Making Early Medieval Societies: Conflict and Belonging in the Latin West, 300–1200, ed. Kate Cooper and Conrad Leyser

Abstract

The volume under review originated in a conference held in Manchester in 2005 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Max Gluckman’s influential ‘Peace in the Feud’. Though only one of the constituent chapters was originally presented at the conference, the contributors seek to further the themes discussed there, probing our understanding of western (or ‘Latin’) Europe between Late Antiquity and the central Middle Ages. As Conrad Leyser explains in the introduction, the volume aims to move discussion of the period beyond the traditional fetishisation of the state and central authority (which is alternatively held to have collapsed in Late Antiquity or the years straddling the first millennium) and on to matters of religion and society. The inspiration here comes from recent work on the late Roman and Carolingian empires, which emphasises that neither was a monolith—and that daily life was generally dictated by social (rather than political) forces. Put playfully, as Leyser states, the modern British political mantra, ‘Small State–Big Society’ (associated with David Cameron’s Conservatives), is used to explore the years between 300 and 1200. In particular, the aim is to use the Church and social conflict as alternative prisms through which to construct an understanding of developments over these years.