René Arnsburg > Recent Status Updates

Es gibt Bücher, in denen blättert man zwischendurch vor, um zu sehen, wann man das Kapitel endlich überstanden hat und dann gibt es Bücher, da macht man das, um zu sehen, worauf man sich noch freuen darf.

Poah ist das gut

It's truly hard to believe that in dealing with developments in England, Wickham almost at the end of this books is concerned with questions of land ownership, wealth creation, the changing position of the peasantry.

Did you know that Otto I. most likely didn't speak Latin when in Rome to assert dominance because he spoke Saxon as the new ruler and didn't want to embarrass himself publicly by not having full command of conversational Latin? I didn't, but Chris Wickham does.

"Intellectuals and politics" could have been a chapter 3 pages long if Wickham would have spared us the seemingly endless examples of who wrote what letter to which bishop and what pamphlet has been copied and circulated by whom. Chris, we already realised that you know all the names and that you'd've been the one in the world of Carolingian politics.

Given that the Carolingian Century was a shorter time period the amount of successive royal family members is severely restricted (not that Wickham wouldn't resort to telling the family stories of some lower aristocrats old smart ass he is), he at least gave an impression of the structural renovation in the United Carolingian empire.

Finally our master historian seems to concern himself with questions of economy. But after 2/3 of the book one is well prepared to avoid further disappointments. When he is tempted to provide some generalizations or further analysis he restricts himself on the spot since nothing can be said other than plain facts (selected by Wickham himself).

Another 30 pages of endless anecdotes of which king did what with which general and which writer wrote what about it. The really interesting question of why and how landed property in Al Andalus changed the curse of events compared to eastern Muslim kingdoms of course does not bother Wickham beyond a superficial description of events. I am only finishing this book because I'm a dedicated hater.

We're back at the Leos and Constantines but at least at the end of the chapter he describes that localized aristocratic power could not assert itself as it did in the West.

Leo, Justin and Constantine are now being replaced by Uthman, Umar and Ali but at least the early Arab unification and Muslim conquests are something I have to read more about to keep it in my mind.

In "Byzantine Survival" the Dagoberts, Aethelreds and Cuthberts of the west are being replaced by a narrative of Constantines, Leos and Justins. At least he gives an implicit understanding of the importance of the Iconoclasm in a centralising and militarising Byzantium (with the worshipping of icons central religious institutions potentially lost importance)

Chapter 10 "The power of the visual" comparing in the main 4 monumental churches and palatial buildings could be interesting for art and cultural science students (which means not for me for the essence that rulers used huge buildings according to their available resources for a display of power isn't that deep of an analysis)

And yet another descriptive chapter on economy which dares to mention slaves in a few instances but excludes them from the broader analysis nonetheless.

So far so usual, the political and sometimes social history of the epoch. I am curious whether marxism will enter the book in the next chapter on "wealth, exchange and peasant society"