Fulk Nerra, the neo-Roman consul, 987-1040 : a political biography of the Angevin count / Bernard S. Bachrach.

This is the first comprehensive biography of Fulk Nerra, an important medieval ruler, who came to power in his teens and rose to be master in the west of the French Kingdom. Descendant of warriors and administrators who served the French kings, Fulk in turn built the state that provided a foundation for the vast Angevin empire later constructed by his descendants.

Bernard Bachrach finds the terms "constructed" and "built" more than metaphorical in relation to Fulk's career. He shows how Fulk and the Angevin counts who followed him based their long-term state building policy on Roman strategies and fortifications described by Vegetius. This creative adaptation of Roman ideas and tactics, according to Bachrach, was the key to Fulk's successful consolidation of political power. Students of medieval and military history will find here a colorful, impressively researched biography.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.

This is the first comprehensive biography of Fulk Nerra, an important medieval ruler, who came to power in his teens and rose to be master in the west of the French Kingdom. Descendant of warriors and administrators who served the French kings, Fulk in tu

Author Notes

Bachrach Bernard S. :

Bernard S. Bachrach is Professor of History at the University of Minnesota and fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. His previous books include Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe (1977).

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Bachrach's title is somewhat misleading. To describe Fulk Nerra as "the neo-Roman consul" implies considerably more direct Roman influence in late 10th- and early 11th-century Anjou than actually existed. Furthermore, personal information available from surviving documentation hardly justifies labeling any study a "biography" even when the qualifier "political" is added. But this is an excellent study nonetheless of the relentless geopolitical thinking of Fulk Nerra in strengthening and extending the territory in the lower Loire valley obtained by his family in the Carolingian period. As the Carolingian dynasty gave way to the Capetian, the once unified strength of Carolingian West Francia gave way to the reign of many petty dynasts who struggled for advantage with and against each other and with and against the French crown. To pursue his goal, Fulk Nerra used his significant military abilities (in both a tactical and strategic sense); he carefully centralized as much as possible the revenues of his "realm" to provide resources for his construction program as well as for the armies that he needed in the field. Although in frustration or in revenge he was capable of attacking the properties and personnel of the church, he offset any resulting threat to his soul by making four pilgrimages to the Holy Land and by founding and endowing several important monasteries. Several good maps, genealogical tables, and extensive bibliography. Advanced undergraduates and above. K. F. Drew; Rice University

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