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Caring for Body and Soul: Burial and the Afterlife in the Merovingian World

01 Jan 2002-
About: The article was published on 2002-01-01 and is currently open access. It has received 89 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Soul & Afterlife.
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Book ChapterDOI
01 Dec 2005
TL;DR: The importance of the Bishop Gregory's extensive writings in the discussions of the formation of Frankish kingdoms, the working of kingship, the roles of aristocrats and bishops, and the limits of Merovingian rule is discussed in this article.
Abstract: From the later third century, Germans whom the literary sources called Franks had joined with other barbarians to challenge Roman rule in Gaul. This chapter acknowledges the importance of the Bishop Gregory's extensive writings in the discussions of the formation of Frankish kingdoms, the working of kingship, the roles of aristocrats and bishops, and the limits of Merovingian rule. The kingdom in north-eastern Gaul was sometimes known simply as 'Francia'. It also came to be known as Austria or Austrasia. Although by the fifth century Orthodox Christianity provided a dominant world-view among the Roman population in Gaul, as the Franks expanded into Gaul they nevertheless retained their pagan cults, and even into the sixth century they continued to worship at pagan shrines, especially in northern Gaul. In the kingdom of Austrasia various combinations of Frankish aristocrats, Roman aristocrats and bishops competed for influence at the royal court.

96 citations

Book
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: Effros as discussed by the authors traces the history of Merovingian archaeology within its cultural and intellectual context and exposes biases and prejudices that have colored previous interpretations of these burial sites and assesses what contemporary archaeology can tell us about the Frankish kingdoms.
Abstract: Clothing, jewelry, animal remains, ceramics, coins, and weaponry are among the artifacts that have been discovered in graves in Gaul dating from the fifth to eighth century. Those who have unearthed them, from the middle ages to the present, have speculated widely on their meaning. This authoritative book makes a major contribution to the study of death and burial in late antique and early medieval society with its long overdue systematic discussion of this mortuary evidence. Tracing the history of Merovingian archaeology within its cultural and intellectual context for the first time, Effros exposes biases and prejudices that have colored previous interpretations of these burial sites and assesses what contemporary archaeology can tell us about the Frankish kingdoms. Working at the intersection of history and archaeology, and drawing from anthropology and art history, Effros emphasizes in particular the effects of historical events and intellectual movements on French and German antiquarian and archaeological studies of these grave goods. Her discussion traces the evolution of concepts of nationhood, race, and culture and shows how these concepts helped shape an understanding of the past. Effros then turns to contemporary multidisciplinary methodologies and finds that we are still limited by the types of information that can be readily gleaned from physical and written sources of Merovingian graves. For example, since material evidence found in the graves of elite families and particularly elite men is more plentiful and noteworthy, mortuary goods do not speak as directly to the conditions in which women and the poor lived. The clarity and sophistication with which Effros discusses the methods and results of European archaeology is a compelling demonstration of the impact of nationalist ideologies on a single discipline and of the struggle toward the more pluralistic vision that has developed in the post-war years.

94 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Dec 2005
TL;DR: The annona system may have tied shippers into the regular transport of Egyptian grain to the Byzantine capital, but not so tightly as to preclude them from the simultaneous pursuit of private profit as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The biggest player in the sixth- and seventh-century Mediterranean economy was obviously the Byzantine Empire, which alone maintained the means and the motive routinely to encourage the bulk transportation of staple items between regions. Part of the agricultural surplus from the wealthiest of all the lands around the Mediterranean, Egypt, had long been diverted to assure supplies of grain for the imperial capital at Constantinople. The Mediterranean afforded wider opportunities for coastal producers to market their surplus, whether in dealings with the state or independently of it. The annona system may have tied shippers into the regular transport of Egyptian grain to the imperial capital, but not so tightly as to preclude them from the simultaneous pursuit of private profit. At privileged western sites like Rome and Marseilles, or Carthage and Naples, the archaeological evidence suggests that the late antique exchange-network persisted in an etiolated form through to the close of the seventh century.

83 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2008
TL;DR: The history of the schism between the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches between the seventh century and the eleventh is described in this article, where the authors focus on the early stages of the conflict.
Abstract: At the end of Late Antiquity, when this chapter begins, the Alps were a Great Divide between Mediterranean cultures and transalpine ones; Rome and Constantinople had more in common with one another than either did with Germanic groups in the north. The emperors in Constantinople still wielded enough authority in Rome to arrest popes who resisted their policies, and the papal apokrisiarios at the imperial court was an important figure in Rome. But by 1100 the popes themselves often came from north of the Alps, few in the West knew Greek, and imperial authority, when acknowledged in Rome, came from Germany. The Latin world, developing with, assimilated to, and combined with the Germanic world of northwestern Europe, had lost sympathy for imperial and Byzantine ways of ruling while developing its own hierarchies. The role and prestige of the popes in the western church was beyond the ken of Byzantines, while the role of the emperor in the eastern church puzzled and appalled Latin Christians. Theological and ritual differences added to a general sense of estrangement, reflected most famously in chronicles of the crusades. To describe relations between Greek and Latin Christians between the seventh century and the eleventh is, then, to write the history of the schism between the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches. Yet overabundant hindsight lurks in such a statement. A narrative which begins at the end – with schism – tends to overemphasize disagreements in earlier eras and to overlook charity and cooperation. It tends to rely on sources that “explain” the origins of the schism and to overlook sources that assume or explicitly say that there was no schism at all.

66 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2005
TL;DR: The situation of Italy during the period now often called “late antiquity’ was not always a happy one as mentioned in this paper, the economy was in transition: the number of occupied rural sites began to fall in the third or even the second century, agri deserti were becoming a common feature of the landscape, and towns were losing population.
Abstract: The situation of Italy during the period now often called “late antiquity’ was not always a happy one. The economy was in transition: The number of occupied rural sites began to fall in the third or even the second century, agri deserti were becoming a common feature of the landscape, and towns were losing population. The construction of urban public buildings, one of the distinguishing characteristics of classical civilisation, dried up, and in the early sixth century it was recognised that the population of Rome was much smaller than it had been. As Cassiodorus, a man with long experience in the civil service, wrote: “The vast numbers of the people of the city of Rome in old times are evidenced by the extensive provinces from which their food supply was drawn, as well as by the wide circuit of their walls, the massive structure of their amphitheatre, the marvellous bigness of their public baths, and the enormous multitude of mills, which could only have been made for use, not for ornament.’ The role Italy played in the economic life of the Roman Empire diminished, imported African pottery having come to dominate the Italian market as early as the second century, and its political fortunes were similar. While Rome remained for centuries the capital of a mighty empire, there were very few Italian emperors after the first century, and the advent of Constantinople as the “second Rome’ from the time of Constantine early in the fourth century saw the eastern and wealthier portion of the Empire become independent.

65 citations