Editor's note; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Editor's introduction; Part I. Modern Mentalities: Historiographies, Methodologies, Preconceptions: 1. Modern mentalities and medieval polities; 2. Medieval: another tyrannous construct?; 3. The insecurity of travel in the early and high Middle Ages: criminals, victims and their medieval and modern observers; 4. Debating the 'feudal revolution'; 5. Pre-Gregorian mentalities; 6. Whose race, whose ethnicity? Recent medievalists' discussion of identity; Part II. The Symbolic Language of Medieval Political Action: 7. Nobles and others: the social and cultural expression of power relations in the Middle Ages; 8. Regemque, quem in Francia pene perdidit, in patria magnifice recepit: Ottonian ruler representation in synchronic and diachronic comparison; 9. Contextualising Canossa: excommunication, penance, surrender, reconciliation; 10. Velle sibi fieri in forma hac: symbolic action in the Becket dispute; Part III. Political Structures and Intentions: 11. Assembly politics in western Europe from the eighth century to the twelfth; 12. Sex, lies and oath-helpers: the trial of Queen Uota; 13. Plunder and tribute in the Carolingian empire; 14. The end of Carolingian military expansion; 15. The Ottonians and Carolingian tradition; 16. The making of England and Germany, 850-1050: points of comparison and difference; 17. Kings, nobles, others: 'basis' and 'superstructure' in the Ottonian period; 18. The 'imperial church system' of the Ottonian and Salian rulers: a reconsideration; 19. Peace-breaking, feud, rebellion, resistance: violence and peace in the politics of the Salian era; 20. The medieval German Sonderweg? The empire and its rulers in the high Middle Ages; 21. Mandate, privilege, court judgement: techniques of rulership in the era of Frederick Barbarossa; 22. All quiet except on the Western Front? The emergence of pre-modern forms of statehood in the central Middle Ages; Index.