Medieval civilization came of age in thunderous events like the Norman Conquest and the
First Crusade. Power fell into the hands of men around castles who imposed coercive new
lordships in quest of nobility, heedless of the old public order. In The Crisis of the
Twelfth Century, acclaimed historian Thomas Bisson asks what it was like to live in a
Europe without government, and he asks how people experienced power, and suffered.
Rethinking a familiar history as a problem of origins, he explores the circumstances that
impelled knights, emperors, nobles, and churchmen to infuse lordship with social purpose.
Bisson traces the origins of European government to a crisis of lordship and
its resolution. King John of England was only the latest and most conspicuous in a gallery
of bad lords who dominated the populace instead of ruling it. Men like him had been all
too commonplace in the twelfth century. More and more knights pretended to powers and
status, encroached on clerical domains and exploited peasants, and came to seem
threatening to social order and peace. Yet as Bisson shows, it was not so much the
oppressed people as their tormentors who were in crisis. Covering all of Western
Christendom, this book suggests what these violent people--and the outcries they
provoked--contributed to the making of governments in kingdoms, principalities, and towns.
The Crisis of the Twelfth Century is an unparalleled cultural history of power in
medieval Europe, and a monumental achievement by one of today's foremost medievalists.
Table of Contents
Preface vii
List of Illustrations xvii
Usage and Conventions xix
Abbreviations xxi
I Introduction 1
II The Age of Lordship (875-1150) 22
Old Order 25
The Quest for Lordship and Nobility 31
Constraint, Violence, and Disruption 41
Cultures of Lordship 68
III Lord-Rulership (1050-1150): The Experience of Power 84
The Papacy 87
West Mediterranean Realms 95
León and Castile 95
In Sight of the Pyreness 104
Imperial Lands 111
Bavaria 116
Lombardy 120
France 128
Anjou 129
Flanders 142
Northern Kingdoms 155
Capetian France 158
Norman England 168
IV Crises of Power (1060-1150) 182
Uneasy Maturity 183
Dynastic Anxiety 183
Anxious Fulfillments 191
The Church 197
Troubled Societies 212
The Saxon Revolt and Its Consequences (1073-1125) 213
Castled France (CA. 1100-1137) 229
Troubles on the Pilgrims' Road (1109-36) 243
Flanders: The Murder of Charles the Good (1127-28) 259
England: 'When Christ and His Saints Slept' (1135-54) 269
An Age of Tyranny? 278
V Resolution: Intrusions of Government (1150-1215) 289
Great Lordship in Prosperity and Crisis 293
'Shadows of Peace' 306
Aquitaine: Princes of Ill Repute 308
Anjou: The Tyranny of Giraud Berlai 310
A Tyrannical Bishop(?): Aldebert of Mende (1151-87) 312
The Justice of Accountability 316
The Accountability of Fidelity (1075-1150) 322
Prescriptive Accountancy 325
Towards an Accountability of Office (1085-1200) 328
A Dynamic of Fiscal Growth (ca. 1090-1160) 329
Towards a New Technique (ca. 1110-75) 336
England: Pipe Rolls and Exchequer 336
Flanders: The Grote Brief and Its Origins 339
Sicily: Pluri-Cultural Conservancy? 343
Catalonia: From Exploitation to Agency 345
Constraint, Compromise, and Office 349
Charters of Franchise: Some Lessons 350
Thresholds of Office 358
In Sight of Our Lady's Towers 362
Working with Power 369
Catalonia 371
England 378
France 398
The Roman Church 415
VI Celebration and Persuasion (1160-1225) 425
Cultures of Power 430
Sung Fidelity 431
Courtly Talk 438
Learned Moralising 445
Expertise: Two Facets 456
Knowing 457
Knowing How 462
Pacification 471
The Capuchins of Velay 475
Politicised Power 484
The Crisis of Catalonia (1173-1205) 499
The Crisis of Magna Carta (1212-15) 515
States and Estates of Power 529
The States of Troubled Realms 530
The Great Lordship of Consensus 541
Towards Estates of Associative Power 548
Towards a Parliamentary Custom of Consent 556
VII Epilogue 573
Glossary 583
Bibliography 587
Index 641
720 pages, Hardcover
