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Título: THE MEROVINGIAN KINGDOMS AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD. REVISITING THE SOURCES
Autor: ESDERS, STEFAN; et al.
Año: 1996
Género: HISTORIA Y MITOLOGÍA
Formato: PDF

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".

One of the most productive trends in the study of the Merovingians -and indeed of the early medieval period more generally- has been the blurring of boundaries that supposedly divided various post-Roman polities in the fifth and sixth centuries (and beyond). Eschewing the "what happens in Gaul, stays in Gaul" approach, the essays in this volume emphasize the myriad of connections that linked the Merovingian kingdoms chronologically to the Romans before and the Carolingians after and geographically to Spain, Britain, Ostrogothic, Byzantine, and Lombard Italy, North Africa, and the Byzantine Empire.

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