This pioneering study explores early medieval Frankish identity as a window into the formation of a distinct Western conception of ethnicity. Focusing on the turbulent and varied history of Frankish identity in Merovingian and Carolingian historiography, it offers a new basis for comparing the history of collective and ethnic identity in the Christian West with other contexts, especially the Islamic and Byzantine worlds. The tremendous political success of the Frankish kingdoms provided the medieval West with fundamental political, religious and social structures, including a change from the Roman perspective on ethnicity as the quality of the 'Other' to the Carolingian perception that a variety of Christian peoples were chosen by God to reign over the former Roman provinces. Interpreting identity as an open-ended process, Helmut Reimitz explores the role of Frankish identity in the multiple efforts through which societies tried to find order in the rapidly changing post-Roman world.

This volume examines the Italian peninsula in the early Middle Ages by focusing on research fields such as ethnic identity, memory, and use of the past. Particular attention is devoted to the way some authors were influenced by their own ‘present’ in their reconstruction of the past. The political and cultural fragmentation of Italy during the early Middles Ages, created by the Lombards’ invasion of a part of the Peninsula in the late-sixth century and early-seventh century, Charlemagne’s conquest of a part of the Lombard Kingdom in 774, and by the weakening of the Byzantine Empire in the eighth and ninth centuries, make this part of Europe a special area for exploring continuities and discontinuities between the Roman and the post-Roman periods in Western Europe. Across the volume, Berto examines the problems that the features of primary sources and their scarcity pose to their interpretations. Ethnic Identity, Memory, and Use of the Past in Italy’s ‘Dark Ages’ is the ideal resource for upper level undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars interested in the relationship between Italy and Europe during the Middle Ages.

Roman identity is one of the most interesting cases of social identity because in the course of time, it could mean so many different things: for instance, Greek-speaking subjects of the Byzantine empire, inhabitants of the city of Rome, autonomous civic or regional groups, Latin speakers under ‘barbarian’ rule in the West or, increasingly, representatives of the Church of Rome. Eventually, the Christian dimension of Roman identity gained ground. The shifting concepts of Romanness represent a methodological challenge for studies of ethnicity because, depending on its uses, Roman identity may be regarded as ‘ethnic’ in a broad sense, but under most criteria, it is not. Romanness is indeed a test case how an established and prestigious social identity can acquire many different shades of meaning, which we would class as civic, political, imperial, ethnic, cultural, legal, religious, regional or as status groups. This book offers comprehensive overviews of the meaning of Romanness in most (former) Roman provinces, complemented by a number of comparative and thematic studies. A similarly wide-ranging overview has not been available so far.

After Alfred deals with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, tracing the development of this group of texts, linking them to a southern court elite who were deeply engaged in kingdom-building, and offering both a detailed study of each chronicle and a broad contribution to the history of a critical period in the making of England and the English story.

The Merovingian centuries were a foundational period in the historical consciousness of western Europe, and their stories were shaped through a process of historiographical adaptation across a millennium. This expert commentary is for scholars interested in early medieval history and historiography.

Modern historians of the Normans have tended to treat their enterprises and achievements as a series of separate and discrete histories. Such treatments are valid and valuable, but historical understanding of the Normans also depends as much on broader approaches akin to those adopted in this book. As the successor volume to Norman Expansion: Connections, Continuities and Contrasts, it complements and significantly extends its findings to provide a fuller appreciation of the roles played by the Normans as one of the most dynamic and transformative forces in the history of medieval ‘Outer Europe’. It includes panoramic essays that dissect the conceptual and methodological issues concerned, suggest strategies for avoiding associated pitfalls, and indicate how far and in what ways the Normans and their legacies served to reshape sociopolitical landscapes across a vast geography extending from the remoter corners of the British Isles to the Mediterranean basin. Leading experts in their fields also provide case-by-case analyses, set within and between different areas, of themes such as lordship and domination, identities and identification, naming patterns, marriage policies, saints’ cults, intercultural exchanges, and diaspora–homeland connections. The Normans and the ‘Norman Edge’ therefore presents a potent combination of thought-provoking overviews and fresh insights derived from new research, and its wide-ranging comparative focus has the advantage of illuminating aspects of the Norman past that traditional regional or national histories often do not reveal so clearly. It likewise makes a major contribution to current Norman scholarship by reconsidering the links between Norman expansion and ‘state-formation’; the extent to which Norman practices and priorities were distinctive; the balance between continuity and innovation; relations between the Normans and the indigenous peoples and cultures they encountered; and, not least, forms of Norman identity and their resilience over time. An extensive bibliography is also one of this book’s strengths.

A major re-assessment of the Frankish historian Flodoard of Rheims, one of the tenth century's most intriguing but neglected narrators.

Gregory, bishop of Tours (573-594), was among the most prolific writers of his age and uniquely managed to cover the genres of history, hagiography, and ecclesiastical instruction. He not only wrote about events (of the secular, spiritual, and even natural variety) but about himself as an actor and witness. Though his work (especially the Histories) has been recycled and studied for centuries, our grasp of an even basic understanding of it, never mind Gregory’s significance in the history of the late antique West, has hardly yet attained a definitive perspective. A Companion to Gregory of Tours brings together fourteen scholars who provide an expert guide to interpreting his works, his period, and his legacy in religious and historical studies. Contributors are: Pascale Bourgain, Roger Collins, John J. Contreni, Stefan Esders, Martin Heinzelmann, Yitzhak Hen, John K. Kitchen, Simon Loseby, Alexander Callander Murray, Patrick Périn, Joachim Pizarro, Helmut Reimitz, Michael Roberts, Richard Shaw.

This study is the first up-to-date comprehensive analysis of Continental Saxon identity in antiquity and the early middle ages. Building on recent scholarship on barbarian ethnicity, this study emphasises not just the constructed and open-ended nature of Saxon identity, but also the crucial role played by texts as instruments and resources of identity-formation. This book traces this process of identity-formation over the course of eight centuries, from its earliest beginnings in Roman ethnography to its reinvention in the monasteries and bishoprics of ninth-century Saxony. Though the Saxons were mentioned as early as AD 150, they left no written evidence of their own before c. 840. Thus, for the first seven centuries, we can only look at the Saxons through the eyes of their Roman enemies, Merovingian neighbours and Carolingian conquerors. Such external perspectives do not yield objective descriptions of a people, but rather reflect an ongoing discourse on Saxon identity, in which outside authors described who they imagined, wanted or feared the Saxons to be: dangerous pirates, noble savages, bestial pagans or faithful subjects. Significantly, these outside views deeply influenced how ninth-century Saxons eventually came to think about themselves, using Roman and Frankish texts to reinvent the Saxons as a noble and Christian people.

Examines the fundamental question of what held the societies of the post-Roman world together.