НИКОЛА БЕНИН
HOW MEDIEVAL EUROPE WAS RULED
The vast majority of studies on rulership in medieval Europe focus on one
kingdom; one type of rule; or one type of ruler. This volume attempts to break
that mold and demonstrate the breadth of medieval Europe and the various kinds
of rulership within it.
How Medieval Europe was Ruled aims to demonstrate the multiplicity of types
of rulers and polities that existed in medieval Europe. The contributors discuss
not just kings or queens, but countesses, dukes, and town leadership. We see that
rulers worked collaboratively with one another both across political boundaries
and within their own borders in ways that are not evident in most current studies
of kingship, inhibited by too narrow a focus. The volume also covers the breadth
of medieval Europe from Scandinavia in the north to the Italian peninsula in the
south, Iberia and the Anglo-Normans in the west to Rus, Byzantium and the
Khazars in the east.
This book is geared towards a wide audience and thus provides a broad base of
understanding via a clear explanation of concepts of rule in each of the areas that
is covered. The book can be utilized in the classroom, to enhance the presentation
of a medieval Europe survey or to discuss rulership more specifically for a region
or all of Europe. Beyond the classroom, the book is accessible to all scholars who
are interested in continuing to learn and expand their horizons.
Christian Raffensperger is the Kenneth E. Wray Chair in the Humanities at
Wittenberg University. The focus of his scholarly work has been on connecting
eastern Europe with the rest of medieval Europe. This began with his first book,
Reimagining Europe: Kievan Rus’ in the Medieval World (2012) and has continued
through numerous other books and articles.
HOW MEDIEVAL
EUROPE WAS RULED
Edited by
Christian Raffensperger
Designed cover image: “Miniature from the “Skylitzes Chronicle”
(13th century), Photo 12/ Alamy Stock Photo CW5DXD”
First published 2024
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2024 selection and editorial matter, Christian Raffensperger;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Christian Raffensperger to be identified as the author of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Raffensperger, Christian, editor.
Title: How medieval Europe was ruled / edited by Christian Raffensperger.
Description: London ; New York, NY : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group,
2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023012691 (print) | LCCN 2023012692 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781032100173 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032100166 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781003213239 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Europe—Politics and government—476-1492. | Kings and
rulers, Medieval.
Classification: LCC D131 .H69 2024 (print) | LCC D131 (ebook) |
DDC 940.1—dc23/eng/20230602
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023012691
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023012692
ISBN: 978-1-032-10017-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-10016-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-21323-9 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003213239
Typeset in Bembo
by codeMantra
CONTENTS
List of Contributors xiii
1 Reimagining Medieval Rulership in the Twenty-First Century 1
Christian Raffensperger
2 Dying by the Sword: The Many Faces of Rulership in
Christian Iberia a Thousand Years Ago 11
Simon R. Doubleday
3 The Rise of Administrative Queenship in
the A nglo-Norman Realm? 27
Lois Huneycutt
4 Khazaria: The Exception Which Proves the Rules 41
Alex Mesibov Feldman
5 Nobility, Loyalty and Dynasty in Medieval Bosnia 59
Emir O. Filipovi´c
6 “Self-Governance at the King’s Command”: Towns and
Their Sovereign in Medieval Hungary 73
Katalin Szende
7 The Governance of Medieval Poland 92
Paul W. Knoll
vi Contents
8 Governing the Byzantine Empire: Politics and
Administration, ca. 850–1204 107
Nathan Leidholm
9 Governing the Latin East: Jerusalem from 1099 to 1174 126
Erin L. Jordan
10 How Popes Governed Christendom? 142
Kirsi Salonen
11 The Governance of High Medieval Norway (c. 1100–1350) 159
Hans Jacob Orning
12 Kyivan Rus: A Complicated Kingdom 176
Christian Raffensperger
13 The Princes and the King in Medieval Germany,
ca. 1125–1350 191
Jonathan R. Lyon
14 How Early Medieval Italy was Ruled: Land and Power 208
Edward Schoolman
15 Rulership and Governance of Medieval Bulgaria:
Seventh to Fifteenth Centuries 223
Kiril Petkov
Index 241
MEDIEVAL WESTERN EUROPЕ
250 km
Ocean
200 mi
Kirkjubøur Faroe Is. inghaugen/Frošta Nidarosauger
FROSTATING
Selja
Hebrides
Orkney
Shetland
Kirkwall
NGGulen
JORWAY
BergenTHamar/Åker Eidsvoll
EIDSIVATIŃG?
EDEN
Oslo
X
Stavanger
BORGARTING
ũ Uppsala VästeråsSigtuna
BBorg Strangna Stockholm
Aberdeen Iona.S Dunkeld
Stirling.St Andrews Glasgow
Linköping
Jönköping Gotland
Visby
Edinburgh
Dumfries magh Armagh
Tuam
A
ND
RELA
Cashel
Tara Lara
St Davids
Dublin
Bangor
Downpatrick D Durham
North Sea
Man
York
Chester
VALES Lincoln Lichfield Hereford Ely. Norwich
ENGLAND London
Winchester
BBRITTANY Rennes
Ba
Canterbury
Boulogne FLANDE
ent
Amiens BaycuxNDY NORMA Rouen ANCE FRA
Chartres Pari PR Paris es.
