Stefan Esders, Yitzhak Hen, Pia Lucas, Tamar Rotman, eds.  The
Merovingian Kingdoms and the Mediterranean World: Revisiting the
Sources.  Studies in Early Medieval History Series. London 
Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.  xiv + 266 pp.  $115.00 (cloth), ISBN
978-1-350-04838-6.

Reviewed by Clifford Backman (Boston University)
Published on H-Africa (October, 2020)
Commissioned by David D. Hurlbut

When one thinks about the Merovingians--and, really, who
doesn't?--one seldom thinks of the Mediterranean. There is good
reason for that. Whatever else the Merovingians may have been, they
were a hodgepodge of northern clans, tribes, and kingdoms who came
from one end of the northern tier of Europe and settled eventually in
the other. They drank beer rather than wine; cooked in lard rather
than olive oil; avoided cities as centers of evil spirits; had little
literature that we know of and less science; had no ships other than
rivercraft; and lived, fought, and died on scattered parcels of
farmland cleared from the immense, dense forest of the continent.
That is not to say they fitted the prejudiced Dark Age caricature of
them as mere "barbarians"--a kind of gruesome but temporary way
station between the glories of Rome and Aachen. As shown by a
generation of scholars from Walter Goffart and Ian Wood to Chris
Wickham, Andreas Fischer, and Peter Heather, the period from Rome's
fall to Aachen's ascent deserves to be studied for its own self and
not merely as another of history's dreary "periods of transition";
after all, every age is one of transition, and the transitions
involved--political, cultural, intellectual, technological, and every
other type--are usually themselves the chief points of interest.

Most of this new work emphasizes the active involvement of the
Merovingian kingdoms in the broader, and specifically Mediterranean,
world. The volume under consideration both results from and mimics
the east-west and north-south contact it discusses, for it is the
culmination of a joint research project by mostly younger scholars at
the Freie Universität Berlin and the Ben-Gurion University of the
Negev, funded by the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific
Research and Development. The thirteen studies that make up the
volume cover a broad spectrum of topics and use a wide array of
primary sources, although this is less the result of an expansive
interpretive vision of the topic than of the scattered and
fragmentary nature of the surviving documents. Composite volumes like
this have significant value in themselves and as spurs to further
research, but they seldom result in the kind of cohesive theoretical
or interpretive model they aim for. This volume certainly points to
such a model even if it fails to reach it. That is hardly the fault
of the authors. For the period and place they examine, after all,
virtually every single surviving piece of written evidence that we
have (not counting monastic copies), gathered together in its modern
published edition, would fit on my own unimpressive desk. It would
all even fit into my Kindle. Given this reality, the best we can hope
for is an unfinished, however accomplished, mosaic. The present
volume, bright with promise, presents just such a mosaic.

The thirteen studies treat four main themes. First is the question of
how the people of the Merovingian era perceived themselves. Were they
late-arriving Romans or post-Romans? Did they think of themselves, in
other words, as a society distinct from the one that preceded it or
as an extension of it? The Franks undoubtedly became Romanized when
they entered western Europe; they adopted Roman language, elements of
Roman law, and parts of Roman technology, and their rulers at least
mimicked aspects of Roman governance. But was this identification
with Rome or mere convenience? Yitzhak Hen argues that the
dissemination of the _Expositio totius mundi et gentium_, a
fourth-century Greek geographical text, across western Europe in a
fifth-century Latin translation illustrates one aspect of this
identity formation. He may be right, but in the complete absence of a
manuscript tradition it is impossible to tell. (The text is known
only from a much-marred seventeenth-century edition.) The existence
of the text certainly means _something_. There is no reason, though,
to assume that the Latin version was composed by a Merovingian or on
behalf of a Merovingian, or even was ever read by a Merovingian. It
may well have been the work of an urbane Italian who wanted to soothe
his worried mind with a tome on the glorious expanse of his beloved,
if troubled, empire. Helmut Reimitz contrasts the legal decrees from
the third episcopal Synod of Mâcon (585 CE) with the description of
that gathering in Gregory of Tours' _Historia Francorum_. The synod
was convened by the then-archbishop of Lyon and involved, according
to Gregory, nearly seventy bishops or their representatives. Three
issues predominated: the Gundovald affair (in which a pretender to
the Merovingian throne and would-be spouse to the charming widow
Brunhild, queen of Austrasia, pressed his case by pointing out the
support he had from figures in the Byzantine court); the question of
bishops' authority to demand the payment of tithes from their
parishes; and the vexed question of whether or not, and when, the
Latin word _homo_ ("man") could be interpreted to mean both men and
women. Reimitz emphasizes the synod's reliance on Roman law, in
contrast to Gregory's relative dismissal of Roman precedents in favor
of considerations of divine purpose. Again, the conclusion
drawn--that the Frankish clerics emphasized Roman secular law as the
means to resolve their disputes since they saw themselves as
Romans--is perfectly plausible but is by no means the only sensible
one. Gregory's aim in his ___Historia Francorum_, after all, was to
show God's hand still at work in a fallen world, not to provide a
record of a series of legal briefs.

