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Early Medieval Europe
ISSN: 0963-9462

Early Medieval Europe provides an indispensable source of information and debate on the history of Europe from the later Roman Empire to the eleventh century. The journal is a thoroughly interdisciplinary forum, encouraging the discussion of archaeology, numismatics, palaeography, diplomatic, literature, onomastics, art history, linguistics and epigraphy, as well as more traditional historical approaches. It covers Europe in its entirety, including material on Iceland, Ireland, the British Isles, Scandinavia and Continental Europe (both west and east). Early Medieval Europe is unique in its chronological, methodological and geographical scope. Filling an important gap, it is indispensable reading for all students and scholars of the early medieval world.

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A Dark Age Peter Principle: Beowulf's incompetence threshold
Oren Falk 1

Many readers, recognizing the incompatibility of heroism with the duties of kingship, have argued that Beowulf tells a story of colossal failure. Drawing on anthropological theory, I propose that the protagonist is more Big-Man than king and that his heroism, far from a socially dysfunctional flaw, is in fact the leash by which society yanks him back from establishing himself as king. Beowulf thus speaks to an aristocracy disinclined to submit to royalty. The poem shines a light on Anglo-Saxons' aversion to despotic rule: to protect its own decentralized political structure, society against the state foredooms King Beowulf to death.

Volume 18 Issue 1 (February 2010) - pp. 2-25

Inventing paganism in eighth-century Bavaria
Jonathan Couser 1

This article examines the hagiographies of Saints Emmeram and Corbinian and the synod of Neuching from eighth-century Bavaria. It argues that the references to pagan survivals in these texts are misleading, in the absence of other evidence of paganism in the region. Rather, since these texts were composed in a narrow window of time from 769–774, this anxiety reflects concerns aroused by pagan uprisings in neighbouring Carantania, which were only suppressed in 772. Thus, the texts' authors 'invented' paganism in their own culture as their perceptions of the dividing lines between Christianity and paganism grew sharper.

Volume 18 Issue 1 (February 2010) - pp.

26-42

The Venerable Bede and Gregory the Great: exegetical connections, spiritual departures
Scott DeGregorio 1

This article revisits the familiar comparison between the thought and writings of Bede and Gregory the Great. Bede was keen to foreground his debt to Gregory and past assessments have illuminated aspects of it, but this investigation offers a more searching analysis of the interface between biblical exegesis and spiritual teaching, a subject that highlights Bede's frequent reliance on Gregory as well as his calculated departures from him. Accordingly, the article first examines the different ways Bede in his commentaries could deploy Gregory's writings as a source, then discusses the more pragmatic, less mystical thrust of Bede's thought that sets him apart from Gregory.

Volume 18 Issue 1 (February 2010) - pp. 43-60

Editorial practice in Smaragdus of St Mihiel's commentary on the Rule of St Benedict
Matthew D. Ponesse 1

This paper examines the editorial principles that guided Smaragdus of St Mihiel (fl. 809–26) in the composition of his commentary on the Rule of St Benedict. Scholars in the late eighth and early ninth centuries actively engaged in an official programme of educational reform that called for the production of accurate texts. Smaragdus' commentary provides a valuable witness to this movement, revealing how scholars applied grammatical and doctrinal criteria to root out errors in the manuscript tradition. Smaragdus' concern with the monastic life also draws attention to the importance of considerations of practice and observance in the pursuit of textual authority.

Volume 18 Issue 1 (February 2010) - pp. 61-91

The history and archaeology of Great Moravia: an introduction
Florin Curta

No abstract

Volume 17 - Issue 3 - August 2009 - pp. 238-247

Disputes over Great Moravia: chiefdom or state? the Morava or the Tisza River?
Jirí Machácek

Great Moravia existed in central Europe from the ninth to the early tenth century and left behind a lasting legacy in central and eastern Europe. However, the interpretation of the early medieval history of the region has always been a delicate matter. The written sources concerning Moravia do not lend themselves easily to historical interpretation. As a consequence, they have often been invoked not just for academic, but also for political debates. For modern state ideologies to effectively exploit the historical heritage of Great Moravia, two conditions must be met. First, there should be absolutely no doubt as to whether Great Moravia encompassed precisely those territories now within the borders of the states claiming to be its direct heirs. Second, firm evidence of politically advanced structures of power is required in order to justify both the name of 'state' and continuity to the modern age. The goal of this paper is to prove these premises on the basis of the archaeological evidence.

Volume 17 - Issue 3 - August 2009 - pp. 248-267

The significance of the Sirmian and apostolic tradition in shaping Moravian episcopal organization
David Kalhous

Based on an analysis of papal documents as well as the Vita Methodii, this work examines shifts in Methodius's status. The text analyses the significance of his titulature by a comparison with other eighth- and ninth-century missionaries, and examines the way his new diocese was legitimized through legal and historical fictions dealing with the restoration of a long-lost see and its apostolic origins. Finally, the article draws a comparison between the situation in Moravia and the importance of apostolic tradition in Rome, Constantinople, Metz, Compostela and Venice.

