Making Early Medieval Societies : Conflict and Belonging in the Latin West, 300–1200
- Submitting institution
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Royal Holloway and Bedford New College
- Unit of assessment
- 28 - History
- Output identifier
- 41331941
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
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10.1017/CBO9781316481714
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- ISBN
- 9781107138803
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- January
- Year of publication
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This pioneering collection (Making Early Medieval Societies: Conflict and Belonging in the Latin West, 300–1200, Cambridge University Press, 2016) pushes forward and re-evaluates the wider subject of the rise of Christianity through the identification of property ownership as an interpretative tool, challenging preconceived and tenacious narratives of the early Middle Ages. Building on insights from a 2005 international interdisciplinary conference on ‘The Peace in the Feud: History and Anthropology, 1955–2005’, it represents a wider collaborative study of social cohesion in the western half of the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. The resulting edited volume was co-devised and co-curated by Cooper, who, with Leyser, guided and edited the contributions, and made a significant individual intervention in ongoing debates, Her individual chapter, ‘Property, power, and conflict: re-thinking the Constantinian revolution’ (pp. 16-32) offers a radical new interpretation of the causes and dynamics behind the rise of the Church in the fourth century. Examining ownership of property as a crucial feature of the development of authority structures within the new religion, it argues that the ‘rise of Christianity’ was connected to the ability to take control of property at the expense of lay landowners who formed the traditional elites. “Cooper and Leyser are to be congratulated for marshalling a set of high-quality essays which collectively offer a powerful framework for rethinking how the social order was continuously reinforced in times of crisis and weak or dysfunctional states … This lustrous collection promises to be of immense value to specialists and students of early medieval social and cultural history, as well as to those looking for fresh perspective on the interaction between history and anthropology” (Dr Edward Roberts, https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/1971).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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