The second part of the volume consists of four studies that trace the
extent of the diplomatic reach of the kingdoms of the era. Anna
Gehler-Rachunek begins, appropriately, with a look at Frankish
marriage negotiations in the sixth century. This was an age in which
marriage-diplomacy was arguably the only real diplomacy, since the
political rights of rulers usually came down to what they were
entitled to by a marriage or an inheritance from one. Once again
Gregory of Tours provides most of the evidence, with some assistance
from Isidore of Seville. Gehler-Rachunek starts with the conversion
of the Visigothic king, Reccared, from Arianism to orthodox Latin
Christianity in 589 and his subsequent expectation that his relations
with the Frankish kings Guntram and Childebert would improve now that
he had joined them in the true faith--only to be rebuffed by Guntram
because of Reccared's maltreatment of his, Guntram's, niece Ingund.
Was Reccared's conversion therefore a diplomatic ploy? Did family
honor take precedence over religious brotherhood? Gehler-Rachunek
shows the many marriage links established between the Visigothic
royal family and those of the Austrasian and Neustrian Frankish
houses that preceded Reccared's reign, bringing in the diplomatic
involvement of Spanish Byzantine courtiers as well, to show that the
Germanic kingdoms were in considerably more and closer contact with
one another and with far-off Constantinople than previously thought.
Unfortunately, she does not consider the various Byzantine sources of
the era, which might have added considerable nuance to her argument
by providing an "outsider's" view. Next, Hope Williard provides a
summary of the ties of diplomatic friendship (_amicitia_) among
Frankish royal and nobles as related by the ever-present Gregory. By
Williard's own count Gregory discusses eight cases of _amicitia_ in
his history, and she argues that the term had ambivalent meanings
that ranged from the connections between a lesser (in the political
sense) individual and a superior one, which case _amicitia_ implies
something like cozening in search of political favors, to the
friendly relations between political equals that precedes betrayal
and strife. As Gregory uses it, she argues, _amicitia_ echoed the
ties between ancient Roman _clienteles_, and if she is right then she
is making a very important point. The point is more suggestive than
conclusive, since eight examples out of a four-hundred-plus-page text
cannot be regarded as definitive, but it fully merits further study.
Bruno Dumézil and Yaniv Fox turn their attention to the _Epistolae
Austrasicae_, a collection of diplomatic letters from the fifth and
sixth centuries that survives in a single ninth-century manuscript
that has long been regarded as a product of the Carolingian
court--that is to say, the collection itself, not merely the
manuscript copy. Dumézil makes a strong argument that the
_Epistolae_ was actually the work of Magneric, the bishop of Trier,
sometime around the year 590. If Dumézil's is codicological, Fox's
is rhetorical and focuses on two diplomatic episodes, first the
effort by Byzantium to win Frankish support against the Lombard
invasion of southern Italy, and second the negotiations over the fate
of Athanagild, the young nephew of Childebert II who got caught up in
the rebellion against restored Byzantine power in Visigothic Spain
and ended up in Byzantine custody. In both cases, Fox argues, the
Franks and Byzantines relied heavily on language that was religiously
tinged rather than based on law or politically strategic appeal.

