The Officer and the People

Accountability and Authority in Pre-Modern Europe

Edited by María Ángeles Martín Romera and Hannes Ziegler

Studies of the German Historical Institute, London

Introduces approaches from across Europe that are rarely published together
Features research across both the medieval and the early modern periods which are often not studied in tandem
Brings a new and innovative approach to the history of state-building from below
For students, it offers an overview of relevant historiography and new trends in fields rarely accessible in English language

The Officer and the People

Accountability and Authority in Pre-Modern Europe

Edited by María Ángeles Martín Romera and Hannes Ziegler

Studies of the German Historical Institute, London

Description

This volume focuses on the relationship between officers and local communities in premodern Europe. Its starting point is that communities played a central role in holding officers to account and thereby contributed fundamentally to shaping premodern rule and authority. The volume's main aims are to further our understanding of popular political participation in premodern practices of officers' accountability, and to shift the emphasis in the study of premodern bureaucracy to the agency of the people. The essays in the volume address different mechanisms of accountability in various geographical and chronological contexts, bridging the traditional gap between medieval and early modern studies. Yet none offers a traditional study of officers using institutional and prosopographical approaches. Instead they all shift the focus to the people in their various communities and their interactions with representatives of central authority. Taking a bottom-up perspective, the essays thus highlight the role of the people as key actors who exerted tangible and visible control over the officers' behaviour, their self-image, and individual scope for action. Ultimately, therefore, the volume contributes to the debate about state-formation from below.

The Officer and the People

Accountability and Authority in Pre-Modern Europe

Edited by María Ángeles Martín Romera and Hannes Ziegler

Studies of the German Historical Institute, London

1. Local Communities and Central Officers: The Rise of Public Accountability, María Ángeles Martín Romera and Hannes Ziegler
2. 'Testify Against Me': The Use of Biblical Exegesis in Holding the Bishop to Account in Thirteenth-Century England, Philippa Byrne
3. The Emperor between Person and Institution: Officer, Office, and Accountability in Dante's Imperial Thinking, John Sabapathy
4. The Prince, his Officer, and the Community: How Secular Inquisitorial Procedures brought against Officers Contributed to Community-Building in the Thirteenth-Century Comtat Venaissin, Laure Verdon
5. Rules, Norms, and Instructions for the Venetian rettori in the Subject Dominions: Between Central Authority and Local Communities (Thirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries), Alessandra Rizzi
6. Purga de taula and other Procedures of Royal Officers' Accountability in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (Fourteenth Century), Alexandra Beauchamp
7. The Will of the Town: Popular Politics and the Control of Local Governments in Late Medieval Castile, Hipólito Rafael Oliva Herrer
8. Royal Judicial Officials Held to Account by Local Communities in Early Sixteenth-Century Portugal: Fact or Fiction?, Adelaide Costa
9. Controlling Officials: Judicial and Administrative Practices in Early Modern Italian States, Marco Bellabarba
10. People and Sergeants: Accountability and the Co-Construction of Order in Early Modern Paris (Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries), Diane Roussel
11. War Administration: Subjects, Local Officers, and the Contribution System in the Thirty Years War, Johannes Kraus
12. Empowered Citizens and Questioned Officers: A Social and Anthropological Perspective on the juicios de residencia in Spain (Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries), María Ángeles Martín Romera
13. The Spanish Visita Procedure as a Social Phenomenon, Sébastien Malaprade
14. Customs Officers and Local Communities: Informing in Late Seventeenth-Century England, Hannes Ziegler
15. Petition Campaigns and Public Order: Negotiating Administrative Accountability in Early Eighteenth-Century Germany, Niels Grüne
Index

The Officer and the People

Accountability and Authority in Pre-Modern Europe

Edited by María Ángeles Martín Romera and Hannes Ziegler

Studies of the German Historical Institute, London

Author Information

María Ángeles Martín Romera, Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, annes Ziegler, Research Fellow for Early Modern British History, German Historical Institute

María Ángeles Martín Romera is a Lecturer in Medieval History at the Complutense University of Madrid. She works on the social history and political culture of the later Middle Ages and the early modern period in Mediterranean Europe. From 2018 to 2020 she was a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at University College London. She has published on late medieval oligarchies, patronage, kinship, women's agency, social networks, and corruption from the late medieval to the early modern period.

Hannes Ziegler is Principal Investigator in a research project on 'Common Informing' at LMU Munich. From 2016 to 2021 he was a Research Fellow in Early Modern History at the German Historical Institute London. He has worked on the history of the British Customs in the eighteenth century and has also published on the history of the Holy Roman Empire.

Contributors:

Alexandra Beauchamp, University of Limoges
Marco Bellabarba, University of Trento
Philippa Byrne, University of Oxford
Adelaide Costa, Universidade Aberta / Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Niels Grüne, University of Innsbruck
Johannes Kraus, Goethe University Frankfurt
Sébastien Malaprade, University of Paris-Est-Créteil
María Ángeles Martín Romera, Complutense University of Madrid
Hipolito Rafael Oliva Herrer, University of Seville
Alessandra Rizzi, Ca' Foscari University of Venice
Diane Roussel, Université Gustave Eiffel
John Sabapathy, UCL
Laure Verdon, Aix-Marseille University
Hannes Ziegler, LMU Munich