Monks, Knights, and the Enactment of Competing Social Realities in Eleventh- and Early-Twelfth-Century Flanders

One of the more challenging paradigms in contemporary medieval studies views public behavior as a lever of political life rather than as its mere by-product. Since the early 1980s, scholars have argued that rituals, gestures, facial expressions, and other verbal and nonverbal means of communication functioned as potent transmitters of values in medieval politics. Enacting elementary principles of human organization, such as authority, hierarchy, and social differentiation, these forms of behavior helped to establish a habitus or shared understanding of how power should be exercised.