Volume 17 - Issue 3 - August 2009 - pp. 268-285

Archeology and written sources on eighth- to tenth-century Bohemia
Nad'a Profantová

This article examines the contribution of archaeology to our understanding of the history of Bohemia in the early Middle Ages. In a period for which only scarce information is available from written sources, archaeology is able to verify information from legend and confirm the scanty written evidence. The results of archaeological research, however, also strongly suggest that relations between Bohemians and Magyars were much more complex than the evidence of the written sources has until now led many to believe.

Volume 17 - Issue 3 - August 2009 - pp. 286-310

Nitra: when did it become a part of the Moravian realm? Evidence in the Frankish sources
Charles R. Bowlus

It is frequently asserted that Imre Boba's attempt to relocate the heartland of ninth-century Moravia cannot be correct because it is a well-known 'fact' that c.830 Moimar, the first Moravian duke, drove his rival Pribina from the fort of Nitra north of the Danube. However, the only source (the so-called Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum) ever cited to support this 'fact' makes no such statement. While modern printed editions of the Conversio do contain a statement connecting Pribina with Nitra, editors of the text recognize that this connection must have been a marginal gloss that found its way into some manuscripts much later. Assertions that two other sources, the Heimo-Urkunde and the Theotmarbrief, prove that Nitra was a part of a Moravian realm as early as c.830 cannot stand careful scrutiny. The Heimo-Urkunde, an original source dated 888, does not mention Nitra at all. While it does make a passing reference to Moravians, it does not locate them geographically. The Theomarbrief, if its authenticity can be trusted, dates from c.900 and can only establish that Nitra first became a part of the Moravian realm during the reign of Duke Sventibald (c.870–94), who conquered it and converted its pagan residents.

Volume 17 - Issue 3 - August 2009 - pp. 311-328

The magic of early medieval ritual
Christina Pössel

Whether, and how, we ought to study early medieval rituals has been much debated recently, including in the pages of this journal by Geoffrey Koziol and Philippe Buc. This paper is intended as a contribution to this debate, and argues that rituals' written or spoken interpretations are not a simple rendering of the ritualized actions' 'meanings' in words and must therefore be analysed separately, not conflated with the possible effects of performance. Ritualized acts thus had two loci: the short-term experience of the embodied performance, and the long-term struggle over interpretation in speech and writing, both of which need to be explored with appropriate methodologies. Whilst the textuality of our sources thus needs to be taken seriously, it is proposed that we can also say something about the possible or even probable characteristics of early medieval ritualized acts as the medium of bodily postures and gestures used for demonstrative public interations between power holders.

Volume 17 - Issue 2 - May 2009 - pp. 111-125

The Vita Columbani in Merovingian Gaul
Alexander O'Hara

This paper considers the evidence for the dissemination of the Vita Columbani. Using a number of seventh-century texts as well as the Vita itself, it proposes that the Vita Columbani had a wider dissemination in Merovingian Gaul than has hitherto been acknowledged. It suggests that the Vita was not merely confined to monastic and ecclesiastical circles, but was also intended for a royal and aristocratic audience closely linked to the Columbanian communities.

Volume 17 - Issue 2 - May 2009 - pp. 126-153

Bede on the Britons
W. Trent Foley, Nicholas J. Higham

This paper addresses the many facets of Bede's portrayal of the Britons in the Historia ecclesiastica, first by illustrating his attempts to cast the Britons generally in the role of usually villainous biblical types and then by examining his often more positive portrayal of certain Britons and British groups independently of those types. His recommendation of certain British Christians as saints to be imitated as well as his conviction that God has not abandoned them to perdition exempts him from the charge of being unqualifiedly anti-British. Nevertheless, his singular stereotyping of them among all the peoples of Britain reveals an especial virulence not easily explained by his biblically informed world-view.

Volume 17 - Issue 2 - May 2009 - pp. 154-185

The significance of the Carolingian advocate
Charles West

his article argues that ninth-century advocates in the Frankish world deserve more attention than they have received. Exploring some of the wealth of relevant evidence, it reviews and critiques both current historiographical approaches to the issue. Instead of considering Carolingian advocates as largely a by-product of the ecclesiastical immunity, or viewing advocacy as a Trojan horse for a subsequent establishment of lordship over monasteries, the article proposes a reading of ninth-century advocacy as intimately linked with wider Carolingian reform, particularly an interest in promoting formal judicial procedure.

Volume 17 - Issue 2 - May 2009 - pp. 186-206

Merovingian partitions: a 'genealogical charter'?
Marc Widdowson

This paper considers the classic accounts of Frankish partitions in 511 and 561 in light of the agenda of Gregory of Tours in the later 580s. While the partitions' political origins have long been emphasized, the concern here is with the political motivations of the source on which we depend, almost exclusively, for our knowledge. This discussion questions whether there were ever actually definite agreements to divide the kingdom, and suggests claims about shared inheritance supplied a 'genealogical charter' that justified and deflected attention from the interests of people like Gregory, in what was a continuously contested, evolutionary process.

