The year 1000 in Europe

Over the course of the last couple of generation European scholars (and particularly historians) have spent more time and nervous energy worrying about the meaning of L’an mil than their tenth-century predecessors ever did. Much may be said to have been gained through this academic process. However, it has come to centre increasingly on issues of governance and identity within an unargued framework of big government.

It is time for a change of focus. Most aspects of government in Latin Europe remained small-scale and relatively local in the central Middle Ages, although the growth of national government and its machinery was developing in some parts of that world in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

A useful beginning will be to consider the origins, the subsequent focuses, and the present results of scholarly attractions to the millennial era in European history: in that way the researcher will be thoroughly grounded in the initial motives, the developing preconceptions, and any ideological and teleological biases. Also still central to the discourse of scholarly millennialists is a conviction that central mediaeval society can be described as ‘feudal’. A great deal of such baggage will probably need to be discarded at a quite early stage of the research.

Thereafter, positive focus on a range of specific topics will form the essence of the work: in that, local, regional, and ethnic identities will be important, as will the questions of the robber-baron and access to justice in tenth- and eleventh-century societies.