Family Trees and the Roots of Politics

Articles on the significance of genealogy and kinship ties in determining political events in the middle ages.In recent decades historians have become increasingly aware of the value of prosopography as an auxiliary science standing at the crossroads between anthropology, genealogy, demography and social history. It is now developing as an independent research discipline of real benefit to medievalists. The geographically and chronologically wide-ranging subjects of the essays in this collection, by scholars from the British Isles and the Continent, are united bya common theme, namely the significance of genealogy and kinship ties in determining political events in the middle ages. The papers, including a review of the history of prosopography and some of its major successes as a method by Karl Ferdinand Werner, range from general considerations of prosopographical and genealogical methodology (including discussion of Anglo-Norman royal charters) to specific analyses of individual political and kinship groups (including the genealogy of the counts of Anjou and a rehabilitation of the prosopographical material in Wace's Roman de Rou). The main geographic focus is England and France from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, but other areas as diverse as Celtic Ireland and the Latin Principality of Antioch also come under prosopographical scrutiny. Contributors: DAVID E. THORNTON, ANNE WILLIAMS, C.P. LEWIS, DAVID BATES, ELISABETH VAN HOUTS, EMMA COWNIE, JUDITH GREEN, JOHN S. MOORE, K.S.B. KEATS-ROHAN, CHRISTIAN SETTIPANI, HUBERT GUILLOTEL, KATHLEEN THOMPSON, VERONIQUE GAZEAU, MICHEL BUR, ALAN V. MURRAY, DANIEL POWER.

Medieval genealog[ists] will find that this work provides valuable insight into the sources available, as well as into some of the pitfalls to be encountered in their use., The papers are of high quality and of significance to others in their fields., The fact that the editor is KSBKR suggests [these studies] will be both unorthodox and brilliant... [she] has used her considerable skills at diplomatics and textual criticism to question the perceived Norman cultural and administrative dominance in post-Conquest England... the essays are all meticulously crafted models of prosopographical research., A thought-provoking collection which deserves to be widely read.

Dr K S B Keats-Rohan is Director of the Linacre Unit for Prosopographical Research and Fellow of the European Humanities Research Centre, University of Oxford. Elisabeth van Houts is Honorary Professor of European Medieval History, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Emmanuel College. Dr K S B Keats-Rohan is Director of the Linacre Unit for Prosopographical Research and Fellow of the European Humanities Research Centre, University of Oxford.