This study contends that prevailing notions of medieval social and constitutional history had been shaped by the 19th-century nation state and its "liberal" order. Where a sharp distinction between the public and the private might be appropriate to descriptions of contemporary society, such a dichotomy could not be projected back into the Middle Ages. Focusing particularly on forms of lordship in late-medieval Austria, Brunner found neither a "state" in the modern sense nor any distinction between the public and private spheres. Behind the violence and apparent disorder of late-medieval political life, however, Brunner discovered a coherent legal and constitutional order rooted in the rights and obligations of noble lordship. In carefully reconstructing this order, Brunner's study weaves together social, legal, constitutional and intellectual history. This volume includes an introduction by the translators, who examine Brunner's intellectual background (including his commitment to the "new order" of national socialism), his critique of traditional constitutional history, the scholarly debate over land and lordship and the broader implications of his historical thought after 1945.