Utrecht
Aachen
Triege
AarhusVMARK
Roskilde. Lund Odense ense
Hedeby
Bremen
Paderborn
Elbe
Växjö
Copenhagen Baltic Sea
Gdansk Kołobrzeg NIA Gdans AN POMER Marienburg
Toruń
Nieszawa
Poznań
SA Brandenburg Gniezno. BrunswickXON Magdeburg
GFGERMA Meissen. Bautzen
e Frankfurt
MANANY Dresden
POLAND
Wrocław
E JedIno SLA
Opole Re Trier Mainz Würzburg .BambergPrague Reims
HE yer Worms.Nuremberg EMIA Olomoucе Speyer Cieszyn
Viborg
Kalmar
Ribe
Rügen
Lübeck Hamburg
Atlantic
Compostela Lugo CantaOviedo Mino Ourense abiан М
Braga
Porto Douro
Coimbra
FUGA
Viseu
Lisboa
Évora
Guadian
León
Tagus
Sevilla
Burgos
Valladolid
CASTIL
Iberian Plate
Mérida Toledo
MUSLIM
Córdoba
adalquivir Guae
Nantes
Orléans, Angers
Poitiers.
Angoulême
Bordeaux
NAVARRE
ITAIN
Pau
Pamplona Pyre
Tours
Bourges
Troyes Strasbourg Sens
Basel
VCF
FRAN Limoges
Dijon
UR BResancon RGUNDY
Geneva
•Périgueux Lvon
Vienne
Albi
Toulouse Carcassonne
renees
ARAGÓN
Ebro Saragossa
KINGDOMS
Granada Murcia
Girona
Rbone
ARELA
Avignon
Turin.
Arles PROVENCE
Narbonne
Tarragona Barcelona
Tortosa
Majorca Valencia
Aix
い
Nice
Regensburg.
2
Brno
Passauanube Trnava Nitra
Pressburg SWABIA Munich. Salzburg
B
Constance
Po
Alps
Milan
Genoa
•Pavia
ITA
Brixen
Verona
Vienna
AUSTR Esztergom. Sopron
Gurk
CARINTHIA
Aquileia
Mantua
ALModena
Lucca Lucea Pisa
Corsica Sardinia
Siena.
Venice
Ravenna
Buda Fehérvár. Veszprém
Zagreb
Kalocsa
Pécs.
Savava
Jajce Bobovaс
CROATIA SNA
ZarKnin Florence Ancona
Spoleton
Viterbo boFarfa
Rome
Spalato
Adriatic Se
Blagaj
N Drijeva
Ragusa
Siponto BeneventoBari
CapuaMIE APUL APULIA
Brindisi
Naples lerno Tata
Tyrrhenian Sea Cosenza
Messina 0
ALABRIA
Taranto
Mediterranean Sea Cagliari
Palermo
Reggio
Tangier Ceuta
Cherchell Bijaya Sicily Catania Annaba T Carthage Syracuse Setif. Constantine Tiaret Qal'ah Miknasa. Fes •Tlemcen
ے
MAGHRIB
ار
IFRIOIYA Kairouan Malta Mahdiyah Map by Ian Mladjov
AboD FINLAND
Baltic Sea
Ladoga MEDIEVAL EASTERN EUROPE Beloozero
Ladoga Galich-Merskii
οι 250 km
200 mi
Polk
Novgorod
L Ilmen
Kostroma Volga
Iaroslavl
Pskov Tver
Rostov. IA Nizhnii Novgorod
UZD Suzdal
Kazan
LGA BULGARIBiliar VOL Bolgar er
SVladimir Suvar Murom
Moscow. Kasimov Samara
Naruchad Riazan
Sernia
LIVONIA
Reval
L Peipus
Königsberg
PRUSSIA PRUS
•Grunwald
Czerwińsk
Warsaw
Płock
•Łódź
Riga Dvi
0
LITHUANLA KaunasA Vitebsk Polotsk Smolensk
Trakai Vilnius
Minsk
Dniepe
RUS LANDS Briansk Kulikovo
Novgorod Severskii Kursk
Pinsk. Turov Liubech Chernigov
Lublin
Kyiv Pereiaslavl
POLANDVolodyniyr Lutsk
Cracow Lviv.
Košice
GALIC Galich
IA
Carpathians
Succava
MOLDAVIA
Dniester ني Vác Pest
Bihoror Oradea
Don
Tana/Azaq
Dnieper
Qunghur?
Seaof Azov
Ukek
Volga QIPGHAQ/STЕРРE
Sarkel
Don
Gulistan
KHAZARIA
Majar.
New Sarai
Old Astrakhan
Itil?/Saksin
Saraychuq
Old Sarai:
Caspian Sea
ndo
Ioannina
Arta
DRASK Vi
Peć
Damube Dorostolon Pliska
Preslav. Varna
GARIA-Tărnovo. Haimos
BULG Sredec Philippopolis Rila
SKO B R Adrianople Bačkovo Skopje
Dyrrachion
Ohrid
Thessaloniki.
