Medieval History Geek

Medieval History Geek Has Moved!

2012-01-01T18:20:00.003-05:00

This blog has moved to WordPress. You can access it by typing http://medievalhistorygeek.wordpress.com/ into your browser or by using the link at the bottom of this post.

For the time being, all existing content will remain on Blogger, there just won't be anything new. I've also closed comments for the blog.

Thank you to everyone who has read, commented on, or otherwise participated in this blog over the past two years. The blog will continue on WordPress and I encourage you to come visit it (and me) there.

Link to Medieval History Geek Blog on WordPress

Final WordPress Migration Post

2011-12-30T09:37:00.006-05:00

This will be my final migration post on Blogger, and my next-to-last Blogger post overall. I'm committed to the move to WordPress and am absolutely, 100% going forward with it.

From this point forward all of my new content will be posted to the WordPress blog. That blog address is: http://medievalhistorygeek.wordpress.com/.

If you would like to continue to follow my blog (please? entreaty? begging?) you should begin doing so from the WordPress Site. All of my content has been moved over and e-mail and RSS subscription options are both available. For those of you with blogs and websites where you've linked to my blog, if you want to continue, now would be a good time to update your links to the above address. I suppose if you think my blog's a waste of time then now would be an equally good opportunity to clean things up by dumping me but I hope this won't happen.

I have a fair amount of work to do to complete the migration, much of which I'd categorize as cleanup. The largest task is that any time I have a post which references another of my posts, the address it points readers to is the Blogger post. I'll need to manually change those to their respective WordPress addresses. I won't be doing this all at once but will chip away at it. I haven't decided whether to do this for every post or just for, say, the most recent posts and maybe my top 25 most-read posts. I'm also not 100% set on the design - color, fonts, page layout, etc.

Because of this link-conflict I'm going to leave this blog up until February 1 or when I get a decent amount of these links changed, whichever comes last. This blog will remain up after that point but with a single message saying the blog has moved. To anyone else who wants to use medievalhistorygeek as a site address in Blogger - sorry!

If you run into problems switching over, or you find the WP blog lacks a feature you've found useful here, please let me know and I'll see if there's a way to fix that. You can comment either here or on WordPress or e-mail me. While I won't be coming back to Blogger regularly, I receive e-mail notices any time someone posts a comment so don't worry about me not seeing it.

I intend to return to more substantive posts beginning this weekend but those will be posted to WordPress, not here.

I apologize for the inconvenience and I hope you'll continue to read my blog. My site traffic has recently increased and I hate to do something to jeopardize that but from what I can see, WordPress is a better platform for what I want to do and moving there will help me improve this blog. And, to foreshadow this year's Year in Review post, thank you to everyone who has read this blog. The blog will continue - I'm just moving it across the street.

Medieval History Geek WordPress Migration Has Begun

2011-12-26T10:00:00.003-05:00

Just a quick note that I have started the process of moving the blog to WordPress. If you want to see how this is working, you can go to the new blog address of medievalhistorygeek.wordpress.com.

You will see the new site change, rather radically I expect, over the next few days. At this moment I have done nothing - no formatting, design, etc., - on how the Wordpress site will look. As I type this, it's the blandest of the bland. It looks like I have some other importation tasks to take care of, including links.

Other than a final message pointing to the WordPress site, this will likely be the final message I post to the blogspot.com address (the only reason this would not hold true would be if I discover some unforseen WordPress issue which changes my mind). I'm hoping current readers are able to find the new address without much trouble. One of the reasons I've held off doing this is I have a fair number of subscribed readers and this blog has also made some "best blogs" lists, something I hate to give up.

But from everything I've heard, WordPress is the better platform. I sincerely hope it doesn't screw with my html coding the way blogger does. It's a move I think I have to make sometime and the longer I wait, the tougher it will be.

At this moment I'm trying to figure out how to change internal links from ,blogspot.com to .wordpress.com. The links all moved to wordpress but the internal ones still point to blogger, which I think you'll see is a problem. I am not looking forward to going in and manually changing all of these. Again, anyone who has advice about WordPress, including the import process, please let me know. Since in the near future I will no longer be regularly checking this site, the best way to send those will be to e-mail me at my home e-mail address or make a comment on my initial WordPress post.

NOTE: My limited understanding of search engines is that one of the ways to get excluded from search results is to have duplicate posts flying all over the internet. For that reason, at some point this blog will disappear entirely except for a single message giving the link to the new address. I can't say for sure when this will be - whenever I'm confident I've imported all of the old content and can delete it, I suppose.

Cool Stuff on Other Blogs V and Miscellaneous Thoughts

2011-12-24T11:49:00.004-05:00

I'm in the situation of wanting to blog but not being comfortable in my office chair for extended periods (though I'm getting there). I'm starting to work on a couple of long-ish posts but for the moment I'm going to substitute by offering a collection of what others bloggers have said over the past month or so.

I'm going to open with a few not-quite-random thoughts. Before I get to those, let me offer a quick "out" if you want to skip this section.

Take me to the collection of posts

Today's a big day for me. My recovery from hip replacement surgery (HRS) has gone far better than I ever could have anticipated. I'm pretty much going wherever I want on crutches and can stand in place without them, easily. The only reason I can think of for this is that my HRS followed an injury, not a progressive arthritis condition so my leg has not been weakened over a period of years. Today happens to be a landmark - First Shower Since Surgery! O frabjous day!

One of the useful features of Blogger is following. Following allows me to select blogs I'm interested in so that whenever I log in I receive a link and the first few words of new posts from my follow list. I can select a specific blog and receive a chronology of recent posts in this summary form. About a month ago I mentioned several new blogs I'd found. Several of them have had recent posts which definitely qualify as Cool Stuff. This morning, when I started putting this post together, I realized that while these blogs are on my blogroll they are not on this "Blogs I Follow" feature. OK - I'd entered them before but Blogger had a glitch so I re-entered the six missing blogs. All looked fine until I returned to the login page (called Dashboard) and they had been re-deleted.

That's it. The proverbial camel is in intensive care filling out disability forms and getting fitted for a wheelchair. This blog will be migrating to Wordpress after January 1. I have the time over the next couple of weeks to (hopefully) do this right. Over the next couple of days expect a followup post with more details about this which will include some requests re anything to pay attention to from others who have made this move and WP Bloggers. Sorry Blogger - enough is enough.

These posts are listed mostly in alphabetical order, by blog title (with one exception). Also, while several of these have more than one worthy post, I'm only putting up one per blog - sorry folks!

Jonathan Jarrett always has good info on his blog but he also frequently throws in fun content. His Christmas Gift Formulary is flat out awesome! Someone out there in the reenactement world needs to be contacting Dr. Jarrett for permission to use this in their activities. I think I have a new poster child for what I'm talking about when I say "other blogs have cool stuff."

Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives has an interesting post which nicely illustrates the hazards of jumping to quick conclusions regarding the "meaning" of material remains. In this post the case in question concerns whether a mummified cat discovered walled into a house meant this was the domicile of a witch.

I bet 5th Century Romans and the Gallo-Roman Aristocracy would have loved to have been able to call Attila an alien. Bones Don't Lie has a nice post detailing some of the finds of cranial deformation and how these are, even today, sometimes interpreted as extraterrestrial remains. The Huns are not specifically mentioned however this gives an idea of how widespread this practice was, and some links within it show how it continues today.

From the Garden into the City has a post on Justinian's wife, the Empress Theodora. There are several interesting messages in this post. One is to read Procopius carefully. Much of his material contains veiled insults directed toward the Imperial Couple. Justinian marrying Theodora always makes me think of the modern advice to not fall in love with a stripper.

Michelle Ziegler at Heavenfield has a post discussing Paul the Deacon's account of the devastation of the 6th century Italian Countryside following the plague. Quite the apocalyptic vision there and, as Michelle says, it found its use well before books and movies began appearing during the past century discussing Humanity's capacity to end itself.

There have been several Leeds reports recently which I've been following however of them all, I'm only going to include one here. Magistra et Mater opens this post with a summary of a presentation by Walter Pohl related to ethnogenesis. This is a nice subsection of this topic, one in which the tone of conversation has often left me feeling as if trying to really learn about this just isn't worth what you have to wade through. I'm paid to have to deal with that kind of invective in my real job; I'm not going to spend time on it in my hobby.

I am continually amazed at the contributions of Roger Pearse. Very recently he provided an annotated edition of Galen's mentions of Christianity and Judaism. You can find the content through this blog post of his. I couldn't begin to summarize everything Roger has done (I doubt I'm aware of half of it) but if you ever want to begin finding out, start at tertullian.org.

Though a bit later than my usual focus, The Lost Fort has an interesting post on The Hansa League. This network has some intriguing Early Medieval precursors and is another example of how exchange networks worked during the Middle Ages. As usual, Gabriele has supplemented her post with some great pictures.

Over at Historian on the Edge, Guy Halsall recently put up a series of posts (more correctly, one article split into four posts) titled, "The Genesis of the Frankish Aristocracy." I'm not going to comment on the quality because, quite simply, I haven't read this yet. I have it printed off and once my leg's a bit more up to par I intend to go through it, check it against what sources I have, and see what I think (and am left wanting to learn more about). I anticipate that, knowing the general quality of Dr. Halsall's work, these will be quite good and useful and I have no qualms about offering the links here though I can't quite give it a recommendation yet. The links are below:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Merry Christmas Everyone!

A Different Sort of Christmas Present

2011-12-21T10:04:00.001-05:00

I've mentioned before how, after not receiving something I really want for Christmas I typically go splurge on something for myself.

This year's "present for me" takes this to a whole new level and is something I think I can only really capture through song.

With apologies to Don Gardner.

Every body pauses and stares at me
My walk is a lurch as you can see
I don't know just who to blame for this catastrophe!
But my one wish on Christmas Eve is as plain as it can be!

All I want for Christmas
is my new left hip,
my new left hip,
see my new left hip!

Gee, if I could only
have my new left hip,
then I could wish you
"Merry Christmas."

It seems so long since I could climb,
Teotihuacan pyramids!
Gosh oh gee, how happy I'd be,
if I could only saunter

All I want for Christmas
is my new left hip,
my new left hip,
see my new left hip.

Gee, if I could only
have my new left hip,
then I could wish you
"Merry Christmas!"

My office chair is not yet terribly comfortable so posts will have to wait for a bit. I suppose I could move my laptop elsewhere and type something up but at the moment the process of unhooking and hooking up the cables, crawling under the desk to unplug stuff, etc., seems a bit daunting.

My Particular Form of Age Discrimination

2011-12-19T11:00:00.010-05:00

I'm writing this on the morning of December 17. If I have any clue as to how to time-delay posts, by the time you read this I'll be on a hospital table getting my first new body part (prepping my life for this has reduced my time to post or comment the past few days). I've thought of bringing my laptop to the hospital and have about decided not to. Anyway, for the next couple of weeks one of three things may happen; I may be bored once I get home and send out buckets of posts; I may send out buckets of posts but be so narc'd on painkillers that once I sober up I'll read what I wrote in my drug-induced state and delete them in horror or; I won't be posting much of anything for several weeks. Much of this will depend on how comfortable I am sitting in my home office chair. Though I have an air card, wireless keyboard, wireless mouse and the thought of hooking my laptop up to my big-screen TV so I have full computer access from my recliner has crossed my mind (to this point I've rejected that option - I think it would qualify me as the laziest man in the world).

Anyway, I'm about a hundred pages from finishing Alan Cameron's The Last Pagans of Rome. I'm hoping to put up a review if I'm sober enough and wanted to get something off my chest before I put it together.

I have a tendency to purchase, almost exclusively, newer books on history. At this point in time my wishlist numbers 881 books. I have various criteria I use when I'm considering what to buy (my to-read list of books on my shelves is 159 so whether I need more books is another topic for discussion). Among those is how recently it was published. At this point, if a book, other than a primary/contemporary source, was published prior to 2000 it's highly unlikely that I'll end up buying it (new - used is another story). I want the most recent information. I've mentioned before how this has resulted in my neglecting to buy books which I've found to be extremely valuable. It has also occasionally resulted in a situation I'll use Cameron to illustrate.

Much of Cameron is concerned with debunking what he considers to be an inaccurate depiction of pagan revivals; periods after 382 where pagans organized some sort of concerted resistance to Christianity. I'll discuss the specifics (hopefully) in more detail in the review.

The problem is that I've never read anything which has argued for this sort of revival. Now I haven't read a ton of secondary stuff covering the early part of this time period (for Cameron this mostly covers from Gratian's removal of the Altar of Victory from the Senate House in 382 to Macrobius' Saturnalia written around 430) but I have read some. And I've read several sources from the period (in translation) such as Prudentius, Ausonius, and Claudian. I don't recall them as being overly concerned with a Pagan revival. In fact, without checking my notes, the foremost impression Prudentius' Contra Symmachus has left me with is the level of respect the author shows for Symmachus, though he disagrees with Pagan beliefs.

Based on what Cameron footnotes, it appears that this type of thinking was more prevalent among historians in the 1990's and earlier. If it has been at the forefront of more recent books, it hasn't been in what I've read. This may change as I read more deeply into the period but when I began reading Cameron and found out what he intended to argue, or counter-argue to be more precise, my initial response was, "Huh?". I simply had not read anything arguing for a pagan revival during the 50 years after Gratian removed the Altar of Victory (and removed public support for Pagan rituals).

This has occasionally happened before. The main reason I decided to post on it is that I don't want to talk about it in any detail later as I think it will detract from my review, but I know I'll have the urge to say something. This has now been said and is not something I need to cover in depth later.

I'll catch you folks on the other side after I gain the ability to set off airport metal detectors (and walk rather than lurch).

How Much do You Know About Vikings?

2011-12-08T22:39:00.001-05:00

David Beard posted a link to a Viking quiz on his Archaeology in Europe Blog. It's pretty tough. I'm too embarrassed to say exactly how I did but let's just say I didn't pass. In my defense, I took it closed book. I have quite a few books on Medieval Scandinavia and the Vikings which I intend to read when I start on the Carolingians (likely several months from now). Hopefully once I do that I'll score a bit better.

Here's the link to the quiz

The Problem With Paganism

2011-12-05T21:50:00.008-05:00

Actually, there is no problem with paganism itself, I'm becoming concerned with the term, in particular the "ism" part.

A long while back, when I was first getting started on this Medieval History thing, I read Susan Reynolds' Fiefs and Vassals. This was very much a revision of what was often called feudalism or the feudal system. To contract a book of over 500 pages into a couple of sentences, she argued that there was no such thing as a feudal system, or feudalism. Land tenure arrangements varied widely from place to place and over time, making use of terminology such as "system or "ism" flawed. Good book and if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. Or at least read Elizabeth Brown's 1974 American Historical Review article. I consider Reynolds one of the most influential Medieval History books I've read.

I'm just getting started on reading on Early Christianity but before I even get going on this, it seems to me that the term "paganism" suffers from the same problem. First, there was no "ism" about it. Different people revered different Gods and Goddesses and each of these cults had their own rituals (though I'm certain some were very similar). Some pagans revered one deity, such as Sol Invictus, others several. Some pagan cults engaged in ritual sacrifice (animal -- claims of Human sacrifice, at least during the period of the Empire -- should be considered baseless accusations, often by Christians who misinterpreted what went on at games) others used incense and/or wore laurel wreaths. An initiate into the cult of Mercury would have undergone a very different ritual from one entering that of Mithras. And this is before we get into all of the local cults and designated Gods for specific cities, or private ritual.

The only time this "ism" seems to be appropriate is in a discussion of how contemporary Christians viewed things. They do not seem to have made much of a distinction between one form of pagan practice and another. Otherwise, lumping all pagan practices under one label is a gross oversimplification of the multiple cults and practices that were followed and engaged in during the Roman Empire.

This is a problem, but IMO it isn't the largest one. This "ism" infers, at least to me, that there was some sort of cohesiveness to pagan practice. In my mind, the term suggests the concept of large pagan congregations highly involved in their cult, receiving lessons in doctrine and worship and actively promoting their beliefs.

