Sébastien Rossignol

The authority and charter usage of female rulers in medieval Silesia, c.1200–c.1330

Although the authority enjoyed by noblewomen and female rulers in medieval Europe varied considerably according to time and place, a constant factor was that, among women, widows had the broadest latitude to act independently. The social acceptance of noblewomens authority and leading role is well documented in charters, which reveal their influence and legal agency in several contexts – as witnesses, consent givers, seal owners and issuers of their own documents. This paper examines the evidence for the legal and social position and power of widowed female rulers in thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Silesia. It argues that, while the parameters of charter production by Silesian duchesses did not change significantly during this period, the acceptance of the value of documents issued by widowed duchesses evolved considerably in favour of a growing authority.

Bilingualism in Medieval Europe: Germans and Slavs in Helmold of Bosau's Chronicle

Having described the countries of the “numerous peoples of the Slavs,” the late twelfth-century chronicler Helmold of Bosau added, “If you consider Hungary as a part of Slavania, as some would suggest, because it does not differ by customs or by language, the area of the Slavic language extends so far that a proper estimate is quite lacking.” These few words indicate how clearly local the chroniclers horizon was—the farther away from Wagria, the fuzzier his information. At the same time, though, Helmold made plain that the Slavic language was for him an essential element of what Slavania was. As a parish priest at the forefront of missionary and settlement activities, Helmold wrote a chronicle that is a unique source of information for intercultural interactions between Germans and Slavs during the high medieval colonization period.

ReviewLaurențiu Rădvan,At Europe's Borders: Medieval Towns in the Romanian Principalities., trans., Valentin Cîrdei. (East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450, 7.) Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2010. Pp. xxix, 613; maps.

According to the stated objective of the series East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, directed by Florin Curta, this book presents in English the results of research first published in a language of limited access to the wider community of scholars. Laurent iu Rădvan’s book sums up his research conducted since his dissertation, completed in 2003 at the University “Al. I. Cuza” in Iaşi, Romania. As Rădvan states in his introduction, urban history has been a neglected topic in Romanian scholarship of the last half century, and an overview of the urbanization process, especially in the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, had not been written in decades. Rădvan’s goal is thus to present a comprehensive survey of the phenomenon in a study embracing historical as well as archaeological materials. The monograph examines the urban developments in the medieval principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia against the background of urbanization processes in highand late-medieval Europe. Rădvan begins with a broad survey of the characteristics of urban developments in the countries surrounding the two principalities under study. In Poland and Hungary, settlement forms were fundamentally altered during the transformative period of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as models inspired by those of central and western Europe were adopted and took shapes typical for the area. The situation was far more complex, however, in Bulgaria and the Balkans, where towns developed following patterns derived either from the Italian model, from the structures of the Byzantine Empire, or from central European features. Rădvan then proceeds with detailed investigations of urbanization processes in the two Romanian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. Studying each principality independently, Rădvan first discusses the historical background of the respective regions. According to him, the emergence of towns would have been favored by intensification of trade, the arrival of foreign settlers—often explicitly attracted by local rulers—and the political evolution of the principalities’ gaining stability and strength. The terminology of sources— mostly Old Slavonic but also Latin—for urban settlements indicates a mixture of German, Hungarian, Slavic, and Latin origins symptomatic of the varied influences that shaped the towns of this area. Rădvan continues with a study of the institutional, social, ethnic, and economic structures of the urban communities of each principality. He finds that urban communities had privileges guaranteeing internal autonomy and tax exemptions but were closely supervised by the prince’s representatives. Rădvan rounds up the overview with a detailed presentation of the main individual towns in the form of case studies. The book ends with a chapter summarizing the results of the study. According to the historical and archaeological evidence presented by Rădvan, the medieval towns of Wallachia and Moldavia did not emerge from Byzantine structures—the only town with proven Byzantine roots in the area was Kilia in Moldavia—but developed following influences coming from areas to the west and north of the two principalities. These towns emerged around the fortified seats of princes or from pre-urban market places (târgs) in which foreign merchants took residence. They gradually obtained forms of autonomy, following Transylvanian models in Wallachia and Polish ones in Moldavia. In many ways this urbanization process resembled that of central Europe. The main differences are that the process began later—primarily in the fourteenth century—and that the autonomy of urban communities remained relatively limited. What distinguished urban and rural settlements was, according to Rădvan, the legal status. The limited autonomy of the urban communities prevented them, however, from erecting the stone walls that 918 Reviews