Timothy Reuter - Germany in the Early Middle Ages c. 800–1056

Longman History of Germany

Germany in the early middle ages c. 8001056
Timothy Reuter

Germany under the Old Regime, 16001790
John Gagliardo

Germany in the
early middle ages
c. 8001056

Timothy Reuter

First published 1991 by Addison Wesley Longman Limited
Fourth impression 1998

Published 2013 by Routledge
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Copyright 1991, Taylor & Francis.

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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-49034-5 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Reuter, Timothy.
Germany in the early Middle Ages c. 8001056
1. Germany 8431519
I. Title
943.02

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reuter, Timothy.
Germany in the early middle ages, c. 800-1056/Timothy Reuter.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Germany History T 843. 2. Germany History 8431273.
I. Title.
DD126.R48 1991
943-dc20
90-46393
CIP

Nemo autem a nobis sententias aut moralitates expectet.

Otto of Freising,
Chronica, prologue to Book 2

Selbstverstndlich wird man immer eine eindeutige Entscheidung suchen, und das tue ich im folgenden auch. Aber man mu dabei zusehen, wieweit es berhaupt mglich ist, sie zu finden, und jenes Suchen scheint mix hufig in die Irre zu fhren, indem es etwas wissen will und u. U. auch zu wissen vorgibt, was man nicht wissen kann.

Martin Lintzel
Miszellen zur Geschichte des zehnten Jahrhunderts

This book is the first part of a history of Germany in the early and high middle ages. The present volume stops on the eve of the great crisis of the late eleventh century; many early eleventh-century developments which were to become of real significance only during this crisis have been merely noted here, and will be treated more fully in a successor volume. This is intended to take the story on to the mid fourteenth century, when Golden Bull and Black Death provide a convenient place to stop. The book is an attempt by someone who has been trained and has worked in both an English-speaking and a German-speaking scholarly environment to convey and interpret the work of the latter to the former. This has not always been easy. I find that my vulgar English pragmatism has prevented me from believing too strongly in some of the more ethereal constructions of German medieval scholarship, but readers in the Anglo-Saxon world may still find some of what remains ethereal enough. Besides this, the political implications of the German middle ages are not so easily dismissed, even today. As a politically conscious being who currently lives in Germany I have my own views on the German present and the way in which the German past has led to it, but I have tried not to let these intrude into my account of the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries. Still less have I felt tempted to interpret such obvious Good Things as Charles the Great or Otto I as prototypes for whatever policy is currently fashionable, having seen how often (and for what different policies) this has been done in the past.