Susan Reynolds

Susan Reynolds ( born 1929 ) is a British historian.

After her first degree at Oxford, she worked as an archivist for a year at the Middlesex County Record Office and then at the Victoria County History for seven years ( 1952-1959 ). Reynolds has a degree in archives management, but not a Ph.D. still a examinierten degree in history. Inter alia After teaching activities at the Secondary Modern School from 1964 to 1986 she was a Fellow and Tutor in History at Lady Margaret Hall. Since 1986 she has been Emeritus Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. Reynolds is an Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, Birkbeck College and University College London. In 1993 she became a Fellow of the British Academy ( FBA). She is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society ( FRHistS ).

Her research interests include the social, political and legal history of medieval Western Europe. Reynolds laid in 1994 with their study fiefs and vassals in Europe ( fiefs and vassals. The medieval evidence reinterpreted ) a groundbreaking investigation. Reynolds moved with her reinterpretation of some harsh criticism. Nevertheless, the first in 1947 by François Louis Ganshof summarized and decades common textbook knowledge is controversial in all areas of feudalism since its representation. Reynolds was divided according to their study country chapters (France, England, Italy and Germany ), which correspond to the present-day nation states in Europe. By doing so, she could take on the respective national research traditions consideration, however, owned and social ties were rather structured in regions that can hardly represent such National Chapter. According to Reynolds, the feudal system was not created in the warrior society of the Frankish Empire in the early 8th century, but in its early form in the learned technical discussions Upper Italian jurists of the Middle Ages and was worked out individually from early modern jurists. The conception of what modern historians understood under the medieval feudal system was, therefore arose only in the later Middle Ages and was with the medieval social and constitutional structure nothing in common. Reynolds pointed, inter alia, on the openness of the source formulation out. So words like beneficia and vassus are ambiguous and may no longer be interpreted lehnsrechtlich readily.

Writings

• Kingdoms and communities in Western Europe, 900-1300. 2nd edition, Oxford 1997, ISBN 0-19-873148-5.
• Ideas and solidarities of the medieval laity. England and Western Europe. Aldershot 1995, ISBN 0-86078-485-1.
• Fiefs and vassals. The medieval evidence reinterpreted. Oxford 1994, ISBN 0-19-820458-2 ( doubly scientific meetings).