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Reviews Building Legitimacy: Political Discourses and Forms of Legitimation in Medieval Societies. Eds. Isabel Alfonso Antón. Hugh Kennedy, andJulio Escalona Monge. Leiden: EJ. Brill, 2004. 359 pp. ISBN: 90-04-13305-4 One of the most unexpected offshoots of the drive for a united Europe has been the stunning realization among European academic circles that the Continent, despite its unique histories, is composed of very much the same historical raw material. This volume, the result of lengthy collaboration between British, French and Spanish scholars, reflects the breakdown of an academic "insularity" with long provenance in English and European scholarship. The unity of this ostensibly disparate collection of twelve essays , though assured by the overarching theme of political legitimacy, falls victim to an often-confusing organizational schema. This simplistic plan divides the articles equally under two rubrics: "legitimation in context" and "discourse in political legitimation". From this arrangement, the casual reader would be right in assuming he had wandered into a "jargon-friendly zone". With the hope of obviating such confusion, I will deal with these essays as they apply to the traditionally-conceived elements of medieval society. The essays on kingship in this volume range widely from the milieu of the eighth to that of the fourteenth century, but they focus on very much the same issues; that is, how sovereigns in the Middle Ages legitimized their own power, ritually provided for their succession, and denigrated the claims of their rivals to the crown. In the opening essay, Paul Fouracre discusses the various forms of ideological opposition Frankish nobles and clerics mounted against the Merovingian kings and shows in some detail how the new court culture which developed in the wake of Charlemagne's accession solidified his assertion of ruling legitimacy in Francia and beyond. Chris Given-Wilson documents a similar case in late fourteenth-century England by following the convolutions of succession politics during the last years of Edward III (1327-1377), a king particularly gifted in both battle and in the procreation of male heirs. While establishing the standards for legitimate succession to the throne, Edward initiated a trend that eventually allowed Parliament (after several centuries and one civil war) to become the principal purveyor of political legitimacy in England. La CORoNiCA 33.1 (Fall, 2004): 249-52 250ReviewsLa coránica 33.1, 2004 Another group of articles deals with the emergence of royal law and government as a means of sanctioning and expanding royal power. Isabel Alfonso Antón explores this channel of legitimacy through the courtly dominance of the written word in her study of political rhetoric within judicial oaths of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Castile. This manipulation of written records was largely carried out by clerics, the only estate with at least some level of literacy. The Castilian sovereign, like contemporary rulers across Europe, saw the control of law and the "truth" it served as an essential foundation of royal power. Cristina Jular Pérez-Alfaro explores this same governmental road to royal legitimacy by reviewing the political function and influence of such royal offices of medieval Castile as the merino and adelantado in advancing the image of political supremacy for the king they served. In charge of both tax collection as well as the investigation and punishment of crimes, these officials proved essential in amplifying and reinforcing their master's basic claims to power. The last set of essays on kingship in this volume deal with another extremely powerful tool of royal legitimacy: the composition of histories. Julio Escalona Monge documents such a "refashioning of history" during the reign of Alfonso III of Asturias-León (866-910). The literate servitors of this leader of one of the few Christian communities to maintain its independence during the Muslim invasions followed but eventually transcended the Carolingian mode of political legitimation. They did so by tying the accomplishments of their royal master to that of an earlier Asturian ruler, Alfonso I (791-812). By doing so, these members of monastic communities and the nascent royal court produced a written version of the past that placed both Alfonsos in the long line of glorious Visigothic history which would eventually become a principal topos of medieval and...

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