Volume 17 - Issue 1 - February 2009 - pp. 1-22

Hospitality in pre-viking Anglo-Saxon England
Alban Gautier

This article studies the question of Anglo-Saxon hospitality, that is, in the first place, the gift (from a host to a guest) of food, fodder, roof and bed for a night or for a longer term. Contrary to Romantic visions, it was nothing like a spontaneous and free practice: Marcel Mauss and other anthropologists after him have shown that giving and receiving were obligations, compulsory acts in pre-market societies. In Anglo-Saxon England, hospitality was always a duty, strictly limited and framed by custom. It may have been provided to a single traveller, to a member of a formal or informal network (particularly ecclesiastical), to a king or to his agents in the form of a pastus or feorm: a kind of 'guesting' or compulsory hospitality which was progressively given up by kings as they booked lands to religious institutions. The forms and beneficiaries may vary, but the opposition between 'spontaneous' feasting and 'compulsory' guesting must not be stressed too much: hospitality was always a kind of binding exchange, even when it assumed the shape, the aspect, and even the values of a free and open practice.

Volume 17 - Issue 1 - February 2009 - pp. 23-44

Coins and trade in early medieval Italy
Alessia Rovelli

This paper is an analysis of monetary circulation in early medieval Italy in the period c.600-900. Using a dual comparison - first, of the level of currency use as against ceramics within Italy, and second, of the pattern of Italian coin use, and economic activity more generally, with that north of the Alps - this paper presents examples that shed light on patterns of change and discontinuity.

Volume 17 - Issue 1 - February 2009 - pp. 45-76

Pigs, presses and pastoralism: farming in the fifth to sixth centuries AD
Tamara Lewit

The fifth to sixth centuries were a time of significant change in rural settlement, land use, production levels and productive technology in many regions. Archaeological and related discoveries suggest that in western Europe, specialized market- and state-oriented production gave way to mixed animal husbandry and diversified farming more suited to local terrains. This was accompanied by a widespread transformation of rural settlement. In contrast, the eastern Mediterranean experienced rural settlement expansion, intensification of land use, increased market-oriented agricultural production, and a significant change in oil and wine press technology. These changes seem to reflect the socio-political context in both east and west during this pivotal period.

Volume 17 - Issue 1 - February 2009 - pp. 77-91

Diaconiae, xenodochia, hospitalia and monasteries: 'social security' and the meaning of monasticism in early medieval Rome
Hendrik W. Dey

The first section of this article examines the various types of charitable institutions operative in Rome between the seventh and the ninth centuries, in the light of what available textual and comparative evidence reveals about their respective functions. It is then suggested that these centres of assistance were staffed by resident monastic communities, an arrangement which accounts well for their many apparent similarities; which may help to explain the disappearance of the most commonly attested types (xenodochia and diaconiae) over the course of the ninth century; and which opens a window onto an alternative conception of monastic practice hitherto under-represented in the scholarly tradition.

Volume 16 - Issue 4 - November 2008 - pp. 398-422

The making of a minor saint in Drogo of Saint-Winnoc's Historia translationis s. Lewinnae
David Defries

In 1058, the Flemish abbey of Saint-Winnoc stole St Lewinna's relics from a minster in southern England. The community worked to establish her cult in Flanders. Although scholars have focused on the material gain Saint-Winnoc probably hoped the cult would bring, this article argues that the development of the abbey's communal identity figured more prominently in its motives. The community saw Lewinna primarily as a means to help bolster its bid for independence from its mother house.

Volume 16 - Issue 4 - November 2008 - pp. 423-444

Rethinking the Pseudo-Eligius sermon collection
James McCune

St Eligius of Noyon (d. 660) has been credited with the authorship of a collection of sixteen sermons since their publication in the sixteenth century. However, this article demonstrates through a detailed analysis of the sources used in these sermons that the collection cannot have been composed before the end of the ninth century. The sermons were written to be preached by a bishop in the vernacular to a mixed audience of clergy and laity. This article also shows how the sermons for Maundy Thursday can shed light on the theory and practice of public penance in the late Carolingian church.

Volume 16 - Issue 4 - November 2008 - pp. 445-476

Minting in Vandal North Africa: coins of the Vandal period in the Coin Cabinet of Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum
Guido M. Berndt, Roland Steinacher

This paper offers a re-examination of some problems regarding the coinage of Vandal North Africa. The coinage of this barbarian successor state is one of the first non-imperial coinages in the Mediterranean world of the fifth and sixth centuries. Based on the fine collection in the Coin Cabinet of Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, this article questions the chronology of the various issues and monetary relations between the denominations under the Vandal kings, especially after the reign of Gunthamund (484-96). The Vandals needed and created a solid financial system. In terms of political, administrative and economic structures they tried to integrate their realm into the changing world of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages.