Serrai
Mt Aibos
Arcadiopolis Constantinople
HUNGARY Cluj Tmutarakan Alba Iulia
Caffa Cenad •Braşov Cherson Preslavec Tårgovişte Belgrade WALLACHIA
Srebrenica Vidine
Derbent
Black Sea
KutaisiGEORGIA Tbilisi
Ganjah
Sinope Trebizond Mesembria
Kastamon Herakleia
Gangra Nicomedia Ainos Nicaea Ankyra
Cyzieus Dorylaion
Larissa Pergamon
Lesbos Smyrna Philadelphiag
•Amorion
Ikonion
HalysCaesarea
Neokaisareia Amaseia Theodosioupolis
.Sebasteia
Kars Ani Dvin ARMENIA
Manzikert
Van VASPURAKА
Amid Hişn Kayfā
LARO
Tabriz
Maraghah
Sis
Patras Thebes Chios Athens Corinth Ephesos
Maeander Laodikeia Tarsus rsus Perge Nauplion PELOPONNESUS Attaleia Seleukeia
CILICIA
Antioch
Mystras Monemvasia RhodesMyra
Nicošia Tripoli
Na Candia,
Gortyna
Cyprus Beirut •Damascus
Melitene
Mardin
Edessa Mosul Irbil
Aleppo Raggah
Tiori
Takrit
SYRIA Rahbah
Hamah
Hims •Tadmur
Sāmărrā
EapfBaghdadk brates
Karbala Hillah
Küfah
Crete Tyre
Mediterranean Sea Acre Hatţin JaffaNablus
RamlaIcrusalem Ascalon Map by Ian Mladjov
CONTRIBUTORS
Simon R. Doubleday is Professor of History at Hofstra University (New York).
His books include The Lara Family: Crown and Nobility in Medieval Spain (2001)
and The Wise King: A Christian Prince, Muslim Spain, and the Birth of the Renaissance
(2015); he is also completing a book on León and Galicia in the reign of Sancha
and Fernando I (forthcoming, 2024). He has co-edited In the Light of Medieval
Spain: Islam, the West, and the Relevance of the Past (2008); Border Interrogations:
Questioning Spanish Frontiers (2008); Why the Middle Ages Matter: Medieval Light
on Modern Injustice (2011); and Galicia no tempo de Afonso X [Galicia in the age
of Alfonso X] (2021). He was Founding Editor of the Journal of Medieval Iberian
Studies and has also served as President of the American Academy of Research
Historians of Medieval Spain. He has received several grants from the National
Endowment for the Humanities, and a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship.
Alex M. Feldman completed his PhD at the University of Birmingham in 2018.
As a postdoctoral fellow at the Warburg Institute, University of London, he
published his PhD thesis as a book, entitled The Monotheisation of Pontic-Caspian
Eurasia, 8–13th Centuries, which focuses on the process of the adoptions of various forms of monotheisms, involving historical ethnicity, theology, periodization and civilizational analysis between Central Europe, Byzantium, Rus’ and
deeper into Eurasia. His next book on the evolution of Orthodox political economy from Byzantium to the Russian Empire is entitled Orthodox Mercantilism:
Political Economy in the Byzantine Commonwealth. He is the chair of the Languages
and Literature department at CIS Endicott International University of Madrid.
Emir O. Filipovic´ is Associate Professor of Medieval History and head of the
Doctoral Studies Programme in History at the University of Sarajevo. He has
obtained his PhD in 2014 and has authored, edited and co-edited several books
xiv Contributors
pertaining to various topics from the history of Bosnia in the Middle Ages. His
most recent monographs deal with relations between the Bosnian Kingdom and
the Ottoman Empire (1386-1463), as well as with the construction of dynastic
identity in medieval Bosnia.
Lois L. Huneycutt is Associate Professor of History at the University of Missouri,
Columbia. A specialist in northwestern Europe in the central medieval period,
she is the author of Matilda of Scotland: A Study in Medieval Queenship, numerous
articles on twelfth-century queens and queenship, and is currently writing a joint
biographical study of Matilda of Boulogne, and the “Empress” Matilda, Countess
of Anjou. She received her PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara
under the joint direction of C. Warren Hollister and Jeffrey Burton Russell.
Erin L. Jordan is a member of the faculty in the department of history at Colorado
State University. Her research investigates the intersection of power, religion and
gender in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. She has published widely on the
experience of monastic women. Her book, Women, Power and Religious Patronage
(Palgrave, 2006) examined the political actions of the countesses of Flanders. Her
current research focuses on the political culture of the Latin East, particularly in
regard to the role played by women in the governance of the Crusader States.
Work on this topic includes several published essays as well as her current book
project, The Women of Antioch: Gender, Power and Political Culture in the Latin East.
Paul W. Knoll is Professor of History, Emeritus, at the University of Southern
California (PhD, University of Colorado, 1964). His major scholarly interests
are the political and cultural history of Central and Eastern Europe, particularly
Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary, with specialization in university history and
conciliarism. Among his numerous publications are two prize-winning books,
The Rise of the Polish Monarchy. Piast Poland in East Central Europe, 1320–1370
(1972) and “A Pearl of Powerful Learning.” The University of Cracow in the Fifteenth
Century (2016). He also has translated into English, with Frank Schaer, the Gesta
principum Polonorum, a medieval Polish chronicle traditionally known as “Gallus
Anonymous,” published by Central European University Press in 2003.
Nathan Leidholm holds a PhD in Byzantine History from the University of
Chicago. He is currently Assistant Professor in the Program in Cultures, Civilizations and Ideas at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. He is the author of
Elite Byzantine Kinship: Blood, Reputation, and the Genos (Arc Humanities Press,
2019), in addition to several articles and book chapters.
Jonathan R. Lyon is Professor of History at the University of Chicago. His
research and teaching focus on the political and social history of Germany,
Austria, and the Holy Roman Empire in the medieval period, particularly
Contributors xv
the eleventh through thirteenth centuries. He has held fellowships from the
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Austrian Science Fund, the German
Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the J. William Fulbright Program, and
the Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Foundation. His first book, Princely Brothers and
Sisters: The Sibling Bond in German Politics, 1100–1250 (Cornell, 2013), won the
2017 John Nicholas Brown Prize for the best first book from the Medieval Academy of America.
Hans Jacob Orning is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Oslo.
