Debating the Middle Ages

Barbara H. Rosenwein is Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago. Her previous publications include To Be the Neighbor of Saint Peter (1989). She has recently completed a book on early medieval political culture and strategies, Negotiating Space: Early Medieval Immunities and Other Entry Prohibitions (1999). Lester K. Little is Dwight W. Morrow Professor of History at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. He previously taught at Princeton University and the University of Chicago. His most recent publication is Benedictine Maledictions: Liturgical Cursing in Romanesque France (1993).

"Rosenwein and Little have produced an extraordinarily broad and intelligent guide to the major debates in medieval history of the past decades. Not only are the selections well chosen, but their introductions are the best surveys of contemporary medieval historiography available in any language." Patrick J. Geary, Director, University of Notre Dame "Debating the Middle Ages will be a uniquely valuable book for beginning and advanced students, for teachers, and for scholars. By prefacing reprints or translations of important recent articles on four broad problems in medieval history with lucid, well-annotated analyses of how debates on each of the four problems has proceeded, Little and Rosenwein provide a superb introduction to the ways in which historians today are studying, arguing about, and reinventing medieval European history." Stephen D. White, Professor of Medieval History "Little and Rosenwein have assembled an impressive selection of essays, incorporating some of the most original and influential recent works in the field of medieval history." Economic History Review "Compilations such as this one will ensure that medieval studies remain intellectually vibrant by encouraging students of the subject to reflect critically upon the forces and ideas that have shaped, and continue to shape, the discipline ... I believe it will prove to be an indispensable tool for both teachers and students in the future." Comitatus

• Acknowledgments to Sources vContentsEditors’ Acknowledgments Acknowledgments to Sources A Note on Format List of Abbreviations Introduction 1Part I The Fate of Rome’s Western Provinces 5Editors’ Introduction 71 Conceptions of Ethnicity in Early Medieval StudiesWalter Pohl 152 The Barbarians in Late Antiquity and How They Were Accommodated in the West Walter Goffart 253 The Fall of Rome Will Not Take Place Chris Wickham 454 The Decline of the Western Empire Richard Hodges and David Whitehouse 585 Gregory of Tours and Clovis Ian N. Wood 736 Missionaries and Magic in Dark-Age Europe Alexander Murray 92Part II Feudalism and Its Alternatives 105Editors’ Introduction 1077 The Banal Seigneury and the “Reconditioning” of the Free Peasantry Pierre Bonnassie 1148 The Year 1000 Without Abrupt or Radical TransformationDominique Barthélemy 1349 The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe Elizabeth A. R. Brown 14810 Giving Each His Due Fredric L. Cheyette 17011 Strangers and Neighbors Monique Bourin and Robert Durand 18012 Amicitiae [Friendships] as Relationships Between States and People Gerd Althoff 191viiviiixxivi ContentsPart III Gender 211Editors’ Introduction 21313 Queens as Jezebels: the Careers of Brunhild and Balthild in Merovingian History Janet Nelson 21914 Women and the Norman Conquest Pauline Stafford 25415 The “Cruel Mother”: Maternity, Widowhood, and Dowry inFlorence in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth CenturiesChristiane Klapisch-Zuber 26416 Men’s Use of Female Symbols Caroline Walker Bynum 27717 Burdens of Matrimony: Husbanding and Gender in Medieval Italy Susan Mosher Stuard 290Part IV Religion and Society 299Editors’ Introduction 30118 The Evangelical Awakening Marie-Dominique Chenu 31019 The Use and Abuse of Miracles in Early Medieval CultureSofia Boesch Gajano 33020 The Dead in the Celestial Bookkeeping of the Cluniac Monks Around the Year 1000 Dominique Iogna-Prat 34021 Literacy and the Making of Heresy, c.1000–c. 1150R. I. Moore 36322 Religion, Folklore, and Society in the Medieval WestJean-Claude Schmitt 376Index of Persons and Places 388