Land and Lordship: Structures of Governance in Medieval Austria (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780812281835)

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.

Author: Otto Brunner
ISBN-10: 0812281837
ISBN-13: 9780812281835
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Language: English
Published: 04/29/1992
Pages: 498
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.81lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.06d