Details

Subject(s)

• Merovingians [Browse]
• Law, Frankish [Browse]
• France—Politics and government—To 987 [Browse]

Series

• Collected studies. [More in this series]
• Variorum Collected Studies

Summary note

The studies collected here cover a period of about 33 years, from 1986 to 2019, and represent a sustained effort to understand the institutions of the Merovingian kingdom and its history. There has long been a predisposition to cast the Merovingian period in the dark colours of barbarism or to treat it with reference to personal relationships and archaic institutions. The present volume, instead, recognizes the Merovingian world not as an archaic, primitive intrusion on the Mediterranean civilization of the Roman Empire but simply as a participant in the wider commonwealth that remained after the dissolution of the western imperial system; in so doing, it serves to refute the scholarly tendency to primitivize Merovingian governance, its underlying institutions, and the broader culture upon which these rested. The collection is divided into four parts. Part 1 considers the question of whether Merovingian kingship should be viewed as a species of archaic, 'sacral' kingship. Part 2, on institutions, has chapters that deal with various offices (the grafio and centenarius); public institutions (especially immunity and public security); and the broader makeup of the Merovingian state system. Part 3 on charters, procedure, and law, has chapters on the profile of the charter evidence as now presented in the new MGH edition of the Merovingian diplomas and one on particular procedures before the royal tribunal, mistakenly referred to in scholarship as 'fictitious' trials; a final chapter provides a reflection on, and basic guide to, the law in general of the successor kingdoms, with an eye to the evidence of Merovingian Gaul. Part 4, a slight change of pace, deals with historiography, both the modern variety (Reinhard Wenskus) and the Merovingian (Gregory of Tours). All chapters deal extensively with the historiography of their subjects. This book will appeal to students and scholars alike interested in Early Medieval European history, Merovingian history, Early Medieval law and society, Early Medieval historiography, and the influence of Merovingian law and governance on later centuries.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Source of description

Description based on print version record.

Contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• List of maps
• List of genealogies
• Preface
• Common abbreviations
• Part I Were the Merovingians sacral kings?
• 1 Post vocantur Merohingii: Fredegar, Merovech, and 'sacral kingship'
• 2 Gregory of Tours (Hist. II 10) and Fredegar (Chron. III 9) on the paganism of the Franks: the relation of the texts and what they say
• Part II Institutions
• 3 The position of the grafio in the constitutional history of Merovingian Gaul
• 4 From Roman to Frankish Gaul: centenarii and centenae in the administration of the Merovingian kingdom
• 5 Immunity, nobility and the Edict of Paris
• 6 Merovingian immunity revisited
• 7 The Merovingian state and administration in the times of Gregory of Tours
• Part III Charters, procedure, and law
• 8 Review article: the new MGH edition of the charters of the Merovingian kings
• 9 So-called fictitious trial in the Merovingian placita
• 10 The law of the post-Roman kingdoms
• Part IV Historiography
• 11 Reinhard Wenskus on 'ethnogenesis,' ethnicity, and the origin of the Franks
• 12 The composition of the Histories of Gregory of Tours and its bearing on the political narrative
• With an appendix of selections from "Chronology and the Composition of the Histories of Gregory of Tours," Journal of Late Antiquity 1/1 (2008): 157-196
• Maps
• Genealogies
• Alexander Callander Murray: bibliography
• General index
• Index of selected authors.

Show 30 more Contents items

ISBN

• 1-00-319750-7
• 1-000-53067-1
• 1-000-53069-8
• 1-003-19750-7

OCLC

1273727339

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