Power in Wales in the early middle ages was inextricably tied to political authority. This book analyzes the nature of that power and its relationships, both in theory and in practice. Confronting challenging questions relating to definitions and consequences of military control, alien settlement, land ownership, and political domination, Davies analyzes the impact and nature of English, Irish, and Viking contacts with the Welsh, and assesses their significance for the long-term development of Wales.

Power in Wales in the early middle ages was inextricably linked to political authority. This book analyzes the nature of power and its relationships, in theory and in practice and looks at the distribution of territorial and social power.

In medieval Europe, the death of a king could not only cause a dispute about the succession, but also a severe crisis. In times of a vacant throne particular responsibility fell to the bishops - whose general importance for the time around the first milennium has been revealed by recent scholarship - as royal counsellors and policy makers. This volume therefore concentrates on the bishops' room for manoeuvre and the patterns of episcopal power, focusing on the Eastern Frankish Reich and Anglo-Saxon England in a comparative approach which is not least based upon the research of a renowned medievalist, Timothy Reuter. His article about "A Europe of Bishops" ("Ein Europa der Bischöfe") is presented in English translation for the first time.

A collection of original essays on the relationship between property and power in early medieval Europe.

Focusing on the way bishops in the eleventh century used the ecclesiastical tithe - church taxes - to develop or re-order ties of loyalty and dependence within their dioceses, this book offers a new perspective on episcopacy in medieval Germany and Italy. Using three broad case studies from the dioceses of Mainz, Salzburg and Lucca in Tuscany, John Eldevik places the social dynamics of collecting the church tithe within current debates about religious reform, social change and the so-called 'feudal revolution' in the eleventh century, and analyses a key economic institution, the medieval tithe, as a social and political phenomenon. By examining episcopal churches and their possessions not in institutional terms, but as social networks which bishops were obliged to negotiate and construct over time using legal, historiographical and interpersonal means, this comparative study casts fresh light on the history of early medieval society.

Drawing on 28 original essays, A Companion to the Early Middle Ages takes an inclusive approach to the history of Britain and Ireland from c.500 to c.1100 to overcome artificial distinctions of modern national boundaries. A collaborative history from leading scholars, covering the key debates and issues Surveys the building blocks of political society, and considers whether there were fundamental differences across Britain and Ireland Considers potential factors for change, including the economy, Christianisation, and the Vikings

This is the first book on one of Wales’s greatest leaders, arguably ‘first prince of Wales’, Bleddyn ap Cynfyn. Bleddyn was at the heart of the tumultuous events that forged Britain in the cauldron of Norman aggression, and his reign offers an important new perspective on the events of 1066 and beyond. He was a leader who used alliances on the wider British scale as he strove to recreate the fledgling kingdom of Wales that had been built and ruled by his brother, though outside pressures and internal intrigues meant his successors would compete ultimately for a principality.