This wasn't the case. Active paganism was largely the concern of the elites who were selected for various offices and priesthoods within their respective cults. State support was used for maintenance of temples and the "professionals" involved in promoting the cults (Vestal Virgins are probably the most well-known of these - their maintenance wasn't free, or cheap). Until the later 4th century state funds supported temples and rituals. Large-scale participation among the populace was largely restricted to festivals. One of the reasons paganism (see -- I'm doing it too -- tried substituting pagan practices and it just didn't seem right) sort of just faded away without any sort of epic battle against Christianity is that large numbers of the populace weren't that concerned with it. This contrasts with Christianity with its organizational system based on bishops, involving the widespread teaching of doctrine and practice, and the ability to influence large numbers of people. The large scale religious responses seen in the fourth and fifth century were largely restricted to Christianity, an ancient form of "get out the vote" which could be translated to "take it to the streets." The populace was very capable of demonstrating about other things. Food shortages, closure of games (they didn't seem to much care if games were to honor a God or not so long as they were held), and opposition to/support for an Emperor all brought people out. But paganism was unable to inspire this sort of reaction.

I don't have a substitute term for paganism -- I wish I did. As I learn more about this I may find that someone has written on this, an Ancient History version of Elizabeth Brown's article. For me the use of the term paganism carries the risk of oversimplifying the wide range of polytheistic and monotheistic practices carried out in the Empire as well as implying that there was a high degree of cohesiveness among practitioners and followers. Neither of these is true. There should be something better, or, unless used in the context of what contemporary Christians believed about non-Christians, these beliefs should be explained in more detail rather than being summed up with an imprecise 8-word term.1

I shall now tell my pedantic self to go sit in a corner. He may escape again though. Unfortunately, I'm reasonably certain I'll use paganism myself from time to time, as I have in this very post. Might be a case where I'll need to resurrect my self-policing through fines.

1 There are a couple of exceptions to this. A statement such as "Symmachus wrote a letter defending paganism and urging Theodosius to restore state support for the temples as well as the Altar of Victory." seems OK because it would be an instance of referring to the entire scope of practice, where the specifics are relatively unimportant. Another acceptable use would be if used in a discussion of specifics. For example, "Paganism associated with Jupiter included ..." or "The form of paganism most strongly favored by the Symmachi involved ..." However even in these cases, substituting "pagan practices" (or something) for "paganism" seems preferable to me.

Brown, Elizabeth A. R., (1974). "The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe", The American Historical Review 79, 1063-1088.

Reynolds, Susan, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted. Oxford: Oxford University Press (1996). ISBN: 9780198-206484.

The Alamanni: A Roman Myth

2011-12-04T19:20:00.012-05:00

I recently finished reading John Drinkwater's The Alamanni and Rome 213-496. Caracalla to Clovis. I started a review a few days ago and it's been kicking my butt (I can't seem to really do it justice in less than 3,000 or so words) so I've decided to throw in the towel and compose a ~~brief~~ post about the Alamanni, in particular how Rome viewed -- and used -- them. Re Drinkwater; This was a good book with a LOT of information. He's a bit selective in the use of some of his sources and he has this annoying habit of bringing up an issue, devoting maybe one sentence to it without summarizing arguments and throwing you to a footnote, sometimes to something which is out of print. I grew to dread anything footnoted, "Drinkwater, 1983a."1 There are also stretches where it seems to me that he's making a logical argument rather than one based on evidence but, while it has a few warts, overall this is a good book. I was fortunate to find a used copy at Kalamazoo this year and I'll be using it a lot in this post.

Now I don't have space on this blog to post anything beyond a very brief summary of all this (and historians reading this blog can take a nap during this if you like - unless you find a mistake in which case I appreciate corrections) but the Alamanni may be the single best example of how Rome created barbarian tribes and exaggerated the threat they posed for their own ends. There isn't a single reason for this; the reason likely varied from Emperor to Emperor. One reason pretty much has to be to emphasize their own military successes and their role as the protector of the Empire and the Roman people however there were undoubtedly others. To me, one of the main reasons this was effective was because the population had been given accounts of a barbarian threat for so long that they were ready to believe that there was some massive foreign force ready to invade and destroy Rome, restrained only by the bravery and actions of Roman soldiers and the Emperor.

Brennus, who led the Gauls during their 4th century, BC sack of Rome, continued to receive mention in literary sources through the fifth century. Caesar's Gallic Wars, while a wonderful historical source, exaggerated the strength of the barbarians for Caesar's own purposes. Even Tacitus, who seems to have really tried to get things right, portrays various barbarian groups as cohesive entities. Beyond this there were accounts of Marcus Aurelius' Marcomannic Wars and an Iuthungi invasion into Italy somewhere around 271.2

This is the start of the myth. For the most part, the myth holds true for other barbarians along the Rhine, it's just that for the Alamanni, the Roman creation is even more extreme. So who, or what, were the Alamanni? This is an interesting question. Drinkwater believes they were a bunch of folks who happened to live in the region between the Rhine and Danube which was lost to Rome in the 3rd century, part of the former Germania Superior. Their arrival was as what I'd characterize as "just folks." Scattered small bands of people arrived from various places and settled in the region over a period of time. Drinkwater says, "Whatever the original meaning of the term 'Alamanni' and the manner in which it became attached to a certain set of people, the lesson of fourth century history and archaeology is that there was no invasion by a single, fully fledged people or consciously related association of tribes."3

Drinkwater thinks they weren't much of anything, as an entity, until at least the fourth century. To this point they consisted of tribal groups capable of developing a war-party of around 600, large enough to cause some serious damage if they crossed the Rhine and raided into the Empire but not sizable enough to represent any sort of invasion threat. In contrast, Thomas Burns believes they began to form a confederacy, coalescing around the Iuthungi, in the 270's and 280's. Figuring out the "truth" of this is one of those interesting pieces of history which historians argue over and which I enjoy reading about.4

The Alamanni, even more than the other barbarian "groups" appear to have been a diffuse group without really answering to a central authority. Nobody knows what or how the Alamanni thought of themselves. They didn't write any books. When they were first mentioned in light of a Germanic campaign in 213, it appears likely that you could consider Dio's Alamanni to actually be, People who happen to live in the region the Romans call Alamannia.5

Now every Human society has some sort of social structure, formal or not. I'm not saying that these folks didn't but based on their extremely rural settlement patterns it seems likely that for much if not all of the third, and even into the fourth century, this structure would have been very local.

As time went on this slowly changed. These small clusters coalesced into larger groups and signs of local elites appears. Settlements became large enough that local industry and craftmanship, particularly with iron, appear. During the fourth century a new type of settlement appeared on hillsites. These are only occasionally walled but seem to indicate a vertical stratification of society and the appearance of local elites. These elites likely held positions of authority and it seems that by the mid-fourth century this had become at least somewhat hereditary. It's hard to say where in the hierarchy residents of these sites ranked -- this likely varied from site to site -- however it's hard to avoid believing that they would have asserted effective control over the immediate surroundings, at least to the extent that agricultural production would have been directed towards supplying their needs. Still, even here the geographic area likely controlled by these elite centers was relatively small and could not have represented large numbers of people. 6

From a Roman perspective, the Alamanni achieve stardom during the middle of the fourth century. In 354 Constantius II attacks the Alamanni in response to extensive raiding in Gaul, resulting in an eventual peace treaty and Constantius adopting a title recognizing this victory (which was achieved without casualties). Ammianus Marcellinus notes that seven Alamanni Kings, led by Chnodomarius, band together against Julian in 357 and are able to raise a force which Ammianus numbers at 35,000 at Strasbourg.7

By now you're probably saying to yourself, "The Alamanni were a myth? What myth? They raised a pretty big army for that time, crossed the Rhine and attacked Rome. Doesn't sound like a myth to me."

While not always literally true, I'm quite fond of the old saying that myths are usually distortions based on fact. In this case, that seems true. Clearly the Alamanni had become more organized by the mid-fourth century. However the simple fact (I'm giving Ammianus the benefit here) that this consisted of the banding together of seven kings says to me that they weren't very organized. There's no reason to believe that Chnodomarius was any sort of "super king" embodied with the right to command all of these others. If that type of kingship was inherent with the Alamanni, I think we'd have heard much more of them both before and after the mid-fourth century. It's also apparent that, in an extraordinary circumstance, these kings were able to work together, though how well is a matter for debate - they certainly lost, badly.

Whether they attacked Rome or acted primarily out of self-defense is at least somewhat debatable, and pretty dependent on POV. By this time the Alamanni had become a pretty useful client group. Alamannia seems to have become one of the first places Rome went to find some extra troops to serve locally in the army. During the usurpation of Magnentius the Alamanni may have been used by Constantius to weaken the usurper by encouraging them to raid into Gaul. Unfortunately, if this is what happened, they didn't stop once Magnentius was defeated. Constantius had to move into Gaul to achieve his bloodless victory (see above). Things didn't end there though as the Franks continued attacks to the north, including taking Cologne and Alamanni began settling on the western bank of the Rhine, providing Julian, once he was given command of the Western army, with a good excuse to attack.8

In any case, by 357 the Alamanni were able to band the forces of seven kings together at Strasbourg. Here they were a threat, at least in numbers. However in the ensuing battle they seem to have been less so. Ammianus provides a fairly detailed account of the battle where it appears that the Roman force was in some jeopardy, however his casualty figures of 6,000 Alamanni and 247 Romans tells a different story.9

Julian wasn't finished with the barbarians. He proceeded to attack Alamanni settlements on both sides of the Rhine, completely driving them out of Roman territory, and took his army through Alamanni territory, destroying settlements and crops. Of course in 361 he was declared Emperor and left the area for the civil war that didn't happen as Constantius died.

The Alamanni still show up after this but it appears that from this point forward they are largely mentioned either as raiding into Roman territory, or as clients and allies. Rome engaged in a strategy of gift-giving and payments and Alamanni periodically served in and with the Roman army. Based on the narratives, it appears that their high point came in the 350's. This did not stop Roman Emperors from being willing to consider military success against raiders to be significant victories. Orators continued to trumpet Roman successes. The barbarians, including the Alamanni, continued to be considered a threat looming on the borders.

Based on the sources, unless you accept that the Suebi/Suevi mentioned as crossing the Rhine in 405/6 were another name for Alamanni, they never again really threaten Rome. Their final significant mention comes in 496 or 497 when Clovis defeats them at Zülpich.10 Drinkwater believes that from about 450, in the wake of the dissolution of the Hunnic Empire, the Alamanni began a process of becoming increasingly organized which, if the process had been allowed to run its course, may have led to their forming a kingdom such as the Visigoths, Burgundians, or Franks. However for them the process began too late and Zülpich ended any chance of this happening. By 506/7 Clovis and the Franks had taken over Alamannia and they became part of the Merovingian kingdom.

Ultimately, the Alamanni were never much of a threat to Rome. They caused some trouble through raiding and Constantius may have started a process where for a brief period they began settling on Roman lands, but they were never organized to the point where they could seriously think of invading. Their one major organization under Chnodomarius amounted to a bunch of kinglets gathering their forces in response to Roman attacks. Beyond this, most of their activity consisted of warbands crossing the Rhine to engage in pillaging raids, often in response to Rome reducing their subsidies. This obviously sucked if you happened to be a raided settlement and some Roman citizens were undoubtedly killed but they were never going to take over Roman territory by force.

But folks in Rome and Constantinople didn't know this. They were hundreds of miles from the frontier. Messages from the border provinces likely focused on what was going wrong, not when everything was fine. Most of all, depictions of barbarians in literature, triumphs celebrated for victories over barbarians, barbarians being killed during state games, and oratory, all supported the concept of a barbarian menace, only kept from Rome's door by the valor of its leaders.

Occasionally barbarians could be a real threat. The Goths in the wake of Adrianople show this, and if Chnodomarius had won at Strasbourg things would likely have gone badly for local residents of the area, until another Roman force could have cleaned things up. For the most part though, the image of barbarians threatening Rome, or even the border provinces of the Empire, is a Roman myth until the fifth century. This is true for various barbarian groups including the Franks and Burgundians. It is particularly true for the Alamanni, a group that never really achieved the sort of structure necessary to become a real threat to the Empire.

1 In case you're curious, this refers to, Drinkwater, John F., Roman Gaul: The Three Provinces, 58 B.C.-A.D. 260. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press (1983). ISBN: 978-0-8014-1642-2. Based on Amazon and Cornell University Press (using the search term, "Drinkwater"), it appears to be out of print.

2 Drinkwater, 2003, pp 70-75, argues that this invasion may have occurred in 260 and the event of 271 was more along the lines of a raid or foraging incursion, motivated by Aurelian ending subsidies which had been established following the earlier invasion. In any case, this threat evidently impressed the Roman people enough to inspire the construction of the Aurelian Walls. For an example of the persistence of the memory of the fourth century BC Gallic invasion, see Themistius, Or.3.43c, delivered in 357 in honor of Constantius.

3 From Drinkwater, 2003, p 45.

4 See Burns, 2003, p. 278 and Drinkwater, 2007, p 80. For Drinkwater, it takes his entire Chapter 3, "Settlement," pp 80-116, to really get a handle on his position. For one thing, he prefers the terms "Elbgermanic" and "proto Alamanni" which infer that who the Romans called Alamanni were mainly "just people."

5 Drinkwater, 2003, p 44 has a short discussion of some modern historians believing Dio's mention of Alamanni to be a later addition by translators and explains why he disagrees with this. Cassius Dio's Roman History 78.13.4-6 discusses the 213 campaign which consists of Caracalla running around and deciding to build forts and cities here and there which does not give me the impression that the Alamanni were capable of any sort of organized resistance.

6 Two interesting perspectives are provided here. Drinkwater, 2003, pp 100-3 believes these were rarely walled and is careful to call them "hill-sites." He also proposes that the Romans may have assisted with the construction of some of these sites as a means of getting locals to assist with Roman security just across the Rhine. Edward James, 2009, pp 142-3 calls these hill-forts and adds some interesting details including evidence of relatively sophisticated trading activity such as the presence of scales, weights and silver ingots.

7 I'm not going to list all of the Ammianus mentions of the Alamanni. Let's just say that they are prominent, first appearing in Book 10 of his History with their final mention in Book 27. However XVI.12 describes the Battle of Strasbourg and the subsequent campaign is covered in XVII.1. Eutropius, writing(probably) in 369 in his Breviarium, X.14, doesn't use exact numbers but says that, "Julian, with only a modest force, overwhelmed vast numbers of Alamanni at Strasbourg ..." Drinkwater, 2003, pp 238-9 believes the Alamanni numbered in the neighborhood of 15,000.

8 Drinkwater footnotes multiple sources for this; Libanius, Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, Zosimus and Ammianus. I don't have Libanius but I have the other four and I'll quote from my translation of Socrates III.1.26, "For the barbarians whom the Emperor Constantius had engaged as auxiliary forces against the tyrant Magnentius, having proved of no use against the usurper, were beginning to pillage the Roman cities."

9 Ammianus VI.12.63 for casualties. While the number of Alamanni dead can probably be summarized as Ammianus saying, "The Romans killed a whole bunch of them," the number of Roman dead is likely to be fairly accurate.

10 Gregory of Tours, Historiae 2.30. I've mentioned before (see note 15) how it seems that Gregory can't really be trusted when talking about things which happened either a long time before or geographically distant from when and where he was however this event was so seminal to the formation of the Merovingian kingdom that it seems likely that his account is substantially true. Of course Gregory is more concerned with Clovis' conversion than the battle itself.

Bird, H. W., trans., Eutropius: Breviarium. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press (1993). ISBN:978-0-8532-3208-7.

Burns, Thomas S., Rome and the Barbarians, 100 B.C.-A.D. 400. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN: 978-0-8018-7306-5.

Cary, Earnest, trans., Dio's Roman History. Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library (1961).

Drinkwater, John F., The Alamanni and Rome 213-496. Caracalla to Clovis. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2007). ISBN: 978-0-19-929586-5.

Heather, Peter and Moncur, David, ed. & trans., Politics, Philosophy and Empire in the Fourth Century: Select Orations of Themistius. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press (2001). ISBN: 978-0-8532-3106-6.

James, Edward, Europe's Barbarians, AD 200-600. Harlow: Pearson Education (2009). ISBN: 978-0-582-77296-0.

Rolfe, John C., trans., Ammianus Marcellinus: History (3 vols). Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library (2000).

Socrates Scholasticus, The Eccelsiastical History. Nu Vision Publications (2007). ISBN: 978-1-5954-7906-8. NOTE: This is one of these cheap OOP reprint editions which I bought a few years ago when I was poorer and not concerned with making blog posts. It doesn't even say who the original translation was by, which is weak. I have several of these and someday I should start updating them, at least if I'm going to keep citing them.

Thorpe, Lewis, trans., Gregory of Tours: The History of the Franks. London: Penguin Books (1974). ISBN: 9-780140-442953.

