Personal power
Rachel Stone
The role of personal power, derived from specific social relationships, has been a key theme early medieval research for several generations. German ‘new constitutional history’, which developed in the 1930s, saw such ties as to all structures: Carolingian empire, like its contemporaries, was Personenverbandsstaat (‘state’ based on rather than institutions). All forms power Germanic world, scholars argued, could be Herrschaft (lordship). This history paradigm now substantially undermined, although without entirely losing grip. Nevertheless, still agree that much society exercised and experienced through relationships between individuals. Whether these ‘personal’ were practice defined or marked by particular emotional closeness is different matter.
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