He submitted his PhD in 2004, published as Unpredictability and Presence: Norwegian
Kingship in the High Middle Ages (2008). He has also published The Reality of the Fantastic: The Magical, Geopolitical and Social Universe of Late Medieval Saga M anuscripts
(2017) and Constant Crisis – The Civil Wars in Norway Deconstructed, c. 1 196–1208
(forthcoming 2021). He is co-editor of Nordic Elites in Transformation I-III (2019–20).
His main research area is Nordic political culture in the Middle Ages.
Kiril Petkov is Professor of Medieval and Mediterranean History at the University
of Wisconsin River Falls, USA. He holds PhDs in medieval Bulgarian and Balkan
History (1994, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) and in medieval and early modern Western European history (NYU, 2002). His research interest is in the interfaith and intercultural history of the premodern Western world and the Eastern
Mediterranean. He is the author and translator of numerous works including;
The Maltese Dialogue: Guiseppe Cambiano, History, Institutions, and Politics of the
Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, 1554–1556, Coriolano Cippico, The Deeds of Commander Pietro Mocenigo in Three Books, The Voices of Medieval Bulgaria, SeventhFifteenth Century: The Records of a Bygone and was the editor of State and Church:
Studies in Medieval Bulgaria and Byzantium.
Christian Raffensperger is the Kenneth E. Wray Chair in the Humanities as
well as professor and chair of History at Wittenberg University. He is the author
of several books including Reimagining Europe: Kievan Rus’ and the Medieval World
(2012), Conflict, Bargaining, and Kinship Networks in Medieval Eastern Europe (2018),
and Rulers and Rulership in the Arc of Medieval Europe (2023). The larger goal of his
work is to demonstrate the interconnectivity of medieval Europe and to break
down the barrier between eastern and western Europe created and perpetuated
in the historiography.
Kirsi Salonen is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Bergen, Norway. She is a specialist in the medieval papal administration, especially the Apostolic Penitentiary and the Sacra Romana Rota, and has done research in the
Vatican Archives for over 20 years. Her latest monograph on the topic is Papal
Justice in the Late Middle Ages: The Sacra Romana Rota (Routledge: London & New
York, 2016).
xvi Contributors
Edward M. Schoolman is Associate Professor of History and the University of
Nevada, Reno, where he focuses on the late antique and early medieval Mediterranean. He published a monograph, Rediscovering Sainthood in Italy: Hagiography
and the Late Antique Past in Medieval Ravenna in 2016, and is working on a new
book project on Greek identity; as part of an interdisciplinary team, his research
extends into the interconnections between history and ecology in Italy.
Katalin Szende is Professor of Medieval Studies at Central European University.
Her research concentrates on medieval cities and towns in the Carpathian Basin
and Central Europe: their society, demography, literacy, everyday life, and topography. She has published Trust, Authority and the Written Word in the Royal Towns
of Medieval Hungary (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 41, Brepols, 2018), is
co-editor and contributor of the volumes Medieval Buda in Context (Brill, 2016)
and Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective (Routledge, 2016,
with Gerhard Jaritz). She is a board member of the International Commission for
the History of Towns and president of the Medieval Central Europe Research
Network (MECERN).
DOI: 10.4324/9781003213239-1
1
REIMAGINING MEDIEVAL RULERSHIP
IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Christian Raffensperger
More than half a century ago, Ernst Kantorowicz published The King’s Two
Bodies, a book that was incredibly positively reviewed and helped to shape our
understanding of kingship in medieval Europe as situated around ritual and
belief.1
The book spawned a reaction among revisionist scholarship in more
recent times, most well known among them perhaps The King’s Other Body by
Theresa Earenfight; an attempt to add the queen into the discourse of monarchy with the formulation of “collective monarchy,” explicitly challenging
Kantorowicz’s definition of rulership as implicitly about kingship.2
This dichotomy of discourse and revision could be repeated in regard to the historiographies
of rulership across medieval Europe; taking France as just one example, we see
the scholarship of Georges Duby which largely excludes women from discussions of elite rulership challenged successfully by numerous authors such as Amy
Livingstone.3
Both of these examples are about the inclusion of women – an
essential element in discussing rulership in medieval Europe. However, there are
other shifts afoot as well.
Geographically speaking the majority of territory discussed in older studies of
rulership was focused on England and France, and their progression toward centralization in the late medieval period. This was noted as recently as 2000 when
Joseph Huffman critiqued this model:
The Anglo-American historiographical tradition was built around Whig
notions of state building and modernization. The common purpose of
both Anglo-American and French historiography was to show how the rise
of impersonal institutions shaped the state. Of course, such a historical paradigm naturally produced the conclusion in Anglo-French historiography
that medieval Germany was simply backward in comparison to w estern
Europe.4
2 Christian Raffensperger
Huffman’s purpose, as is clear, is to attempt to include the German Empire in the
conception of medieval Europe and medieval governance that had been clearly
defined in opposition to models created to fit England and France. Iberia, as
advocated for by Earenfight and others including Lucy Pick, Therese Martin, and
Miriam Shadis has a yet different model for developing rulership and one also not
easily mapped onto a modern nation-state.5
Such attempts to remake our understanding of medieval rulership in circumscribed areas are essential building blocks for understanding medieval rulership
more broadly. But one must also look at the whole tapestry of rulership to
attempt to understand what is going on in the broader world, medieval Europe,
or in the Christian world at the very least. Works that broad are largely a lacuna
in the scholarship. In fact, 2020 and 2021 saw three publications on rulership in
medieval Europe with differing levels of success in this regard. Political Culture
in the Latin West, Byzantium and the Islamic World created a tripartite division of
states and rulers.6
The goal of the tripartite division is to cover a broader area,
but the editors’ perspective that the three regions would be dealt with separately
hamstrung any ideas of a larger world that could be elicited by the contributors,
leaving it to the mind of the reader. More successful was Björn Weiler’s Paths to
Kingship in Medieval Latin Europe.
