The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages

The importance of collective behavior in early medieval Europe By the fifth and sixth centuries, the bread and circuses and triumphal processions of the Roman Empire had given way to a quieter world. And yet, as Shane Bobrycki argues, the influence and importance of the crowd did not disappear in early medieval Europe. In The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages , Bobrycki shows that although demographic change may have dispersed the urban multitudes of Greco-Roman civilization, collective behavior re