Introduction

In July 2006, the International Medieval Society-Paris held a symposium at the Ecole nationale des chartes on the theme of “Foreigners, Strangers, and Others.” Focusing particularly on France and Carolingian West Francia, the symposium provided a venue for a multi-disciplinary discussion of difference and identity formation by scholars from three continents, eight countries, and several different linguistic backgrounds. This collection contains a selection of chapters developed from the papers presented at that conference, as well as additional contributions solicited for this volume. The impetus for the symposium and the resulting volume was to revisit the now fundamental realization that medievalists’ traditional focus on the culture and history of elites neglected the experience of most medieval people, as well as that of minority groups and other excluded constituencies. Yet we also hoped that looking toward the periphery of medieval society would generate new ideas about the center and about the dynamics of inclusion, as well as exclusion. In the event, the resulting collection is about not just the existence of difference in medieval France, but about the variety of ways that difference could create solidarity and sympathy among groups, as well as disaffection and disgust.