Book contents
- Merovingian Worlds
- Cambridge Medieval Textbooks
- Merovingian Worlds
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Note on Digitised Manuscripts
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 History and Its Historians
- 2 Identities and Status
- 3 Power in the Early Merovingian World (c. 450–613)
- 4 The Rise of the Shadow Kings (613–751)
- 5 Economies, People, and Nature
- 6 Literacy and Culture
- 7 The Frankish Churches
- 8 Religions and the Wider World
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction
Anarchy and Complexity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 November 2024
- Merovingian Worlds
- Cambridge Medieval Textbooks
- Merovingian Worlds
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Note on Digitised Manuscripts
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 History and Its Historians
- 2 Identities and Status
- 3 Power in the Early Merovingian World (c. 450–613)
- 4 The Rise of the Shadow Kings (613–751)
- 5 Economies, People, and Nature
- 6 Literacy and Culture
- 7 The Frankish Churches
- 8 Religions and the Wider World
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter introduces how the study of the Merovingian kingdoms has developed since the sixteenth century. Merovingian history is not easily or self-evidently presented in the source material; it has had to be recovered and reconstructed. The historiographical survey is therefore important to understanding how writers and scholars have put that history together. It highlights some of the key political, confessional, theoretical, and methodological issues that have shaped how the period is interpreted, from the Magdeburg Centuriators of the Reformation to the Monumenta Germaniae Historica’s self-consciously ‘scientific’ approach to editing sources.
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- Merovingian Worlds , pp. 1 - 28Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024