This collection of essays from both established and emerging scholars analyses the dynamic connections between conflict and violence in medieval Italy. Together, the contributors present a new critique of power that sustained both kingship and locally based elite networks throughout the Italian peninsula. A broad temporal range, covering the sixth to the twelfth century, allows this book to cross a number of ‘traditional’ fault-lines in Italian historiography – 774, 888, 962 and 1025. The essays provide wide-ranging analysis of the role of conflict in the period, the operation of power and the development of communal consciousness and collective action by protagonists and groups. It is thus essential reading for scholars, students and general readers who wish to understand the situation on the ground in the medieval Italian environment.

Christopher Heath teaches at the Manchester Metropolitan University. His interests include historiography, and socio-economic and religious change between 450 and 950. His monograph The Narrative Worlds of Paul the Deacon was published in 2017 by AUP. Currently he is working on a study of the Lombard king Liutprand.

Robert Houghton is a Lecturer in Early Medieval History at the University of Winchester. His research focusses on the social and political history of the kingdom of Italy c.900 to c.1150 with particular emphasis on representations of urban society and the changing role and ideology of the bishop.

i. Preface
ii. Abbreviations
I: (Christopher Heath and Robert Houghton), Introduction: Discordant Minds and Hostile Nations
II: (Christopher Heath), Morbidity and Murder: Lombard Kingship’s Violent Uncertainties 568-774
III. (Guido Berndt), Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Lombard Italy (c.600-700)
IV: (Francesco Borri), The Hope of Italy: Narrative of Conquest and Resistance from Charlemagne to Bernard (774 – 818)
V: (Kordula Wolf), Nec patiaris populum Domini ab illis divinitus fulminandis Agarenis discerpi: Dealing with ‘Saracen’ Violence in 9th and 10th-Century Southern Italy
VI. (David Barritt), Formosus and the ‘synod of the corpse’: tenth century Rome in history and memory
VII. (Edoardo Manarini), Sex, denigration and violence: a representation of political competition between two aristocratic kinships in IXth-century Italy.
VIII: (Penelope Nash), ‘Italy and her [German] Invaders’: Otto III’s and Frederick Barbarossa’s Early Tours of Italy – Pomp, Generosity and Ferocity
IX: (Robert Houghton), ‘I predict a riot’: What were the Parmense rebelling against in 1037?
X: (Enrico Veneziani), Violence in Rome: the papal election of Honorius II
XI: (Ross Balzaretti), Afterword
XII. Bibliography
XIII. Index