Download PDF | Patrick J. Geary - Before France and Germany_ The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World-Oxford University Press (1988).
274 Pages
Preface
The Germanic world was perhaps the greatest and most enduring creation of Roman political and military genius. That this offspring came in time to replace its creator should not obscure the fact that it owed its very existence to Roman initiative, to the patient efforts of centuries of Roman emperors, generals, soldiers, landlords, slave traders, and simple merchants to mold the (to Roman eyes) chaos of barbarian reality into forms of political, social, and economic activity which they could understand and, perhaps, control.
The barbarians themselves were for the most part particularly eager to participate in this process, to become "authentic" peoples, that is, to achieve structures ·which made sense within the seductive orbit of classical civilization. So successful was this effort that already from late antiquity it was impossible for the Goths, Burgundians, Franks, and other "peoples" who had become masters in the Western Roman Empire to understand themselves and their past apart from Roman categories of ethnography, politics, and custom, just as it was impossible for them to prosper apart from Roman traditions of agriculture and commerce or to exercise power apart from Roman traditions of politics and law.
Thus did such classical ethnographers as Pliny and Tacitus present the history of the barbarian peoples in terms of Greco-Roman categories of tribes, peoples, and nations and describe their religious and social customs either as assimilable to or in contrast with values and vices of Roman society. When, in the sixth century, authors such as Cassiodorus and Gregory of Tours wrote the histories of now victorious barbarian peoples, both they and their Romanized barbarian informants· used these same categories to render intelligible their past and present. Since both the historical and ethnographic or sociological 'dis- · ciplines which now dominate scholarship were the dire<;t descen~ dants of these very traditions, it has been quite difficult for l;Ilod· ern historians to step back and view the origins of European society ·apart from these same. categories and structures. Only in recent decades have anthropologists and ethnographers, by fo<;using on the internal structures of non-Western· traditional societies,begun to. show how scholl!.rs can break out of the per· ceptual categories of the Western experience not only to understand other societies but; to some· extent, the distant origins of our own. Assisting this process . is the work of archaeologists, ; whose evidence is the only source for understanding the non· literate world of barbarian society not filtered through the 'language, and thus the categories, of Greco-Roman culture. As a re· suit, our understanding of how to interpret the sparse evidence of the barbarian world of late antiquity is in a process of transformation.
However, even as (me begins to reinterpret this world in light of modern ethnography and archaeology, one is constantly reminded ·of the· deep penetration of Roman culture·.into this world long before Roman conquests or barbarian migrations. The Roman creation of the barbarian world was not simply a perceptual one in which the Romans processed the d,ata of contact with barbarians through the grid of Roman values. Roman perceptions and influences, both active and p~sive, transformed arid structured.· this world even while trying to understand it to an extent only recently beginning to be recognized. This process is • particularly evident in the case of the Franks, whose origins · and early history form the subject of this book. Their very ex- . isten<;e as well as every phase of their history makes sense only within the context of Roman presence in northern Europe, for their genesis as_ a people and gradual transformation into the conquerors of mu<;h of Europe were from the start part of the Roman experience. However, this Roman e~perience is a far cry from the vision most p.eople have of classidtl Rome. It was part of the provincial Roman world, especially that of late antiquity, a world in some ways .even more alien to. modern sensibilities than that of the barbarians.
The history, of the barbarian kingdoms and especially that of 'the Franks i~ th:us· a history of the transformation of the Roman provinCial world, a process which, .while occasionally marked by violent episOdes that continue to have reverberations through the Westel11 consciousness, such as the sack of Rome in 410 or . the defeat of the last Roman commander of Gaul in 486, is actually much more the history of a gradual and at times impercepti-. ble amalgamation of complex traditions. Its developments are by · no means always uni~irectional, and the principals, Romans and barbarians, are usually indistinguishable. Rather than marked by great events, this. transform.ation is best -followed in incidental · details and examples. Where we begin is in a sense arbitrary, j:ust as where we end. We shall start with the fitst century and the early phase of 'the Roman invention of the barbarian world, and end by looking forward to 800, when at last .the barbarian world feels compelled to reinvent· the Roman.
Presenting Merovingian Europe I am reminded of a particularly vicious academic dispute in the early ninth century, in the course o£ which Florus of Lyon accused qis . opponent, Bishop Amalarius of' Metz,. of the cardinal sin of medieval intellectual activity: originality. In a description of a synod at which the bishop was condemned he explains: They asked him where he had read ~ese things. Then he; quite clearly restrained in his speech, responded thilt he had neither . taken them from scripture nor from the teachings handed down from the universal Fathers, or even from heretics; but :rather he had read them in his own heart. The assembled fathers replied: "Here in truth is the spirit of ertorf"1 This author would certainly stand. acquitted by . Florus and the synod.
The unfortunate constraints imposed. on this book, which is intended as a first introduction tO Merovingian history, are such that it contains few notes and only a brief bibliographical orientation. Those familiar with 'the literature on Merovingian Europe will find little here that is novel: at every. point I have drawn on an enormous body of literature, largely by Continental scholars .. The 'justification for writing is not to launch some new theory about the origins of European civilization, but to make available the vast literature on late antiquity and the early Middle Ages which has, for a variety of reasons, seldom been presented in a manner accessible to a broader audience, particularly to a!l English-reading one. Merovingian specialists tend even more than other medievalists to eschew writing for anyone but themselves. Moreover, until quite recently, virtually all of this specialist writing was being done in German and, to a lesser extent, French.
Thus the dominant understanding of this crucial period continues to be that formulatedover fifty years ago under the twin influences of nostalgia for the high cultural tradition of antiquity and of modern nationalistic fervor fanned by the fires of French-German hostilities. To the French, the Merovingian period has too often been seen as the first time (of many) when crude and faithless Germanic hordes would invade a,nd occupy Gaul, plunging this civilized and urbane world into three centuries of darkness. For some German scholars of the past, the Merovingians represented the triumph of new and vigorous peoples over the decadent successors of Rome. The elements of these viewpoints have been eroded bit by bit, ClOd little now remains. However word of this demise has not reached much beyond academic circles, much less word of the new understanding of this crucial period which has taken its place.
I hope to present the results of these important reappraisals and evah,1ations to a wider audience with 11ittle or no previous familiarity with this period of Continental history. While I have. been extremely dependent on the great scholars-Eugen Ewig, Friedrich Prinz, Karl Ferdinand Werner, Mi-. chael Wallace-Hadrill, among others-! have exercised selective judgment in interpreting, arbitrating, and selecting elements of these scholars'. work. No area of Merovingian history is-free of controversy, and every topic treated in this book should be accompanied by a historiographical essay and could be replaced by a series of arguments contradicting its conclusions. In some places, opposing positions have been mentioned, in other plac,es they have been passed over because of limited space.
Thus, while the individual details are overwhelmingly derivative, the synthesis itself may prove somewhat novel and certainly controversial. The best one can hope is that other specialists will be so enraged by the errors, omissions, and distortions they find herein that they will be inspired to write their own, bette~ accounts of Europe be- ' fore France and Germany. Professor Peter Brown first urged me to write this book, and I am grateful to him for his encouragement and advice. Professors Maria Cesa, Friedrich Prinz, and Falko Daim have read portions of the manuscript and are responsible for much of value in it. My students at the University of Florida, among whom an early draft of the manuscript circulated, also provided valuable criti-, cism. Professors Barbara Rosenwein and Edward Peters read the completed manuscript and corrected numerous errors and inconsistencies. Those that remain are the fault of no one but myself. Gai·nesville, Florida August 1987
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