Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Authority and Legitimation of Royal Policy and Action: The Case of Henry II
- 2 King Henry II of Germany: Royal Self-Representation and Historical Memory
- 3 The Variability of Rituals in the Middle Ages
- 4 Rebels and Rituals: From Demonstrations of Enmity to Criminal Justice
- 5 Oblivion Between Orality and Textuality in the Tenth Century
- 6 Text and Ritual in Ninth-Century Political Culture: Rome, 864
- 7 The Concept of Time in the Historiography of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries
- 8 Constructing the Past by Means of the Present: Historiographical Foundations of Medieval Institutions, Dynasties, Peoples, and Communities
- 9 Topographies of Memory: Center and Periphery in High Medieval France
- 10 Challenging the Culture of Memoria: Dead Men, Oblivion, and the “Faithless Widow” in the Middle Ages
- 11 Artistic and Literary Representations of Family Consciousness
- 12 The Strange Pilgrimage of Odo of Deuil
- 13 The Rhineland Massacres of Jews in the First Crusade: Memories Medieval and Modern
- 14 The Martyr, the Tomb, and the Matron: Constructing the (Masculine) “Past” as a Female Power Base
- Index
4 - Rebels and Rituals: From Demonstrations of Enmity to Criminal Justice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2013
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Authority and Legitimation of Royal Policy and Action: The Case of Henry II
- 2 King Henry II of Germany: Royal Self-Representation and Historical Memory
- 3 The Variability of Rituals in the Middle Ages
- 4 Rebels and Rituals: From Demonstrations of Enmity to Criminal Justice
- 5 Oblivion Between Orality and Textuality in the Tenth Century
- 6 Text and Ritual in Ninth-Century Political Culture: Rome, 864
- 7 The Concept of Time in the Historiography of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries
- 8 Constructing the Past by Means of the Present: Historiographical Foundations of Medieval Institutions, Dynasties, Peoples, and Communities
- 9 Topographies of Memory: Center and Periphery in High Medieval France
- 10 Challenging the Culture of Memoria: Dead Men, Oblivion, and the “Faithless Widow” in the Middle Ages
- 11 Artistic and Literary Representations of Family Consciousness
- 12 The Strange Pilgrimage of Odo of Deuil
- 13 The Rhineland Massacres of Jews in the First Crusade: Memories Medieval and Modern
- 14 The Martyr, the Tomb, and the Matron: Constructing the (Masculine) “Past” as a Female Power Base
- Index
Summary
Medieval kings faced many problems. The most persistent ones were the relations with the people they somewhat euphemistically called their “faithful ones” - fideles - the great princes or barons on whose consent the kings' capacity to act depended. The greater part of medieval historical writing deals with the feuds of these great men with each other, lesser nobles, or their kings. We, and in fact royal-minded contemporaries, call the last rebellions. The term rebellion carries the notion that feuding with the king was something quite different from regular noble warfare, that it was, indeed, illegitimate, a notion that the kings and their ecclesiastical propaganda staffs tried to drive home in many ways. Because they were the ones who put their ideas into writing, it is predominantly their views we read. The nobles who made war on their kings thought quite differently about it and claimed - justly or unjustly - that they were defending their rights against a king turned tyrant. How did the kings deal with these formidable rebels? They tried to fight them, to be sure, but it is generally believed that the kings also tried to make use of their supreme judicial authority and make the nobles account for their deeds in the royal law courts.
Heinrich Mitteis analyzed a number of notorious trials of mighty nobles dating from the tenth to the twelfth centuries and argued that procedurally they all ended in verdicts for contumacia, that is, verdicts for not having appeared in court. Mitteis assumed that all these noble defendants preferred not to stand trial, either because in headstrong defiance they refused to accept the king’s justice or because they knew their defense to be hopeless, thus admitting their guilt.
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- Information
- Medieval Concepts of the PastRitual, Memory, Historiography, pp. 89 - 110Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002