Law and the peasant: rural society and justice in Carolingian Italy
Giuseppe Albertoni
Comparative analysis of the most important Carolingian‐period Italian placiti dealing with defence freedom allows us to reconstruct approach taken by various large monasteries as they attempted transform their landholding into coercive power over people, converting dependent freemen slaves. Similarly, it reveals strenuous mounted who were thus threatened, clearly perfectly aware that a downgrading legal status would be far more serious for them than an economic downgrading. It also permits sites representation public power, in which ideological model king ‘protector weak’ was often scuppered ability many potentes use own advantage either presence royal officials, or those very processes supposed guarantee protection pauperes.
Early Medieval Europe