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FROM ROMAN PROVINCES TO MEDIEVAL KINGDOMS
In 300 C.E. the Roman Empire stretched from Britain to Mesopotamia, from the North Sea to the Sahara Desert. A mere three hundred years later the Roman imperial structure was gone, replaced by a series of barbarian kingdoms that became the basis of Europe’s eventual medieval and modern states. In this anthology Thomas F.X.Noble presents a collection of key articles, written by leading scholars over the last twenty years, that examine how and why the dominance of the Roman Empire ended and how new forms of government and society were established. Since the Renaissance, historians have tended to understand the events of the period in terms of a dramatic ‘decline and fall’ of Rome.
However, these revisionist essays provide an overview of how contemporary historians have furthered the debate, reassessing how abruptly the shift from Roman Empire to medieval Europe occurred, and the origins and causes of the development of the Middle Ages, and the new order that it ushered in. Rome played a key role in guiding this transformation and these essays also include a wealth of material on the characteristics and experiences of the barbarian tribes, the relationships they forged with the Romans and how far their new kingdoms were influenced by Rome. With an accessible and informative introduction, and thorough editorial material accompanying each section, From Roman Provinces to Medieval Kingdoms is a highly readable and informative compilation of current work and recent perspectives, making complex arguments accessible to students and exposing them to the key debates surrounding the study of the era.
Contributors to this volume are: Bonnie Effros, Patrick J.Geary, Walter Goffart, Guy Halsall, Heinrich Härke, Peter J.Heather, Stéphane Lebecq, Wolf Liebeschütz, Michael McCormick, Alexander Callander Murray, Walter Pohl, Herwig Wolfram, and Ian Wood.
Thomas F.X.Noble is Director of the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. He is co-author of Western Civilization: The Continuing Experiment (2004) and author of The Republic of St. Peter: The Birth of the Papal State, 680–825 (1998).
CONTRIBUTORS
Bonnie Effros is Professor of History at Binghamton University in New York. Her research has focused on the Merovingians. She is particularly known for integrating historical and archaeological methods. She has recently published three books that reveal her interests and approaches: Body and Soul: Burial and the Afterlife in the Merovingian World (2002), Creating Community with Food and Drink in Merovingian Gaul (2002), and Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology and the Making of the Early Middle Ages (2003).
Patrick J.Geary is Professor of History at UCLA. His research has focused on the cultural, social, and religious history of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Among his books are: Aristocracy in Provence: The Rhone Basin at the Dawn of the Carolingian Age (1985), Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World (1988), Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (2nd edn 1990), Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (1994), and The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (2002). He has also published many articles, edited several volumes, and contributed to a Western Civilization textbook.
Walter Goffart now teaches occasionally at Yale after his retirement in 1999 from a long career at the University of Toronto. His research has had two rather different foci: fiscal and administrative history and medieval authors and texts. Among his most significant publications are: The LeMans Forgeries: A Chapter from the History of Church Property in the Ninth Century (1966), Caput and Colonnate: Towards a History of Late Roman Taxation (1974), Barbarians and Romans, A.D. 418–584: The Techniques of Accommodation (1980), and The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550–800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (1988). His most recent book marks a new direction in his research in recent years: Historical Atlases: The First Three Hundred Years, 1570–1870 (2003).
Guy Halsall became a lecturer in medieval history at the University of York in 2003 after teaching at the University of London. He has both archaeological and historical training and has published in both areas. Specialists value his many articles but his books have been well received too: Early Medieval Cemeteries: An Introduction to Burial Archaeology in the Post-Roman West (1995), Settlement and Social Organization: The Merovingian Region of Metz (1995), and Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West, 450–900 (2003). He has also edited books on Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West (1998) and Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (2002). Heinrich Härke is Reader in Archaeology at Reading University. He is renowned as both an excavator and theorist. In addition to many articles and reports, he has written major books: Settlement Types and Settlement Patterns in the West Halstatt Province: An Evaluation of Evidence from Excavated Sites (1979), Angelsächsische Waffengräber des 5. bis 7. Jahrhundert (1992), and Archaeology, Ideology, and Society: The German Experience (2nd edn 2002). He has been particularly interested in burial customs and in what they do or do not reveal about migrations.
