More than two decades of research engaged Giuseppe Sergi in analising
the relations between society, institutions and territory in two great
kingdoms of Early Medieval Europe: those of Italy (that included Northern
and a great part of Central Italy), and of Burgundy (that included the
Aosta Valley, part of Switzerland, Savoy, and Provence). As a result, in
this book boundaries are intended in the terms of political geography of
the early Middle Ages. Political geography and its fluidity, in the sense
suggested by the meeting between the germanic mentality of command over
people, and the latin tradition of govern within defined territories. We
can find boundaries everywere, in the Middle Ages, that's why they offer
us a variety of view points from which we can observe the complex political,
cultural and economic dinamics of a given society. So can for example have
territorial boundaries (between districts, kingdoms, areas separated by
a range of mountains); cronological boundaries (the X and XI centuries,
between the IX, carolingian, and the XII, the age of Comuni); institutional
boundaries (for example between powers that are no longer public, but not
yet private); ethnic boundaries (between Lombards and Romans, or Franks
and Lombards, or Arabs and Byzantines, and so on).
As a whole, this book gives a clear definition of a new way of intending
the political history. A history that, without ignoring the social, cultural,
imaginative, simbolic aspects of political power, at the same time sheds
light on its geografic and territorial aspects.
Antonio Sennis