Princes and territories in medieval Germany (review)

Reviews Arnold, Benjamin, Princes and territories in medieval Germany, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991; cloth; pp. xiv, 314; R.R.P. AUS$120.00. This is a dense and difficult book for the non-specialist to read because it conforms to the requirements of the 'new' history. Lacking the dramatic, if artificial, theme of Geoffrey Barraclough's celebrated The origins of modern Germany (1946), or even the reduced sense of drama to be found in a textbook such as Horst Fuhrmann's Germany in the High Middle Ages c. 1050-1200 (Eng. trans. 1986, reviewed in Parergon, n.s. 7 [1989], 126-27) and without the thematic comprehensiveness and narrative interstices of Alfred Haverkamp's Medieval Germany 1056-1273 (Eng. trans. 1988), it presents German history from the structural point of view. Admittedly limited to the aristocracy, and overlapping somewhat with the author's other books, German knighthood 1050-1300 (1985) and Count and bishop in medieval Germany: a study in regional power 1100-1350 (1991), the work nevertheless conveys a thick sense of the fabric of the central medieval German past as perceived from the vantage point of one familiar with the attitudes, ambitions, and practices of the group of leaders, 'an endogamous caste of several hundred families' (p. 141), who owned, were enfeoffed with, or acquired in other ways, the lands,titles,followings, and prestige that ultimately constituted 'a multiplicity of autonomous states under secular dynasties, urban authorities, and prince-bishops, . . . a species of aristocratic congeries in which the crown enjoyed enormous prestige but minimal authority' (p. 1). For the industrious reader, there is a sense of historical progression, from 'the Carolingian institutional legacy consisting of homage, vassalage, fealty, fief-holding, and the consequent military services andrightsof counsel' (p. 30), through important changes in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, to the situation in the later medieval period when the autonomous principalities dominated the territorial and lordship scene. In particular, see pp. 31, 53, 62-3, 68-69, 72, 89, 98, 114-15, 117, 118-20 (changes familiar to readers of Barraclough's book), 121 ('remoulded . . . transmutation' and cf. 'remodelled', p. 128), 123,143, 14546 , 151, 212, 251, 280-84 (with which must be compared p. 1). This evolution is just enough to support interest in a rich diet of associated topics; for example, violence, feud, and territorial peace, the nature of kingship, the rise of towns, advocacy, territorial expansion eastwards (a topic deartoBarraclough and generations of European historians' hearts), woodland, justice, and questions of terminology in regard to lordship. The discussion throughout is illuminated by judicious insights and extraordinarily ample bibliographic annotation based upon a seemingly 136 Reviews encyclopaedic knowledge of the primary sources and the secondary discussions of generations of German historians. As such the book forms a lucid introduction to the specialist literature and is of particular value to those whose libraries do not contain the required material, or who do not read German. In its own right, however, the book makes a major contribution to current interpretative paradigms concerning the vast and detailed panorama of the medieval German past and, as such, to the interpretation of medieval history in general; for Germany, and the German Empire, have always been, as it were, two-thirds of medieval Europe. There is a comprehensive index, but there are no maps or illustrations. John O.Ward Department of History University of Sydney Baker-Smith, Dominic, More's Utopia, London, Harper Collins Academic, 1991; cloth; pp. xv, 269; R.R.P. AUS$120.00 (approx.) [Distributed in Australia by the Law Book Company Ltd]. Any doubts that Utopia could take the weight of yet another study are dispelled in the opening pages of Dominic Baker-Smith's splendid book. The work ranges over the political, social and ideological environments in which Utopia was written, gives an interpretation of the text, and concludes with a brief survey of its various receptions between More's century and ours. The first five chapters are concerned with establishing the ideological context in which More wrote. This entails an unpacking of the humanist curriculum. Anyone familiar with the Yale Utopia or Surtz's compendious lists of its classical and Christian authorities would know that a...