Loyalty in Medieval Europe

Medieval historians frequently write about loyalty, usually in the context of lords and kings, but there has been little sustained engagement with the wider role of loyalty in society. This introduction to a Special Issue on Loyalty in Medieval Europe outlines earlier work, from the central role of loyalty in the historiography of feudalism to the recent beginnings of a material turn in loyalty studies. It draws on insights from the greatly expanded modern semantic field of the word ‘loyalty’, and from philosophers’ and sociologists’ interest in loyalty to frame a definition which might be applied to the Middle Ages. It takes loyalty to be both an emotion and a social practice, and advocates using loyalty as a lens on medieval society, pointing to some types of social relationship as well as other and overlapping abstract ideas (especially identity) where further research is desirable.