Offers a new perspective on the "feudal revolution" by comparing forms of social and political organization in the Kingdom of the Rus and Latin Europe.

This book intertwines two themes in medieval studies, which so far have never been brought together: comparative studies of Latin and Orthodox Europe and a debate on the "feudal revolution" - the changes that occurred during the transition from Carolingian to post-Carolingian Europe. The book broadens the linguistic and geographical scope of the debate by comparing texts written in "learned" and "vulgar" Latin, Church Slavonic, Anglo-Norman, and East Slavonic, the vernacular of Kievan Rus. From this comparison, the Kingdom of the Rus' - a terra incognita for most medievalists, generally assumed to be profoundly different from the West -emerges as a regional variation of European society. In particular, the finding that contractual relations, traditionally described in scholarly literature as "feudo-vassalic," were present in the Kingdom of the Rus suggests that current explanations for the origins of such relations may overemphasize factors unique to the medieval West and overlook deeper pan-European processes.