This article examines the office of advocate at the abbey of Saint‐Martin of Tours. It studies what was regionally distinctive about its emergence there in the late ninth century and suggests a reason for the office’s demise in the early tenth century. In doing so, it draws out the important discursive shifts which were part and parcel of both the…[Read more]

The development of ducal authority in tenth‐century Aquitaine was a major change in the region’s political culture. The emergence of a regional, aristocratic polity was a shift from the Carolingian past, and historians have proffered several explanations for it. This article examines several models for the development of principalities: as the e…[Read more]

In 965, Count Arnulf the Great of Flanders died, leaving a small child as his only heir. In the wake of his death, the West Frankish King Lothar annexed his southern lands for the crown. This paper examines how and why Lothar was able to succeed in this. By the 950s, the Flemish count was diplomatically isolated and facing threats to his southern…[Read more]

In this essay, I consider the ideal ascetic leader depicted in the Life of Moses attributed to Gregory of Nyssa: that leader is not a bishop, but a leader who has more experience with the day-to-day struggles of monks, particularly the kind of struggles described by Evagrius and writers influenced by him.