LAUSR

dieval Italy demonstrates their close association with war and politics in an age in which armed conflict was both endemic and inconclusive. Andreas Bihrer explores the uses of memory in his analysis of the contemporary chroniclers’ treatment of the murder of King Albrecht I. Franck Collard employs literary and legal sources to uncover contemporary attitudes toward poison as an agent of political violence. In a useful and elegant concluding synthesis, Hermann Kamp attempts to draw together these disparate papers by grouping them into related themes: the foundation and delimitation of royal authority, challenges to royal authority, attacks on the ruler, violence against royal proxies, the power of discourse, the meaning and purpose of ostentatious violence, and, finally, whether the many facets of Gewalt evident in late medieval political life distinguish it from other eras. The reader might be well served by beginning here before proceeding to the individual papers; one wonders why the editors themselves did not group these papers thematically. In any case, the final product is a stimulating collection that will likely engage scholars of the later Middle Ages for some time to come.