Violence is a paradigm of first importance for the establishment of general interpretations of the Middle Ages. This text pretends to bring its validity into question by two procedures. In first discussing its connection with the role that the Middle Ages plays in contemporaneous historiography, in counterpoint to modern political and social forms (specially the centralized state and its monopoly of violence). Second place trying to define the point of view of the medieval historians about the violence that they record.
Historiography; violence; History