7
Though Weiler creates a circumscribed area of
Latin Europe, purposefully excluding Byzantium and any “Orthodox” area, he
covers a wide range of territory with examples not just from England and France,
but Iberia, Scandinavia, Poland, Hungary, and elsewhere. Of course, the title also
gives away another narrowing factor of the work which is its sole focus on kings,
as opposed to rulers, inclusive of queens. The final of the three recent books is
Robert Bartlett’s Blood Royal which is a thematic overview of the possible life
cycles of a medieval ruling family and includes male and female rulers (though
unevenly dealt with) and all of medieval Europe, inclusive of Byzantium.8
But
with a focus on life cycles and episodic across a wide time range, it does not deal
with rulership in much depth in any one particular place – this is not its purpose.
All of these books then demonstrate the interest and appetite that scholars have
for engaging and reengaging with ideas of rulership in the twenty-first century.
What they do not do, largely, is engage with all of medieval Europe or with the
idea that “ruler” means more than “king.” This volume aims to serve as a corrective to such developments, though within a particular scope.
The essays in this volume all deal with rulership, but they are purposefully
about different regions of medieval Europe, different types and levels of rulership, and with different foci to demonstrate that rulership was manifold in the
Middle Ages. There are, of course, still limitations and one of the main ones of
this volume is that almost all of the contributions focus upon Christian Europe.
While Alex M. Feldman’s piece on the Khazars stands out for its inclusion of
Jews, Muslims, and pagans, the rest of the contributions are within the bounds of
Christianized polities. This is in no way meant to privilege those regions, though
they represent the majority of the physical territory of medieval Europe in the
period under discussion.
Reimagining Medieval Rulership in the Twenty-First Century 3
While one may choose to dip in and out of this book, selecting a chapter or
region to read up on to improve one’s knowledge, use for graduate readings, etc.,
there are, both purposeful and otherwise, thematic similarities that run throughout the whole collection. I would like to take just a bit of time to elucidate a few
of those themes to highlight the broader picture of medieval European rulership.
The first theme which is apparent is a negotiation of political power between
rulers and elites. Such an idea is growing in popularity in medieval studies, moving beyond the once common view of hierarchical power in England as normative and the German imperial example requiring its own “special way.” Thomas
Bisson’s Crisis of the Twelfth Century centralized many of his ideas about lordship
and government. One of the main takeaways from that work, important for our
purposes here is that “Royal order was seldom centralized order.”9
And further,
Bisson adds that “Without ceasing to be a sphere of public order, the kingdom
had become a fabric of lordships sharing patrimonial wealth.”10 Björn Weiler,
too, has discussed the importance of elites to the good functioning of kings and
kingdoms in his Paths to Kingship. For Weiler, elites were part of the governmental
process, but also the succession process and helped to make both a success, or not,
depending on the circumstances.11 In this volume, we see negotiated authority
in numerous places, but I will single out four of the contributions which make
it most apparent, those by Hans Jacob Orning, Jonathan Lyon, Katalin Szende,
and Emir Filipović.
Orning’s “Governance of High Medieval Norway” is focused precisely on the
issue of negotiated power over the course of three moments in Norwegian history. The king may be king over a wide territory, and the breadth of Norwegian
geography is stressed by Orning, but to actually make things happen in localities
he needs the help and consent of the local community. Over the period examined by Orning (1100–1300), we see this local community shift from a local
lord or elite who could choose to support the king and his efforts, or not; to
an actual community organization inclusive of individuals who might not even
be named in the sources – the importance comes from the organization rather
than the people themselves. Orning’s choice of case studies to illustrate his point
emphasizes the lack of centralized control noted by Bisson and Weiler to get at
the negotiated reality of medieval political, even royal, power.
Lyon’s contribution telegraphs by its title (“The Princes and the King in
Medieval Germany”) that it will be about not just royal authority, but the ways
that multiple levels of power interacted to generate rule in the medieval German
empire. As noted earlier, studies of medieval Germany have often dealt with its
Sonderweg and one can look at the work of Benjamin Arnold or Joseph Huffman
to find other examples of this kind of conversation.12 Lyon creatively engages this
narrative by focusing on multiple power centers including the Babenbergs and
early Habsburgs in Austria and the rise of the Wittelsbach dynasty in Bavaria,
as well as the importance of ecclesiastical power to those, and other families, in
his discussion of the ways that important aristocratic families shaped not only
their own regions, but the empire as a whole. Their means to do this came
4 Christian Raffensperger
through local power, yes, but also through the tradition of elective monarchy in
the m edieval German Empire which allowed them, as highlighted by Weiler, to
shape the future of their kingdom as a whole.