Good Resource for Late Antique Sources

2011-11-25T13:43:00.002-05:00

I recently finished Stephen Mitchell's A History of the Later Roman Empire, AD 284-641. As I was reading it the thought was in the back of my mind that I might write a review but there are plenty of publicly accessible reviews out there already, ranging from people who are disappointed at the general track he took to those who are very pleased. For me, I'd say I'm fairly pleased. I have a few quibbles with areas he chose/didn't choose to focus on and I thought he questionably used some sources but it is a good overview, shorter than AHM Jones and I think he covers most of the major issues, excepting a lack of emphasis on the last 40 years which is a bit perplexing.

The reason I want to talk about the book has to do with a small section. If you're interested in finding English translations of sources for Late Antiquity, Mitchell's bibliography makes a great starting point. Pages 426-9 (I have the paperback) include a wide variety of sources. What was most useful to me, in particular, was the section sub-headed "Collected Sources in Translation." When I scan lists for books I might be interested in, titles such as, Pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity or Religious Conflict in Fourth-Century Rome don't scream "Source Collection" to me. I'm at the point where I need to find a table of contents because I may already have many of the sources in these books but that doesn't keep this from being a very useful method of arranging a bibliography.

While I'm sure Blackwell would love it if you ran out and bought the book (the paperback isn't too expensive), my suggestion is that if you're interested in finding English translations of sources but don't want to read this volume, head to a library or use Inter-Library Loan and photocopy these four pages.

Jones, AHM, The Later Roman Empire, 284-602(2 volumes). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press (1986). ISBN: 978-0-8018-3285-7.

Mitchell, Stephen, A History of the Later Roman Empire, AD 284-641. Malden, MA/Oxford: Blackwell Publishing (2007). ISBN: 978-1-4051-0856-0.

Book Buying I: Pre-Black Friday

2011-11-22T04:42:00.002-05:00

For those not familiar with US holidays, Black Friday directly follows the fourth Thursday in November which happens to be our Thanksgiving Holiday. It's widely considered the official beginning of the Christmas shopping season. There's a myth out there that the term originated because that was the day retailers generally thought they were "in the black" and anything sold from that point forward would be profit for the year. Not so. The term, at least as it is used in this context, originated among retailers (and public safety workers) because they knew this was going to be the craziest shopping day of the year, a terrible day if you worked in a store (from a workload/stress perspective anyway) but I'm sure the corporate people loved it. During Grad school I worked part time as mall security (I have lots of good stories from that) to make ends meet. This was a wild day and that was before things had gotten nearly as crazy as they are now.

Anyway, while X-box and Playstation and big screen TV's seem to be the big deals, I'd rather buy books.

A little while back I mentioned a foray which resulted in my buying a bunch of books from David Brown. They were so happy with me that they sent me an e-mail about some damaged books being 85% off. I was so happy with them that I bought 6 of these. Happiness everywhere. Notre Dame also sent me a 40% off notice. I only bought one of theirs -- and it's Ambrose's Patriarchs: Ethics For The Common Man by Marcia Colish, which fits right in with what I'm going to be looking into in the near future.

Next up is a used bookstore run either today or tomorrow. It's been a while since I made the rounds. I want to get there before the hordes descend on Friday. If I get some good stuff you can be certain that I'll come here to ~~brag~~ let you know about it.

NOTE: You'll see that I'm going to start indexing my book buying posts (and may eventually go back and renumber all of them). I should have done this a long time ago but I had no idea I'd put as many of these up as I have. I'm leaving Kalamazoo book-buying out of the numbering; that's a unique category.

Cool Stuff on Other Blogs IV

2011-11-21T08:43:00.004-05:00

You know how it is; you post something and immediately afterward a bunch of stuff comes out which makes you wish you'd waited a couple of days (I've had the same thing happen with publishing articles). This weekend appears to have been a profitable one for some of my favorite blogs.

Before I get to that I want to mention that I've updated my Kalamazoo page to include my posts from 2011. I'm not sure I'm thrilled with how it looks so I may tweak that a bit but the content is all there. I've been planning to do this for months and kept putting it off so I think this is more to brag about a relatively insignificant accomplishment than because it will matter to anyone right now. I must be in search of validation or something at the moment.

Also, I've put up the labels I've used for posts in the lower left of the blog. It looks messy and confusing to me - but it may be helpful to people trying to find stuff and by being stuck down there, they're not overly visible. So I've also put a poll up, towards the upper right. If you feel the urge, please vote and let me know whether I should leave the labels in.

I've also added a button so you can follow this blog by e-mail, rather than having to log on to follow posts. I should have done this a while ago though it is a fairly recent add-in for Blogger. I believe once you go in it gives you options on when you receive the e-mails and I'm pretty sure it comes in digest form - if I post more than once in a day you'll receive a single message. I've been told this is easier to read on mobile devices.

On to the blogs, in chronological posting order.

Michelle Ziegler has a really cool post on Heavenfield summarizing some National Geographic documentaries, as well as offering her own thoughts on the Staffordshire Gold Hoard.

Magistra et Mater has a great post recounting a seminar on the characteristics of Viking slavery. She also comments on how these characteristics compare with slavery in other societies as well as warning us all against over-generalization, a message I have increasingly come to appreciate (and to date have not grown tired of) over the past few years.

Moving a bit out of my period but something I'm increasingly troubled by, over at Modern Medieval, Scott Jenkins has put up a post which covers some broad turf; the current University funding situation in the UK, 60's protests and a medieval institution - the "student university." I enjoyed this post tremendously -- extremely insightful.

This last is more contemporary than I usually post about but I'm having some real problems dealing with the images coming out of Cal-Davis over the past few days and I'm battling a strong urge to break my "this blog is for medieval stuff only" vow. I think I'll get past it. There are far smarter people than I talking about it.

My Early Christianity Journey: The Starting Point

2011-11-20T11:37:00.028-05:00

WARNING! Everything in this post may be wrong!!!
(I just want to be clear)

This post, or at least the inspiration for it, started while I was on campus for an immigration seminar a few weeks ago. The 25 or so of us in the room were unaware that both the time and location for the seminar had been moved, very likely because it had never been announced (I was later told there were six people at the actual seminar -- I wonder why). While waiting I began thinking of how I was going to be reading on Christianity and before we began talking among ourselves about whether this was going to happen (even a sign on the door of the room would have fixed this situation) I jotted down a few notes about what I thought of Christianity and its evolution.

I was just looking at these (during a bout of early morning insomnia so I suppose that should get some credit as well) and thought it would be interesting to save them so I could look at them a few months or even a couple of years from now and see how my thinking has progressed. But handwritten notes sometimes disappear when I go into one of my housecleaning frenzies (these typically take place about twice a year) and while I could type them into a word processor document, where's the fun in that? So I figured if I posted things here I'd a) have a record and b) not be able to weasel out of realizing what massive misconceptions I once had.

Now I've read a bit on Christianity. It wasn't too long after I began this Medieval thing that I figured out I'd have to know something about it to have a clue about what was going on. I have a decent number of primary sources but need a bunch more. So I'm not completely clueless. But I have a feeling that quite a bit of what I know ain't so.

Is it smart to post about your ignorance? I have no idea, but I'm about to do it. Usually I try to be careful about being able to support, with evidence (or at least by referring to something someone promotes as evidence), what I post. This will not be the case here. I have books on my shelves, which I have already read, where I've forgotten much of the content and I have deliberately avoided consulting any of these in writing this post, to the point of, for example, not looking up the date of Constantine's developing a dual Christian/Pagan prayer for use by the Roman Army. Anyway, here are some thoughts I have as of now, November 2011, before I begin reading the 37 books on Early Christianity on my bookshelf, along with however many more I end up buying. I'm going to concentrate on characteristics of certain periods and some watershed moments. And I'm going to write as if these are cast-in-the-wall-I-believe-them truths even though I don't generally write that way even about stuff (medieval stuff anyway) I'm much more familiar with. And some of them are concepts I've not seen elsewhere, such as Constantine's Pagan background and its impact on the conversion of Christianity to a religion which placed much greater importance on space than it had previously -- these ideas are beyond tenuous right now. I suppose I should add a second warning that this will be long.

Also, I intend to make no reference whatsoever to my personal belief system. This is unimportant (though as with anyone, my personal biases will inevitably color my perspective). If I want to discuss my beliefs, I will do so with people much closer to I than those reading this blog, regardless of how highly I regard many of you. I don't think I've ever deleted a constructive comment (to date my deletions have been if the poster is linked to something like getviagraonlinedotcom). However if someone posts a comment which wants to take this in a "religion is a crock" or "Christianity is evil" or "Only God can save us" direction I will delete it as soon as I see it. This will not be about modern spirituality. I suggest, if you really want to talk about this, find some close friends and sit down and have a conversation. This will hold for any such comments anywhere, not just in this post. I'm not going there and neither is this blog.

I'm plugging a bunch of internal anchors/links into this so when I return to this some months from now I can find what I put where. There are a lot of them because I have a lot of concepts in this. I think it will read better if you ignore them the first time you read this. Besides, they give a false impression that you can divide concepts and examine them independent of each other, which you can't. Also, as you begin reading please feel free to open a comment box and add other areas you think I'm missing and need to look at. I know I don't know much about this and would love input from those of you who are knowledgeable. Just be warned - if what you post gets me looking closely at something you'll get the blame/credit in my followups! Enough babbling -- let's get to it.

The Church before the 4th Century

Early Church and Space

Early Christians as Philosophers

Constantine's Conversion

Issues Initially Facing a Divided Church

Enforcing Orthodoxy

Constantine and His Impact on the Church and Space

The Influence of Julian

Ecumenical Councils

Monasticism and Asceticism

The Development of Hagiography

The Merovingians

Eastern Developments

Prior to 300 the Church, starting out as an underground sect of a minority religion, was a collection of fairly loosely organized, related groups geographically located primarily in urban clusters throughout the Empire. While most of these clusters did communicate with one another, the lack of any sort of rigid social structure and hierarchy meant that Christian worship looked very different from one place to another, a situation which would cause a great deal of conflict later.

Christianity was not at all vested in locations of worship. In fact, one of the defining characteristics, testified to by early writers, including the Bible, was how, in contrast to paganism, Christianity was not vested in things and places. Things and places were neither worshiped nor revered where paganism had various items and temples which were considered holy. Christianity was vested in its people. A church was its congregation, a brotherhood of members. Place mattered little and much, likely most, worship took place in members' homes, quite often among groups but frequently in private ritual. Of all objects of reverence(this term presents difficulties here), other than Christ and the Apostles, the most significant were the martyrs, people. Of course Christ was the ultimate martyr but many others followed during the various persecutions and conflicts. However even here, initially, martyrs (other than Christ, his disciples and Paul) were not revered in the same manner as later became common for saints, but as figures of honor who had paid the ultimate price as defenders of the faith. The evolution of martyrology will be an interesting concept to explore.

During the first three centuries AD most of the leading Christian minds were philosophers. Christianity appears to have been another philosophical branch which averred that the true deity responsible for the world was Christ and the Christian God. Those involved in these debates were individuals with a strong philosophical background, quite frequently trained rhetors. The arguments for Christianity, along with, for example, arguments for Platonism were conducted in a logical, reasoned, enthusiastic manner. Clearly these arguments were strong as a substantial minority of the population of the Empire (nobody can put a figure on that beyond an educated guess but around 15-20% is the figure that most appeals to me right now) was Christian by the beginning of the 4th century.

Constantine's "conversion" initiated a chain of events which resulted in massive change. I'll take a moment to speak of Constantine himself. While Eusebius paints him as a model of Orthodoxy (whenever I use Orthodoxy I'm going to use it in the context of whatever became the official belief or practice of the Church, or was at that time) many of his actions indicate otherwise. Constantine came from a Pagan background, which I think helped influence many of the subsequent characteristics of Christianity. I'll cover some of them below. However, for example, the Arch of Constantine, commissioned in 315, three years after Milvian Bridge, contains no Christian symbology but includes reverences to Pagan Gods. Later (I'm blank on the year -- early 320's I believe) he instituted a new army prayer which would be perfectly acceptable to Pagans and Christians. He favored Christianity but he was quite tolerant and many of the doctrinal struggles which took place during the two decades following Milvian Bridge were areas where my impression has been that he likely thought, "What's the fuss/big deal with this?" In particular this seems true for Arianism.

Because of the Church's initial loose structure, entire segments of Christianity were virtually their own Church and followed different doctrinal beliefs. These belief differences were quite often in only one or two areas but these were often critical, such as regarding the nature of Christ. Manichee/dualism sects which adopted Christ as a central spiritual figure (typically later than this period but I wanted to plug it in here anyway) exhibited even more profound differences, for example, to drastically oversimplify things, having the world of matter being evil and created by a being which, if not precisely the devil, was at the very least not a benevolent God.

To me, Arianism and Donatism, and possibly the Coptic Church in Alexandria, at the time of Constantine's conversion were already vibrant, functioning, nearly independent Churches. I do not believe that Arius himself created Arianism or that he was anything more than the foremost among a large number of adherents who had been in place for some time. Donatism may have been a bit younger, though I'm not certain of that, but even if this group had developed in response to Diocletian, their stricter, more rigorous system basically had become the North African Church by Milvian Bridge.

The result of this was a period of substantial, sometimes violent conflict of enforcing Orthodoxy. The Nicaean supporters were most numerous and eventually their beliefs became accepted as Orthodox however there were a LOT of people who believed differently and it took a long time for this to be worked out. One of my major differences with a framework for teaching Christianity recently proposed by Walter Goffart is that while Early Christianity did have a period of significant violence, the bulk of this violence was not focused on the conversion of pagans but in enforcing Orthodoxy among heretical groups. This would change with Justinian but it wasn't until that point that forced conversion of non-Christians became a sustained official government policy. Prior to that it was enforced Orthodoxy and even that went in fits and starts with some Arians as Emperor.

This leads me back to Constantine and some characteristics of Christianity which, if not directly attributable to him, were strongly influenced by him. Constantine and his mother strongly influenced the development of Christianity in several areas. Of course Constantine's involvement in the development of doctrine created a precedent which came to be more important in the East than in the West. However I believe Constantine's background as a Pagan influenced the transition of Christianity to a religion which placed a strong value on the identification of places as sacred. He instituted a program of building Christian places -- monuments to Christ and the Christian God -- something the religion had never had before. Helena's discovery of the One True Cross and the building of a sacred placed infused with holiness due to the fragment, provided major impetus to the practice of finding relics and designating places as sacred by building them as a place to house such items. In fact, for a period of time Churches couldn't be consecrated without a relic. This also began the conversion of Christianity from a religion which was often practiced in private places using rituals which, while related to one another were not always identical, to one which was practiced largely in public spaces, under the auspices of an approved representative of the Church, and using a standardized set of rituals and symbols.

I should add that I don't believe you can attribute all of the monument building to Constantine's Pagan background. The Tetrarchy and Diocletian had been involved in a massive monument-building effort, much of it proclaiming the greatness of Rome and the Tetrarchy itself. Constantine was a direct heir to this and transferring this monument building to his new favorite religion cannot be attributed only to his religious background. I don't know if it is possible to quantify which influence was greater -- I suspect not -- but I think both were in play.

Emperor Julian represented another watershed moment. To that point Paganism and Christianity had coexisted fairly peacefully. While some financial support for Paganism and Pagan rites had been withdrawn and even transferred to Christianity, Paganism was allowed to continue, generally without interference. Pagan temples and holy places were not actively destroyed but, if no longer used, allowed to decline. Julian's ability to so disrupt Christianity in less than two years, and his restoration of Pagan places, showed Christian leaders a new danger. Following Julian's death, while Paganism itself was allowed to continue relatively unhindered (for a couple of decades anyway, until Theodosius), the use of Pagan places, and in particular acceptance of abandoned shrines and temples, was not. Christians became much more aggressive in restricting Pagan use of spaces and either destroying or taking over abandoned places, particularly from the time of Theodosius. Paganism continued to be practiced for another couple of hundred years and Pagans continued to hold high office in the Empire at least through the early fifth century (to be honest I think we'll be able to push this into the early sixth looking at some of Theoderic's high officials in Ostrogothic Italy and individuals who appear to have been pagans such as Procopius in the East) but their lot had become much more difficult.

The Ecunemical Councils were important, in particular for working out doctrinal issues. Quite a bit of conflict occurred over matters of faith such as Mia/Monophysitism and issues such as the Three Chapters. As you read this you'll see that this is a particular weak area of mine at the moment but conflicts such as occurred in Eastern cities such as Alexandria or Antioch often occurred due to doctrinal disagreement (though issues such as the primacy of Rome and the perception of heavy-handed "outsiders" likely had a lot to do with this). And the Three Chapters Controversy seems to have been more important than I once thought. NOTE: Schism and Church Councils are something I read a fair amount on and knew substantially more about at one time. Unfortunately much of this was before my note-taking phase and I've forgotten most of it. But the books are still here.

