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