Volume 16 - Issue 3 - August 2008 - pp. 252-298

The seal of Alaric, rex Gothorum
Genevra Kornbluth

A sapphire ring stone in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna which bears the legend ALARICVS REX GOTHORVM fits well into a late fifth/early sixth-century context. Forgery is highly unlikely. It was probably meant to seal letters and secure valuables, though chancery use is possible. Its composition, most probably modelled on imperial coinage, combines with an extremely high-status medium to present a flattering picture of Alaric as a peaceful king. This paper suggests that Theoderic the Ostrogoth may have commissioned the intaglio in an effort to avert war between the Franks and Visigoths, and to enhance his own status.

Volume 16 - Issue 3 - August 2008 - pp. 299-332

The 'Life of Muhammad' in Eulogius of Córdoba: some evidence for the transmission of Greek polemic to the Latin west
Janna Wasilewski

Eulogius of Córdoba, the principal recorder of the ninth-century Córdoban martyrs' movement, copied for posterity a polemic biography of the Prophet Muhammad. The lost original is the earliest such text known in Latin, despite the longstanding tradition of anti-Islamic polemic in the Greek east. However, textual analysis indicates that Eulogius revised the original biography, and that his revisions were influenced by the polemic of John of Damascus. Eulogius's exposure to John's writings probably came through personal contact with a monk from the monastery of Mar Saba, contact which offers rare evidence of a non-textual transmission of ideas.

Volume 16 - Issue 3 - August 2008 - pp. 333-353

The disappearance of the ancient landscape and the climatic anomaly of the early Middle Ages: a question to be pursued
Fredric L. Cheyette

Archaeological surveys and rescue archaeology have now dated the disappearance of occupied sites in late antiquity with considerable precision, especially in the Rhône valley and northern Gaul. Landscape archaeology has shown a conversion from arable to pasture and reforestation during the same period. Recent studies of the climate of the first millennium show that this was also an extended period of wet and cold climate. How these phenomena were connected is an important research question. A preliminary suggestion made here is that since reversion from arable to pasture affected regions as far apart as Italy and Poland it cannot simply be ascribed to the political and fiscal dislocation of the ancient world, but should be understood as one effect of the climatic anomaly.

Volume 16 - Issue 2 - May 2008 - pp. 127-165

Frankish military duty and the fate of Roman taxation
Walter Goffart

Frankish kings exacted unpaid military service from their subjects in both Merovingian and Carolingian times. The basis for this right has long been uncertain. A study of the term 'manse' as a Carolingian measure of assets brings to light the ostensibly hidden property on whose basis Franks went to war. This military duty reached back to the origins of the Frankish kingdom, when a large share of Roman taxes was awarded in individual allotments to soldiers obligated to serve, otherwise unpaid, when summoned, and heavily fined if they did not. Both demesne and tributary manses - contributory units - were the main part of state resources applied to military costs. They cannot be simply envisaged as components of an agricultural scheme (grand domaine). A tax-like military obligation was one among several institutions actively surviving from the fifth century to the ninth, and it suggests that Frankish government was more law-based and administrative than is often allowed.

Volume 16 - Issue 2 - May 2008 - pp. 166-190

Tradition as a governing theme in the writings of John Cassian
Augustine Casiday

John Cassian has been criticized in recent scholarship for historical inaccuracy - but it is not self-evident that his works were intended as histories in the sense that is supposed by that criticism. Instead, Cassian presents himself as the promoter of key traditions. This paper describes of Cassian's own thinking about 'tradition' as a key theme in his works. To that end, it aims to redress scholarly misgivings about the worth of Cassian's writings by taking them as the transmission of identifiable traditions into early to mid-fifth-century Gaul (rather than as documentary evidence for late fourth-century Egyptian monasticism).

Volume 16 - Issue 2 - May 2008 - pp. 191-214

'Ugly but . . . important': the Albanian Hoard and the making of the archaeological treasure in the early twentieth century
Melanie Holcomb

This paper deploys the Metropolitan Museum's Albanian (or Avar) Treasure as a case study to explore the role and value assigned to the named treasure during the early twentieth century, a moment when Americans - most notably J.P. Morgan - were among the wealthiest and most avid collectors of Byzantine and medieval art. Outlining the market conditions for such treasures, the archaeological practices that authenticated them, and the art historical categories that gave them meaning, the paper demonstrates the extent to which the archaeological treasure was a social creation built by various players: finders, dealers, scholars, museums and collectors.

Volume 16 - Issue 1 - February 2008 - pp. 3-22

Selling archaeology and anthropology: early medieval artefacts at the Expositions universelles and the Wiener Weltausstellung, 1867-1900
Bonnie Effros

The archaeological and anthropological exhibits included in the four Expositions universelles held in Paris between 1867 and 1900 and the Wiener Weltausstellung in the Austro-Hungarian capital in 1873, contributed to the commercialization of antiquarianism and granted international attention to the amateur practitioners of these emerging disciplines. Displays of archaeological artefacts and human remains from the migration period and the early Middle Ages, juxtaposed with more exotic 'primitive' art, permitted organizers to broaden the aesthetic sensibilities of fairgoers and promote the acquisition of native antiquities. Exhibiting private collections of early medieval objects likewise justified nineteenth-century concepts of French and 'pan-Germanic' identity by linking them to iconic artefacts and romanticizing the barbarity of this distant epoch.

