Shaping Relations During the Middle Ages in Southwestern Europe

“This stimulating and rigorous volume offers a fresh perspective on the medieval western Mediterranean through the compelling lens of the centre/periphery relationship. Covering a full millennium of history, it brings together economic, political, social, and cultural insights with impressive clarity and intellectual depth. A significant and timely contribution to medieval studies.”  -Antoni Furió, Professor of Medieval History, University of Valencia, Spain This book deploys the analytic model of centres and peripheries to study medieval southwestern Europe and, more specifically, the Iberian Peninsula. Here, the reader will find engaging, up-to-date scholarship on the monastic management of landscapes and hydric resources; the diffusion of fishing techniques; the roles of epigraphy and consecrations in establishing territorial, cultural, and jurisdictional boundaries; the symbolic aspects of royal legitimacy in late antiquity; the identitarian and memorialistic strategies deployed by trans-national aristocratic dynasties; the expansion of corso-piracy in the Mediterranean; and the transformation in the organization of feudal landscapes.  Within this diversity of themes, the intrinsic tension between centres and peripheries serves as a common thread. This inherently comparative approach facilitates the construction of geographical and political systems, inter-regional hierarchies and connections, and, ultimately, a more comprehensive view of past societies. Indeed, medieval societies, territories, and cultures are particularly well-suited for these approaches due to the fragmented and highly localized nature of power, development of diverse languages and cultural systems, and exploitative nature of economic relations. Pol Bridgewater Mateu is an adjunct lecturer at the University of Barcelona, Spain. He holds a BA in History, MA in Medieval Cultures, and PhD in Medieval Cultures from that institution. Xavier Costa-Badia is a Serra Húnter Tenure-Eligible Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Barcelona, Spain. He holds a BA in History, MA in Medieval Cultures, and PhD in Medieval Cultures from that institution. Jaume Marcé Sánchez is an adjunct lecturer at the University of Barcelona, Spain. He holds a BA in History, MA in Medieval Cultures, and PhD in History from that institution. Laura Miquel Milian is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Valencia, Spain. She holds a BA in History and MA in Medieval Cultures from the University of Barcelona, and a PhD in History from the University of Girona.