Ein Reich ohne König? Akzeptanz, Deutung und Repräsentation königlicher Herrschaft im regnum Italicum zwischen dem 11. und 12. Jahrhundert. By ÉtienneDoublier. Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Schriften84. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. 2024. LXXIV + 666 pp.; 45 colour figures and 10 b/w maps. €115. ISBN 978 3 447 12274 0.
Year: 2025
Type: book-review
Abstract: The volume under review is the published version of the author's habilitation thesis (Habiliationsschrift), submitted to the University of Cologne in the summer semester of 2023.For those unacquainted with the genre, the habilitation is a second thesis, traditionally required in order to be eligible for a professorial chair in Germany (as in much of mainland Europe).It is typically longer and more ambitious than the doctoral thesis; it also normally needs to be in a second subfield, in order to demonstrate breadth and depth of expertise.Weighing ina verb I used advisedlyat some 740 pages, with individual chapters of almost monographic length, Doublier's book certainly betrays its origins within the vaunted German habilitation process (Habilitationsverfahren).But while this has an unfortunate tendency to produce bloated works of questionable scholarly value, Doublier's is a testament to the system firing on all cylinders.For it is a truly superb piece of scholarship, which will have a lasting impact on the field.Doublier has chosen as his subject politics within the kingdom of Italy (the 'realm without a king' of his main title) in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.As he notes, this is a sorely neglected subject.For though the politics of the Italian realm in the ninth and tenth centuries have attracted much interest in recent years, from the likes of François Bougard, Wolfgang Huschner and Stefano Mangarano (on whose works Doublier gratefully draws), this dops off precipitously as we move into the eleventh century.By this point, Italian scholarship starts to lose interest in high-level politics within the peninsula, focusing instead on the local power structures which would dominate the region in years to come (above all, the pre-history of the later communes).German historians, meanwhile, tend only to treat the Italian kingdom insofar as it promises a better understanding of ideals and practices of rule north of the Alps (one thinks here of the work of Tilman Struve and Stefan Early Medieval Europe 2025
Source: Early Medieval Europe
DOI: 10.1111/emed.70010
Author: Levi Roach
Institution: University of Exeter
Language: English
Subfield: Classics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W7106411652
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