Introduction -- The historiographical background -- The place of the Carolingians in the Feudal Revolution -- Methodology -- Geography and sources -- Part I. The Parameters of Carolingian Society -- 1. Institutional integration -- Counts and the locality -- Bishops and episcopal organisation -- Royal power -- Conclusion: Structures of authority -- 2. Networks of inequality -- Aristocratic solidarities and the limits of Carolingian institutions of rule -- The logic of aristocratic dominance -- Conclusion: The dominance of lordship? -- 3. Carolingian co-ordinations -- Carolingian symbolic communication between Marne and Moselle : gifts, violence and meetings -- Characterising Carolingian symbolic communication -- From symbolic communication to economies of meaning -- Conclusion -- Part II. The long tenth-century, c. 880 to c. 1030 -- 4. The ebbing of royal power -- The distancing of royal authority -- Post-royal politics -- The causes for the retreat of royal power -- Conclusion -- 5. New hierarchies -- The transformation of the Carolingian county -- Lords and landlords in the long tenth century -- Ritual and society in the tenth century -- Conclusion: "Symbolic impoverishment" -- Part III. The exercise of authority through property rights, c. 1030-1130 -- 6. The banality of power -- The rise of banal power -- The reification of political power -- Material consequences -- Conclusion -- 7. Fiefs, Homage and the "Investiture Quarrel" -- Fiefs and dependent property -- Homage -- The "Investiture Quarrel" -- Towards a "secular liturgy"? -- Conclusion -- 8. Upper Lotharingia and Champagne around 1100 -- The new political landscape between Marne and Moselle -- Upper Lotharingia and Champagne compared -- Architectures of power -- Conclusion -- Conclusion: Between the "long twelfth century" and the settlement of disputes -- Reframing the Feudal Revolution : the Carolingian legacy -- Manuscripts index
Summary
Revisits the idea of a 'Feudal Revolution' in Europe between 800 and 1100, examining the causes of profound socio-economic change
