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What is History? series
Peter Burke, What is Cultural History? 2nd edition Peter Burke, What is the History of Knowledge? John C. Burnham, What is Medical History? Pamela Kyle Crossley, What is Global History? Pero Gaglo Dagbovie, What is African American History? Shane Ewen, What is Urban History? Christiane Harzig and Dirk Hoerder, with Donna Gabaccia, What is Migration History? J. Donald Hughes, What is Environmental History? 2nd edition Andrew Leach, What is Architectural History? Stephen Morillo with Michael F. Pavkovic, What is Military History? 3rd edition James Raven, What is the History of the Book? Sonya O. Rose, What is Gender History? Barbara H. Rosenwein and Riccardo Cristiani, What is the History of Emotions? Hannu Salmi, What is Digital History? Brenda E. Stevenson, What is Slavery? Jeffrey Weeks, What is Sexual History? Richard Whatmore, What is Intellectual History? Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, What is Early Modern History?
What is Medieval History?
Second Edition
John H. Arnold
polity
Copyright © John H. Arnold 2021
The right of John H. Arnold to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2008 by Polity Press
This edition published in 2021 by Polity Press
Polity Press
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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3258-2
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Arnold, John, 1969- author.
Title: What is medieval history? / John H. Arnold.
Description: Second edition. | Medford, MA : Polity Press, 2021. | Series: What is history? | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “A rich and compelling overview of the sources and methods used by medieval historians”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020013070 (print) | LCCN 2020013071 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509532551 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509532568 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509532582 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Middle Ages. | Middle Ages--Study and teaching. | Medievalists.
Classification: LCC D117 .A72 2020 (print) | LCC D117 (ebook) | DDC 940.1072--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020013070 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020013071
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
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Dedication
This one is for Alex
Preface to the Second Edition
The primary purpose in producing a second edition is to include some new and additional material that relates to methods and debates that have become more prominent over the decade-and-a-bit since I wrote the original book. This mainly consists of expansions to sections within Chapter 3, and a new section on ‘Globalisms’ in Chapter 4. As the original introduction admits, ‘my coverage tends towards western Europe’, and this is still the case; but the original did already reach out to a wider geography on occasion, and I have here attempted to expand upon that enlarged sense of ‘the medieval’.
I have also taken the opportunity to amend the text in minor ways in some other places, for greater clarity of expression and to include some additional examples where they are particularly illuminating. As with the original book, I remain deeply indebted to a host of colleagues and their work for my understanding of the middle ages; I should note, in particular, conversations with Ulf Büntgen, Matthew Collins, Pat Geary, Caroline Goodson, Monica Green, Eyal Poleg and Peter Sarris regarding recent work in science and archaeology. I am grateful to Pascal Porcheron at Polity for prompting my further work, and for the careful labours of Ellen MacDonald-Kramer, Sarah Dancy and others involved in its production. This second edition remains a work that aims to introduce ‘the medieval’, not in any sense claiming fully to represent it, or the fullness of its study.
Preface and Acknowledgements
This is a book about what historians of the middle ages do, rather than a history of the middle ages itself, though it will also provide a sense of that period. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of the historian’s task, and the conditions of its possibility. Chapter 1 discusses the idea of ‘the middle ages’ and its associations, and the foundational contours of academic medievalism. Chapter 2 looks at sources, the possibilities and problems that they present to the historian. Chapter 3 examines intellectual tools which medievalists have borrowed from other subject areas, and the insights they provide. Chapter 4 tries to indicate the shape of some key and broad-ranging discussions in current historiography. The final chapter addresses the very purpose of medieval history – its present
