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

Birth and death

In effecting, at the very highest level of existence, the connection and constant transactions between man and God, between the tangible universe and eternity, the liturgy illustrated this propensity [for sensory participation] in an exemplary way. Spectacular, even in its smallest aspects, it signified the truths of the faith by means of a complex play on the senses of hearing (through music, chants, reading), sight (through the grandeur of the edifices ; by the actors, their dress, their gestures, their dance and by the setting) and even touch ; the sacred wall was touched ; the foot, the reliquary, the episcopal ring kissed ; the fragrance of incense and of candlewax inhaled.

Performing the liturgy

Central to the re-evaluation of the Germanic migration and its impact on post-Roman Britain is the relationship between Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon cemeteries and settlements. The Romano-British cemetery at Queenford Farm, for instance, lay outside the Roman small town of Dorchester-on-Thames in an area with an early fifth-century Anglo-Saxon presence, yet radiocarbon dates indicate that it continued in use into the sixth century. The cemeteries and settlements of the sixth century indicate that the society within which the Anglo-Saxon identity developed was not rigidly stratified and that high-ranking individuals were integrated within the community, in death as well as in life. The earliest Anglo-Saxon leaders, unable to tax and coerce followers as successfully as the Roman state had done, instead extracted surplus by raiding and collecting food renders. By 600, the establishment of the first Anglo-Saxon emporia was in prospect. Anglo-Saxon society, in short, looked very different in ad 600 than it did a hundred years earlier.

The earliest Anglo-Saxon kingdoms

Beyond empire I: Eastern Christianities from the Persian to the Turkish conquest, 604–1071

Historical approaches to the written sources have changed in many ways and at several analytical levels. New evidence, new lenses, have become available. This chapter presents a short survey of the ways in which those forms of evidence are approached and the sorts of questions which they can, and cannot, answer. The most common form of historical writing, broadly defined, was related to ecclesiastical history: hagiography. A common source for post-Roman social history is the series of law-codes issued in the period. Another source of information for the period takes the form of letters. Poetic writing in this period took a number of forms. The theological writings are increasingly of interest to historians of the early Middle Ages, certainly far more than was the case a hundred years ago. The chapter discusses developments in archaeological theory, numismatics and epigraphy, and towns and trade. The study of medieval rural settlements provides many ways of examining social structure as well as economy.

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

Citations

Birth and death

Performing the liturgy

The earliest Anglo-Saxon kingdoms

Beyond empire I: Eastern Christianities from the Persian to the Turkish conquest, 604–1071

The sources and their interpretation

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