The contribution by Szende focuses not on royal or even elite power but on
towns. Of course, those towns were situated within a kingdom, Hungary in
her example, but they also existed in a wider spectrum of trade and travel, law
and commerce as citizens moved and migrated throughout medieval central
Europe. Szende notes that, initially at least, town creation was the preserve of
the king, creating an immediate interaction between the authority of the ruler
and the existence of the town. However, over time, towns became increasingly
independent and were able to utilize their increasing economic prominence to
create avenues of self-governance for themselves, within the hierarchy of the
kingdom. This self-government, though, was real and powerful and allowed the
towns to enforce laws, trade, and manage documents with their own seals; all
prerogatives which were once only allowed to royal authority. Thus, as Szende
notes, these towns had, “spatial and legal structures like those of other European
polities.”13
Emir Filipović brings the medieval polity of Bosnia into our look at medieval
rulership; an example of the breadth of medieval Europe that is being examined in this volume. Bosnia, as discussed by Filipović, is much akin to Orning’s
Norway wherein the king, or ban before there was a king, negotiated with the
elites to maintain power. Yet, in Bosnia much of the power of the center was
devolved to the elites over the course of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries.
In place of direct control, the king created for himself a sense of dynastic unity
among the Kotromanići, who were the only family allowed to become kings,
along with a sense of loyalty to the crown and the kingdom which enmeshed
the nobility in its own preservation alongside their won. For Filipović then,
“the nobility functioned as a cohesive force thus retaining their unity with the
ruler, stubbornly defending the borders and territorial integrity of the Bosnian
Kingdom from any external pressure.”14 Thus creating a Bosnian kingdom.
Close kin to negotiated authority is shared authority, the second theme seen
in this collection. In her now classic The King’s Other Body, Theresa Earenfight
argued for the creation of the idea of collective monarchy encompassing not
just the male ruler as monarch, but his wife also as monarch.15 Such ideas have
been expanded, especially in Iberia, to focus on other members of the royal
family who assist in the ruling of the polity as a whole, for instance in the work
of Lucy Pick who argues for the utilization of ideas of networks of power in
which women participated.16 Corporate rule, by a leading family, has also been
put forward as a subject of consideration whether in regard to central or eastern
Europe or elsewhere.17 In this volume, the idea of shared authority can be seen in
several pieces, including those by Erin Jordan (who herself has written on corporate monarchy),18 Lois Huneycutt, and Simon Doubleday. Each of those authors
expands on this idea in a particular way to demonstrate a diversity of means of
ruling in medieval Europe.
Reimagining Medieval Rulership in the Twenty-First Century 5
Jordan’s piece builds on similar themes to those developed by Orning
regarding the interactions between rulers and their elites in collective decision
making, though for Jordan this process is one that involves the corporate monarchy of both king and queen; or often just the queen herself. Jordan suggests
that the negotiated rule which she suggests for the kingdom of Jerusalem was
a component of attempting to deal with the “challenges encountered, most of
which stemmed from the precariousness of their position and the volatility of the
region.”19 To develop this argument, Jordan focuses on particular elements such
as marriage and succession through which she analyzes events from the kingdom in the twelfth century. Her view of rulership in Jerusalem resonates well
with the image elsewhere in this volume such as those from Orning, Huneycutt,
and Lyon – once again demonstrating the broader types and styles of rulership
throughout a broader medieval European world.
Lois Huneycutt’s focus is on administrative queenship in the Anglo- Norman
realm which highlights the ways in which queens worked on behalf of their
realm and held official standing in a variety of circumstances. The queens focused
on by Huneycutt held court and made decisions, planned campaigns, and ruled,
all while managing their other duties. One crucially important point from this
contribution is that the medieval authors found it much less surprising that these
queens exercised administrative power than scholars have in the recent past, or
even today. To further that observation, Huneycutt also deals with a brief history of the fields of Anglo-Norman and queenship studies to help us understand
where some of the preconceptions have come from, and how they have been
challenged by more recent scholarship; as well as highlighting the work that still
needs to be done in incorporating administrative queenship into a normative
view of medieval Europe.
Simon Doubleday deploys a unique style in his chapter, focusing on the will
and testament of a scribe and priest named Ecta. Ecta lived in the early eleventh
century and worked under King Vermudo III of León, receiving his ultimately
fatal wound at the same battle which killed his king. Ecta’s story, as outlined by
Doubleday, includes the numerous layers of government that existed in medieval
Iberia, particularly in the kingdom which he refers to as León-Galicia. Kings
and queens participated in that governance and in the maintenance of land and
authority. But so did bishops, abbots, and abbesses who all participated in the
creation and enforcement of royal and other types of authority. Finally, Doubleday notes the nobles who also played a crucial role, even in defeat, being
able to negotiate for their own power, and that of their kin. Doubleday’s piece
is emblematic of the volume as a whole, making connections to so many of the
themes noted in this introduction, and in the other chapters.
The third theme is one of claims making and power. Seth Richardson helped
to popularize the idea of claims making, for historians, in his work on Babylon where he argued that “The Crown’s claims to juridical power ought not to
be taken at face value, especially with respect to the gaps between statute and
practice.”20 For instance, in regard to Hammurabi’s famous law code, “virtually
6 Christian Raffensperger
none of Hammurabi’s ‘laws’ found their way into the relevant contracts or legal
processes where one might expect to find them.”21 This idea can be, and has
been, used for medieval European polities as well. Alice Rio quite clearly states
the conundrum as “kings behaved as if they controlled a big state; most people knew they lived under a small one.”22 In this volume, we see this in both
Nathan Leidholm’s and Kirsi Salonen’s pieces, both of which use this idea of
claims making implicitly.
Leidholm’s focus is not on the imperial court, nor on the emperor, though
those are the focus of nearly all work on Byzantine governance that makes its way
to the larger public. The implicit claim here is that the Byzantine, or medieval
Roman, government is all powerful and all knowing. Emperors set the tone for
the empire and their reigns are markers of the empire’s prosperity or lack thereof.
