5 - The kingdom of the Franks to 1108

Summary

the eleventh century in France was a period in which both political and social structures were transformed. Much of the heritage of the tenth century continued, from the assumption that Benedictine monasticism was the purest form of the religious life to the very political units over which the territorial princes of the eleventh century ruled. Yet old institutions were modified within a new cultural matrix and entirely new institutions were formed. While the changes were not sudden enough – or even synchronous enough – to speak of the eleventh century as a ‘rupture’ in French history, the Carolingian heritage was modified during the eleventh century until it was virtually unrecognizable.

In politics, although the form of governmental institutions remained initially unchanged, the Carolingian assumption that the king was at the top, surrounded by his great fideles and bishops, was no longer automatic, regardless of how much reality it might or might not once have had. The narrowness of the eleventh-century kings’ political domain, which had already shrunk under the last French Carolingian kings and continued to shrink under the first Capetians, points to a profound transformation of authority.