In the middle of all of this was the rise of monasticism and asceticism. I have this loosely held belief that this received a great deal of impetus with the suppression of the more rigorist North African Churches. As it was no longer acceptable for people to officially practice these stricter forms of worship, individuals and then later groups went off on their own. This is something I really want and need to explore -- the rise of monasticism -- and I have a bunch of books on it.

I've been fascinated by hagiography for a long time. Once Christianity became an approved religion, opportunities for martyrdom virtually ceased. To that point martyrs were considered to have achieved the pinnacle of earthly Christianity, as individuals who had displayed the "purest" demonstration of belief in giving up their lives, or at least withstanding torture, in defense of the faith. However opportunities to die for Christianity had virtually ended. Aspects of hagiography and a portion of the impetus for asceticism and monasticism rose from people continuing to want to suffer for their faith. The concept of the spiritual desert and bloodless monasticism seems to me to have evolved from this desire for martyrdom. Virginity, particularly female virginity, had always been prized among many ancient sects, including Paganism (Vestal Virgins anyone?), however this also became a portion of the "desert" where people could experience sexual martyrdom for their religion as well as the more traditional view of becoming a bride of Christ (these two motivations were interrelated).

Personally, I believe that hagiography was a merging of martyrology and panegyric. Hagiographical conventions adopted their general structure from panegyric and their motivation from martyrdom accounts. Of course while the structure came from panegyric, the content did not as panegyric generally took place while the subject was alive, or at the very least shortly after death, as for a funeral oration, while much hagiography involved people who had been dead for a significant period of time so they were less dependent on recounting events which could be at least somewhat verified. The Lives of Antony and Martin seem to have been extremely influential in the development of hagiographical conventions but I will likely discover more sources for this.

Moving later, the Merovingians actively worked to reduce the authority and power of the Church however without realizing it, their desire to similarly reduce the development of an entrenched aristocracy which might threaten the Royals served to strengthen the Church. The Merovingians insisted on approving ecclesiastical appointments and could overturn wills donating property to the Church. However they donated plenty of property themselves and provided grants of immunity which helped the Church become a powerful member of the landowning aristocracy in its own right, an aristocracy which the Carolingians would later partner with.

In the East, beginning in the 5th century the Patriarch of Constantinople began to assert more authority resulting in a later situation where the Patriarch almost seemed to be a co-Emperor. Note: There are so many components of this and other Christian developments in the East that I know I don't know. For example, did the Roman tradition of mob influence as a component of rule have something to do with religious developments, and how much? How about the (likely) higher level of literacy in the East? Different social class structures? Threat and uncertainty in the wake of the Arab Conquests? So much I don't know.

Justinian's aggressive, violent, militant conversion of pagans in the sixth century spelled the effective end of paganism. This was the first extensive, long-lasting (there had been prior brief efforts which had never lasted very long) forced conversion and it had its impact.

As you can see from the above, I am certain there are things I believe right now that are quite wrong and there are areas, such as an in-depth knowledge of the impact of the various Church Councils, Eastern developments (I'm interested in the East but to date the bulk of my reading has been on the West) and the cause of and result of schism are, not quite nonexistent, but extremely thin. There's also a place in here -- somewhere -- for a discussion of the transition where leading Christian authorities no longer came from a classical, philosophical background but I'm not sure this fits in its own category as this took place over a long period of time, gradually. I think it should instead be looked at from a perspective of how this influenced other developments. And if I started to write about the impact of all this on secular life and society I'd end up with 10,000 words.

If you've gotten this far and read the whole thing, I congratulate you on your endurance. I suspect that as I get into my reading I'll pull bits and pieces from this to compare them to what I'm learning. This will likely be of interest to nobody but me but this is my blog and me is who it is for, first and foremost, so I won't apologize for this. And as I've said before, I think this will be fun.

Cool Stuff on Other Blogs III

2011-11-18T19:42:00.010-05:00

I should subtitle this, "and Cool New Blogs." Meaning blogs I just found out about, not newly created.

At the moment I have nothing to say but some time to say it. This is a perilous situation but I will attempt to avoid boring you all.

My first kudos goes to Michelle Ziegler. Michelle has her excellent blog on the Early Medieval British Isles, Heavenfield. She also has a second blog, Contagions. I happen to not have this on my blog list because about 80% of the content is well over my head. I mean, I took Epi in college but along with Physics and Advanced Calculus I seem to have eradicated it from my brain. But every so often she posts a Round-up. These are very interesting, even when none of my stuff is mentioned, and this time it introduced me to four new blogs I'm planning to pay attention to.

First up is Kristina Killgrove's Roman DNA Project Blog. There are a couple of reasons I'm interested in this, even though it's before my period. First is that how the Empire was populated is interesting in and of itself. Second is that DNA evidence is coming up quite frequently in Medieval research and by following a project from its beginning (If I can - I didn't donate) I should be able to learn a lot about methodology. As I've said before, this is not so I can go out and do my own research, which I expect to never do, but so I can better assess the validity of an argument when I read it.

Rosemary Joyce has a blog, Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives which seems (I've just started reading it) to be about archaeological evidence disclosing the roles of gender, in particular women, in ancient societies. I've always been fascinated in trying to find out (from a reading what other people write perspective) what happened to two massively underrepresented groups, peasants and women. While for her blog ancient does indeed seem to cover the ancient period, women were just as underrepresented in pretty much all of history and going earlier will still be very interesting.

Senchus is a blog about Early Medieval Scotland authored by Tim Clarkson and I'll just say that I'm a bit embarrassed that I didn't already know of it.

I think I'm going to enjoy reading Bones Don't Lie. Katie Meyers is a PhD student at Michigan State and it looks like she knows her stuff.

So thanks Michelle!

Gabriele from The Lost Fort always has excellent posts with great pictures. She has two posts which cover historic sites including a lot of reconstructed Germanic (sorry Goffart!) buildings, bridges, etc. Really good stuff.

As always, it seems, I can't do one of these without mentioning Jonathan Jarrett. Even though I don't know enough about it to comment, his opening report on Leeds has some fabulous pictures of Whitby Abbey. If Jonathan ever gets tired of this Medieval stuff he might do pretty well as a photo journalist (He could get some serious competition from Gabriele). He does far better with images than I could ever hope to and these are particularly good when he breaks out his camera.

And yet again, one of the things I got from this post, based on clicking on the links for some of the comments, ended up being two things; new blogs to follow. I really need to mine Jonathan's Blogroll one of these days.

First up is L'Historien Errant. Christian Opitz says his main focus is Late Medieval which makes it several hundred years later than mine but I was impressed enough by the quality of the posts to want to start reading what he has to say, whether I understand much of it or not.

Slouching Towards Extimacy looks to have an Anglo-Saxon focus. I couldn't find out who the author was so either he/she wishes to remain anonymous or I couldn't figure out where to look. Of course I had to look up what "extimacy" means but it's such a cool word. Looks like a pretty cool blog too. And give me a break - 15 years ago I didn't know what exegesis meant. 1

I wasn't going to focus on Jonathan's most recent post about Richard Hodges' book on the Vikings but it was through comments on that post that I found Norse and Viking Ramblings authored by Viqueen. I have not read a ton on them but I have several books on the Vikings and am interested in them and figuring out their impacts on Western Europe, in particular (for now, I always find more to be interested in when I start reading) on the evolution of fortifications in Western Europe. From scanning the first page of posts I think this is another gold mine.

So thanks again Jonathan - not just for the great posts but for helping me find some other terrific blogs.

I had a bit more to add but this seems long enough for now. I may follow up in a couple of days with a bit more. But reading three posts and finding seven new blogs? That's a pretty good couple of days there.

1 Another broken vow. I swore when I started this blog to never use "exegesis" or "exegetical" in a post. I suppose I'll just have to remember not to use it in a historical context or in a review while discussing how the author examines texts.

Book Review: The Rhetoric of Power in Late Antiquity

2011-11-16T19:42:00.012-05:00

Frakes, Robert M., Digeser, Elizabeth DePalma and Stephens, Justin, eds., The Rhetoric of Power in Late Antiquity: Religion and Politics in Byzantium and the Early Islamic World. New York: Tauris Academic Studies (2010). ISBN: 978-1-84885-409-3.

This book contains 11 essays covering a variety of topics and geographic regions. The most prominent theme, as one would expect in a book dedicated to Professor Harold Allen Drake, is that divergent religious and political entities could and did peacefully coexist during the Later Roman Empire. This theme is not universal as is obvious for a book in which one essay discusses Ireland, however it is predominant.

Following a forward by John W. I. Lee and and an Introduction by the editors, the essays are divided into four broad thematic areas, as follows:

Part I: The Image of Political and Episcopal Authority

1. "The Adventus of Julian at Sirmium: The Literary Construction of Historical Reality in Ammianus Marcellinus," by Eric Fournier
2. "Butheric and the Charioteer," by Robert M. Frakes
3. "Calming an Angry Enemy: Attila, Leo I, and the Diplomacy of Ambiguity, 452," by Michael Blodgett
4. "'Patres Orphanorum': Ambrose of Milan and the Construction of the Role of the Bishop," by Michael Proulx

Part II: The Function of Roman Tradition in Emergent Societies

5. "'Your Brothers, the Romans': Early Islamic History as a Turn of the Classical Page in Early Muslim Thought and Literature," by Thomas Sizgorich
6. "Spiritual Landscapes: The Late Antique Desert in Ireland," by Jim Tschen Emmons

Part III: Civic Elites in the Byzantine East

7. "The World of St. Daniel the Stylite: Rhetoric, Religio, and Relationships in the Life of the Pillar Saint," by Miriam Raub Vivian
8. "Two Philosophers from Gaza":
"Timotheos of Gaza and the Grande Caccia of Piazza Armerina" by Frank J. Frost
"Choricius of Gaza, Oration XIII: Religion and State in the Age of Justinian," by Roberta Mazza

Part IV: Addressing Challenges to Sacred Texts and Rites

9. "Origen on the Limes: Rhetoric and the Polarization of Identity in the Late Third Century," by Elizabeth DePalma Digeser
10. "A Stranger Consensus: Daemonological Discourse in Origen, Porphyry, and Iamblichus," by Heidi Marx-Wolf
11. "Torah, Torah, Torah: The Authorship of the Pentateuch in Ancient and Early Modern Times," by Paul Sonnino

"Conclusion," by Elizabeth De Palma Digeser & Robert M. Frakes

In the opening essay Eric Fournier examines the welcome given to Julian at Sirmium, during the civil war with Constantius II, and how it was portrayed by Ammianus Marcellinus. According to Ammianus, this welcome was a formal adventus given by the city which would have basically amounted to formal recognition of Julian as Emperor. Fournier discusses Sirmium and whether it might have been expected to so readily support Julian. Fournier tells us that Constantius may have been born in Sirmium. Additionally, "The emperor also resided there for most of the 350's and continually from 357 to 359." (24) Despite this, Fournier believes Ammianus to have been basically truthful in his account. He discusses some issues, in particular Constantius helping depose Photinus, Bishop of Sirmium, which may have turned the city against him. (270 Ultimately, Fournier cautions that one must be careful in assessing Ammianus' use of rhetoric when discussing Julian but believes that, while certain elements may be exaggerated "... the overall description of the event was not too far from what might have happened." (29)

In "Butheric and the Charioteer," Robert M. Frakes takes a look at the events which led to Theodosius I's massacre at Thessalonica. This massacre of civilians was in response to the killing of a Roman General, Butheric. Frakes takes a close look at the various sources and concludes that Butheric unlawfully arrested a popular charioteer, either in response to an insult or due to homosexual jealousy. The detailed investigation of the sources is interesting as well as this closing statement, "It is insightful that no pagan source, even ones hostile to Theodosius, mentions the episode of Butheric and the charioteer, or even the massacre. To non-Christian writers, an emperor punishing his own citizens for killing a general might simply have been business as usual." (53)

Michael Blodgett examines the embassy of Pope Leo I to Attila following the Hunnic invasion of Italy in 452 and its impact on the Huns' decision to abandon the invasion. Through an examination of Hunnic losses due to disease and famine and an exploration of Hunnic beliefs, Blodgett believes that Leo may have been viewed as something of a shaman by the Huns and that his embassy provided Attila with the justification he needed to call off his Italian campaign, a decision he wanted to make anyway.

The essay by Michael Proulx examines methods by which Ambrose helped transform the role of bishop while revising his own role in events. In examining his Letter 30, Proulx discusses how Ambrose assigned to himself a far larger role than he actually had in the embassy to the usurper Maximus in 383, in particular his claim to be protector of Valentinian and basically fabricates a confrontation between himself and Maximus in 386. Proulx believes that rather than looking at this letter for an accurate representation of the embassies of 383 and 386 it should be looked at as a means by which Ambrose strengthened the relationship between himself and Valentinian's court. Along with his funeral oration for Valentinian in 392, Letter 30 provided an opportunity for Ambrose to construct his image and role in the events of the late 4th century. Very interesting essay.

Thomas Sizgorich provides an essay which is absolutely fascinating to me. In it he examines how early Islam likely looked on the Romans as kindred in their struggle as monotheistic believers against the polytheist Persians. Sizgorich provides Arab sources which describe sorrow at the initial Roman defeat, as they are a people of the book. However the Arabs believed that due to their monotheism, Rome would eventually triumph. (109-10) The early Islamic texts repeatedly show respect for the Romans and attribute the eventual Arab triumph to a combination of Roman arrogance and a lack of understanding regarding their place in the course of human events.

The essay by Jim Tschen Emmons explores an area which is both familiar and unfamiliar to me. He discusses the Irish "desert" in hagiography. I am fairly familiar with this literary convention however I am not well versed in Irish hagiography. Using the Life of Martin and the Life of Antony as well as the writings of John Cassian as background, Emmons examines the Vita Aidi to discuss the use of forests and swamps as deserts in Irish hagiography.

Daniel the Stylite's Vita is examined fairly straightforwardly by Miriam Raub Vivian. She takes us through various aspects of this life and believes that it can reveal much about Late Antique Roman society. I found this essay to be interesting but I am concerned that Vivian goes too far in accepting aspects of the vita. I've argued myself that many aspects of society can be revealed through this type of literature however looking at this, for example, to present an accurate depiction of the relationship between a monk and Emperor Leo may take this too far.

Essay number eight presents some difficulties in evaluating as it consisted of two sections written by different authors. Frank J. Frost opens with a brief discussion of the portrayal of tigers and griffins in a Sicilian mosaic. I suspect art historians may find more in this however other than describing the images I found little of value. This contrasts to the second part of the essay regarding Choricius of Gaza by Roberta Mazza. Choricius is a figure worthy of study and I was fortunate to pick up Robert Penella's book on him (including translations of his declamations) this year at Kalamazoo.1 Mazza uses Chrocius' Oration 13 to briefly examine a variety of sixth century issues including the relationship between a peripheral Byzantine territory and the imperial court. An interesting aside is the discussion of the evolution of a Byzantine festival, the Brumalia.

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser provides an in-depth view of Origen by placing his Christian rhetoric within the framework of third century philosophical debate. She briefly summarizes the discussion of whether there were two Origens before concluding that there was likely only one. Following this she examines Origen and his role as a Christian philosopher. The most significant aspect of this is that Christianity appears to be another branch of philosophy prevalent in the third century. Disagreements rooted in divergent opinions of the fundamental natures of the deity between Christians and Platonists, while sometimes vehement, come across as rhetorical, philosophical arguments. However subsequent individuals such as Porphyry and Eusebius preferred to characterize Origen in terms of black and white, depending on their respective viewpoints; attitudes which point to an increasing polarization of society as the third century drew to a close.

It is always interesting to consider whether two complementary essays in a volume are included by choice or by chance. In any case, Heidi Marx-Wolf's essay is an excellent companion piece to Digeser's. Marx-Wolf looks at divergent opinions regarding blood sacrifice between Origen and pagans. I was struck again by how the Christian outlook appears to be one among several philosophical branches in existence at the time. For this period, discussions among these branches were conducted in a reasoned manner, as opposed to the hostility which would develop later.

I am going to cover the final essay by Paul Sonnino in a relatively cursory fashion. This essay analyzes arguments for whether Moses authored the Pentateuch and takes us from the fifth century BC to the 17th century AD. He discusses the various arguments and uses them to contrast ancient attitudes with those of early-moderns, to the point of characterizing the former as obtuse and the latter as perverse. (265) For me, his discussion of how the ancient Hebrews contributed to historical methodology and their adherence to law and emphasis on legal documents influencing us to this day was the most interesting aspect of the essay. (242) I will need to become more familiar with the extent to which their outlooks were adopted by Rome before assessing the validity of these statements.

