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In Princely Brothers and Sisters, Jonathan R. Lyon takes a fresh look at sibling networks and the role they played in shaping the practice of politics in the Middle Ages. Focusing on nine of the most prominent aristocratic families in the German kingdom during the Staufen period (1138–1250), Lyon finds that noblemen—and to a lesser extent, noblewomen—relied on the cooperation and support of their siblings as they sought to maintain or expand their power and influence within a competitive political environment. Consequently, sibling relationships proved crucial at key moments in shaping the political and territorial interests of many lords of the kingdom.Family historians have largely overlooked brothers and sisters in the political life of medieval societies. As Lyon points out, however, siblings are the contemporaries whose lives normally overlap the longest. More so than parents and children, husbands and wives, or lords and vassals, brothers and sisters have the potential to develop relationships that span entire lifetimes. The longevity of some sibling bonds therefore created opportunities for noble brothers and sisters to collaborate in especially potent ways. As Lyon shows, cohesive networks of brothers and sisters proved remarkably effective at counterbalancing the authority of the Staufen kings and emperors. Well written and impeccably researched, Princely Brothers and Sisters is an important book not only for medieval German historians but also for the field of family history.
Jonathan R. Lyon is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Chicago.
"Jonathan R. Lyon uses the history of the medieval family, which all medievalists recognize as crucial, to give new life to medieval political history. Lyon's focus on family structures breaks free of paradigms about the patrilineal medieval family, while his focus on politics restores centrality to something that must have occupied medieval people themselves. Using German sources to address questions that have previously been addressed almost exclusively through French sources, he not only argues against received opinion but offers new models for aristocratic family structure. The result is a book that is both new and important."-Constance Brittain Bouchard, Distinguished Professor of History, The University of Akron, author of "Every Valley Shall Be Exalted": The Discourse of Opposites in Twelfth-Century Thought
"Jonathan R. Lyon's synopses of historical events and developments, and his evaluations of historians' debates on the same, are assured and magisterial. By integrating political history with issues of kinship and family dynamics, moreover, his book builds on and goes beyond the available scholarship in English on the German regnum as well as on the medieval family."-Sean Gilsdorf, Harvard University, author of Queenship and Sanctity: The Lives of Mathilda and the Epitaph of Adelheid
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