Chris Wickham

Productive Forces and the Economic Logic of the Feudal Mode of Production

This article returns to the debate about the relative importance of the productive forces and the relations of production in the feudal mode of production. It argues, using western medieval evidence, that this relation is an empirical one and varies between modes, maybe also inside modes; and that, in the specific case of feudalism, not only were the relations of production the driving force, but developments in the productive forces actually depended upon them.

Problems of Comparing Rural Societies in Early Medieval Western Europe

There is surprisingly little early medieval social history being written. In recent years, more specifically economic history has had a remarkable rebirth, thanks to the (largely unconnected) efforts of archaeologists on the one side and Belgian and German historians on the other; but the study of society in general, outside the restricted spheres of the aristocracy and the church, has been neglected. I speak schematically; obviously, there are notable exceptions. But it is significant that noone, in any country, has thought it worthwhile to attempt a synthesis of early medieval European socio-economic history as a whole that could replace those of Alfons Dopsch or, maybe, Andre Deleage. It would be hard; but people have tried it for the centuries after 900, with interesting (even if inevitably controversial) results. Why not earlier? Richard Sullivan recently lamented the conservatism of most Carolingian scholarship; in the arena of social history, he could easily have extended his complaints back to 500.

Rural society in Carolingian Europe

In the Carolingian period, from 750 or so onwards, people began, for the first time in European history, to see rural society more directly. This chapter provides an understanding of how rural social relationships actually worked in practice, on the ground. It talks about four areas as brief examples of the local societies, and discusses what their similarities and differences might tell us about the vast range of small-scale realities that made up Europe as a whole. The four are two small Catalan counties, Urgell and Pallars; the villages north of the Breton monastery of Redon; Dienheim in the middle Rhine, just upstream from Mainz; and Cologno Monzese, a settlement just east of Milan: from, respectively, a marginal frontier area, a more prosperous marchland, a core area for Frankish political power, and the urbanised heartland of the Lombard-Carolingian kingdom of Italy.

Community and Clientele in Twelfth-Century Tuscany: The Origins of the Rural Commune in the Plain of Lucca

List of Maps 1. Introduction 2. Lucca and the Sei Miglia in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries 3. Rural Settlement, Village Identity, and the Parish in the Lucca Plain 4. Signoria and Commune in Moriano in the Twelfth Century: Institutions 5. Signoria and Commune in Moriano in the Twelfth Century: People 6. Rural Landowners and Rural Communes on the Eastern Plain 7. Rural Communes in the Lucca Plain in the Twelfth Century 8. Comparative Perspectives Appendix 1. Sources and Abbreviations Appendix 2. Main Archival Sources Guide to Use of Archival Sources Bibliography

THE ‘FEUDAL REVOLUTION’ AND THE ORIGINS OF ITALIAN CITY COMMUNES *

This article takes two major moments of social change in central medieval Europe, the ‘feudal revolution’ in France and the origins of Italian city communes, in order to see what they have in common. They are superficially very different, one rural one urban, and also one whose analysts focus on the breakdown of political power and the other on its construction or reconstruction; but there are close parallels between the changes which took place in France around 1000 or 1050 and those which took place in Italy around 1100. The contrast in dates does not matter; what matters is that in each case larger-scale political breakdown (whether at the level of the kingdom or the county) was matched by local recomposition, the intensification or crystallisation of local power structures which had been much more ad hoc before, and which would be the basic template for local power henceforth. In Italy, the main focus of the article, the different experiences of Pisa and Genoa are compared, and the development of urban assemblies first, consular collectives second, communal institutions third, are all analysed from this perspective, as guides to how the city communes of the peninsula developed, however haltingly and insecurely. The article finishes with a brief comment on the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu.

The Problems of Comparison

This essay replies to the various criticisms made of Framing the Early Middle Ages (2005). It concedes a number of points relating to the importance of ideologies, the distinction between elites and aristocracies, the issue of money, and the question of the importance of the productive forces. It defends the comparative method and defends the discussions of coloni and of the spatial limitations of the peasant-mode of production in Framing. It also explores the nature of the state and aristocracy in this period.

The Financing of Roman City Politics, 1050-1150

The purpose of this article is not to discuss the rights and wrongs of papal “corruption”; rather, it is to analyse how Money worked in the framework of Roman urban politics. Outside critics did not ______________________________________________ * Versión original en inglés en: Europa e Italia. Studi in onore di Giorgio Chittolini, Firenze: Firenze university press, 2011. – XXXI, 453 p. (Reti Medievali. E-Book ; 15). Traducción: Marcia Ras (Universidad de Buenos Aires), Revisión de estilo: Ana Ras. ** Quiero hacer llegar mi agradecimiento a Sandro Carocci por su crítica de este texto y a Giulano Milani por el valioso aporte de su discusión. En el presente texto he cambiado los nombres de los italianos al italiano moderno, con la excepción de los papas e Hildebrando antes de que fuese ungido papa como Gregorio VII, ya que Hildebrando, la versión italiana de su nombre, es menos reconocible en inglés [N del T: en la traducción al español se han respetado las mismas pautas que en la versión en inglés]. greatly distinguish between the Roman church and the city of Rome, but they were by no means the same – and certainly not in the first, uneasy, century of the international papacy, a period in which no pope until 1130 and few cardinals were of Roman origin. The Romans took money too; but they took is this which tells us most about the financing of the Roman political system in the decades either side of 1100.

The Transformation of the Roman World AD 400-900@@@The Rise of Western Christendom. Triumph and Diversity, AD 200-1000

The fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of what we call the Middle Ages was a period of tremendous change and upheaval in Europe and Byzantium. Focusing on these pivotal five centuries in European history, this wide-ranging study features essays by an international team of distinguished scholars. Their essays survey the most significant aspects of the transition from late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages: the later Roman empire, the barbarian successor states, estates and property, wealth and treasure, production and distribution, death and burial rites, cult and worship, and the transmission of ideas. The essays are accompanied by six shorter chapters based on related exhibitions in museums throughout Europe during 1997, with themes ranging from Roman villas to Scandinavian gold brooches, Byzantine burial practices to medieval Dutch hoards. Handsomely illustrated in both color and black and white, the book also contains a helpful glossary and gazetteer of principal place names.

The Mountains and the City: The Tuscan Appennines in the Early Middle Ages.

Winner of the American Historical Association Marraro Prize, 1988. The Mountains and the City is a rare discussion in English of the history of a region of Europe, a genre common in other countries but undeveloped in Britain. The book deals with two mountain valleys in Tuscany from the eight to the twelfth century, with some examination of their future progress into the sixteenth. It charts their internal social and economic development and their links with the emerging world of the Italian city states. The importance of the book is in its stress on the small-scale society of the mountains; on the relation of local society to its geographical environment; and, above all, in its concern to see society from below, through the activities of local people, rather than through the interests of their masters. In its focus on local interaction, this is one of the few anthropological studies of medieval history that has yet been written.

Review Article: The Formation of Christendom.

JUDITH HERRIN. The Formation of Christendom. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Pp. x, 530.