Corruption, Protection and Justice in Medieval Europe

Jonathan R. Lyon is Professor of History at the University of Chicago, where he specializes in the history of the Holy Roman Empire. He has previously held fellowships from the Humboldt Foundation and the Austrian Science Fund. He is the author of Princely Brothers and Sisters: The Sibling Bond in German Politics, 1100–1250 (2013), which won the 2017 John Nicholas Brown Prize from the Medieval Academy of America, and Noble Society: Five Lives from Twelfth-Century Germany (2017).

'In this big, important book, Jonathan Lyon dissolves the distinction between the bad old days of the feudal order and the modern forms of governance that supposedly replaced them. The heterogenous realms of the German-speaking lands take center stage in a new political narrative fit for the 21st century.' Daniel Lord Smail, Harvard University

• Introduction; 1. The First 'Medieval' Advocates; 2. Putting Down Roots in Ninth-Century Francia; 3. The 'Aristocratization' of Post-Carolingian Advocacy; 4. Elite Competition at the Turn of the First Millennium; 5. The Limits of Church Reform; 6. Pigs and Sheep, Beer and Wine, Pennies and Pounds; 7. A History of Violence; 8. Weapons of the Not-so-Weak; 9. The Murder of Archbishop Engelbert; 10. Widening the Lens; 11. The Emperor as Vogt, ca. 1000–1500; 12. From Lordship to Government?; 13. Reframing the History of Violence; 14. Crossing the False Divide: Advocates after 1500; 15. A Cultural History of the Rapacious Advocate, or: William Tell's Revenge; Conclusion.