Fanny Madeline, Les Plantagenêts Et Leur Empire. Construire Un Territoire

FranciaRecensio 2015/2 Mittelalter – Moyen Âge (500–1500)

Fanny Madeline, Les Plantagenêts et leur empire. Construire un territoire politique, Rennes (Presses universitaires de Rennes) 2014, 368 p., ISBN 9782 753534940, EUR 21,00. rezensiert von/compte rendu rédigé par David S. Bachrach, St. Paul, MN

Between 1144 and 1154 Count Geoffrey le Bel of Anjou (1129–1151) and his son Henry († 1189) assembled through war, marriage, and inheritance a vast congeries of territories stretching from Scotland in the north to the Pyrenees in the south that included Anjou, Maine, Touraine, Normandy, Aquitaine, and the kingdom of England. The remarkable success of the Angevin comital dynasty has received enormous attention from scholars on both sides of the English Channel as well as in North America. Among the numerous questions raised by historians has been the nature of the realm ruled by Henry, whether it was an empire, a personal union of lands, or the epitome of the »feudal« political system of Europe before the putative rise of »national« kingdoms during the course of the 13th century.

In her thèse produced at the University of Paris I and published by the University Press of Rennes, Fanny Madeline has entered into the lists regarding the empire of the Plantagenets with a text that is focused largely on the mechanisms through which Henry, as count of Anjou, duke of Normandy, duke of Aquitaine, and king of England, governed the territories that he and his father had acquired. Madeline does cast her gaze forward in time to the reigns of Henry’s sons Richard († 1199) and John († 1216), but very rarely, as will be discussed below, considers the administrative, legal, and institutional inheritance of Henry in the various polities that comprised his realm. This is largely the case because Madeline has accepted the model of medieval governance postulated by Thomas N. Bisson in his »The Crisis of the Twelfth Century. Power Lordship, and the Origins of European Government«, and seeks to demonstrate the ways in which Henry Plantagenet’s manner of rule illuminates the ostensible rebirth of government in the second half of the 12th century. Consequently, Madeline explicitly rejects (p. 14) the argument by Susan Reynolds in »Fiefs and Vassals. The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted«, that feudalism lacks even heuristic value for an understanding of postCarolingian Europe, but also implicitly the work of scholars such as Bernard S. Bachrach, David Bates, James Campbell, and Judith Green, who have presented Anjou, Normandy, AngloSaxon England, and AngloNorman England as having wellorganized governments during the 10th, 11th, and early 12th century.

Madeline has organized her text in 13 chapters that are divided among four parts. The text begins with a

Each of the four sections also is provided with a general introduction and conclusion, in which Madeline identifies the main points that will be addressed in the individual chapters, and again synthesizes her findings. Section one, titled »The Royal Administration of Construction: Institutions and Corpus, Actors and Operation«, includes three chapters that treat in turn Plantagenet institutions, including the use of the written word for administrative purposes, the organization and development of the fiscal resources of the Angevin realms, principally with regard to England, and finally the royal officials who were in charge of construction projects, including engineers. In this final chapter, Madeline also considers the ways in which Henry and his sons maintained control over royal construction projects, principally castles. Throughout this section, Madeline draws heavily on the Pipe Rolls, which were the financial accounts of the sheriffs that were recorded and enrolled by officials of the exchequer. However, she does not deal with the most up to date research on these documents by Nicholas Barrett, whose research on the pipe rolls has revolutionized understanding of the fiscal resources available to the Angevin kings.

Section two, titled »Controlling Places and Marking Space: Topographical Affirmation of Public Power« includes four chapters. These treat in turn, royal power and the challenge to the aristocracy, the church as a space for affirming royal power, the establishment of new towns as an example of the king’s duty to seek the public good, and finally the transition from feudalized control over public works, such as bridges, to royal control. In this section, Madeline argues that the putative reintroduction of Roman law in the 12th century provided the intellectual basis for the king’s assertion of his role as the guarantor of the public good. She also points to the ability of Henry, and his sons, to appoint both abbots and bishops as playing a crucial role in securing control over both economic assets and establishing public authority throughout the lands they ruled. Similarly, Madeline emphasizes that the Plantagenets used the establishment of new towns to strengthen their control in regions where aristocrats formerly enjoyed considerable autonomy or even de facto sovereignty.