Volume 16 - Issue 1 - February 2008 - pp. 23-48

Anglo-Saxonism and Victorian archaeology: William Wylie's Fairford Graves
Howard Williams

William Wylie's Fairford Graves is prominent among a series of publications dating from the mid-nineteenth century reporting the discovery of early medieval cemeteries and defining their national and racial significance for English history. This paper discusses interpretative themes in Wylie's text and images. It is argued that Fairford Graves was more than a set of descriptive observations upon the excavations and finds. The paper shows how Fairford Graves was a statement about Wylie's identity as well as the imagined Teutonic origins of the English. Seen in this light, the investigation, interpretation and publication of the early medieval burials from Fairford were active resources in a burgeoning Anglo-Saxonist discourse in early Victorian society.

Volume 16 - Issue 1 - February 2008 - pp. 49-88

Defining the OE hearg: a preliminary archaeological and topographic examination of hearg place names and their hinterlands
Sarah Semple

The OE term hearg is interpreted variously as 'pagan temple', 'hilltop sanctuary' and even 'idol'. It is a rare survival in the English place-name record. When it can be identified, the place name is commonly considered to refer to a location of pre-Christian religious activity, specifically a pagan Anglo-Saxon temple. Taking inspiration from the extensive and methodologically well-advanced studies in Scandinavia, which have successfully related place-name evidence for cultic and religious sites with the archaeology and topography of these localities, this paper adopts and uses a similar methodology to investigate the archaeological and topographic character of a selection of hearg locations. The traditional interpretations of the place name are questioned and evidence is presented that these sites are characterized by long-lived, localized cult practice spanning the late prehistoric to early historic periods, but with activity reaching a zenith in the late Iron Age to Romano-British eras, rather than the fifth to seventh centuries AD.

Volume 15 - Issue 4 - November 2007 - pp. 364-385

The origins of the theophoric week in the Germanic languages
Philip Shaw

The Germanic terms for the days of the week that contain the names of Germanic deities are often taken to result from Romano-Germanic interactions in the fourth century AD. Yet this need not be the case: the linguistic arguments underpinning this view are not decisive. A reassessment of these names suggests that an early medieval process of transfer in scholarly Christian contexts may be equally, if not more, plausible.

Volume 15 - Issue 4 - November 2007 - pp. 386-401

Defining paganism in the Carolingian world
James Palmer

Generations of scholars have looked for evidence of 'paganism' in continental sources from the eighth and ninth centuries. This paper surveys some of the key problems in defining and conceptualizing the available literary evidence for such a project. Part one argues for a return to the sources to help escape the intellectual baggage created by discussions of 'pan-Germanic paganism', interpretatio Romana and, more recently, folk practices. From the perspective of the sources' producers, paganism needs to be understood as a category of difference employed to provide a better definition of Christianity itself. In part two this line of thought is pursued through a brief study of the ways in which classical learning framed not only Carolingian attitudes to paganism, but also related strategies of moralizing.

Volume 15 - Issue 4 - November 2007 - pp. 402-425

An abbot between two cultures: Maiolus of Cluny considers the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet
Scott G. Bruce

In July 972, Muslim raiders from the citadel of Fraxinetum (modern La Garde-Freinet) abducted Abbot Maiolus of Cluny and his entourage as they crossed the Great Saint Bernard Pass (Mons Iovis) in the western Alps. This article analyses a little-known letter that Maiolus sent to his Cluniac brethren to secure payment for his release. Interwoven with biblical passages drawn from the Book of Samuel and the Psalter, the abbot's ransom letter provides the rare opportunity to examine how one of the most influential Christian leaders of the tenth century perceived his Muslim captors and their religion.

Volume 15 - Issue 4 - November 2007 - pp. 426-440

Disputes and courts in Lombard and Carolingian central Italy
Marios Costambeys

This study examines the relationship between judicial courts and the societies in which they operated as revealed by the documents of the abbey of Farfa in the duchy of Spoleto. In a series of case studies it is shown that disputants and judges could draw on a wide range of norms that enabled them to manipulate the settlement process and to tailor it to their own social advantage. Unlike many studies of disputes in central and northern Italy of the early Middle Ages, here weight is given to those aspects of disputing that took place outside the court. It is an approach that casts fresh light on the transition from Lombard to Carolingian rule in central and northern Italy. It also challenges the binary line between the 'private' and the 'public' in dispute settlement. This, in turn, has implications for how we view the so-called 'feudal transformation' in which the public was supposedly eclipsed by the private. 1

Volume 15 - Issue 3 - August 2007 - pp. 265-289

Siena in the early Middle Ages: new data from the excavation at Santa Maria della Scala
Federico Cantini

The data from excavations around the hospital of Santa Maria in Siena help to build a picture of the city in the early Middle Ages. Comparison is made with the rural site of Montarrenti, and significant differences between the economic development in the town and country are observed, although both suffered decline. Settlement, and economic activity in the city of Siena are seen to go into recession in the post-Roman period, but signs of growth become visible from the ninth century onwards.

