The Birth of Nobility: Constructing Aristocracy in England and France, 900-1300

Abstract

This book cuts a swathe through the histories and the historiographies of England and France over four centuries in a way that commands admiration for its scope and the liveliness of the writing. Its genesis came, the author tells us, in the lack of anything comparable to explain to students differences in both historical development and historians' assumptions. The result is therefore ‘a travelogue in history’, a prefatory comment which helps to explain the form and coverage of the book. It is divided into four sections devoted to key aspects of the history of social elites: conduct, descent, class, and lordship. Within each section, the chapters alternate between history and historiography, with a discussion of women bringing up the rear. The basic hypothesis is that over the period in question, social elites mutated from aristocracies into nobilities, or elites defined according to legal privileges. The author argues that ideas about aristocratic conduct, which he describes as the noble habitus, evolved in the late twelfth century into a self conscious code of behaviour, chivalry, associated with the contemporary and related acceptance of knights into the ranks of the nobility. Chivalry was not simply a thin veneer over violence and warfare but was in turn influenced by religious ideals and the rise of lay literacy. A useful survey of the historiography of medieval noble families is followed by a chapter discussing the practical functions of descent and ties of kinship. It is argued that greater importance was attached to lineage from the twelfth century because of concerns about social gradation. A discussion of theories about class formation in medieval society is followed by a discussion of the way medieval people perceived social differences, and, in the last section, a survey of the historiography of feudalism precedes what is in many ways the most challenging chapter, a discussion of lordship and structures, where the focus is local power. In England, lords' estates were often intermingled with those of their neighbours. Their influence was exercised in the public courts of shire and hundred, and in many cases they did not build, or need to build, castles. In France, however, the lord's castle was the symbol of his power over the surrounding countryside, and his estates were often territorially compact. English honorial communities were thus less exclusive and less enduring than their counterparts in France, evolving, by the thirteenth century, into communities bound essentially not by ties between lord and man but those of interest and neighbourhood. The concluding chapter, a brief discussion of the historiography of noble women, pointing out that much of it is recent, and focused on women's access to power, ends on a somewhat inconclusive note. Nevertheless, the book as a whole is full of ideas and comments which will prompt further debate.

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