This is a very good collection of essays and I expect that Professor Drake is pleased. Perhaps some of the authors have moved too far in the direction of peaceful coexistence in Late Antiquity however they all provide evidence for their assertions, such that their opinions will at least need to be considered in the future. While the essays by Frost and Vivian lack analytical depth, overall the quality was very good. The essays by Digeser and Marx-Wolf provide an excellent lens through which to view Christianity as a component of the vibrant philosophical debates of the third century. Thomas Sizgorich's examination of Islamic opinions of Rome through an examination of Arab sources is something I would enjoy seeing more of. I would have appreciated a bit more of an effort to tie the entire volume together. The introduction was brief and largely consisted of a summary of the essays while the conclusion was even shorter. With these relatively minor caveats, I believe this book is a valuable contribution to Late Antique scholarship and I recommend it to those interested in the issues discussed in the essays.

1 Choricius, Rhetorical Exercises from Late Antiquity: A Translation of Choricius of Gaza's Preliminary Talks and Declamations, Robert J. Penella, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2009). ISBN: 978-0-521-84873-2.

Reading Plan: Early Christianity

2011-11-14T18:12:00.011-05:00

For the past few weeks I've started feeling like I'm actually in charge of my life. From January through mid-October I thought my job was running things. For the past month I've been knocking off books like crazy, have had more time to post, and have really made progress on my "to-read" stack. I've pretty much finished my non-religious Late Antiquity books. I have two left; Steven Mitchell's A History of the Later Roman Empire, AD 284-641 and James J. O'Donnell's The Ruin of the Roman Empire. Mitchell's book comes highly recommended, including by Jonathan Jarrett, whose opinion I respect very much. I'm less certain about O'Donnell. I picked up the hardcover for under $10 at a book store (the sticker says for $9.98) which makes me question its quality. But I'll read it and see.

Following Kalamazoo I took stock of what was sitting on my shelves to be read. At the time I knew I was going to read LA but was uncertain if I'd follow up by reading the 20 or so books I have on the Carolingians or move to earlier religious history. I've decided it will be religion. I'm going to start with Alan Cameron's The Last Pagans of Rome. There are several reasons for this. It's the largest book on my to-read shelf (except possibly for Tyerman's God's War) and I had to work pretty hard at Kalamazoo to get it. Also, it promises to be both an overview and something of a revision. Nice way to jump in feet first, with something that, if it lives up to its billing, will either surprise me or that I'll disagree with. From there I'll move backwards, finishing with a review of the New Testament, particularly Paul. I'm not sure how much I'll dive into doctrinal evolution as opposed to social impacts, Christian-Pagan conflicts, martyrology, monasticism, etc. Some doctrine is inevitable. To date I've not wanted to deeply explore this (reading Jaroslav Pelikan's series about fried my brain 10 years or so ago) but I might feel different about it now.

I've always found it interesting how I read history. It's probably not the recommended learning method but it works for me. I start with a time period I'm familiar with and then work backwards, trying to figure out how things evolved and developed to that point. When I go Carolingian (I have 37 on my LA/religion shelves and still haven't received my recent Oxbow order so this may be a while) I'll be doing the opposite; working from early to later. This will be interesting once I get there.

You may think that with 37 books I won't be buying more until I finish what I have. Not so - if I run across a reference to something I think I need and it's within my price range, I know I'll buy more, and they won't all be focusing on religion. I already know I need Libanius, Symmachus and the translation of the Panegyric Latini, among others. And I'm keeping an eye out for the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series. I have a promising lead on a set but likely won't make that purchase until after the first of the year. And before anyone tells me, yes, I know these aren't always the best translations available but they are in my price range and some aren't available anywhere else.

So for the next few months expect more posts focusing on the evolution of religion; particularly Christianity, but I also have some books on early Islam. I'd guess it'll be about a 50-50 split between the Roman West and East. Should be fun.

Coding Problems

2011-11-14T07:24:00.003-05:00

Some of you may have noticed that the internal anchors on some posts are taking you to the wrong place. If you scroll down to, say, my Rutilius Namatianus post and click on the hyperlink for footnote 1, it takes you to the note in my most recent Medieval Medicine post. I just noticed this and the anchor/destination codes are correct. If this happens and it annoys you (I consider the notes important or I wouldn't put them in), if you click on the post title and read it as a standalone, they seem to work the way they're supposed to.

I don't have time to work on this more right now because I have to go to work. Hopefully this will fix itself. If not, I'll work on it more this evening. Anyway, I apologize and am aware of it.

EDIT: I've done this before - I'm going to need to save each post as a draft, then re-load it to the blog. Those of you receiving this blog through e-mail or RSS notifications might be told I'm making new posts. Again, I apologize. Hopefully these will stay in the correct order.

Second Edit: Tried that, didn't work. Sorry folks but for the time being people will just have to scroll down to see the correct fn.

Third Edit: Fixed re my comment below. At least for the first page worth of posts - you click on "older posts" and beyond and I make no promises. I swear this hasn't happened before - just like my UL tag issue with my latest book review.

Early Medieval Law Codes and Medicine II

2011-11-13T09:45:00.027-05:00

Warning! This Post Contains Graphic Content!!!

OK, to me the graphic content in this post isn't as bad as in my first post on the topic, but it still has some so I thought I'd repeat the warning. I have a more serious purpose with this post than discussing a wound which would leave you unfit for anything other than the lead if Jethro Tull dusted off one of their songs to make a new music video.

In reading Lisi Oliver's The Body Legal in Barbarian Law I was struck by her mention of several instances where a value is placed on injuries which at one time I would have considered to be pretty much an automatic death sentence before modern medicine, particularly without the availability of antibiotics to counter sepsis. Evidently, as a value which is less than a person's full wergild is assigned to these injuries, people could sometimes recover from them. I thought I'd take a post to discuss this in a bit more detail.

Before I get started, for those of you less familiar with Germanic (sorry Goffart!) law codes, I want to give a very brief explanation of the concept of wergild. Every person in a given Germanic society is assigned a value. This value is usually equal to the amount a murderer would be required to pay the victim's family to avoid possible repercussions, or from being "handed over" to the family. These are interesting in and of themselves as they help indicate how valuable that society considered members of a certain social class to be, as well as revealing what skills/abilities/characteristics were important. For example, in Frankish society a free woman of childbearing age had a wergild of 600, the same as that of a nobleman and three times that of a normal freeman, indicating the value of the ability to produce children. Penalties for lesser crimes are sometimes set at a percentage of wergild. For example, among the Alamanni, if someone is killed by a dog then the owner of the dog owes half the man's wergild (though there is an interesting clause in this case requiring the dog to be hung over its owner's door until it rots away and the owner must enter and leave his home only through that door until decomposition is complete). However sometimes the price for these penalties is a flat value. Returning to the Alamanni, if someone causes a woman to abort, he or she owes 12 solidi if the child is male, 24 if it is female. 1

This type of system has often been characterized as primitive. To me the civil court system, at least in the US, functions very similarly. In an early medieval case an assessment was made of a person's value, how much the injury or death was worth and a punitive penalty was sometimes assigned. Items such as potential earning ability, impacts on quality of life, cost of medical care, etc., were factored in. The conflict may have been settled out of court by agreement of the two parties but if they chose the judicial route there were fairly strict criteria for selecting a judge and witness testimony was highly valued. I don't see a lot of difference between these medieval cases and a modern lawsuit (once you accept the lack of scientific evidence available back then).

I had always been of the opinion that certain injuries from those days would have been pretty much a death sentence. After all, while they had some pretty solid herbal remedies, they didn't have antibiotics and while they had knowledge of the general concept that clean was better than dirty for injuries, they had no concept of germs. It's apparent that simple injuries, amputations, or even abdominal wounds which didn't damage internal organs could be recovered from. The assignment of penalties to these wounds, at rates below full wergild, indicates that survival could be expected.

There are certain wounds I would have considered extremely serious but sometimes survivable. Among these would have been non-penetrating trauma which caused serious internal injuries and wounds which penetrated the peritoneum but did not damage internal organs. Interestingly, the former receives almost no mention in the law codes. There's nothing pointing to, say, coughing blood because a rib punctures a lung, urinating blood because kidneys are damaged (this is particularly surprising to me because of how common it should have been) or excreting blood due to lower GI injuries. Apparently, if there weren't visible, external signs of injury, it didn't matter. Wounds to the abdomen do receive mention in many of the codes. The Franks have some provisions discussing if the wound doesn't heal but continuously seeps. 2

There are some wounds mentioned by the law codes which I would have expected survival from to be extremely rare, nearly nonexistent. Two of these involve the abdomen. In one, the abdomen is cut so the internal organs spill out and must be replaced. Now folks back then had a pretty decent knowledge of anatomy and they would certainly have known to clean things up before stuffing everything back in but I would still expect this sort of injury to introduce foreign matter into the body cavity, something I understand to be pretty much a death sentence. A related wound is one to the abdomen which also damages the intestines so that excrement comes out. Again, this is contamination with foreign matter, in this case material which is loaded with bacteria. A medieval surgeon would have had the choice of sewing up the intestines with stitches which couldn't be removed or tucking the excrement-leaking intestines back in. I probably need to read Galen or Hippocrates but I can't imagine they'd leave the body open while the intestines healed and wait until then to close the wound. These two types of wounds are such that I would have expected near certain death, however values at less than full wergild were assessed for them, so evidently they were survivable at least some of the time. 3

The other wound category involves those to the head. And not just a head wound but those which expose the brain. Again, there are two categories. In one the brain is simply exposed. I can see how this might be survived though I'd expect this to be rare. The other involves a head injury such that the brain protrudes out of the skull. This is another I'd expect to be almost always fatal, but it is dealt with in the law codes so evidently the medievals had ways of treating it. In fact, in the Alamannic code this is portrayed as relatively common, "If, however, the brain protrudes from the wound, as often happens, so that a physician mends (the skull) with medication or silk and afterwards (the patient) recovers, and this is proved to be true, let him (the giver of the blow) compensate with forty solidi." 4

Clearly I'm underestimating either; the ability of the body to fight off infection caused by exposure to or introduction of foreign materials or; the ability of medievals to treat such injuries. Or both. I don't have a ton of medieval medical manuals and this isn't something I've read a lot on. Thanks to Stephen Pollington(2008) I do have a few Anglo-Saxon sources. Bald's Leechbook includes a treatment for wounds of the head where the bones are broken. The Leechbook also contains instructions for "... if one's bowels be out ..." but I suspect this refers to a prolapse. Examples of trepanation known through archaeological finds are fairly numerous so they were willing to drill holes in someone's head if necessary. 5

Herbal remedies were also available. The Old English Herbarium suggests that, "If a man's head be broken ..." the patient should drink a concoction made of bishopswort and hot beer. Drink enough of it and I bet you would feel better. 6

This is something I need to read more on and it appears that early medieval medicine is more sophisticated than I have given it credit for. I suspect a reading of Galen and Hippocrates would be useful. I'm not sure how available these would have been to early medieval doctors however Galen's Therapeutics to Glaucon, Hippocrates Aphorisms and a text, The Wisdom of the Art of Medicine were, among others, in circulation. I also want to get a copy of the Frisian laws. According to Oliver, they were very concerned with specifics of anatomy.

Once again, even after all the reading I've done, I've come across something which surprised me. This is really cool, happens fairly often, and if it ever stops happening I have a feeling I'll have to find a new hobby. Of course it also leaves me with the sense of how much I don't know but that's OK too.

The following abbreviations will be used to identify law codes in the notes:

PLA - Pactus Legis Alamannorum
LLA - Alamannic Laws from the Lantfridana Manuscripts
BL - Bavarian Laws (from the Ingolstadt Manuscript)
PLS - Pactus Legis Salicae (Salic Law)
LSK - Lex Salica Karolina (Charlemagne's update to the Salic Law)

1 For being killed by a dog, see LLA, XCVI.3. For abortion, LLA, LXXXVIII.1. I should also mention that when an offender was handed over to the victim's family, general opinion is that this would usually be to serve the family as a slave until it is judged that the debt is paid, not to be killed. See Oliver(2011) pp 49-51 for a discussion of this. One of the main points of the wergild system was to reduce violence by providing non-violent means of compensation. I doubt they would have legalized turning someone over to be tortured and/or killed which would only serve to continue the violence/retribution cycle.

2 Oliver (2011), p 59 in discussing a poisoning case, "The resulting harm, in any case, would have damaged the internal organs which (except in Frisia) were not protected by law." For non-healing abdominal wounds see PLS, XVII.7, LSK, XV.6.

3 Oliver (2011), p 129, "Frisia includes a fine for causing the intestines to spill out such that they have to be replaced." The Alamans, LLA, LVII.57, include a fine for, "If, however, he mutilates the intestines so that the excrement comes out, let him compensate with forty solidi."

4 LLA, LVII.7. The Alamans, LLA, LVII.6 also include compensation of 12 solidi where, "... the brain appears and a physician can touch it with a feather or a cloth ...". This is the most specific account but the Bavarians, Frisians and Franks all include compensation for injuries in which the brain is exposed. In addition to those quoted see Oliver(2011), p 86 referencing the Frisians and; BL, IV.6, V.5 and VI.5; PLS, XVII.4 and XVII.5; LSK, XV.4; PLA, I.1. Another interesting aspect to head injuries which I'm not going to cover here is that of compensation being established by determining if a piece of bone broken off was large enough to hear it strike a shield when you threw it.

5 Bald's Leechbook, III.33 for the head and III.73 for bowels.

6 Old English Herbarium, 1.Bishopwort/Betonica.

Drew, Katherine Fischer, trans., The Laws of the Salian Franks. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (1991). ISBN: 978-0-8122-1322-5.

Oliver, Lisi, The Body Legal in Barbarian Law. Toronto: University of Toronto Press (2011). ISBN: 978-0-8020-9706-4.

Pollington, Stephen, Leechcraft: Early English Charms, Plant Lore, and Healing. Hereward: Anglo-Saxon Books (2008). ISBN: 978-1-898281-47-4.

Rivers, Theodore John, trans., Laws of the Alamans and Bavarians. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (1977). ISBN: 0-8122-7731-7.

Wallis, Faith, ed., Medieval Medicine: A Reader. Toronto: University of Toronto Press (2010). ISBN: 978-1-4426-0103-1.

Early Medieval Law Codes and Medicine I

2011-11-12T10:45:00.011-05:00

WARNING: This Post Contains Graphic Content!!!

Now that I've ~~helped increase site traffic~~ sufficiently warned everybody, I should clarify that this doesn't contain any nudity but there may be some items which have a certain yuck factor.

NOTE: I originally intended this to be a single post but after the length of my tangential digression I decided to split it into two parts. The second part will discuss some of my thoughts on the kinds of injuries which folks in Late Antiquity might have a reasonable prospect of surviving, some of which I would once have considered to be pretty much a death sentence. Click here for Part II.

I finished reading Lisi Oliver's The Body Legal in Barbarian Law a week or so ago. She uses evidence from the various laws/law codes of Roman successor kingdoms to evaluate, based on the value placed on injury to various parts of the body, what the barbarians (I'll use her terminology here) reveal regarding the importance of the physical form. For example, she takes some time to discuss what parts of the body are most important functionally vs which are most important aesthetically. By looking at whether a law assigns greater value to damage to a functionally or aesthetically important body part she can look at what's more important to one of the barbarian groups and does this vary with social status. For example, is an aesthetic body part valued more highly for an elite female as opposed to a slave male. This is an interesting book and if the subject intrigues you, I encourage you to take a look at it.

But this is not a review of this book. As I was reading her account she discusses some injuries which, 15 years ago, I would have thought would have been an automatic death sentence before the advent of modern drugs to counter sepsis, particularly antibiotics. She also mentioned one injury which absolutely freaks me out.