Section three, titled »Construction of a Territory and the Demarcation of the Frontiers of the Empire«, also has four chapters. These consider the establishment of governmental control over liminal spaces within the broader Angevin realm, the use of fortifications to defend the frontiers, the use of fortifications to establish control within the Angevin territories and also for territorial conquest in Ireland, and finally a

Lizenzhinweis: Dieser Beitrag unterliegt der CreativeCommonsLizenz NamensnennungKeine kommerzielle NutzungKeine Bearbeitung (CCBYNCND), darf also unter diesen Bedingungen elektronisch benutzt, übermittelt, ausgedruckt und zum Download bereitgestellt werden. Den Text der Lizenz erreichen Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/byncnd/4.0/ chapter that is focused on the development of territorial control within the duchy of Aquitaine. Madeline’s treatment of these issues is largely historiographical, although she does draw some original insights from both narrative sources and charters. Conspicuous for its absence is a detailed treatment of the tactical and strategic thinking involved in the construction of fortifications, or the logistical, administrative, and institutional requirements for building large numbers of castles, and the associated costs of garrisoning and supplying them. Missing here is also a treatment of some of the most salient scholarly works dealing with the Angevin military frontiers during the latter half of the 12th century, including Fred Suppe’s »Military Institutions on the Welsh Marches«.

Section four, titled »Itineraries and Residences: The Practices of Space and the Representations of Power«, includes two chapters. The first of these focuses on the role played by the itinerant Plantagenet court both in creating a sense of unity within their realms, and in tying these disparate regions ideologically to Henry and his sons. The second chapter in this section considers the efforts of the Plantagenets to demonstrate their power and legitimacy through the construction of monumental residences, including those that were intended to serve a dual capacity as fortresses and homes, and those that were intended purely for residential life.

The volume is equipped with an extensive scholarly apparatus of footnotes and a select bibliography of sources and works of scholarship, as well as a useful index of names and places. Madeline also includes a set of sixteen maps and charts, which are included within the body of the text and are repeated as an appendix, in color, that show the frontiers of the various polities within the Angevin realm, the locations of fortifications constructed and confiscated by Henry, and his sons, the itineraries of the Plantagenet rulers, and their principal residences.

In considering the volume as a whole, Madeline is at her best when describing the mechanisms that Henry and his sons utilized in governing their disparate territories. It is quite clear that the construction of fortifications along the frontiers of Normandy and Wales served valuable offensive as well as defensive purposes. Similarly, the confiscation or destruction of the castles from wealthy magnates who refused to accept their royal, ducal, or comital authority served to strengthen the hand of the Plantagenets in enforcing policy decisions throughout their realms. In the same manner, Madeline shows Henry and his sons making effective use of governmental officials to carry out projects in the public interest, including the construction of bridges and canals, the maintenance of roads, and establishment of new markets and towns.

All of this, however, does not add up to something new in the second half of the 12th century. It is simply incorrect that public authority and government gave way to selfinterested lordship following the end of the

Lizenzhinweis: Dieser Beitrag unterliegt der CreativeCommonsLizenz NamensnennungKeine kommerzielle NutzungKeine Bearbeitung (CCBYNCND), darf also unter diesen Bedingungen elektronisch benutzt, übermittelt, ausgedruckt und zum Download bereitgestellt werden. Den Text der Lizenz erreichen Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/byncnd/4.0/ effective Carolingian rule in the 9th century. In fact, Madeline, herself, admits this at several points in her text, observing, for example, that strong princely power forestalled the usurpation of central authority in both Normandy and Anjou (S. 147). It is also not the case that Roman law was reintroduced to Europe in the 12th century. Rather, Roman never disappeared in the Latin West, and remained the basis for governance throughout the medieval millennium. Similarly, it also was not the case that the distinction between public and private disappeared in the postCarolingian era, to be replaced by unregulated lordship. Rather, Carolingian norms of governance, which drew clear distinctions between public, governmental authority, and the private usurpation of public goods and governmental jurisdiction are to be seen throughout the postCarolingian world, both east and west of the Rhine.

On a broader level, in every instance where Madeline shows Henry undertaking a building project, asserting control over fortifications, granting licenses for towns and markets, asserting control over ecclesiastical appointments, displacing local magnates, justifying his actions through citations of Roman law, and presenting an image of legitimate authority through stagemanaged itineraries, scholars have shown Henry’s Angevin, Norman, and English predecessors doing precisely the same things in precisely the same manner in the 10th, 11th and early 12th century. In her effort to justify the reimposition of a »feudal« model on post Carolingian Europe through the backdoor of »lordship« espoused by Thomas N. Bisson, Madeline treats Henry in isolation from the administrative, legal, and institutional structures that regulated the governance of Anjou and Normandy, as well as England, for the two centuries before he came to power. When properly understood, Henry can be seen to have exercised governmental authority in a manner that was similar not only to Charlemagne († 814), but also to his own predecessors as counts of Anjou, dukes of Normandy, and kings of England, such as Fulk Nerra (987–1040), William II (1042– 1087), and Henry I (1100–1135).