Brittany in the Early Middle Ages

Texts and Societies

Wendy Davies

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000950885
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This volume focuses on Wendy Davies's work on early medieval Breton texts and their implications. Beginning with core analyses of the Redon and Landévennec cartularies, it continues with papers that tease out some of the key social implications of the 9th-century Redon material - on the nature of political power, on rural communities, on the settlement of disputes, and on transmission of property. While the Redon charters have long been known as a source of fundamental importance for Breton history, the author's database (established in the 1980s) allowed much greater understanding of the role of individuals - at all social levels, and particularly peasant level - than had previously been possible. Attention to the detail of the east Breton past also includes papers on some of the results of her fieldwork, on building stone in particular. Early medieval Brittany is not merely interesting in itself (and it is certainly not some Celtic backwater): Breton evidence can usefully be differentiated from the evidence of other Celtic areas and has a significant role in wider issues of European history. As well as papers on the familiar themes of kingship, rulership, cult sites and cemeteries, the final section highlights the distinctive quality of the Breton evidence for the protection of sacred and personal space, for slavery and serfdom and for village-level courts.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Publisher’s Note
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• I The composition of the Redon cartulary
• II Forgery in the Cartulaire de Redon
• III Les chartes du cartulaire de Landévennec
• IV On the distribution of political power in Brittany in the mid-ninth century
• V Priests and rural communities in East Brittany in the ninth century
• VI Disputes, their conduct and their settlement in the village communities of eastern Brittany in the ninth century
• VII People and places in dispute in ninth-century Brittany
• VIII Suretyship in the Cartulaire du Redon
• IX Intra-family transactions in south-eastern Brittany: the dossier from Redon
• X Wynebwerth et enepuuert: l’entretien des épouses dans la Bretagne du IXe siècle
• XI A note on ville names and settlement development in the Morbihan
• XII Field survey and the problem of surface scatters of building material: some east Breton evidence
• XIII Surface scatters ofbuilding stone: enhancing field survey work
• XIV Ecclesiastical centres and secular society in the Brittonic world in the tenth and eleventh centuries
• XV ‘Protected space’ in Britain and Ireland in the middle ages
• XVI Celtic kingships in the early middle ages
• XVII Alfred’s contemporaries: Irish, Welsh, Scots and Breton
• XVIII On servile status in the early Middle Ages
• XIX Local participation and legal ritual in early medieval law courts
• Index