Volume 15 - Issue 3 - August 2007 - pp. 290-314

St Columba and the convention at Druimm Cete: peace and politics at seventh-century Iona
James E. Fraser

Attendance at the 'convention of kings' at Druimm Cete in north-east Ireland is one of the most famous episodes in the career of St Columba or Colum Cille, who died in 597. Discussion of the significance of this shadowy summit, largely informed by unreliable late evidence, has hitherto focused upon what (may have) transpired there between kings based in Ireland and Scotland. The result has been the neglect of the hagiographical dimension of the presentation of Druimm Cete in our principal source, Adomnán's Vita Sancti Columbae, composed c.700. Analysis of this material shows that Adomnán's information about the convention came from his principal source, composed some sixty years earlier. It reveals moreover that Druimm Cete assumed prominence within the Columban dossier in the 640s for what it represented, rather than because of what actually happened there. Once the hagiographical agenda of Vita Sancti Columbae and its principal source is restored to its rightful place in evaluating the text, it emerges that several of its best-known stories - including the story of Columba's ordination of a Scottish king - are much more problematic as witnesses to sixth-century history than is conventionally supposed. As scholars begin to lose their grip upon the historical Columba, however, they grow better able to grasp seventh-century political history in north-east Ireland and Gaelic Scotland.

Volume 15 - Issue 3 - August 2007 - pp. 315-334

Acquiring, flaunting and destroying silk in late Anglo-Saxon England
Robin Fleming

This paper argues that silk was ubiquitous in England in the late Anglo-Saxon period. It also contends that when examined in the context of its use, it becomes clear that the deployment of silk was symbolic. People of means moved heaven and earth to get silk because it allowed them to appropriate its associated meanings for themselves. So, after establishing silk's ubiquity and its uses, the paper teases out its ideological underpinnings. Finally, the paper investigates the economics of silk. In the end it strives to prove that a whole spectrum of people acquired, displayed, and sometimes even destroyed silk, because it made others see them as they wished to be seen.

Volume 15 - Issue 2 - May 2007 - pp. 127-158.

Some remarks on ethnicity in medieval archaeology
Florin Curta

Recent critiques of the culture-historical approach to ethnicity have denounced the idea that archaeological cultures are 'actors' on the historical stage, playing the role that known individuals or groups have in documentary history. But the critique has gone as far as to claim that, because archaeologists supposedly have no access to the meaning of cultural traditions, medieval ethnicity cannot be studied by archeological means. Ethnicity should be banned from all discussions, if medieval archaeology is to make any progress in the future. The paper examines the theoretical malaise at the root of this scepticism verging on nihilism. The understanding of the archaeological record not as an imprint, but as a text allows for much learning about meaning in the past. Symbols, style and power are the key concepts that currently guide anthropological research on ethnicity as a 'social construction of primordiality'. As several archaeological examples show, medieval ethnicity was a form of social mobilization used in order to reach certain political goals. Ethnic identity was built upon some pre-existing cultural identity, in a prototypic manner.

Volume 15 - Issue 2 - May 2007 - pp. 159-185

Saxon military revolution, 912-973?: myth and reality
B.S. Bachrach, D. Bachrach

For more than a generation Karl Leyser's influential thesis, which credited Henry I with undertaking a military revolution which made possible the Saxon dynasty's rule of Francia orientalis, has dominated the scholarly literature. According to Leyser, Henry radically reformed the Saxon military by building a large force of heavily armed mounted fighting men. These men provided the means necessary to assure Saxon domination. It is argued here, by contrast, that this Saxon military revolution is a myth and that the continental Saxons, as contrasted to those in England, saw the gradual development of a heavily armed mounted fighting force following their conquest by Charlemagne in 805. The real Saxon military revolution was Henry's creation of the agrarii milites and the building of frontier fortifications.

Volume 15 - Issue 2 - May 2007 - pp. 186-222

Material memory: rebuilding the basilica of S. Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome
Caroline J. Goodson

Examining Pope Paschal I's early ninth-century architectural project of S. Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome, brings to light the diversity of functions of tituli in early medieval Rome. Not only was the church a papal basilica and site of the stational liturgy of Rome, but it was also a shrine to the saint Cecilia, a popular Roman martyr. The architectural arrangement makes clear that the papal project incorporated both the papal cult and the popular cult of the saint by manipulating the archaeology of the site and translating corporeal relics to the urban church.