Part 3 collects four studies dealing with the social dimensions of
law and religion. Lukas Bothe takes the prize for best essay title
with his "Mediterranean Homesick Blues," which inspects Germanic laws
regarding the slave trade. Here he follows the granular, quantitative
work of Michael McCormick's _Origins of the European Economy_ (2001)
but looks in particular at the European Christian justification for
engaging in human trafficking. The slave trade, he finds, reached far
into the Germanic hinterlands, but each society (the Visigoths, the
Burgundians, the Franks) responded differently to the moral question
of that trade. Till Stüber examines the so-called Three Chapters
controversy as it was debated at the 5th Council of Orléans. The
controversy itself centered on the supposedly Nestorian writings of
three theologians that had been debated at the Council of Chalcedon.
Stüber ignores the theological issues themselves and emphasizes
instead the significance of a council in northern Francia engaging in
the debate, a debate having originated in an exchange of letters
between the bishop of Arles and Pope Vigilius--while he was residing
temporarily in Constantinople. The Frankish Church, the implication
goes, was not peripheral to the Church Universal but was actively and
continually engaged with it. Next come two studies on rituals as
described in Merovingian liturgical and hagiographical texts. Rob
Means goes in depth into the _Sacramentary of Gellone_, a late
eighth-century text from Meaux, and discusses the _ordo_ for ritually
purifying an altar where a murder has been committed. This being the
Dark Ages, the question is not altogether theoretical and the
existence of such a rite should be contrasted with the fact that
whereas Gregory of Tours narrates many a defilement of altars and
churches by bloodshed he never mentions a purification of those
sacred spaces. Tamar Rotman closes this section of the book with an
inspection of the sources regarding the pillar-climbing ascetic,
Vufiliac of Trier, focusing once again on the ever-present Gregory.
She emphasizes the ways Gregory shapes Vufiliac's story in order to
provide a distinction between his tale and that of Simeon Stylites
over in Syria.

The last section of the volume contrasts Frankish and Byzantine
portrayals of emperorship: Pia Lucas studies Gregory's depiction of
Tiberius II; Stefan Esders examines Fredegar's portrait of Constans
II; and Federico Montinaro shifts the perspective by analyzing a
Byzantine view of Frankish political rulership, namely, Theophanes's
discussion of the end of Merovingian rule and the rise of the
Carolingian version. The general conclusion of these studies is that
western writers used descriptions of Byzantine politics as a way of
depicting rulership as an aspect of Christian history, a means of
promoting God's will on earth, whereas a Byzantine writer like
Theophanes reveals a factually shaky but genuine interest in matters
far away from the cosmopolitan center of Constantinople.

All in all, this is an engaging and impressive collection. The essays
are filled with sharp insights and an eager willingness to upend
traditional interpretations that makes the reading enjoyable without
weakening their scholarly gravitas. Two weaknesses stand out,
however, almost across the board. First, with the exception of Bothe,
the authors fail to emphasize the distinctions between the societies
of Dark Age Europe. The Visigoths were not like the Franks, who were
not like the Burgundians, who were not like.... The authors are well
aware of this, of course, and may have written their contributions
assuming that the likely readers of a volume like this would also be
aware of the fact and therefore need not be reminded. Nevertheless,
using the general term "Merovingian" in the title to describe all
these societies could easily mislead an unexperienced reader. More
significant, though, is the near-total absence of Byzantine sources.
Only Theophanes appears in any meaningful way, and he only in a
readily available English translation. Any research project aimed at
showing the interaction of the western and eastern worlds of the
Mediterranean should surely look through both ends of the telescope.

Citation: Clifford Backman. Review of Esders, Stefan; Hen, Yitzhak;
Lucas, Pia; Rotman, Tamar, eds., _The Merovingian Kingdoms and the
Mediterranean World: Revisiting the Sources_. H-Africa, H-Net
Reviews. October, 2020.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55070

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
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