Book of Llan DAcv alongside later pieces which explore the place of Wales in the wider world of the early middle ages. The Llandaff studies have provoked much subsequent comment: readers will find it helpful to reconsider what the author actually said about arguably the most significant surviving text for early medieval Welsh history - as opposed to the several published interpretations of what she is supposed to have said. The later work includes much-cited papers on the Latin charter tradition of the Celtic world and on 'Celtic' women; as well as studies of the so-called Celtic church and of the distinctiveness of Celtic saints - in all of which Welsh evidence makes a particularly important contribution. It also includes recent pieces on the environment and economy of early medieval Wales, which highlight some of the crucial new evidence provided by archaeology as well as historiographical issues that attract much current interest. Overall, the author has sought to make Welsh evidence accessible to scholars with interests in other parts of the middle ages and to ensure that Wales plays a part in broader surveys of early medieval Europe.