The Peasant Rusticus: Life near Paris in the Time of Clovis
David Powell
With that final sentence of her essay on Bodo, a Carolingian-era peasant near Paris, Power announced the arrival common man scene popular historiography, genre was then dominated by examinations famous men and their deeds. 2 Among medievalists, needs little introduction. Medieval People, most work, has had ten editions numerous reprints since its original publication in 1924. 3 The first profiles titled, ―The Peasant Bodo: Life Country Estate time Charlemagne,‖ remains fixture reading lists history undergraduates. Bodo an unlikely revolutionary. A dutiful serf ecclesiastical estate, rebellious thought attributes to him is wish ―the [estate] house all land were at bottom sea,‖ expressed as he ―shivers shakes rime from his beard‖ while plowing abbot’s fields midwinter morning. 4 It expressing such feelings all, if only through speculations historian writing eleven centuries later, became early standard bearer for masses so-called ―ordinary people‖ ―everyday lives‖ have so thoroughly occupied generations social historians Power’s time. These efforts benefited modern readers giving new illumination, color, depth narratives once rendered flatly political, military, or economic hues. study Late Antiquity, which sought shed additional light transition world classical antiquity Middle Ages, reaped particularly large benefits rise historiography. Indeed, it does not seem unreasonable claim without perspective, Antiquity might exist separate field (a distinction must
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