I'm going to open with my gross-out tangent which really isn't relevant to the second part of this post as the injury is neither life-threatening or fixable (back then anyway). I'm going to begin with an anecdote. In Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four one of the most important scenes - perhaps the most important - occurs towards the end of the account of Winston's being broken by O'Brien. Winston's had the dog beaten out of him - he's been starved, beaten, tortured, but there's still a piece of him, at his core, that remains intact. Leading up to this there have been occasional references to a specific room which the other prisoners say is "the worst place in the world" (I'm paraphrasing - the book's here somewhere but I haven't found it). So O'Brien takes Winston in there. Winston defiantly tells O'Brien that despite everything that's been done to him, he hasn't betrayed Julia, his lover. We've previously had hints (though I hadn't made the connection to this point) that Winston is very frightened of rats. O'Brien pulls out some sort of cage device which holds some huge, starving, ravenous rats. He places it on Winston's head and describes how, once released, the rats will go for his eyes and burrow through his cheeks to get at his tongue. As O'Brien's about to release the catch and Winston can hear the rats scrambling around trying to get at him, Winston screams, "Do it to Julia! Tear her face off! Eat her eyes!" or something like that. The final breaking of Winston.

In thinking about this when I read it the first time (I was in my teens) I was pretty sure that the worst place in the world for me would have been being fitted with a similar helmet, but one filled with yellowjackets. Any social bee or wasp would have done but the yellowjackets would have been the worst. When I was 9 I stepped in a ground nest, got stung a bunch of times and had to be taken to the hospital. Ever since then I've had a pretty strong fear of bees. At one time I considered it overwhelming. I'm better now - if I see the bees/wasps I can deal with them rationally. I know what sets them off and how to behave. And I've been stung since and it's not that bad. But if a sudden buzzing happens in my ear, I still have a moment of panic.

Lisi Oliver has given me a new, not place but worst thing in the world, at least for a little while. In discussing wounds to the nose she writes of Ripuarian and Alamannic laws that, "If, however, a sufficient amount has been struck off so that mucus dribbles from the stump; a fine equal to the full penalty for eye or ear is required. This legislation addresses the physical task of the nose to contain mucus." 1

OK, I'd never once considered a wound which would expose the sinuses to such an extent that snot would be constantly running down your face. This first passage of hers was bad enough but she becomes a bit more explicit later.

In Ripuarian law, a damaged nose that can still contain mucus must be compensated for with fifty solidi, but if the stump cannot hold mucus (mucare non possit), the penalty is doubled to 100 solidi - 50 per cent of a freeman's wergild. Certainly these rulings consider the greater degree of injury to the dribbling stump; however, it seems at least possible that in setting the assessment for the perpetual drip, the Ripuarian legislators may also have taken into account the visual embarrassment. If this hypothesis is true, the punitive surcharge would not seem to have been assessed in Alamann law, in which restitution for slicing off a sufficient portion of the nose so that mucus flows freely is a mere twelve solidi, or 6 per cent of wergild.2

That one did it for me. I've often found humor in folks who express a desire to have lived even a couple of hundred, let alone a thousand or more years ago. I suspect what they would (in the vast majority of cases anyway) like is to visit and then come back home. I like camping for a few days at a time but this does not mean I want to live my entire life without electricity or flush toilets. For me, the new worst thing in the world would be to have my nose sliced off so that mucus would constantly be running down my face because my sinus cavities would be exposed to that degree, and in a world without the prospect of cosmetic surgery to fix it. I suspect that this is a temporary condition and that with time my phobia will return to stinging wasps, however this was a powerful enough visual image for me that I felt it my duty to share it with anyone who reads this blog.

Feel free to thank me. ;)

1 Oliver (2011), p 93.

2 Oliver (2011), p 168.

Oliver, Lisi, The Body Legal in Barbarian Law. Toronto: University of Toronto Press (2011). ISBN: 978-0-8020-9706-4.

Orwell, George, Nineteen Eighty-Four, originally published in 1949. There are various editions out there including inexpensive paperbacks. If you haven't read it, I encourage you to.

Rutilius Claudius Namatianus and His Trip from Rome to Gaul

2011-11-09T18:34:00.034-05:00

In 417 a wealthy Gallo-Roman by the name of Rutilius Claudius Namatianus traveled from Rome to his estates in Gaul. Then he wrote a poem about his trip, De Reditu Suo. And we have some of it, a big chunk of one book and a bit of a second. Cool, right?

Unfortunately, the poem doesn't reveal quite as much about the fifth century as either Hydatius' Chronicle or Salvian's book on what God was really up to then, but it has some interesting information. In particular, following the sack of Rome and Visigothic occupation of much of Gaul, it provides another window into what contemporary inhabitants of the Roman Empire thought of things. In contrast to the above authors, Namatianus does not seem to believe the world is falling apart. Quite the opposite; based on this poem he believes things have turned a corner and are looking up. Besides showing the attitude of an elite Roman during this specific time it also is a nice illustration of how quickly things were changing in the second decade of the fifth century.

The edition I read is a reprint of something that was originally published in 1907. In many ways it's equally interesting to read what folks thought about all this a hundred years ago though I'll save a discussion of that for the end of this post.1

As usual, a brief bio seems to be in order, and this will indeed be brief. We don't know when or where Namatianus was born and we have no idea when or where he died. We know little of him at all actually though we do find out that his father was pretty high on the Roman food chain and Namatianus tells us that the same held true for himself. 2

From the content of the poem we learn that Namatianus has estates in Gaul and is evidently a member of the wealthy landowning class. The point of this trip is that he is going to tend after his estates in Gaul which are in need of care.

The poet provides a great deal of detail about the trip, including how far his party traveled and what they saw each day. For the portion covered by the poem (not all of it survives) this is a sea voyage from Rome to Pisa with the poem ending after they left the Pisan harbor. This was not a single long sea voyage but a series of short legs as they traveled along the Italian coast and spent each night on shore. The editor of this edition believes the dates of the surviving portion of the poem are from September 22 to November 21. 3

Many people appreciate the poem for its descriptive elements and how Namatianus portrays the various cities and landmarks he passed along the way. For myself, I'm more interested in what it says about the state of the Empire in the year 417, when this trip took place.

At that time the Visigoths, who had been living in Gaul, had recently moved to Spain where they stayed for a brief period before they received lands in Gaul through a treaty signed in 418. The Visigothic journey through the Empire to that point was a fairly convoluted one. Alaric had sacked Rome in 410, then moved to the south of Italy where he died. His brother, Athaulf, took over the leadership and moved them back north into Gaul where they remained until being driven into Spain by Constantius in 415.

Namatianus makes several references in the poem to the Goths and the damage they have caused, both to Rome and Gaul. He speaks of how his Gallic fields have been marred by war and demand his attention so he can build anew. 4

Namatianus clearly believes that Rome will recover. Early in the poem he spends substantial time praising the city, professing his love for Rome and describing how, while she has been harmed, she has recovered from greater depths than this. The Goths are a temporary setback. Rome is eternal. The Gods (there is little doubt he is a pagan) have and will continue to protect her. Her greatness has perhaps been marred a bit but this is a small setback. Rome is recovering, as are his estates. In contrast to Hydatius, Salvian and Sidonius Apollinaris, Namiatus believes that, for this snapshot in time, 417, Rome is strong and in no danger. 5

There are two other items that caught my attention. First, Namatianus hates Jews. He absolutely reviles them. They are a "filthy race" and one is "An animal that spurns at human food." An interesting question is whether he distinguishes between Jews and Christians. I suspect he is well-informed enough to do so. This does not, of course, mean that he believes the differences between the two are substantial. He may even be using his vilification of Jews as a way to express similar feelings toward Christians. He takes the opportunity to criticize the monks of Capraria as mad and says that they are punishing themselves deservedly for evil. It's impossible to say if his feelings towards the monks are extended to all Christians but it is certainly possible. 6

He is even more vitriolic against Stilicho. Stilicho burned the Sybilline Books. He opened the protective barrier of the Alps and allowed Rome to be pillaged. The barbarians were invited into Rome, to commit murder. Nero was horrible for killing his mother but Stilicho was responsible for the death of the mother of the world. Namatianus reviles Stilicho more than anyone or anything else in this poem. 7

There's one other passage that interested me. In this poem Namatianus discusses various friends of his who he meets along the way. One of these is Victorinus. Victorinus was apparently the deputy for the Prefect whose authority included Britain. While this is well after Rome had abandoned Britain, evidently a Roman official continued to be assigned responsibility for it. Did this mean Rome believed it would take Britain back or was this symbolic only? I can't say, though based on the rest of the poem it seems likely that Namatianus believed Rome could regain everything it had lost (or at least he wrote a poem which made it seem like he believed it). 8

As I noted above, I went ahead and read through the introductory section. It's interesting to see how thinking has changed on some items over the past century. For example, Keene does not believe Namatianus would have been capable of showing warmth to a Christian however there are plenty of examples of Christians and Pagans being good friends. There were zealots such as Ambrose and the mob at Alexandria that killed Hypatia however there were also Christians who believed themselves to be advanced philosophers and didn't behave that way. Keene also depicts the trip as extremely dangerous and the poem does not give this sense at all and at that moment in time there is little reason for it to have been. 9

I don't believe this poem tells us nearly as much as Hydatius, Salvian or Sidonius, but it does provide some information. In contrast to the writings of the three former authors, for Namatianus Rome is still strong, her future bright. At this specific time the threat of the Goths has been lifted, the great landowners are still prosperous and with a little work, life will continue as it always has. One wonders what a poem of his would have looked like ten years later.

1 I debated ignoring the introductory section and decided to read through it, thankfully. I also want to note that while it includes both the English and Latin, the English and Latin do not match up on the facing pages but generally you had to flip a page or two further on to find the matching Latin. This raises an interesting dilemma for notation and I've decided that when I reference something the line number will represent where I found the Latin and the page number will reference the English which is what I'll quote when a quote seems called for. I hope this is clear. Seems a strange way to publish a book but there it is. While my Latin is far from strong the poem contains many proper names and references to geographic locations so I was able to keep track reasonably well, I hope. I suppose this is as good of a place as any to mention that I found this a tough read. Namatianus' style is florid at best. He's often called, "The Last of the Roman Poets." Personally, I think whoever is given that title should have written a better poem.

2 For Namatianus' father see I.579-585, p 157 where he is Prefect of Tuscany, Quaestor, Prefect of Rome and the Imperial Treasurer. For Namatianus see I.561-4, p 155 where he says, "I of old by office held control over the palace and the soldiery guarding the pious Emperor." which would make him Magister Officiorum and I.466, p 148 where we learn that he was Praefecti Urbi or Prefect of Rome, like his father.

3 There are several interludes where, for weather or other reasons, the travelers remained in one place for several days. For a discussion of the astronomical signs mentioned in the poem indicating the dates of the trip, see the Introduction, pp 8-9. Also, at the time of this edition the journey was believed to have taken place in 416 while a fragment of the poem discovered later indicates that it took place in 417.

4 For his ravaged lands, see I.19-34, p 111. For references to the Goths see I.39-40, p 113 and a lengthy passage referencing the fall of the Goths and recovery of the earth at I.141-154, p 121. Namatianus refers to them as Getae which can be used to refer to a number of barbarian groups however he's specific enough with his references that it seems fairly clear that he's discussing Alaric's and Athaulf's Goths.

5 This theme repeats itself several times but nowhere stronger than in this opening section, I.47-204, pp 113-121.

6 For Jews see, I.380-398, p 141. For the monks see, I.440-452, pp 145-7.

7 II.41-60, pp 165-7.

8 I.493-501, pp 149-51.

9 Introduction, p 24 for Keene's discussion of Namatianus' likely feelings toward Christians and p 13 for his describing the trip as difficult and perilous.

Rutilii Claudii Namatiani, De Reditu Suo Libri Duo: The Home-Coming of Rutilius Claudius Namatianus from Rome to Gaul in the Year 416 A.D., Charles Haines Keene, ed., George F. Savage Armstrong, trans. London: George Bell & Sons (1907), Nabu Reprint (2010). ISBN: 978-1-1763-8714-0.

Hydatius and the End of the World

2011-11-05T11:21:00.025-04:00

I love these fifth century authors - they're even better than the folks in the fourth. I've just finished going through the Chronicle of Hydatius. Seriously cool.

Before I get started, Hydatius was a bishop in the province of Gallaecia, in northwest Spain. He was born around 400 and died around 470. His chronicle is a continuation of Jerome's and covers the years 379-468.

The reason I love the fifth century folks is they all have a different take on what was taking place. Now I'm willing to admit that for 85% of the people living in those days; slaves, coloni, the poor free, etc., life went on pretty much as it always had, though with a change at the top. I'm not willing to go so far as to say that nothing changed except who was at the top of the pyramid for society, social structure, the economy, etc. To an elite with a classical education, including Hydatius, this was a massive upheaval. However each of these authors has a unique perspective which is not echoed by the others.

For Hydatius, this was it. The world was ending. He wasn't a witness to the Apocalypse itself but to the days leading up to it. Hydatius may even have had a date in mind of May 27, 482.1 He expresses a belief that he did not have long to live and wouldn't live to see the end, but it would surely come; "Such then are the contents of the present volume, but I have left it to my successors (to include an account of) the Last Days, at that time at which they encounter them." 2

If you're looking for a source to support the old, tired tradition that the End of the Roman Empire was basically an invasion by a bunch of animalistic barbarians intent on rape, pillage, plunder and the destruction of all that's good in the world, Hydatius is your man. You have your pestilence, sack and destruction of cities, slaughter of innocents, and even cannibalism. Hydatius' picture of the fifth century is monstrous. 3

Interestingly, for all Hydatius' belief that these are the last days, he does show some balance. He includes that during Alaric's sack of Rome, those who hid in churches were spared. Theoderic's sack of Bracara on October 28, 456 is horrible but "was accomplished without bloodshed." Hydatius himself was taken prisoner by some Suevi and held captive for three months. Throughout his account, Aetius appears as someone who constantly fights and defeats barbarians. 4

So for Hydatius, life sucks, the world sucks, and while creation itself doesn't suck, its suckiness is such that God has decided to end it. I once mentioned that I found Salvian to be rather anti-jovial in his outlook. Compared to Hydatius, he was the Good Humor Man.

So here's where perspective comes into play. Christians had been predicting that the Apocalypse would come soon ever since Paul (by the fifth century some exceptions, notably Augustine, were showing up). Hydatius clearly believed that the signs were there. The problem is, Hydatius was a bishop of an obscure (by that time) province in Spain which became a major battleground between the Goths, Vandals and Suevi. Gallaecia appears to have been a mess. Unsurprisingly, Hydatius did not possess much of a world view. While he knows of major events such as Geiseric's sack of Carthage, much of his account, particularly from 460 on, is focused exclusively on his home province. Were things as bad as Hydatius says? They may have been, locally. However there's little evidence that you can broaden his account to include the entire Roman West. For all that he seems to believe it is, things were not the same everywhere. 5

It's also interesting to consider how Hydatius' perspective compares with other sources. Salvian, while the world sucks for him too, does not see an Apocalypse. What he believes is happening is that the barbarians are being sent as a Divine Punishment for the sins of the Romans and, to take this concept one step further, believes the barbarians have become God's favored people over the Romans because of the latter's sins. Sidonius Apollinaris is also an unhappy camper, particularly when the Auvergne was ceded to the Goths, but does not seem to believe in an imminent Apocalypse either. Augustine comes to not place much stock in Rome at all and believes the advent of the barbarians is (among other reasons) so Christianity can be spread among other groups and to new regions. I've not read Prosper of Aquitaine's Chronicle but my understanding is that (as might be expected) his thinking roughly echoes Augustine's.

Hydatius is at the Apocalyptic end of the spectrum of fifth century sources. Some people certainly believed as he did and considered that the end was coming. But this outlook was not the rule among fifth century authors.

Whatever his worldview, Hydatius is an important fifth century source. For me, he's going to fit in with Sidonius and Salvian as my favorite sources for the period where the Empire was ending. I have many of the Eastern sources including Sozomen, Theodoret, Evagrius Scholasticus, Socrates Scholasticus, Zosimus and the Paschale Chronicle. But while these all have value in recounting events, they weren't written by authors who lived in the West. The folks who lived those days, on location, provided us with not just a record of events, but how some people, at least among the elites, may have felt about it. 6

NOTE: An interesting aside, or at least it struck me as interesting, is that Hydatius discusses the Huns leaving Italy in 452. He mentions that Aetius slaughtered many of them (that this happened is debatable - and there's a second Aetius) and they were afflicted by "heaven-sent disasters" such as plague and famine. However Hydatius says nothing of Pope Leo's delegation or that the Huns left because of, or even after, this meeting. This may mean nothing beyond Hydatius not having a good handle on things going on outside of Spain but it sure caught my attention. 7

1 Burgess (1993), p 9.

2 Hydatius, Introduction, 1, p 73, "... as much at the end of the world as at the end of my life ..." and Introduction, 6, p 75. NOTE: The Burgess edition is a facing translation with the original Latin and the English. My notes will reference the page of the English translation. And as long as I'm including a note on notes, I don't like using "ibid" and won't.

