Amazon.com description: Product Description: This text brings together the work of 14 scholars, embracing regions as diverse as England, Italy, France, Norway, Poland, Portugal and the Romano-German empire. It covers the whole medieval period from the 5th to the 16th centuries, confronting central issues about the origins and nature of nobility, its relationship with the late Roman world, its acquisition and exercise of power, its association with military obligation, and its gradual pacification and transformation into a more-or-less willing instrument of royal government in most regions at the end of the medieval age. Particular attention is paid to the conceptualization of nobility, the dichotomy between nobility of birth and nobility of character, the role of chivalry, the importance of physical force and the fear it engendered, and the elevated status given to noble women as the co-progenitors and transmitters of noble blood.