Social complexity and weak states. The forms of governance in Western Europe between the eighth and eleventh centuries

Abstract

The politics of land were central to the weaving of polities and to political practice in the early Middle Ages but while their dynamics are well understood, their material bases are less so. Following recent work on fiscal and royal goods, the aim of this paper is to reassess the economic bases supporting royal power in the Kingdom of León in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. In order to do so, and after a brief review of the nature of the landed resources available to the kings, this paper analyses the patrimonies and trajectories of a number of aristocrats who were originally from peripheral regions of the Kingdom, and even from beyond its confines, and joined the kings’ service at a moment of deep political crisis around the year 1000. As others, they benefited from royal grants. However, they had no previous history of landholding in the area and were particularly dependent on the resources they got from the kings or as a result of their actions as royal officials. A detailed study of their holdings reveals that the landed resources on which the kings relied constituted an ensemble of assets more extensive and complex than has so far been considered.