Roman Czaja – författare

In the later Middle Ages a European 'core' of culturally and administratively sophisticated societies with rapidly growing populations, on an axis from England to Italy, colonised the European 'periphery'. In northern Europe this periphery included Wales and Ireland, as colonised by the English, and Prussia and Livonia, as colonised (mainly) by Germanic and Nordic peoples. A key tool of colonisation was the chartered town, giving citizens distinguishing legal privileges and a degree of self-regulation. Towns on the Edge in Medieval Europe contends that while the chartered town, as a legal and social-political concept, was transferred to peripheral areas by colonisers, its implementation and adaptation in peripheral areas resulted in unique societies, not simply the replication of core urban forms and communities. In so doing, it compares the development of social and political institutions in the chartered towns of medieval Ireland, Wales, Prussia, and Livonia. Research themes include community formation, normalisation/social disciplining, and peace making/keeping.

The book contains several essays by Polish and German historians and art historians from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, translated into English and dedicated to the presentation of the territorial authority of the Teutonic Order in Prussia and Livonia. The authors focus on issues concerning the organization and internal structure of the territorial authority, formation of political borders, administrative divisions, defensive architecture, urbanisation of the country and church structure and divisions. The book includes a list of officials of the Order in Prussia and Livonia prepared by German researchers. Authors: Marian Arszyński, Marian Biskup, Roman Czaja, Benrhart Jähnig, Klaus Militzer, Zenon Hubert Nowak, Andrzej Radzimiński, Janusz Tandecki.