Featured Reviews Thomas N. Bisson . The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government . Princeton : Princeton University Press . 2009 . Pp. xxviii, 677. $39.50.
R. I. Moore
For almost a century now more or less everyone who has written about the twelfth portrayed it, correctly, as time of great constructive endeavor when foundations Europe's future predominance were laid. A signal and salutary achievement this book is to remind us how nearly they not, but that not Thomas N. Bisson's chief purpose. Rather he wants show Latin Europe period in its own terms, wie es eigentlich gewesen ist. Above all means—as indeed it must for any age—understanding exercise (or, Bisson prefers, experience) power from perspective those suffered well possessed it. To do so, rightly insists, we discard thought consequences, jettison vocabulary, priorities, hindsight—the anachronistic notions government (as consciously directed public ends), politics (strictly understood reconciliation legitimately conflicting interests), rational efficient administration. In their place stands lordship (“personal command over dependent people … peasants, knights vassals” [p. 3]), effectively alone, form assumed means by which was exercised, self-aggrandizement sole object. Thus, take one example among many far obvious, however excitably posterity may have hailed Henry I an architect English state, himself, maintains, sought envisaged no higher broader goal than maintenance extension his personal lordship. He did conceive kingly status conferring office (in antithesis lordship) might impose obligations on him, endure independently him. His men, including famous “new men,” officers held account discharge acknowledged functions, “those with whom content share proceeds lordship,” “for practical purposes, inner, curial circle trusted aides, outer tenants-in-chief” (p. 180).
The American Historical Review