The aristocracy

Abstract

This chapter presents the dynamics of the aristocracy, primarily in the Carolingian realms, by examining its relations with royal patrons and the workings of its family structures. The creation of the Carolingian empire offered opportunities to regional nobilities to act on a European stage. For this elite, local origins were less important as a form of identity than membership of a group that governed the empire, a truly imperial aristocracy, the Reichsaristokratie. Definitions of identity and status were made within families and could be fluid. This emerges clearly from Dhuoda's text in two ways. First, she herself draws a distinction between a broad and a narrow view of family when she commemorates eight dead members of her son William's kin whom she seems to regard as a genealogia, before going on to talk of other relatives who form a stirps. Second, she selects one of William's relatives as being his most important connection in the family: his paternal uncle Theodericus.

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