Instead of these typical models, Leidholm discusses the administrative apparatus
that allows the imperial government in Constantinople to function. The governmental structure revealed relies almost entirely on a hierarchy of bureaucrats,
often from elite families, who work for the good of their local, not necessarily imperial, government. The case studies he focuses on serve as an important
corrective for the view of a Byzantine state which is still centered solely on the
emperor and empire.23
Salonen, similarly, is dealing with an overarching polity that excels in grand
claims making – the papacy. Though she does not explicitly engage with this
terminology, Salonen leads with the very concept – “According to the autocratic
idea of the Church, the popes possessed full powers (Lat. plenitudo potestatis) in
all fields of ecclesiastical administration and justice, dogma, and theology.”24
Even the title of her piece and the concluding question mark serve to highlight
the idea that the claims made by the papacy may not be entirely in line with the
reality of practice. And yet, the papacy, as detailed by Salonen created an entire
bureaucratic apparatus as if they did, in fact, control the entirety of Christendom.
That apparatus was handled through four separate fora and Salonen notes case
studies of material that was handled in each of them; instances which actuated
the papal claims to dominance in Christian society. Finally, it is important to
note the success of the claims making by the papacy, as Salonen does, with their
persistence throughout time as well as the appropriation of papal bureaucracy by
growing nation-states in the late Middle Ages.
Two of the papers in this collection represent a different approach to looking
at medieval rulership and that is a closer look at the sources themselves. Though
all scholars utilize primary sources, and we have moved away from the Rankean
idea of sources equal facts, approaching the topic solely through this source or
that rather than constructing a model made from a concatenation of sources is
still an interesting way of examining what the sources said, rather than what we
think happened. In this volume, utilizing different methodologies, both Alex
Feldman and myself engage in that technique.
Feldman’s piece is an in-depth analysis of the vast array of sources, in Greek,
Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew which tell us about the little-known polity of
Reimagining Medieval Rulership in the Twenty-First Century 7
Khazaria. He organizes his subject around multiple themes (such as the conversion
to J udaism), but he starts, and is constantly enmeshing the reader in the source
base to see what the sources actually say about the topic at hand as a way of stripping away the accretion of assumption that a topic as fascinating as a medieval
Jewish kingdom of steppe nomads has created. In so doing, Feldman presents an
in-depth analysis of the source material to give the reader a breakdown of what
we can, and cannot, know about the Khazars, their conversion, and their governmental structure. In so doing, he offers a unique take on the placement of the
Khazars in a wider lens of medieval European rulership.
My own piece, “Kyivan Rus: A Complicated Kingdom” puts the spotlight on
three particular sources, the Povest’ vremennykh let, the Chronicle of Novgorod,
and the Russkaia Pravda. The first two of those are annalistic and the third is
a law code and, interestingly, all three portray rulership differently in regard to
medieval Rus’. The first source, known as the PVL, portrays the elite power
structure of the ruling Volodimerovichi family as if it is the only governance in
the entire kingdom. The second is focused, understandably, on what is going on
in Novgorod and deals in detail with offices and organizations, such as the veche,
which rarely appear in the PVL. Finally, the law code goes to an even deeper
level mentioning, often off-handedly, offices and individuals who never appear
in either of the other sources. This kind of source-specific approach is a way to
present the problems inherent when we focus on one kind of source, or even one
level of rulership.
The last category of contributions is based around an organizational methodology demonstrating the way rulers and rulership were structured over the
changing time scale of the high Middle Ages. Each of these pieces focuses on
what we can know about the subject, given the source base – as the sourcefocused contributions do – but has organized the material in such a way that the
reader gets a sense of what kind of rulership was operational at different moments
throughout the medieval history of the polity. Paul Knoll’s work on Poland and
Kiril Petkov’s on Bulgaria exemplify this idea.
Paul Knoll walks through the thin source material for medieval Poland, before
beginning a chronological tour through the earliest Piast polity, its eleventh- and
early twelfth-century progression, the internal shifts which happened after 1138
resulting in multiple polities all being ruled by members of the Piast family, and
then the progress toward reunification of the kingdom in the fourteenth century.
As one sees throughout the process, the members of the Piast family are the
primary rulers, no matter if the polity is centralized or decentralized, and they
work in conjunction with ecclesiastical leaders and with their neighbors to create stability in the region. Rulership in Poland, as described here, is very much
afamily affair.
Kirik Petkov’s “Rulership and Governance of Medieval Bulgaria” follows a
similar path to Knoll’s contribution. He begins by raising the issue of source,
specifically the lack thereof, for anything covering the early part of Bulgarian
history internal to the polity dealing with rulership. Within that rubric though,
8 Christian Raffensperger
which does change over time, Petkov deals with the waxing and waning of
Bulgarian rulership structures, as well as other factors. In particular, he focuses
on the relations that the Bulgarians had with their neighbors, whether those
be steppe polities, the papacy, the Byzantine, or the Frankish/German Empire.
Each of those presents both a threat and an opportunity to the Bulgarian rulers
to appropriate new ideas and technologies, some intimately connected to ruling such as coinage. The rulers also used those same neighbors as foils to react
against in creating their own identity as a Bulgarian polity and then projecting
that identity more broadly. Petkov’s Bulgarian kingdom is situated very clearly
as one among many polities in its region, interacting with, and reacting to, its
neighbors.
