Lordship in Ninth-Century Francia: The Case of Bishop Hincmar of Laon and his Followers
Charles West
The notion of lordship has long played a role as backdrop to research on honourable forms dependence in the Latin West during Middle Ages, but recent work further emphasized its importance for understanding exercise power, and social history more broadly this period. 1 Encouraged by Susan Reynolds’s broadside against over-schematized ideas vassalage feudalism, medieval historians have sought extricate themselves from legalist interpretations society, many turned instead. 2 Yet such move produced some significant uncertainties disagreements. Among most prominent these is whether Carolingian Francia was society already permeated lordship, or age only really began after turn first millennium. This article seeks contribute towards clarifying issue examining especially revealing evidence late ninth-century northern relations between Frankish bishop, Hincmar Laon (died 879), his secular followers. 3 material provides an opportunity consider closely what mean how, when, they should use term, weigh up implications involved. In follows, I shall concentrate English-language work, cognate words other languages distinctive traditions connotations, though, we see, linguistic barriers been very far impermeable. 4
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