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1 results

  • 21 - Kings and kingship

  • from PART III - THEMES AND PROBLEMS
  • Edited by Paul Fouracre, University of Manchester
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 December 2005, pp 571-604

  • Summary

    This chapter covers the kings who governed the one-time dioceses of Italy, Spain, Gaul and Britannia in the post-Roman era. Sixth and seventh century Europeans with only marginal education could have known of the fall of the kings of Rome. The legitimate emperor, Justinian II, was the last of the dynasty of Heraclius, which takes the credit for saving the Eastern Roman Empire from complete extinction. The only king in Frankish Gaul was Childebert III. Child kings reflected the strictly hereditary nature of kingship in this part of the West. The chapter shows that sub-Roman monarchy in the West derives substantially from the Roman imperial model. Early medieval western kings inherited what was, by the standards of the time when Germans first became familiar with Rome, a massive palace mechanism. Among the themes of their rule was its scaling down until it again resembled what had been at Augustus' disposal.