Finally, it is worth highlighting the contribution of Edward Schoolman as
distinct from any single one of these categories as he deals with most of them
in his contribution on early medieval Italy. The first part of his article covers an
organizational schema that is similar to what we have seen in our last theme,
looking at how different cities and regions organized their power structures and
changed over time, specifically via a lens of looking at the source record that has
been preserved. But he also includes a case study that combined ecclesiastical,
royal/imperial, and local power to highlight the negotiated power structures
which were omnipresent not just in the Italian peninsula but, as we have seen,
throughout medieval Europe. Though the earliest chronological contribution,
Schoolman’s piece acts as a nice cap on the totality of the practices demonstrated
in this volume.
All of these contributions are, of course, interrelated, and the themes delineated here could be rearranged to include other pieces or set in different ways.
The purpose of such an organization is merely to highlight the connectedness of
rule in medieval Europe, as the volume does as a whole; rather than focusing on
modern nation states read back into the past, or a falsified version of “medieval
Europe” that only covers the West. Each of these pieces presents a fascinating
look at the way rulership looks in one particular area but taken together they
further our understanding of how medieval Europe was ruled – as a whole, and
not just in its parts.
Notes
1 Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957). For the reception, and a terrific
analysis of the book and its context see Brett Edward Whalen, “AHR Reappraisal:
Political Theology and the Metamorphoses of The King’s Two Bodies,” American
Historical Review 125, no. 1 (2020): 132–45.
2 Theresa Earenfight, The King’s Other Body: María of Castile and the Crown of Aragon
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010).
3 ‘‘The Middle Ages were resolutely male. All the opinions that reach and inform
me were held by men, convinced of the superiority of their sex. I hear only them’
Georges Duby, Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages, trans. by Janet Dunnett (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1996) Author’s Note. Amy Livingstone, Out of Love
Reimagining Medieval Rulership in the Twenty-First Century 9
for My Kin: Aristocratic Family Life in the Lands of the Loire, 1000–1200 (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2010).
4 Joseph P. Huffman, The Social Politics of Medieval Diplomacy: Anglo-German Relations
(1066–1307) (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2000), 5.
5 Lucy Pick, Her Father’s Daughter: Gender, Power, and Religion in the Early Spanish Kingdoms (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2017); Therese Martin,
Queen as King: Politics and Architectural Propaganda in Twelfth-Century Spain (Leiden:
Brill, 2006); Miriam Shadis, Berenguela of Castile (1180–1246) and Political Women in
the High Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave, 2009).
6 Political Culture in the Latin West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, c. 700-c. 1500:
A Framework for Comparing Three Spheres, ed. Catherine Holmes, Jonathan Shepard, Jo
van Steenbergen, and Björn Weiler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
7 Björn Weiler, Paths to Kingship in Medieval Latin Europe, c. 950–1200 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2021).
8 Robert Bartlett, Blood Royal: Dynastic Politics in Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).
9 Thomas N. Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of
European Government (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009), 27.
10 Bisson, Crisis of the Twelfth Century, 34.
11 Björn Weiler, Paths to Kingship in Medieval Latin Europe, c. 950–1200 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2021). Examples are woven throughout Weiler’s book.
One can see a particularly nice summary of the role of elites at 36: “Consequently,
even if medieval polities do not resemble a Weberian image of statehood, their l iterate
elites nonetheless viewed themselves as part of a transpersonal entity that transcended
individual lifespans, and that was unified by customs and practices according to
which rulers and leading subjects were supposed to operate.”
12 Benjamin Arnold, Count and Bishop in Medieval Germany: A Study of Regional Power,
1100–1350 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991); Joseph P. Huffman,
The Social Politics of Medieval Diplomacy: Anglo-German Relations (1066–1307) (Ann
Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2000).
13 Szende, “Self-Governance at the King’s Command”: Towns and Their Sovereign in
Medieval Hungary, p. 24 of Word doc.
14 Emir O. Filipović, “Nobility, Loyalty and Dynasty in Medieval Bosnia,” Word, p. 7.
15 Theresa Earenfight, The King’s Other Body: María of Castile and the Crown of Aragon
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), see 13 in particular.
16 Lucy Pick, Her Father’s Daughter: Gender, Power, and Religion in the Early Spanish Kingdoms (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2017).
17 Just for one example on central Europe see Zbigniew Dalewski, “Family Business:
Dynastic Power in Central Europe in the Earlier Middle Ages,” Viator 46, no. 1
(2015): 43–60.
18 Erin Jordan, “Corporate Monarchy in the Twelfth-Century Kingdom of Jerusalem,”
Royal Studies Journal VI, no. 1 (2019): 1–15.
19 Jordan, “Governing the Latin East: Jerusalem from 1099 to 1174,” Word, p. 2.
2 0 Seth Richardson, “Before Things Worked: A ‘Low-Power’ Model of Early Mesopotamia,” in Ancient States and Infrastructural Power: Europe, Asia, and America, ed.
Clifford Ando and Seth Richardson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2017), 28.
21 Richardson, “Before Things Worked,” 28.
2 2 Alice Rio, “Introduction,” in Law, Custom, and Justice in Late Antiquity and the Early
Middle Ages: Proceedings of the 2008 Byzantine Colloquium, ed. Alice Rio (London:
Centre for Hellenic Studies, 2011), 2. I, too, have utilized claims making in regard
to medieval Europe in “Kingdom of Rus’: A New Theoretical Model for Rulership
in Medieval Europe,” in Rulership in Medieval East Central Europe: Power, Rituals, and
Legitimacy in Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland, ed. Grischa Vercamer and Dušan Zupka
(Leiden: Brill 2022), 325–39.
