Building Legitimacy: Political Discourses and Forms of Legitimation in Medieval Societies

This volume presents a selection of papers exploring the ways by which medieval powers sought to legitimize themselves, the political discourses through which this was effected, and a wide range of related problems. The six chapters in Part I analyse particular cases in which processes of legitimation can be seen at work, in order to disentangle the wide range of strategies and resources deployed by competing actors in a given context. Part II gathers five articles discussing the specific discourses of legitimation contained in a text or group of related texts, in order to expose their intricacies and their bearing on the way historians look at their sources. The book is of relevance for readers interested in new ways of approaching the History of Power.
With contributions by Frances Andrews, Carlos Estepa, Paul Fouracre, Chris Given-Wilson, Piotr Górecki, Patrick Henriet, José Antonio Jara Fuente, Cristina Jular Pérez-Alfaro and Stephen D. White.
Contributors include: Paul Fouracre, Stephen White, Isabel Alfonso, Chris Given-Wilson, Cristina Jular Pérez-Alfaro, José Antonio Jara Fuente, Carlos Estepa, Julio Escalona, Piotr Górecki, Patrick Henriet, Frances Andrews.

Isabel Alfonso Antón, Ph.D. (1980) in Political Science, Universidad Complutense (Madrid), is Investigadora Científica at Instituto de Historia (CSIC), Madrid. Her research covers medieval rural history, the Cistercians, and legal and political culture, including the co-editing of Lucha política. Condena y legitimación en la España Medieval (Lyon, 2003).
Julio Escalona Monge, Ph.D. (1996) in Medieval History, Universidad Complutense (Madrid), is Investigador Contratado at Instituto de Historia (CSIC), Madrid. He has published on medieval territoriality, and on document forgeries and the invention of the past, and co-edited Lucha política. Condena y legitimación en la España Medieval (Lyon, 2003).
Hugh Kennedy is Professor of Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and has published extensively on the Islamic World in the Middle Ages, including The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates (London, 1986) and Muslim Spain and Portugal: a political history of al-Andalus (London, 1996).