Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Preface
- Notes on names, dates, manuscripts and coinage
- Note on maps
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I PRINCELY POWER AND THE NORMAN FRONTIER
- Part II THE POLITICAL COMMUNITIES OF THE NORMAN FRONTIER
- Chapter 5 The aristocracy of the Norman frontier: origins and status
- Chapter 6 The concerns of aristocratic lineages: marriage, kinship, neighbourhood and inheritance
- Chapter 7 The lesser aristocracy
- Chapter 8 Religious patronage and burial
- Part III THE POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE NORMAN FRONTIER
- Conclusion
- Appendix I Genealogies
- Appendix II The campaigns in eastern Normandy (1202)
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 5 - The aristocracy of the Norman frontier: origins and status
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Preface
- Notes on names, dates, manuscripts and coinage
- Note on maps
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I PRINCELY POWER AND THE NORMAN FRONTIER
- Part II THE POLITICAL COMMUNITIES OF THE NORMAN FRONTIER
- Chapter 5 The aristocracy of the Norman frontier: origins and status
- Chapter 6 The concerns of aristocratic lineages: marriage, kinship, neighbourhood and inheritance
- Chapter 7 The lesser aristocracy
- Chapter 8 Religious patronage and burial
- Part III THE POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE NORMAN FRONTIER
- Conclusion
- Appendix I Genealogies
- Appendix II The campaigns in eastern Normandy (1202)
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The recorded history of the Norman frontier in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries is largely a story of the aristocracy. The peasantry who comprised the bulk of the population have been poorly served by the sources; the burgesses of the little towns and bourgs fare rather better, not least in fiscal records, but they, too, are scantly documented if compared with the landowning classes, on whose behalf the bulk of extant charters were issued. It is almost exclusively their activities that drew the attentions of chroniclers. The Norman exchequer rolls abound with the names of the petty knights, who can often be identified more precisely from charter witness-lists; not surprisingly, the Angevin and Capetian surveys into military service also noted mainly domini and milites. The material and social concerns of what Lucien Musset has called the classe dirigeante in the frontier regions will be the focus of the second part of this book: its origins (real or imagined), its notions of lineage and its marriage practices, and the relations between greater and lesser landowners. Taken together these concerns demonstrate the impact of the frontier upon the aristocracy, and conversely, how the aristocracy helped to shape the frontier itself.
The historian's first need when considering the aristocracy is to establish its composition, but several problems immediately arise.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004