Land and lordship
Subtitle: structures of governance in medieval Austria
By: Otto Brunner ; translated from the fourth, revised edition ; translation and introduction by Howard Kaminsky and James Van Horn Melton.
Series: Middle Ages series
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 1992
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 425
Subjects: Feudalism -- Austria -- History -- To 1500.; Feudalism -- Germany -- Bavaria -- History -- To 1500.; Constitutional history -- Austria.; Constitutional history -- Germany -- Bavaria.; Constitutional history, Medieval.
Description: Otto Brunner contends that prevailing notions of medieval social and constitutional history had been shaped by the nineteenth-century nation state and its "liberal" order. Whereas a sharp distinction between the public and the private might be appropriate to descriptions of contemporary society, such a dichotomy could not be projected back onto the Middle Ages. Focusing particularly on forms of lordship in late medieval Austria, Brunner found neither a "state" in the modern sense nor any distinction between the public and private spheres. Behind the apparent disorder of late medieval political life, however, Brunner discovered a coherent legal and constitutional order rooted in the the rights and obligations of noble lordship. In carefully reconstructing this order, Brunner's study weaves together social, legal, constitutional, and intellectual history.--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [369]-412) and index.
Translation of: Land und Herrschaft.