Law, laity and solidarities : essays in honour of Susan Reynolds

This book is dedicated to Susan Reynolds and celebrates the work of a scholar whose views have been central to reappraisals of the position of the laity in the Middle Ages. The themes and concerns include a medieval world in which the activity and attitudes of the laity are not obscured by ideas expressed more systematically in theoretical treatises by ecclesiastics; a world in which lay collective action and thought take centre stage. Reynolds has written her own Middle Ages, especially in her innovative book Kingdoms and Communities whose influence can be seen in so many of the essays. Collectivities, solidarities and collective action are everywhere in these essays, as Reynolds has shown us to expect them to be. Collective action was carried out often in pursuit of social peace, but it existed precisely because there was discord. Of the narratives and interpretative frameworks with which Reynolds's work has been concerned, the book has least to say directly on the debate over feudalism. The book engages many of the themes of Reynolds's work and pursues some of the issues which are prominent in re-examinations of the medieval world and in studies of the medieval laity. It discusses secular aristocratic attitudes towards judicial combat within the broader setting of fictional 'treason trials' of the later twelfth century. Although kinship did not start out as an explicit and overt theme of the book, it emerges as a leitmotiv, perhaps in part because when feudalism is removed, kinship is thrown into sharper relief. Front matter 1 Contents 6 List of contributors 8 Introduction 12 Writing about Charles Martel 23 Peers in the early Middle Ages 38 Stepmothers in Frankish legal life 58 Political ideas in late tenth–century England: charters as evidence 79 Medieval mentalities and primitive legal practice 94 The problem of treason: the trial of Daire le Roux 106 Between law and politics: the judicial duel under the Angevin kings (mid–twelfth century to 1204) 127 Local custom in the early common law 161 ‘Slaves of the Normans’? Gerald de Barri and regnal solidarity in early thirteenth–century England 171 Kinsmen, neighbours and communities in Wales and the western British Isles, c.1100–c.1400 183 Lay kinship solidarity and papal law 199 Laity, laicisation and Philip the Fair of France 211 Lay solidarities: the wards of medieval London 229 Language, laughter and lay solidarities:an inquiry into the decline of pilgrimages and crusading 245 Lay/clerical distinctions in early India 260 A bibliography of Susan Reynolds’s work (to 1999) 273 Index of topics 280 "The primary focus of this collection by leading medieval historians is the laity, in particular the ideas and ideals of lay people. The contributors explore lay attitudes as expressed in legal cases, charters, chronicles and collective activities. Highlights the centrality of kinship, whilst stressing its limitations as an all purpose social bond. Ranges chronologically and geographically from the seventh century to the eve of the Reformation, from Western Britain to papal and urban Italy, from Carolingian dynastic politics to the decline of medieval pilgrimage in the sixteenth century, and from the courts of twelfth-century France to the fifteenth-century wards of London." --Back cover