Peter J.Heather is a fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. He formerly taught at the University of London. In addition to many studies on the cultural and institutional history of the later Roman Empire, Heather has been especially interested in the history of the Goths. His major books include: Goths and Romans, 332–489 (1991), The Goths in the Fourth Century (1991), and The Goths (1996). Stéphane Lebecq is a professor of medieval history at the University of Lille, and is accomplished in both history and archaeology. He has published many articles and also important books, including: Marchands et navigateurs frisons du haut moyen âge, 2 vols. (1983) and Les origines franques: Ve -IXe siècle (1990).
J.H.W.G.Liebeschütz recently retired after a long career at the University of Nottingham, and has made important contributions to many aspects of the history of Late Antiquity. He began with a book on Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire (1972) and then turned to Continuity and Change in Roman Religion (1979). Subsequently he plunged into the whole debate over barbarians (without leaving urban officials behind!) in Barbarians and Bishops: Army, Church, and State in the Age of Arcadius and Chrysostom (1990). His latest book, Decline and Fall of the Roman City (2001) has brought him back to familiar themes in urban history. Michael McCormick was formerly a professor of medieval history at Johns Hopkins University, and is now Goelet Professor of History at Harvard. His first book, Les Annales du haut moyen age (1975) treated an important class of sources. He then painted on a huge canvas in Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West (1990). Meticulous manuscript research led him to write Five Hundred Unknown Latin Glosses from the Palatine Virgil (1992). His most recent book, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce A.D. 300–900 (2001) has won wide acclaim.
Alexander Callander Murray, Professor of History at Erindale College of the University of Toronto, has concentrated on the Merovingians. His first book Germanic Kinship Structure: Studies in Law and Society in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (1983) combined legal and anthropological approaches in studying Frankish families. He edited an important volume of essays in honor of his teacher Walter Goffart, After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History. Essays Presented to Walter Goffart (1998) and he compiled an exceptionally rich collection of source materials for the study and teaching of Merovingian Gaul, From Roman to Merovingian Gaul: A Reader (2000).
Thomas F.X.Noble has been Robert M.Conway Director of the Medieval Institute at Notre Dame and Professor of History since 2001. Before that he taught for twenty years at the University of Virginia. His research has focused on Rome, the papacy, and the Carolingians. His first book, The Republic of St. Peter (1984), treated the origins of papal temporal rule. He has edited volumes of essays and of sources and contributed to a Western Civilization textbook. He is currently preparing for publication a volume entitled Images and the Carolingians: Tradition, Order, and Worship Walter Pohl is the most accomplished pupil of the great medievalist Herwig Wolfram. For many years he was Director of the medieval history research branch of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In 2004 he was elected to the chair of medieval history at the University of Vienna. He has edited many volumes and published countless articles. Among his major books, one might cite Die Awaren (1988), Die Germanen (2000), and Werkstätte der Erinnerung: Monte Cassino und die Gestaltung der langobardischen Vergangenheit (2001). His research has contributed to major rethinking of the barbarians along Rome’s frontiers and within the late empire. Herwig Wolfram recently retired as the Professor of Medieval History at the University of Vienna. His early work concentrated on diplomatics, the technical study of documentary sources: Intitulatio I: Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel bis zum Ende des 8. Jahrhundert (1967), Intitulatio II: Lateinische Herrscher- und Fürstentitel im neunten und zehnten Jahrhundert (1973), and Intitulatio III: Lateinsiche Herrschertitel und Herrschaftstitulaturen vom 7. bis 13. Jahrhundert (1988). But he is best known for influential works on the history of the barbarians, including Die Geburt Mitteleuropas (1987), History of the Goths (1988), and The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples (1997).
Ian Wood is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Leeds. As an historian of the Merovingians, he is perhaps best known for numerous articles and his book The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450–751 (1994). But his ability to make acutely critical and highly original interpretations of sources is on display in countless articles and in The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe, 400–1000 (2001). With Danuta Shanzer he has made available in English translation Avitus of Vienne: Letters and Selected Poems (2002) a subject that brought him back to his original doctoral research.
SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE
Rewriting history, or revisionism, has always followed closely in the wake of history writing. In their efforts to re-evaluate the past, professional as well as amateur scholars have followed many approaches, most commonly as empiricists, uncovering new information to challenge earlier accounts. Historians have also revised previous versions by adopting new perspectives, usually fortified by new research, which overturn received views. Even though rewriting is constantly taking place, historians’ attitudes towards using new interpretations have been anything but settled. For most, the validity of revisionism lies in providing a stronger, more convincing account that better captures the objective truth of the matter. Although such historians might agree that we never finally arrive at this “truth,” they believe it exists and over time may be better approximated.
At the other extreme stand scholars who believe that each generation or even each cultural group or subgroup necessarily regards the past differently, each creating for itself a more usable history. Although these latter scholars do not reject the possibility of demonstrating empirically that some contentions are better than others, they focus upon generating new views based upon different life experiences. Different truths exist for different groups. Surely such an understanding, by emphasizing subjectivity, further encourages rewriting history. Between these two groups are those historians who wish to borrow from both sides. This third group, while accepting that every congeries of individuals sees matters differently, still wishes somewhat contradictorily to fashion a broader history that incorporates both of these particular visions. Revisionists who stress empiricism fall into the first of the three camps, while others spread out across the board. Today the rewriting of history seems to have accelerated to a blinding speed as a consequence of the evolution of revisionism. A variety of approaches has emerged. A major factor in this process has been the enormous increase in the number of researchers.
This explosion has reinforced and enabled the retesting of many assertions. Significant ideological shifts have also played a major part in the growth of revisionism. First, the crisis of Marxism, culminating in the events of Eastern Europe in 1989, has given rise to doubts about explicitly Marxist accounts. Such doubts have spilled over into the entire field of social history which has been a dominant subfield of the discipline for several decades.
Focusing on society and its class divisions implied that these are the most important elements in historical analysis. Because Marxism was built on the same claim, the whole basis of social history has been questioned, despite the very many studies that directly had little to do with Marxism. Disillusionment with social history simultaneously opened the door to cultural and linguistic approaches largely developed in anthropology and literature. Multi-culturalism and feminism further generated revisionism. By claiming that scholars had, wittingly or not, operated from a white European/American male point of view, newer researchers argued that other approaches had been neglected or misunderstood. Not surprisingly, these last historians are the most likely to envision each subgroup rewriting its own usable history, while other scholars incline towards revisionism as part of the search for some stable truth. Rewriting Histories will make these new approaches available to the student population. Often new scholarly debates take place in the scattered issues of journals which are sometimes difficult to find.
Furthermore, in these first interactions, historians tend to address one another, leaving out the evidence that would make their arguments more accessible to the uninitiated. This series of books will collect in one place a strong group of the major articles in selected fields, adding notes and introductions conducive to improved understanding. Editors will select articles containing substantial historical data, so that students—at least those who approach the subject as an objective phenomenon— can advance not only their comprehension of debated points but also their grasp of substantive aspects of the subject. In this volume about the end of antiquity and emergence of barbarian kingdoms, the applecart of historical tradition has been completely upset. Although scholars formerly believed that successive invasions by barbarian tribes issuing from the north and east eventually toppled Rome and replaced that empire with their own kingdoms and cultures, the articles presented here completely undercut every element of that simple and coherent explanation. In short, no evidence has emerged that tribes migrated over long distances to challenge the ageing Roman Empire.
In fact, they seem to have constituted themselves anew in contact with Rome. Furthermore, the invasion of the empire becomes more a slow transformation. Some articles argue that it mainly resulted from Roman efforts to resolve their own problems, while others disagree, proposing different ideas. The collection also establishes that Romanist influences continue into the era of barbarian kingship, making emergent societies cultural amalgams. This volume also makes an impact on relatively recent political debates. By disputing the existence of potent barbarian groups which arrived, marched in, and formed kingdoms, this volume undermines the notion of ageless ethnicities in Europe. This collection suggests that these peoples were more contingent as entities and that the collision of ethnic groups may have been decided by accommodation and mixing more than merely the victory of one over another.
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