1st Edition

Continuity and Change in Medieval East Central Europe Social, Ruling and Religious Transformations

Edited By Dušan Zupka Copyright 2025
360 Pages 15 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

296 Pages 15 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

360 Pages 15 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Continuity and Change in Medieval East Central Europe explores the crucial societal, political, and cultural dynamics that defined medieval East Central Europe during the early and high Middle Ages. Focusing on the historical regions of Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and Lithuania, the book provides a comprehensive and comparative analysis of this transformative historical period. It gathers the... Read more

Contents

 

List of Contributors

List of Figures

 

Introduction

 

1          Dušan Zupka

Continuity and Change in Medieval East Central Europe: An Introduction

 

 

Part 1

Early and High Medieval Transformations

 

2          Daniel Ziemann

Dark Ages in Central Europe? – The period around 900 A.D. as a turning point

 

3          Ágnes Ritoók

Mosaburg – Zalavár: Changing Forms of Continuity

 

4          Piotr Pranke

“Power Networks” and the State – how Was the first Piast State Created?

 

5          Pavol Hudáček

From Royal Populi to Filii Iobagionum (The Change in the Social Position of “Royal Servants” to “Conditional Nobles” in the Region of Liptov in the Thirteenth century)

 

6          Franciszek Dąbrowski

Territorial Organisation of the Piast Monarchies in 10th-13th Centuries: Factors of Continuity, Factors of Change, Change of Historiography Concepts

 

 

Part 2

Elites and Rulers

 

7          Christian Raffensperger

Recentering Medieval Europe: Making the Periphery Central

 

8          Yanina Ryier

From a Chief to Grand Duke: Evolution of a Ruler`s Role and Functions in the Forming of Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the mid-13th to the mid-14th Century

 

9          Cosmin Popa-Gorjanu

Continuity and Change in the History of Elites in Medieval Hungary: the Nobility and the Knezes

 

10        Paweł Figurski

Gregory the Great (d. 604), Bishop Stanisław of Cracow (d. 1079), and the Unbound Rhinoceros

 

11        Attila Bárány

King Andrew II of Hungary's crusade in 1217. New insights

 

 

Part 3

Church and Culture

 

12        Beatrix F. Romhányi

Population and Church Organisation in the Carpathian Basin between the Foundation of the Kingdom of Hungary and the Mongol Invasion (1000-1241)

 

13        Béla Zsolt Szakács

Double Cathedrals and Church Families in Medieval East Central Europe

 

14        Anna Adamska

Continuity and Change in Studying East Central European Literacy

 

15        Gábor Barabás

A Series of Unfortunate Papal Legates: Papal Interventions in Hungary at the Turn of the Thirteenth–Fourteenth Centuries and the Hungarian Chronicle-Composition

 

 

Afterword

 

16        Florin Curta

Plus ça Change: A Fractal Afterword

 

Biography

Dušan Zupka is an Associate Professor of History at Comenius University in Bratislava. His previous publications include Ritual and Symbolic Communication in Medieval Hungary under the Árpád Dynasty, 1000–1301 (2016). He co-edited several collective volumes including Rulership in Medieval East Central Europe. Power, Rituals and Legitimacy in Bohemia, Hungary and Poland (2021) and Marxism and Medieval Studies. Marxist Historiography in East Central Europe (2023). He is co-editor of the Brill series East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450.