The Merovingian Kingdoms and the Mediterranean World

Stefan Esders is Professor of History of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität 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 Universität 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.

Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
List of Abbreviations
Maps

Introduction, Pia Lucas and Tamar Rotman

Part 1: The wider world: Setting the context of the post-Roman world
1. History, geography and the notion of mare nostrum in the early medieval West
Yitzhak Hen

2. True differences: Gregory of Tours’ account of the Council of Mâcon (585)
Helmut Reimitz

Part 2: Mediterranean ties and Merovingian diplomacy
3. East and West from a Visigothic perspective: How and why were Frankish brides negotiated in the late sixth century
Anna Gehler-Rachunek

4. Friendship and diplomacy in the Histories of Gregory of Tours
Hope Williard

5. Private records of official diplomacy: The Franco-Byzantine letters in the Austrasian Epistolar Collection
Bruno Dumezil

6. The language of sixth-century Frankish diplomacy
Yaniv Fox

Part 3: Bridging the Seas: Law and religion
7. Mediterranean Homesick Blues: Human trafficking in the Merovingian leges
Lukas Bothe

8. The Fifth Council of Orléans and the reception of the Three Chapters controversy in Merovingian Gaul
Till Stüber

9. Reconciling disturbed sacred space: The ordo for “reconciling an altar where a murder has been committed” in the Sacramentary of Gellone in its cultural context.
Rob Meens

10. Imitation and rejection of Eastern practices in Merovingian Gaul: Gregory of Tours and Vulfilaic the Stylite of Trier
Tamar Rotman

Part 4: Shifting Perspectives: Emperors, tributes and propaganda
11. Magnus et verus christianus: The portrayal of Emperor Tiberius II in Gregory of Tours
Pia Lucas

12. When contemporary history is caught up by the immediate present: Fredegar’s proleptic depiction of Emperor Constans II
Stefan Esders

13. Byzantium, the Merovingians, and the hog: A passage of Theophanes’ Chronicle revisited
Federico Montinaro

Conclusion, Yitzhak Hen and Stefan Esders

Index