Book Review

Privileges of immunity (the common law "franchise") prohibited agents of a power from entering a given territory to exercise certain fiscal or judicial functions. Negotiating Space traces the history of immunities in the medieval West from their origins through the eleventh century. This is a complicated story, principally because of the broad definition that Rosenwein--wisely--applies. Thus she examines not just immunities, but also exemptions: the removal of ecclesiastical institutions from the normal jurisdiction of the local bishop. Immunities and exemptions are usually studied separately; Rosenwein shows convincingly why this should not be the case. Her willingness to ignore this and other boundaries allows her to go beyond a traditional history of legal institutions and diplomatic forms to offer a wide-ranging study of changing notions of sacred and prohibited space. While it is essential reading for anyone interested in questions of law, power, and politics in the early Middle Ages, Rosenwein's forays into anthropological literature and Anglo-American legal history recommend this work to a wider audience.	1
The earliest charters of immunity and exemption emerged from the courts of the late sixth- and early seventh-century Merovingian rulers. These drew on elements of Roman and early canon law traditions, but represented something new, reflecting a growing concern with the independence of monasteries and with the sacrosanct nature of altars and monastic enclosures. Over the course of the century they became a regular and essential part of Frankish governance. Thus when the Carolingians introduced a new conception of rule in the eighth century, immunities and exemptions did not disappear; they were, however, radically transformed, becoming linked to the notion of protection. Protection implied control, and this led to closer involvement of kings and bishops in the affairs of immune and exempt institutions. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, immunities and exemptions changed yet again, following several different paths: the language of immunity appeared in royal licenses to construct castles and grants of jurisdiction (bannum, districtus); the papacy began to issue immunities, and then to combine immunity and exemption; the sacralization of territory reemerged with the Peace of God movement and the creation of sacred spaces around (not just within) churches and monasteries. In a final chapter, Rosenwein considers the history of the notion that "a man's house is his castle," offering a rapid survey of English franchises up through the origins of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The principal lesson of this evolutionary strand of the book is that the meanings and functions of immunity and exemption changed over time. Historians have traditionally discussed "the" immunity; Rosenwein's work will prevent us from doing so again.	2
Negotiating Space is not, however, a simple chronological consideration of the development of early medieval immunities, for Rosenwein is equally concerned "to show how they are rich and polyvalent sources, how they served social and political strategies far beyond their surface meanings, and how the negotiations, conflicts, and accords that they variously embodied, reflected, diffused, and/or affirmed changed under different circumstances and at different times" (5). Immunities provided opportunities for the resolution of social tensions. Their functions might be economic (redistributing resources), religious (associating the grantor with sources of divine power), political (affirming or dissolving alliances)--or all of these together. These functions might be viewed differently by grantor and immunist, and they might change from one generation to the next. This sort of analysis requires a contextual approach, and Rosenwein devotes much of this work to discussing "nodal moments" where she can analyze immunities and exemptions alongside related documents. She offers often masterful reconstructions based on very thin documentation of the intricate circumstances that gave rise to individual privileges--such as immunities for the monasteries of Tussonval in 696 and Salonnes in 777--or policies of granting privileges--such as those of Chrodegang of Metz, aristocratic factions at the Merovingian court, Berengar I of Italy, or Cluny and the Papacy.	3
Of course, as Rosenwein herself has helped to show (To Be the Neighbor of Saint Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny's Property, 909–1049 [Ithaca, 1989]), many legal documents can be read in this way. What is particularly interesting, then, about immunities? Historians have seen them as a sign of weakness: in giving up jurisdictional control, for example, kings paved the way for feudal decentralization. Rosenwein argues, however, that in granting an immunity or an exemption, a ruler exercised power. The demonstration of self-restraint implicit in such a grant, its nature as a gift, and the consequent connections with secular and divine power all provided a ruler with prestige. Through immunities, Merovingian rulers managed alliances and channeled resources away from bishops to monasteries. By granting exemptions, bishops showed that they ultimately controlled access. The Carolingian fusion of immunity and protection/control simply made this duality explicit. On this point, Rosenwein turns for support to recent anthropological discussions of the Polynesian tapu (taboo), which describe a power that is simultaneously bound, binding, and burdensome. Rosenwein often seems more interested in explicating contexts than in demonstrating how this idea plays out consistently in her sources. But if it is not always convincingly presented, this conception of power offers a wonderful foundation for future discussions. As she writes, "If we drop the attempt to judge whether medieval kings were 'strong' or 'weak' and try instead to understand what assumptions they and their associates made about the uses and abuses of power, the early Middle Ages suddenly becomes extremely lively and inventive" (215).	4
While Rosenwein makes creative use of hagiographical and liturgical material, her sources are principally early medieval charters, and she deftly works her way through the dense thickets of German and French scholarship that surround almost every one. These sources force her to take a Francocentric approach and to give little space to the problem of lay immunities. Perhaps because of this, the coda on English franchises and the presentist effort to link the early medieval immunity to the origins of the Fourth Amendment come across as forced. But this final chapter does allow Rosenwein to raise some fundamental issues about medieval political theory, if only in a few tantalizing sentences in the conclusion. Let us hope that her future work will develop these ideas further.	5
Adam J. Kosto Columbia University

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