Eclipse of Empire? Perceptions of the Western Empire and Its Rulers in Late-Medieval France (review)

In an introduction and eight richly detailed chapters, Chris Jones addresses the question of the attitude of the "French"toward the Empire, which is to say, the (Holy) Roman Empire or, in Jones's formulation, the Western Empire, in the High Middle Ages. By French, he means elites in northern France, in particular chroniclers of various traditions (royal and local), writers of legal treatises, and men of state. He systematically explores their views by describing how they depicted or imagined the early emperors like Charlemagne, their own contemporaries like Frederick II, and the aspirants (Richard of Cornwall, Alfonso X of Castile, Philip III of France, et al.). The book could have used a thorough revision to reduce both the excessive repetition and the use of multiple footnotes in single sentences, like one on page 172 with five footnotes, which is not at all unusual.

The subject is a big one. Was the Western Empire considered a superprincipality in terms of prestige? Were emperors, for example, conceived as the ideal leaders of the crusades? What were the parameters of the relationship between empire and papacy, as seen through French eyes? Was the emperor regarded as possessing higher political authority than the king of France? If he was regarded as superior to the French king theoretically, did this have any practical impact on French governance or diplomacy? Did French kings act in ways they imagined emperors should act, in line with the famous maxim, rex imperator in regno suo? Were the imperial "boundaries," if one can even use this word for a superprincipality, more sacrosanct than the boundaries of kingdoms? Certain French authors did believe that there were territorial limits to the empire, but did French rulers care enough to regard those limits as sacrosanct or did they violate them in their desire to expand royal authority? Did royal chroniclers, largely based at Saint-Denis, have a different vision of the empire and its rulers than local chroniclers writing in regions near the imperial lands? Did local chroniclers in Western France care anything at all about the distant empire? One can go on and on.

The number and range of questions means that Jones's book is a very sprawling one. The overarching thesis is his answer to the question in the title. The reigning assumption is that there was a time when empire was a powerful concept and reality. The received opinion until now, as Jones sees it, is that the troubles of the late eleventh and early twelfth century (the Investiture Controversy) and the recurrent tragedies of imperial history occasioned by struggles between emperors and German aristocrats, emperors and Italian towns, and emperors and popes weakened the concept of imperial authority and the reality of imperial power. The dominant view, according to Jones, is based on a master narrative about the medieval origins of the modern state, one rooted in the French experience. Jones rightly asserts that Joseph R. Strayer was one of the most able defenders of this master narrative, but Jones also thinks Strayer was largely wrong. All the evidence Jones marshals is meant to show that the empire as concept especially, but also as an instantiation of practical political power, remained profoundly significant.

His method involves assembling evidence of opinions held and actions taken throughout the High Middle Ages that allegedly counter the Strayer narrative. For example, Saint-Denis chroniclers may have been somewhat dismissive of the empire, but local chroniclers living near its putative borders took the empire a great deal more seriously. He argues, too, that a number of chroniclers' views, whether Saint-Dionysian or not, that appear to support the master narrative have to be discounted considerably because they had very little circulation. They have been privileged because they support the teleology of nation-state formation, not because they had a wide or appreciative audience at...