Aristocrazia e Stato: prospettive dall'alto e dal basso medioevo

State and Aristocracy: a Perspective between High and Low Middle Ages
In the last decades, the framework employed to read the relationship between «state» and aristocracy in the Middle Ages has been founded on the assumption of reciprocity and symbiosis between the two worlds. Through the analysis of some recent works this essay argues that, in recent years, the historiography of the high and low Middle Ages is taking different paths. As much as the high Middle Ages are concerned the paradigm of cooperation is altogether the dominant one; on the contrary, in the low Middle Ages this interpretation is increasingly perceived as restrictive and inadequate to account for a more complex and ambivalent relationship.