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cost of any significant factual inaccuracy. Though there are certainly moments
when it veers in this direction, the narrative is not dominated by the traditional,
Third Republic interpretation of French history as the making of 'modern France' -
the creation of the centralized, nation state. Goubert is receptive to the existence of
numerous other currents running through French history, and of the dangers of im-
posing a single, inflexible interpretation upon a complex mass of frequently con-
tradictory evidence. It is impossible to come away from the book without a sense of
the diversity of French historical development, and in this respect at least, the study
is a worthy tribute to its author.
New College, Oxford DAVID PARROTT

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The Feudal Transformation, 900-1200. By Jean-Pierre Poly and Eric
Bournazel. Translated by Caroline Higgitt. New York: Holmes & Meier.
1990. xvii + 404 pp. S3995- ISBN 0 8419 1167 3.
Ten years after its appearance in French The Feudal Transformation has now been
translated into English. The work belongs to a small group of graduate textbooks,
along with J. H. Mundy's Europe in the High Middle Ages or Alexander Murray's
Reason and Society in the Middle Ages in that recent research is intelligently sum-
marized in some detail while a wealth of fertile areas for future work are suggested
in the text and footnotes. The English edition includes a supplementary
bibliography of recent publications and works cited which have been translated
into English. Caroline Higgitt has made a fluent translation, although parts of the
book are not an easy read in any language.
Poly and Bournazel's ambitious task is to create a Feudal Society for our time, as
Marc Bloch's was for an earlier generation. On the way there are generous
acknowledgements to the influence of Lemarignier and Schneider and above all to
that of Georges Duby. In pursuit of their aim the authors divide the work into two
parts, "What is Known' and 'New Interpretations'. The meat of the book is in the
first part and here is where Bloch is thoroughly updated and revised. The last
vestiges of mutuality in feudal relationships are attacked. The powerful enforce
their 'protection' at the expense of a free peasantry by methods which are at best
semi-legal. Meanwhile the Carolingian monarchy is doing its best to establish the
aristocracy's subservience to the king, or even the state, but fails, leaving a
kaleidoscope of different relationships. Indeed Poly and Bournazel (following
Duby) declare the abolition of Bloch's first feudal period: the only thing feudal
about it is its ending when 'the use of what our texts call "fiefs" and "homage"
became common among a wide stratum of people'.
The strength of the book is the careful analysis and bringing together of research
into the regional varieties of 'feudal' relationships, particularly in regard to
southern France and Barcelona. For example, the term miles carried far more
prestige in the area from Lyon to Narbonne than further north and this is sug-
gestively linked to the influence of the Cluniac movement. Consequently there was
never the juxtaposition of milites and nobiles which was to characterize society fur-
ther north. The stimulus the Cluniacs gave to secular society in the south can also be
contrasted with the strains in that society which coincided with the stagnation of
the reform movement in the later twelfth century.
 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 105
The problem with this concentration on regionalism, particularly in the early
part of the period, is that it undermines the logic of Poly and Bournazel's decision
to confine their study to the area 'bounded by the Rhine, the Alps, and the
Pyrenees'. Although there are occasional references to the wider European scene,
the true successor to Bloch will surely have to consider feudalism in other areas. If
it is agreed that Bloch's second feudal age from 1050 to 1250 is now of greater im-
portance since it saw the institutionalization and codification of custom, then the
contemporary bonds of society in the Empire can hardly be ignored.
The second part of the book is unashamedly provocative. Bloch would have been
proud of the wide range of reading shown by his successors. There are echoes of
research into grain yields in modern Russia when the authors suggest that medieval
peasants may not have been as badly off as many have suggested since the care and

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effort lavished on their own plots may have made smallholdings rather more pro-
ductive than the great demesnes whose records have survived to be studied by
historians.
Further away from Bournazel and Poly's specializations the chapters are more
speculative. In their piece on popular religion in western Europe the authors claim
that there is 'a clear indication of the eastern influence on heresy from before
1104'. They ignore the basic problem that, if some sort of dualist heresy was strong
enough to form links throughout western Europe in the eleventh century, why is so
little heard about such heresy until it becomes a major social issue in the mid-
twelfth century? The most persuasive evidence for their case, the outspoken Gerard
of Csanad, is a neglected author, but since he lived in Hungary he was hardly the
best source of information about the West. Moreover, Gerard was associated with
the Hungarian royal court, which supported the Roman Church. His Greek
Orthodox rivals were still active in his diocese while the Byzantine Empire was
widely believed to be colluding with a restless nobility. Gerard had every reason to
denounce Greece as the home of heretics and to exaggerate the scope of their
influence.
Still, it is to Poly and Bournazel's credit that The Feudal Transformation can be
magisterial and yet stimulate discussion. This is in the best traditions of Marc
Bloch's own work. However, the writer of The Strange Defeat, who cast such a
critical eye over the conservatism of academic institutions, might have been rather
less happy at the survival of a strong sense of hierarchy in French writing about
history which is clearly reflected in this book. Georges Duby has been one of the
major intellectual figures of the post-war era, but some of his cameo appearances in
the main text of this book are unnecessary and distracting. Bloch's Feudal Society is
a great work because it questioned established notions of feudalism. Ultimately
Poly and Bournazel show themselves to be dutiful sons of the prevailing post-
Annales orthodoxies.
University of Glasgow ANDREW ROACH

Guerre et societe en France, en Angleterre et en Bourgogne, xitf-xve

siecle. Edited by Philippe Contamine, Charles Giry-Deloison and Maurice
H. Keen. Lille: Centre d'Histoire de la Region du Nord et de l'Europe du
Nord-Ouest. 1991. 360 pp. Ffrl50. ISBN 2 905637 11 0.
The thirteen papers which make up this volume were presented to a colloquium of
historians of the Hundred Years' War which met at the Institut Franc.ais in London