The Merovingian Kingdoms and the Mediterranean World: Revisiting the Sources

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This book explores the Merovingian kingdoms in Gaul within a broader Mediterranean context. Their politics and culture have mostly been interpreted in the past through a narrow local perspective, but as the papers in this volume clearly demonstrate, the Merovingian kingdoms had complicated and multi-layered political, religious, and socio-cultural relations with their Mediterranean counterparts, from Visigothic Spain in the West to the Byzantine Empire in the East, and from Anglo-Saxon England in the North to North-Africa in the South. The papers collected here provide new insights into the history of the Merovingian kingdoms by examining various relevant issues, ranging from identity formation to the shape and rules of diplomatic relations, cultural transformation, as well as voiced attitudes towards the other. Each of the papers begins with a short excerpt from a primary source, which serves as a stimulus for the discussion of broader issues. The various sources point of view and their contextualization stand at the heart of the analysis, thus ensuring that discussions are accessible to students and non-specialists, without jeopardizing the high academic standard of the debate.

Reviews

[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. * H-Africa *
The two absorbing volumes ... provide timely foundations for more integrated studies of the Merovingian Franks within a much broader cultural context ... provides a sound and much-needed first step, and these interventions bode well for the future of early medieval studies. * Early Medieval Europe *

Author Bio

Stefan Esders is Professor of History of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universitt Berlin, Germany. Yitzhak Hen is Professor of Late Antique and Early Medieval History, Department of History at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Director of the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies, Israel. Pia Lucas is a doctoral candidate and research assistant at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universitt Berlin, Germany. Tamar Rotman is a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of General History at Bar Ilan University and a research assistant in the Israeli Science Foundation project Through distant eyes: the birth of a Merovingian story, 575-1575, Israel.