3 Not sure where to start with these - if this was an academic paper or book this is where you'd see half a page of notes. For cannibalism for the year 410 we have Hydatius 40, p 83, "A famine ran riot, so dire that driven by hunger human beings devoured human flesh; mothers too feasted upon the bodies of of their own children whom they had killed and cooked with their own hands ... And thus with the four plagues of sword, famine, pestilence, and wild beasts raging everywhere throughout the world, the annunciations foretold by the Lord through his prophets came to fulfilment." This is the worst but, among others(there's a wide selection), you can also see Hydatius 164, p 107, Hydatius 167, p. 107 and Hydatius 179, pp 109-11.

4 For Alaric, see Hydatius 35, p 81. For Bracara, see Hydatius 167, p. 107. For his captivity, see Hydatius 196, p 113 and 202, p 115. The portrayal of Aetius by various sources is interesting and may be worth its own post at some point. For Hydatius, Aetius almost comes across as a heroic figure, valiantly battling to save civilization until his murder.

5 For a good assessment of Hydatius' portrayal of Spain during this period, see Kulikowski (2004) pp 197-203. It's hard to prove a negative but I'm unaware of anything like a massive burial pit which shows evidence of human cannibalism. In fact, I'm unaware of any massive burial pit which would provide evidence for the sort of rapid depopulation during the 5th century as was once commonly believed to have happened.

6 I hope people will forgive me if I don't include the Eastern authors in my bibliography. I'm happy to provide that information on request though to be honest, many of these are cheap reprint editions as I bought them when I was more concerned about my budget than I am now.

7 Hydatius 146, p 103.

Hydatius, Chronicle in, The Chronicle of Hydatius and the Consularia Constantinopolitana: Two Contemporary Accounts of the Final Years of the Roman Empire, R.W. Burgess, ed. and trans. Oxford: Oxford University Press (1993). ISBN: 978-0-198-147879.

Kulikowski, Michael, Late Roman Spain and Its Cities. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (2004). ISBN: 978-0-801-879784.

Salvian the Presbyter, On the Governance of God: The Writings of Salvian the Presbyter, J.F. O'Sullivan, trans. New York: CIMA Publishing (1947).

Sidonius Apollinaris, Sidonius: Letters, W.B. Anderson, trans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (1997). ISBN: 978-0-674-994621.

Sidonius Apollinaris, Sidonius: Poems, Letters, Books I-II, W.B. Anderson, trans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (1996). ISBN: 978-0-674-993273.

This Looks Like it Might be Really Good

2011-11-05T08:37:00.002-04:00

My annual May migration has usually been to Kalamazoo but at some point I may need to deviate from that. Research News in Late Antiquity just posted the CFP for the North American Patristics Conference.

I have to say, the open call session topics are really interesting. Narratives of Religious Conflict in Late Antiquity? Yup - I'm very interested in this. The Cults of Saints as Social Capital? Well - yeah. The New Prophecy: Montanism in the Light of Recent Research is the same - very interesting movement.

Plus I like Chicago and know the city reasonably well. Obviously, a Chicago Conference will cost more than one in Kalamazoo and I'm even less qualified to attend a Patristics meeting than a meeting of Medievalists but I've had plenty of practice in sitting in the back of a room and keeping my mouth shut. This appears to be a biennial Conference. I may need to think about it.

And I just joined. I took a look at the Journal of Early Christian Studies online and loved it. It may be stupid to pay $50 for something I already have free access to but A) I'll be much more likely to read it if I have a hard copy (I still haven't gone through the August Issue of EME) and B) More importantly, sometimes you see something that's good and decide it's worth supporting. I've done the same with the Journal of Late Antiquity for a couple of years now.

Quick Question for Experienced Bloggers

2011-11-03T07:10:00.005-04:00

Are we supposed to do anything with dead/broken links?

My post from last fall on Medieval Movies has been receiving a lot of traffic lately so I went back and took a look at it. One of the links is to a site maintained by Tim O'Neil, History versus the DaVinci Code where Tim takes a look at the historical basis for many of the claims in the book. For some reason I decided to click on it and apparently the link had changed to a site (not a very good one - mostly blank) which promotes Dan Brown's books.

Evidently the link had changed. I was able to go to Tim's blog, Armarium Magnum and find the correct link and fix the post.

Is there a blog protocol for dealing with links? This isn't the first dead/changed link I've come across though it's one of the more important ones. I've sort of decided that people reading the blog would probably know enough about the internet to realize that links may die and/or change and have just lived with it. When I reference a link in a publication I include, "(last accessed on _____)" in the bibliography.

Are we supposed to do something similar with links in a blog post? Is there an assumption that the link is good as of the date the post was put up? Should I put a disclaimer, All links included in posts were righteous links at the time this was posted and the fact that they may lead the reader into evil is not the fault of Medieval History Geek and all of his friends, relatives, heirs and assigns?

This is not a big deal and I suppose I could Google this question but I'm curious what people think. I'm much less concerned about dead links than about links which may have changed and now take the reader somewhere I had no intention of sending him or her.

Galla Placidia: The Last Roman Empress - a Few Comments

2011-10-30T10:01:00.009-04:00

I just finished reading Galla Placidia: The Last Roman Empress by Hagith Sivan. I ran the gamut with this book - started reading just to read, decided partway through I was going to review it and changed my note-taking accordingly, then reversed myself and decided not to. As a compromise with myself I decided to comment briefly.

First, any book which mentions the Pseudo Society at Kalamazoo can't be all bad. Sivan detailed the contents of GP's secret diary at the 2002 International Congress on Medieval Studies. Unfortunately that was one I did not attend. 1

Sivan takes an interesting approach in this book, one which grew on me as I went along. While she provides some details of GP's life, what she uses are events from her life to illustrate the life of aristocratic women. For example, she and Athaulf had a young son, Theodosius III who died in infancy. Other than the fact that the child's body was placed in a small, silver reliquary, almost no details have survived about his initial burial in 415 (as opposed to the translation of his body to the family mausoleum in 450). Sivan uses other examples from Late Antiquity such as late 4th century letters from Ambrose, homilies from Gregory Naziansus and Gregory of Nyssa, poems from Paulinus of Nola and accounts of funerals to describe what likely happened. She provides similar examples for GP's weddings, her son's accession as Emperor and other key moments in her life. Where they exist she uses surviving evidence such as texts and inscriptions.

In essence, this is much more a book on aristocratic women in the later Empire than a biography of Galla Placidia. There are biographical elements but in many ways, this is the weakest part of the book. It is more valuable as a study of the status of women. My two main criticisms of the book are how it serves as a biography and with how Sivan approaches some of the more controversial modern interpretations of some of the evidence.

The book offers a fair amount of detail of GP's life, or at least the progression of the later Western Empire, through 425 when she becomes regent for her son, Valentinian III. A fairly detailed account of the Goths, their movements through Gaul and settlement in Spain and various conflicts and power struggles are provided. The death of Constantius III, GP's exile during the brief - 423-425 - reign of John, a Notary, and her and her son returning to Ravenna in 425 receive substantial attention. This drops off for the years 425- 437, the period of her regency, and even less is given for 438-450. Some details of the conflict between Aetius and Boniface are provided however little is spoken of the erosion of the Empire's territory, the impact of the Vandal conquest of North Africa or how the Empire struggled to respond to these threats. This was disappointing to me, largely because those kinds of details are given through 425 and honestly, if the book's about Galla Placidia, wouldn't an account of when she was the ruler of the Empire, and her son's rule (at least through 450 and if you're going to do that you might as well get to 455) be included?

My other issue is when Sivan discusses events which have been interpreted in contrasting ways by modern historians. This may be more of a personal peeve. This book is what I would consider a fairly light read and does not engage in the dense, technical examinations of evidence that more academic books contain. However when Sivan mentions that she has chosen one source interpretation over another, I believe she should at least summarize the two arguments. One of these is for the dating of the Ashburnham Pentateuch to the fifth rather than sixth or seventh century. (129) Her selection of the earlier date may be perfectly valid - it likely is - however a brief foray into the arguments would be appropriate. Likewise, she provides an interpretation of Merobaudes' Carmen I which portrays the child Valentinian III as a weeping exile in search of assistance before the Eastern Emperor, Theodosius II, while in the translation I have this is depicted as the joyful betrothal of Licinia Eudoxia and the then (in 423) exiled young emperor. (122-3) Sivan does footnote that her interpretation differs from others (I have the Clover translation) but she goes into no detail regarding how or why she reached this conclusion, or even what the Clover translation describes.

By necessity I have spent considerable time detailing a couple of criticisms. However I do not want this to give the impression that this book is not useful. It is geared more toward the beginner than the historian. In particular, I believe a specialist in this period and region will find little of value. I do think it will make a very nice introduction to the early fifth century of the Western Empire, though I will need to consider a more narrative type of book to suggest as a companion.

In the end, this is a good book, though with a few holes. The status of aristocratic women in the later Empire is explored through an interesting examination of source material and in using Galla Placidia as something of a case study. It is not a straightforward biographical account and some of the details of the fifth century, particularly from 438-450, are unfortunately absent. However if someone is interested in learning more about medieval women; their roles, challenges, and ability to influence events, this book would make a good starting point.

1 The Pseudo Society presentations at Kalamazoo are purely humorous depictions of the Middle Ages.

Clover, Frank, trans. Flavius Merobaudes: A translation and Historical Commentary, Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society (1971).

Sivan, Hagith, Galla Placidia: The Last Roman Empress, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2010).

This Will Sound Familiar

2011-10-29T23:07:00.000-04:00

At least it will if you've been reading this blog for any period of time.

I did a search for a reference cited in something I read which led to a horrible confluence of events which may require my buying another bookcase tomorrow. I don't want to come across as pushing any commercial sites but let's just say that if you go to the Oxbow Books/David Brown Book Company and start looking at their bargains and special offers, be very careful.

Though I got some seriously cool stuff.

What is Late Antiquity Anyway?

2011-10-28T08:01:00.003-04:00

I need a tidier definition. I was eating lunch with some friends a couple of days ago and in the process of resolving all of the world's problems my hobby came up, as it does from time to time, mainly because I look for ways to interject it whenever possible. I made the mistake of mentioning Late Antiquity rather than saying I tend to focus on Early Medieval. 1

The obvious followup was, Friend: "What's Late Antiquity?"

Me: "The period from around 250 to around 700."

Friend: "That's when it is - what is it?"

Uh-oh. I like it when people are perceptive, except for those times when I don't. I gave him some sort of explanation which included a period which contained elements from classical and medieval society, monotheistic state-sponsored religion, changing patterns of land tenure, etc., etc. I quit before I threw in retaining classical literature, government administrative systems, etc., from Rome. I think I was close to discovering a new method of hypnosis.

OK, so that didn't work and I'll never do it again. For now I'm going to remember not to use Late Antiquity in this sort of conversation. That doesn't mean I want to throw the term in the dustbin, only to be trotted out when I go to a conference, happen to run into folks with some knowledge, or post to this blog. I think it has some utility and it should, even when talking to people who know even less about history than me.

I'm pretty comfortable with about 250-700 as the period (of course there's overlap with other periods). I have the "whenness" piece of this down fairly well and have no problem justifying it for Western Europe. For details you can see this discussion on Magistra et Mater.

What I need is a better description/explanation. I've got a bunch of Peter Brown's stuff and ran through it to see what he has but he's short on shallow definitional terminology - he seems to want to actually explain things. I thought maybe the Oxford Centre for Late Antiquity would have something. Websites tend to be pretty useful for mining short summary phrases from - people tend to spend less time on them. Though maybe not when you're an Oxford student. Oxford briefly describes some of what happened, not a definition. 2

Maybe the best I can do is a combination of period/characteristics. One statement I try to stay away from is, "Late Antiquity was a period of change." Every time in history was a period of change. LA may have had a bit more than some periods but it's pretty hard to find any 500-year chunk of time where things were pretty much the same at the end of it as at the beginning. And I definitely won't say that Late Antiquity was, "The period where the Roman World transformed into the Medieval World," since this tells my lunch-listeners nothing.

Anyway, if someone has a useful phrase defining Late Antiquity in 20 words or less, I'd appreciate it. Lacking that, I think I need to go back to explaining my interest as, "the early part of the Medieval Period and the later years of the Roman Empire." That hasn't caused me much trouble.

1 I should note that long before I started thinking about things like Late Antiquity I considered the Middle Ages to be from 312-1517. I thought (and still think) that the existence of Christianity as the single largest social institution in Western Europe was a pretty important defining characteristic and figured the period between Constantine at the Milvian Bridge and Luther worked pretty well (at the time 1517 made sense - I have no trouble with anyone saying it should be 1519, 1520, 1530, etc. - or anyone who wants to use 1492, 1453, etc.). Once I figured out what piece of Medieval History was most interesting to me, I decided that Late Antiquity did a pretty nice job of covering that same time (at least based on the years used by some). My About this Blog page gives a bit more detail on how my thinking progressed.

2 Since humor doesn't always translate on the internet I figure I should note that this is a good thing. We get enough shallow "pithy" phrases imposed on us by society - it would be troubling if historians and universities ever start promoting them. And while I enjoy talking about the artificiality of modern periodizations, I usually don't take lunch conversations there.

Book Review: Literacy in Lombard Italy, c. 568-774

2011-10-23T12:40:00.009-04:00

Everett, Nicholas, Literacy in Lombard Italy, c. 568-774. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2003). ISBN:978-0-521-17410.

This is a book which discusses the uses of writing and written forms of communication during the period of Lombard rule in Italy. Whether this truly represents literacy will be discussed below. 1

Everett opens by providing a brief historical narrative discussing Italy prior to the Lombards and detailing the first years following their arrival. He then examines examples of Lombard writing, dividing these by chapters in well-ordered, logical categories. The titles of chapters three through seven are simple and descriptive of their contents; "Language and Literacy," "Law and Government," "Charters," "Inscriptions" and, "Manuscripts."

Everett spends most of the book closely examining surviving texts. Charters, law codes and monumental inscriptions are described in some depth regarding their form, functions, evolution and authorship. Manuscript production in Bobbio and Monte Casigno receive considerable attention. A section on the use of scripts is particularly detailed and informative. (306-16) If you want to know what Lombard writing has survived, this book will prove to be a very good resource.

However this is the high point. In examining the quality of this book the first question which comes to mind is; Does Everett in fact address literacy? I believe he does not. He extensively discusses the forms of writings, their uses and dissemination. He provides detailed information on various forms of texts and inscriptions. He provides excellent information regarding the evolution of Lombard law codes. Yet nowhere is there a discussion of the level of literacy among the population. Instead he resorts to a sort of "literacy by implication." As many texts are in existence and many more must have been present during the period, literacy must have been at a fairly high level. There will have been significant numbers of literate, certainly among the higher levels of society. Unfortunately, Everett never attempts to quantify this or even provide detailed evidence regarding it and the existence or nonexistence of lay literacy is never addressed. Indeed, the most substantial argument for literacy is contained in the introduction where Everett argues that while literacy levels may not have been high, the use of formulaic subscriptions and the number of witnesses signing charters indicates that a substantial portion of the population recognized the importance of writing, though they may not have been literate. (10) This is less a book about literacy than one which examines the uses of writing. To truly explore literacy, a focus must be on the authors and readers. While the former receives some attention, the latter does not. 2

This examination of the writings is the most valuable part of the book. The discussion of surviving texts and inscriptions is detailed and well done. Everett's structure in examining writings in various contexts is useful in helping to describe various aspects of Lombard administration and governance.

