Officers and Accountability in Medieval England 1170-1300
Regular price
€50.99
14 days return policy
Shipping & Delivery
A01=John Sabapathy
Author_John Sabapathy
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=JPA
Category=NHDJ
Category=NHTB
Category=NL-HB
Category=NL-JP
COP=United Kingdom
Discount=15
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Format=BC
Format_Paperback
HMM=232
IMPN=Oxford University Press
ISBN13=9780198847984
Language_English
PA=Available
PD=20190923
POP=Oxford
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
PUB=Oxford University Press
SMM=17
Subject=History
Subject=Politics & Government
WG=498
WMM=156
Product details
- ISBN 9780198847984
- Format: Paperback
- Weight: 498g
- Dimensions: 156 x 232 x 17mm
- Publication Date: 13 Sep 2019
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- Publication City/Country: Oxford, GB
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
The later twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a pivotal period for the development of European government and governance. A mentality emerged that trusted to procedures of accountability as a means of controlling officers' conduct. The mentality was not inherently new, but it became qualitatively more complex and quantitatively more widespread in this period, across European countries, and across different sorts of officer. The officers exposed to these methods were not just 'state' ones, but also seignorial, ecclasistical, and university-college officers, as well as urban-communal ones. This study surveys these officers and the practices used to regulate them in England. It places them not only within a British context but also a wide European one and explores how administration, law, politics, and norms tried to control the insolence of office.
The devices for institutionalising accountability analysed here reflected an extraordinarily creative response in England, and beyond, to the problem of complex government: inquests, audits, accounts, scrutiny panels, sindication. Many of them have shaped the way in which we think about accountability today. Some remain with us. So too do their practical problems. How can one delegate control effectively? How does accountability relate to responsibility? What relationship does accountability have with justice? This study offers answers for these questions in the Middle Ages, and is the first of its kind dedicated to an examination of this important topic in this period.
John Sabapathy is a Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at University College London. He is the co-editor of Individuals and Institutions in Medieval Scholasticism and is writing The Cultivation of Christendom, a history of thirteenth-century Europe for the Oxford History of Medieval Europe.
