| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.3

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 300 words from this article are provided below; about 663 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Europe: Ancient and Medieval

Matthew Innes. State and Society in the Early Middle Ages: The Middle Rhine Valley, 400–1000. (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, number 47.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 2000. Pp. xvi, 316. $64.95.

This book is presented as a regional study of the middle Rhine, drawing on a "database" of some 4,000 Carolingian charters that are billed as permitting a unique reconstruction of politics and society and a radical revision of our approach to the conventional sources of the early Middle Ages. The charters in question—mainly deeds, abbreviated, purged of superfluous detail, and copied into cartularies from Fulda and, in particular, Lorsch—are well known and have long been studied; the twelfth-century Lorsch Codex, which furnishes the bulk of the documents, was even provided with a German translation in the 1960s. These circumstances might suggest problems in deriving from such evidence new and radical insights. Matthew Innes acknowledges the laconic character of the sources and their "mind-numbingly formulaic tradition"; he frequently complains of them being "too opaque" to serve the purposes to which he wishes to put them. But the author's ambition is undeterred by this inconvenience and by the scope imposed by the chronological or geographical limits of source material. The book's perspective envelops the post-Carolingian as well as the late Roman and Merovingian periods, despite the observation that the "internal organization of the Merovingian middle Rhine must remain shadowy, given the lack of evidence." Shadows quickly vanish in the author's exposition, which takes the form of a dubious thesis recklessly applied not just to the Rhineland but the medieval West. Banishing the concepts of office, jurisdiction, and territorial administration from the early Middle Ages, Innes replaces them with notions of autonomous local power, personal association, ritual, and charisma. . . .

There are about 663 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.