CITIES AND TOWN The medieval city.pdf

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Series Foreword
and fifteenth centuries within contexts whose importance has sometimes
been blurred or ignored in past studies. An episode of apparently only
moderate significance, a feudal lord’s seizure of his vassal’s land for harboring
his mortal enemy, sparked the Hundred Years War, yet on the face
of it the event should not have led inevitably to war. But the lord was
the king of France and the vassal the king of England, who resented losing
his claim to the French throne to his Valois cousin. The land in dispute,
extending roughly from Bordeaux to the Pyrenees mountains, was
crucial coastline for the economic interests of both kingdoms. The series
of skirmishes, pitched battles, truces, stalemates, and diplomatic wrangling
that resulted from the confiscation of English Aquitaine by the
French form the narrative of this Anglo-French conflict, which was in
fact not given the name Hundred Years War until the nineteenth century.
Fraioli emphasizes how dismissing women’s inheritance and succession
rights came at the high price of unleashing discontent in their male heirs,
including Edward III, Robert of Artois, and Charles of Navarre. Fraioli
also demonstrates the centrality of side issues, such as Flemish involvement
in the war, the peasants’ revolts that resulted from the costs of the
war, and Joan of Arc’s unusually clear understanding of French “sacred
kingship.” Among the primary sources provided are letters from key players
such as Edward III, Etienne Marcel, and Joan of Arc; a supply list for
towns about to be besieged; and a contemporary poem by the celebrated
scholar and court poet Christine de Pizan in praise of Joan of Arc.
Magna Carta, by Katherine Drew, is a detailed study of the importance
of the Magna Carta in comprehending England’s legal and constitutional
history. Providing a model for the rights of citizens found in the United
States Declaration of Independence and Constitution’s first ten amendments,
the Magna Carta has had a role in the legal and parliamentary
history of all modern states bearing some colonial or government connection
with the British Empire. Constructed at a time when modern nations
began to appear, in the early thirteenth century, the Magna Carta
(signed in 1215) presented a formula for balancing the liberties of the
people with the power of modern governmental institutions. This unique
English document influenced the growth of a form of law (the English
common law) and provided a vehicle for the evolution of representative
(parliamentary) government. Drew demonstrates how the Magna Carta
came to be—the roles of the Church, the English towns, barons, com-