Volume 15 - Issue 1 - February 2007 - pp. 2-34

Reform and the Basque dukes of Gascony: a context for the origins of the Peace of God and the murder of Abbo of Fleury
Claire Taylor

The tenth-century Basque rulers of the early medieval duchy of Gascony created novel temporal and ecclesiastical institutions through which to express their power, and negotiated, from a position of some prestige, relationships with both monastic reformers and the Poitevin dukes of neighbouring Aquitaine. There a member of the Gascon ducal family summoned what would come to be known as the first council of the 'Peace of God' movement, usually portrayed as an Aquitainian initiative. The impact of the Gascons' record on their own obscure territories also provides a context for the murder of Abbo, abbot of Fleury.

Volume 15 - Issue 1 - February 2007 - pp. 35-52

Divide and rule? The military infrastructure of eighth- and ninth-century Mercia
Steven Bassett

Military might is widely recognized as having been a key element in the Mercian kings' ability to forge and maintain a large kingdom in midland England in and after the seventh century. The paper argues that its basis was a network of fortified places - all major royal settlements that were given substantial defences in the eighth and early ninth centuries - and a systemic mechanism for manning them. The archaeological evidence of these defences at Hereford, Tamworth and Winchcombe is reviewed; the probable locations of other such early fortified places in midland England are considered; and the significance of this burghal system for our understanding of 'the supremacy of the Mercian kings' is weighed.

Volume 15 - Issue 1 - February 2007 - pp. 53-85

Charles the Simple, Robert of Neustria, and the vexilla of Saint-Denis
Geoffrey Koziol

A recent consensus holds that the deposition of Charles the Simple by Robert of Neustria in 922 was the result of a sudden deterioration in their relationship that had nothing to do with any earlier hostilities. A close examination of contemporary diplomas suggests a very different story. In 898, Charles did not faithfully implement the agreement he had made with Robert's brother Odo that gave him the succession and he resisted recognizing Robert's lay abbacies, in particuar that of Saint-Denis. These grievances shaped the entirety of the reign, and their memory remained quite alive at the time of the deposition.

Volume 14 - Issue 4 - November 2006 - pp. 355-390

Northumbria's southern frontier: a review
Nick Higham

Northumbria's southern frontier was arguably the most important political boundary inside pre-Viking England. It has, however, attracted little scholarly attention since Peter Hunter Blair's seminal article in Archaeo-logia Aeliana in 1948, which later commentators have generally followed rather uncritically. This essay reviews his arguments in the light of more recent research and casts doubt on several key aspects of his case: firstly, it contests his view that this boundary was fundamental to the naming of both southern and northern England and its kingdoms; secondly, it queries the supposition that the Roman Ridge dyke system is likely to have been a Northumbrian defensive work; thirdly, it critiques the view that the Grey Ditch, at Bradwell, formed part of the frontier; and, finally, it argues against the boundary in the west being along the River Ribble. Rather, pre-Viking Northumbria more probably included those parts of the eleventh-century West Riding of Yorkshire which lie south of the River Don, with a frontier perhaps often identical to that at Domesday, and it arguably met western Mercia not on the Ribble but on the Mersey. It was probably political developments in the tenth century, and particularly under Edward the Elder and his son Athelstan, that led to the Mercian acquisition of southern Lancashire and the development of a new ecclesiastical frontier between the sees of Lichfield and York on the Ribble, in a period that also saw the York archdiocese acquire northern Nottinghamshire.

Volume 14 - Issue 4 - November 2006 - pp. 391-418

Metamorphoses of the early medieval signum of a ruler in the Carolingian world
Ildar H. Garipzanov

This article uses the approach of diplomatic semiotics to explore early medieval signs of authority in charters and on coins, especially the monogram and the sign of the cross used as an individual 'signature'. Coins and charters used these signs communicating royal or imperial authority differently, addressing diverse regional and social audiences. From the fifth through the ninth centuries, the early medieval signum of a ruler gradually transformed from the individualizing sign of a particular monarch, designed to differentiate him symbolically from other rulers, to the generalizing sign of the king by the grace of God, which as a visual attribute of authority could be shared by several rulers. This transformation signified the inauguration of a new 'medieval' tradition in the communication of authority in late Carolingian times.

Volume 14 - Issue 4 - November 2006 - pp. 419-464

. . . in die festivitatis: gift-giving, power and the calendar in the Carolingian kingdoms
Dmitri Starostine

The reckoning of time and the composing of calendars became an important part of cultural practice in the early Middle Ages. This paper asks how important were works on the reckoning of time for those who used the calendar in everyday life. It considers whether monks and scholars may have influenced royal officials in the reckoning of time. The social symbolism of calendric knowledge is also examined in the context of gift-giving and exchange that permeated Frankish society. Representations and uses of time reckoning are actually seen to be similar in the royal court and local contexts, but were rather different from what some scholars have imagined.

