Les stratégies du contrôle des territoires dans les romans du XIIe siècle : entre regnum et imperium
Strategies of Territorial Control in Twelfth-Century Romances: Between regnum and imperium

Author(s): Gîrbea Cătălina
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts, Political history, Social history, Modern Age
Published by: Editura Pro Universitaria
Keywords: empire; kingship; romance; territorial domination; political knowledge; theology
Summary/Abstract: Medieval intellectuals struggled to articulate clear definitions for the two dominant forms of government in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: empire (imperium) and kingship (regnum). Whereas the strategies associated with the regnum display a degree of conceptual coherence in scholarly writings, imperium remained more elusive, as medieval authors could not fully equate it with the Roman Empire and instead understood it as a hybrid between regnum and imperium. This ambiguity applied both to the Holy Roman Empire of the Germans and to kingdoms expanded through armed conquest, such as the Plantagenêt realms. The romances written in the twelfth century and the early thirteenth century partly reflect these scholarly uncertainties. This article examines the forms of territorial domination through which scholars articulated and shared their political and theological knowledge.

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