The Merovingian Kingdoms and the Mediterranean World

[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 *

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.

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 Mcon (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 Orlans and the reception of the Three Chapters controversy in Merovingian Gaul Till Stber 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: Fredegars 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