The Peasant Rusticus: Life near Paris in the Time of Clovis
With that final sentence of her essay on Bodo, a Carolingian-era peasant near Paris, Power announced the arrival of the common man on the scene of popular historiography, a genre that was then dominated by examinations of famous men and their deeds. 2 Among medievalists, Power needs little introduction. Medieval People, her most famous and popular work, has had ten editions and numerous reprints since its original publication in 1924. 3 The first of its profiles was titled, ―The Peasant Bodo: Life on a Country Estate in the time of Charlemagne,‖ and remains a common fixture on the reading lists of history undergraduates. Bodo was an unlikely revolutionary. A dutiful serf on an ecclesiastical estate, the most rebellious thought Power attributes to him is a wish that ―the [estate] house and all its land were at the bottom of the sea,‖ expressed as he ―shivers and shakes the rime from his beard‖ while plowing the abbot’s fields on a midwinter morning. 4 It was in expressing such feelings at all, if only through the speculations of an historian writing eleven centuries later, that Bodo became an early standard bearer for the masses of so-called ―ordinary people‖ and their ―everyday lives‖ that have so thoroughly occupied generations of social historians since Power’s time. These efforts have benefited modern readers by giving new illumination, color, and depth to narratives that were once rendered in flatly political, military, or economic hues. The study of Late Antiquity, which has sought to shed additional light on the transition from the world of classical antiquity to that of the Middle Ages, has reaped particularly large benefits from the rise of social historiography. Indeed, it does not seem unreasonable to claim that without the social perspective, Late Antiquity might not exist as a separate field of study (a distinction for which it must
Frankish military duty and the fate of Roman taxation
Frankish kings exacted unpaid military service from their subjects in both Merovingian and Carolingian times. The basis for this right has long been uncertain. A study of the term ‘manse’ as a Carolingian measure of assets brings to light the ostensibly hidden property on whose basis Franks went to war. This military duty reached back to the origins of the Frankish kingdom, when a large share of Roman taxes was awarded in individual allotments to soldiers obligated to serve, otherwise unpaid, when summoned, and heavily fined if they did not. Both demesne and tributary manses – contributory units – were the main part of state resources applied to military costs. They cannot be simply envisaged as components of an agricultural scheme (grand domaine). A tax‐like military obligation was one among several institutions actively surviving from the fifth century to the ninth, and it suggests that Frankish government was more law‐based and administrative than is often allowed.
Greek: A History of the Language and Its Speakers
Preface to the First Edition xii Preface to the Second Edition xv IPA Chart xvii The Greek Alphabet xviii Introduction: The Scope and Purpose of This Book 1 PART I Ancient Greek: From Mycenae to the Roman Empire 7 1 The Ancient Greek Dialects 9 2 Classical Greek: Official and Literary 'Standards' 43 3 The Rise of Attic 67 4 Greek in the Hellenistic World 79 5 Greek in the Roman Empire 124 6 Spoken Koine in the Roman Period 160 PART II Byzantium: From Constantine I to Mehmet the Conqueror 189 7 Historical Prelude 191 8 Greek in the Byzantine Empire: The Major Issues 207 9 Byzantine Belles Lettres 231 10 The Written Koine in Byzantium 244 11 Spoken Greek in the Byzantine Empire: The Principal Developments 273 12 Texts in the 'Vernacular' 325 PART III Modern Greek: From the Ottoman Empire to the European Union 371 13 Ottoman Rule and the War of Independence 373 14 Spoken Greek in the Ottoman Period 379 15 Written Greek in the Turkish Period 413 16 The History of the Modern Greek State 428 17 The 'Language Question' and its Resolution 438 Bibliography 471 Index 493