Volume 14 - Issue 4 - November 2006 - pp. 465-486

Is Robert I in hell? The diploma for Saint-Denis and the mind of a rebel king (Jan. 25, 923)
Geoffrey Koziol

Can one use the most formal and formulaic type of source left us by the early Middle Ages to probe the beliefs and values of a tenth-century leader? An enquiry into Robert of Neustria's 'deposition' of Charles the Simple, the importance of Saint-Denis to Robert, and the contemporary meaning of the battle of Soissons.

Volume 14 - Issue 3 - August 2006 - pp. 233-267

The use and abuse of hostages in later Anglo-Saxon England
Ryan Lavelle

This paper explores the use of hostages in political relations in Anglo-Saxon England, often between different ethnic groups. Although much of the evidence relates to the ninth century when hostages were used as a means of guaranteeing the peace agreements made between King Alfred and his Viking adversaries, consideration will be given here to the use of hostages in the broader context of the late Anglo-Saxon period. The paper discusses whether the significance of these arrangements lay in their projection of imperial power or in their practicality as a crude political tool whose effectiveness in maintaining an agreement lay in a tangible threat. Both of these aspects of Anglo-Saxon hostageship are examined, especially with regard to peacemaking, the extent to which it could be successful, and why.

Volume 14 - Issue 3 - August 2006 - pp. 269-296

Reconstructing the past in medieval Iceland
Chris Callow

Locating and dating sagas is a difficult but still important task. This paper examines the relationship between the Sagas of Icelanders, which are concerned with tenth- and eleventh-century events, and the contemporary sagas of the mid-thirteenth century. Drawing upon models from anthropology, it looks at how contemporary ideas permeated these historicizing texts and how genealogy and geography act as structures around which the past is remembered. The many political relationships which occur in Laxdæla saga are analysed in relation to those from contemporary sagas from the same area of western Iceland. Since it appears that there is relatively little in common between the political situations depicted in Laxdæla saga and those portrayed in the contemporary sagas, it is likely that Laxdæla saga and the contemporary sagas were actually written down in different periods. It is possible, therefore, that the Sagas of Icelanders give us a view of the past which originates earlier than is usually suggested.

Volume 14 - Issue 3 - August 2006 - pp. 297-324

The history of marriage and the myth of Friedelehe
Ruth Mazo Karras

The idea that Friedelehe and Muntehe constituted two distinct forms of Germanic marriage was based upon an attempt to reconstruct common Germanic culture with scraps of evidence from widely different times and places. A thorough re-examination of the sources for the institutions that were posited, based on this now outmoded methodology, reveals no evidence that transfer of Munt, or guardianship, distinguished between two different types of marriage, except perhaps in Lombard Italy, under the influence of Roman law. The idea that marriage with a dos is a different institution from marriage without one is not attested until the Carolingian period.

Volume 14 - Issue 2 - May 2006

Answers and echoes: the Libellus responsionum and the hagiography of north-western European mission
Bill Friesen

This article examines three aspects of Augustine of Canterbury's Libellus responsionum. Through recent scholarship it provides a summary of the Libellus's textual context. It also clarifies the very contentious issue of just how familiar the Libellus was to missionaries, not only those preaching in England but also on the Continent, and specifically Augustine of Canterbury and Boniface. Finally, in light of the pastoral and textual circumstances, it explores the largely neglected question of just how the Libellus may (or may not) have illuminated the various literary features and strata of Augustinian and Bonifatian biography.

Volume 14 - Issue 2 - May 2006

The first two centuries of Saint Martin of Tours
Allan Scott McKinley

This paper presents a critical examination of the evidence for the cult of St Martin in the fifth and sixth centuries. Through examination of the various manifestations of Martin's cult, it argues that the cult had different meanings and significance at different times and places, and that the commonly perceived popularity of Martin's cult was in fact an illusion created by the constant reinvention and promotion of various interpretations of Martin by interested parties, from aristocratic ascetics to politically active bishops.

Volume 14 - Issue 2 - May 2006

Penitentials and the practice of penance in the tenth and eleventh centuries
Rob Meens

This article reconsiders the function of penitentials in the tenth and eleventh centuries; were they used mainly to support priests in the administration of penance, or rather as legal texts in either the episcopal court or in the schoolroom? Through an examination of the evidence of the manuscripts from across Europe, it shows that whilst few new penitentials were composed, many older ones, especially those which gave their authorities, continued to be copied in this period, and that most were preserved in a legal rather than pastoral context. Finally, it suggests that this shift towards collections of a legal nature indicates not only tighter episcopal control, but also a concern for the better legal training of priests.

Volume 52 - Issue 2 - June 2006

Correcting sinners, correcting texts: a context for the Paenitentiale pseudo-Theodori
Carine van Rhijn and Marjolijn Saan

This article presents the preliminary results of an investigation into the history of the Penitential of Pseudo-Theodore. It outlines the text's manu-script history, the scope of its contents, and its sources, arguing that it was a comprehensive, systematic collection. It also reconsiders the evidence for when and where it was composed, suggesting it was probably written in north-eastern France or the eastern Rhineland in the 820s or 830s.