More difficult to assess is what it means. Everett provides several bold statements. He believes that, "... a unified, widely diffused native Lombardic language may never have existed." (100) As a result, the Lombards quickly adopted Latin for their texts. This raises the question of the survival of Germanic terms in many texts, including law-codes. He believes these may have originated from a variety of dialects, not a single one, and represents allies and other barbarian groups the Lombards may have been in communication with, not from a Lombard language. (110) This is an interesting thesis and may be true, however Everett provides little evidence in support of it. Subsequently, he argues against a period of bilingualism such as others have proposed. This is an important point, however again the argument is insubstantial. 3

Another interesting thesis is that of Roman continuity. Everett argues that Lombard administrative structures and documentary practices illustrate a high degree of continuity from the Roman period; "The form and content of Lombard charters suggest that, far from being products of a less organized and less literate post-Roman political order, the charters of Lombard Italy have deep Roman roots in a legal culture of property law and practice that changed little, if at all, with the arrival of the new barbarian overlords." (198) With this statement, Everett displays a belief that not only did administrative practices continue from the Roman period, but the literacy level among the population involved in political activities was equivalent during the Roman and Lombard periods. Both of these assertions lack supportive evidence and with regards to literacy levels remaining unchanged, considerable evidence to the contrary exists. Such a bold statement requires substantial, detailed evidence however this is not forthcoming. 4

It is worth taking some space to explore one of his arguments in detail. For this I am going to select a discussion of the Lombard use of seal-rings on pages 170 and 171. Everett discusses the finding of a seal-ring from a mid-seventh century grave at Trezzo d'Adda. He then considers whether a seal-ring was commonly used including, "Although Rothari's law did not specifically mention a seal or seal-ring, the wording of 'aut recognitum seu requisitum' is sufficiently indeterminate to render it plausible." (my emphasis) Later he adds, "Admittedly, seal-rings are not much evidence of literacy per se - the use of seals may even be termed 'sub-literacy' - but they are a visual counterpart to written communication, icons which help to validate the message and thus are part of the message itself. Their existence presupposes a literate stratum of communication and testifies to the tenacity of Roman traditions of government."

In examining this, several aspects of the argument are missing. For one, in equating Lombard uses of seal-rings with Roman, a discussion of how they were used in Roman administration followed by comparing and contrasting these uses with Lombard uses, would be entirely appropriate and, in my opinion, necessary if such a connection is to be made. The use of the term "plausible" in the argument is insufficient. To make this connection, "plausible" must become "likely" or "probable". This should include a discussion of alternatives such as the likelihood that Lombard use was either due to independently coming up with a similar solution to a similar problem or even to Lombard uses being "inspired by" Roman uses, but not through a continuous use handed down from the fifth century. The structure of the argument and the evidence presented is not sufficient either to support Lombard use as stated by Everett or the connection he proposes with Roman uses. His footnotes in this section provide little help, noting one secondary source arguing that the passages actually preclude the use of seal-rings and another in which the author is undecided.

This type of argument is not an isolated case. The seal-ring discussion is interesting however to truly examine it requires more than a few hundred words and much more detail. This reads more as a thesis statement than as a statement of proof. Overall, his arguments for Roman continuity are among the weakest in the book and are peppered with statements such as "plausible" and "possible". This is unfortunate as the concepts he proposes are interesting and important, if sufficient evidence is given. I am unable to flatly state that he is wrong with these arguments as I do not have the knowledge of the sources or other secondary books to make such a judgement however I am comfortable in stating that I believe the structure of his arguments and the evidence given are often insufficient.

Overall, this often reads as some sort of Lombard apologetic. While it is unlikely that the Lombards were the cause of the bulk of the damage done to the Italian peninsula in the sixth century, they did inherit a scarred region, one in which it was difficult to pick up the pieces of Roman society for inclusion in the kingdom. Everett's assertions of Roman continuity and high levels of literacy on a par with Roman society are questionable, at best, at least without substantially more evidence than is provided here.

In the end this book shows promise but disappoints. While Everett provides detailed examinations of Lombard writings, he fails to provide the type of evidence to support many of his conclusions. The book contains a great deal of information regarding charters, texts, inscriptions and scripts. There are some interesting, possibly even exciting concepts proposed. Unfortunately, the arguments in support of these concepts are frequently flawed and lack sufficient evidence. Lombard society provides evidence of literacy, and writing was important in administrative and social structures, at the elite level at least, and within this context, this book is valuable. However when Everett steps beyond these discussions, the flaws in this book become apparent.

1 I rarely review a book where I am not fairly familiar with the topic under discussion. This book is an exception. I have read some on the Lombards but do not consider myself to be any type of authority on them and have only a passing familiarity with the texts discussed. However the major issues here are with the author's arguments and I am comfortable discussing these.

2 You'll note that one of my problems with this book is in its title. It should not have been titled as a book on literacy rather than one on the uses of writing. While the existence of texts is an aspect of literacy, to truly be considered a book on literacy, I believe more attention must be given to those who wrote and those who may have read. The former receives some attention, though not enough, the latter receives almost none, beyond the vagueness of the general theme that if written materials existed there must have been someone to read them. Such is true, but this is not enough for a book on literacy. This would be less of a problem if the promotional materials did not repeat and emphasize the error. For example, the back cover on my paperback edition opens with, "Italy had long experienced literacy under Roman rule but what happened to literacy in Italy under the rule of a barbarian people?"

3 For an argument in favor of a bilingual period see, Wolfgang Haubrichs, "Langobardic Personal Names: Given Names and Name-Giving Among the Langobards," in, Ausenda, G., Delogu, P., and Wickham, C., eds., (2009). See p. 217 and the subsequent discussion on pp. 242-50.

4 For arguments conflicting with this see Wickham, (2006), pp. 115-22 and Paolo Delogu, "Kingship and the Shaping of the Lombard Body Politic" in Ausenda, G., Delogu, P., and Wickham, C., eds., (2009). Wickham provides substantial evidence against Everett's argument for extensive Lombard taxation structures through Everett's period while Delogu substantially discusses the differences in Lombard Italy from Roman with emphasis on Roman society having been so fractured due to the Gothic Wars that developing a successor kingdom utilizing substantial Roman structures was impossible.

Ausenda, G., Delogu, P., and Wickham, C., eds., The Langobards before the Frankish Conquest: An Ethnographic Perspective. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press (2009). ISBN: 978-1-84383-490-8.

Wickham, Chris, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2006). ISBN: 978-0-19-921296-5.

Scattered Not-so-Random Thoughts

2011-10-16T10:57:00.015-04:00

I've been reading quite a bit on Ostrogothic and Lombard Italy lately. I've never focused on the Lombards before so I'm learning quite a bit. I read some of the obvious books years ago such as Chris Wickham's Early Medieval Italy, Neil Christie's The Lombards and Paul the Deacon's History of the Lombards.

I've been waiting for something to stimulate my brain to the point where I'd feel inspired to post. This has happened three times. Each time I started a post and in reviewing it realized that it had huge holes, largely due to my lack of knowledge, and was in an area where, once I look into it more, I should be able to put up something more substantial. 1

So here are my teasers; areas I intend to look at in more depth at some point (I really shouldn't run out and buy more books right now - I have plenty to read sitting here). While these are Italy-based, they have implications for Western Europe during the period.

The nature of violence. The closest I came to making a complete post was one which would have been titled something like, The Feud and Vendetta in Late Antiquity. What stopped me was realizing that in order to do this topic justice I would have to try to place the feud in context with the role of violence overall, and based on that, how the state tried to regulate legitimate societal violence as one of its aspects of maintaining authority, and how this evolved from a recognition of a legitimate personal grievance to one where these grievances were a matter of concern for the state. 2

This arose from a discussion by Giorgio Ausenda and Sam Barnish on how feud was regulated by Liutprand where a murderer would lose everything, "They [those who developed Liutprand's legal decrees] condemned the intentional killer to the loss of his entire substance, with the proviso that, if the murderer's substance was less than the compensation stated in Rothari's Edict, he was to be delivered to the victim's relatives; if it was more, half the balance was to go to the king's court and the rest to the victim's heirs." 3

One of the things I enjoy about the Studies in Historical Archaeoethnology series sponsored by the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Social Stress is that the volumes include participant discussions following each paper. One of the exchanges, initiated by Marios Costambeys, discusses how feud and vendetta were extensively mentioned in literature, less frequently in law codes, and are almost nonexistent in charters. Costambeys offers that literary mention of feuds may involve topoi and may not be representative of reality. This raises a host of questions for me, including whether one would expect to find this mentioned in charters, but also provided the motivation for my almost-post. 4

Lombard aristocracy. An area which I am intrigued by, but have never looked into, is why the city-state developed in Medieval Italy. Now every Medieval society is unique however entities such as 13th century Genoa and Venice are more unique than most. I don't know for sure that these were factors - the temporal distance my be too great to make that connection - however the inability of the Lombards to create the sort of Romano-barbarian kingdom found in Gaul and Hispania may have something to do with it. 5

Related to this is that Lombard aristocrats did not develop the wealth possessed by the Franks and that the aristocrats were much more city-based than in Gaul. 6 Was this a precursor to the development of city-states? I don't know but it's an interesting question.

Literacy. Literacy and Education have always interested me, in particular evidence for lay literacy. I have never focused all that much on the development of scripts and what that may indicate. Nicholas Everett discusses the evolution of Lombard scripts from very individualistic, varied cursives to the adoption of more standardized miniscule. He argues that this development is an indication of a lower level of literacy, though possibly a broader audience. 7

This makes some sense. I'm not sure about lower level of literacy. To me, individualistic scripts may represent manuscripts intended for a limited audience - a small circle of "literate elites" - which would recognize and read it easily. It also may indicate political leadership having little influence on what was being written - an absence of the "official" centers where charters are redacted or edicts written such as are found with the Carolingians. It may possibly point to a lower literacy level at the court as well though this would require a lot of investigation before I'd be comfortable with it as a conclusion.

These three areas; the role of feud and vendetta; the structure of Lombard society and; what the development of scripts may indicate about literacy and the uses of writing, were very interesting for me. However, while I'm interested in them, I don't know enough about any of these topics to offer them up as standalone posts.

1 I apologize for my lack of substantive posts lately. I finished a major responsibility on September 24 and thought I'd have more time. I underestimated how many projects I'd set aside to be worked on as soon as I finished this. I'm still working through "the stack" and hope to return to more regular posting in the not-too-distant future.

2 I use the term "state" very loosely here. Entities in Western Europe in Late Antiquity lacked many of the aspects we would today attribute to a state. Guy Halsall's use of the term "polity" is more accurate but I don't want to take the time to discuss that here - for the folks who this blog targets, I think I'll stick with state, however flawed. There have been some interesting blog posts on this topic recently. I'd suggest one by Guy Halsall and another by Steve Muhlberger referencing Susan Reynolds. This is another area I really need to focus on - what is a state and which medieval societies fit the term?

3 Giorgio Ausenda and Sam Barnish, "A Comparative Discussion of Langobardic Feud and Blood-Money Compensation with Parallels from Contemporary Anthropology and from Medieval History," p. 314 in Ausenda, Delogu and Wickham, eds. (2009). This seems to indicate a situation where under Liutprand, violence in the form of feuds and vendettas were no longer a crime against an individual and/or family, but a public crime, requiring that the state also be compensated. Graham Barrett gave a paper titled, "Literacy, Law and Libido in Early Medieval Spain" at Kalamazoo in 2010 which pointed out a similar evolution in 10th century Hispania.

4 Ausenda and Barnish (2009), p. 338. This is something I really want to explore. I'm for anything which further debunks the portrayal of Medieval Society, particularly immediately post-Roman, as the anarchic, people running around killing each other randomly, way it's frequently been illustrated in older history, popular modern literature, and credit card commercials. But I need to know more before I start posting on it. Another shout-out to Guy Halsall. His Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West is extensively referenced. One more book I haven't read which I clearly need to get to.

5 Paolo Delogu, "Kingship and the Shaping of the Lombard Body Politic," p. 255 in Ausenda, Delogu and Wickham, eds. (2009). Delogu believes that Authari and Agiluf attempted to create this sort of entity however Roman society was too fragmented in the wake of the Gothic Wars to take this sort of role in kingdom formation.

6 Chris Wickham, "Social Structures in Lombard Italy," p. 123 and discussion on pp. 140-2 in Ausenda, Delogu and Wickham, eds. (2009).

7 Everett, Nicholas, Literacy in Lombard Italy, c. 568-774, (2003) pp. 315-6. I am not, overall, very fond of this book. I felt he was overly given to conjecture and did not provide sufficient evidence for many of his conclusions, however this argument was pretty good. Many of his arguments are interesting but he failed to provide a discussion of the evidence in the sort of detail to convince me. Jonathan Jarrett once asked me about reviewing books I didn't find useful. This book became a candidate (and this may still happen). A lot of good ideas, insufficient evidentiary support for many of them.

Bibliography

Ausenda, Giorgio, Delogu, Paolo and Wickham, Chris, eds., The Langobards before the Frankish Conquest: An Ethnographic Perspective. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press (2009). ISBN: 9-781843-834906.

Christie, Neil, The Lombards. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers (1995). ISBN: 9-780631-211976.

Everett, Nicholas, Literacy in Lombard Italy, c. 568-774. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2003). ISBN: 978-0-521-17410-7.

Halsall, Guy, Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press (1998).

Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, Edward Peters, ed., William Dudley Foulke, trans. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (2003). ISBN: 9-780812-210798.

Wickham, Chris, Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society 400-1000. Ann Arbor, MI, USA: Ann Arbor Paperbacks (1989). ISBN: 9-780472-08099-7.

Fishers Renaissance Faire

2011-10-01T20:40:00.002-04:00

I only became aware of The Fishers Renaissance Faire last year. Fishers is only about an hours' drive and I decided I'd try to make it this year.

I am not involved in reenactments. I've never felt the urge to dress up in period costume, develop a craft to practice, or pretend to attack people with sharp pointy things. At the same time, I have a lot of respect for what many of these folks do. I know some SCA members and I think they have something to add to the study of history. If nothing else, they are able to take interpretations of various aspects of medieval life and demonstrate whether they are practical or not, and offer possible details on how things may have been done. I know some academics discount what they have to offer and personally, I think that's a bit narrow-minded.

So I went to the Faire. For the most part, this wasn't for my period. The focus of this group is Elizabethan. But there were a few exceptions. One of the first booths I stopped to chat at had a gentleman dressed as a Saxon warrior, conversing with someone dressed as a 15th century Ottoman Turk.

Eric Chance, dressed as a Saxon Warrior (left) and Luke Casey as an Ottoman Warrior (right).

I also had the chance to meet with royalty. It's not every day when one gets to chat with Queen Elizabeth. I particularly enjoyed that she stayed in character and, when I mentioned a blog, asked me what that was. I told her it was a sort of chronicle, like Henry of Huntington would write.

Queen Elizabeth, AKA Susie Alexander. I wouldn't have come so close except she ordered me to when she saw me taking pictures.

I hung around for a few hours, drank a little mead, making up for missing it at Kalamazoo this year when I was chasing down books, talked to a few folks and had a good time. Fortunately there wasn't a book tent or I might have gotten in trouble.

In the past some friends of mine and I have made comments that Medieval History is a lot more than people chasing each other around to stick them with sharp, pointy things. Despite that, I seemed to spend as much time watching people go after each other with sharp pointy things as anywhere. And while I didn't buy anything beyond food and mead (no book tent, remember?) I seemed to linger a bit longer in the tents with sharp pointy things in them. I'm amazed I didn't leave the place with a dagger.

Good thing their swords were blunted - these two guys hammered the tar out of each other.

I'd seen combat on foot before but this was my first opportunity to watch a joust. Two gentlemen, James Acuff from Tennessee of The Lords of Chivalry and Aaron Toby from Ontario, Canada, had at it. I climbed on a horse with plate on once and that extra weight throws your balance all out of wack. I suppose you improve with practice but those dudes must be pretty strong. Toby was unhorsed on (I think) the fourth pass and I don't know how you can fall well with that stuff on. I used to train horses for a living and did a little rodeo so I've had plenty of practice falling off. That looked like it hurt.

Acuff, playing to the crowd

The moment of truth. I tried zooming in closer but that made it hard to take a good picture from where I was, several rows back and holding my camera above my head.

It was fun and I'll try to get back there next year. Maybe I'll read up a bit beforehand so I can carry on a bit more of a conversation with people. It's not my thing but I can see where being involved in this would be very enjoyable.

I think this was a group heading to perform on one of the several stages.

I'm currently doing some reading on Lombard Italy and will offer up a post or two on some interesting aspects of this before too long. But I thought I should mention that for a little while I decided to see what was going on a thousand years or so later than what I'm usually involved with.

Turning Down a Book

2011-10-01T09:01:00.001-04:00

I should have a little more time as a major project I've been working on is wrapping up. Time to blow the dust and cobwebs off this blog.

I recently received an offer from a major publishing house to review a book. Obviously, I enjoy doing book reviews. And this book looks interesting and intriguing. Unfortunately, it's about 15th century events. It is in an area I find interesting; an aspect of society which added a new, very significant variable into contemporary culture. I've even read a little bit about it, but not enough. I'm not up on recent scholarship, don't read journals related to the topic or period, and this isn't an area I've chosen to focus on.

After debating with myself for several weeks I decided to decline the offer. It is a popular history but this is no problem. There absolutely is a place for well-written books designed to reach a wider audience. One of the problems is I probably could have written at least a decent review, though I'd have had to do some additional reading to "brush up" on things. However if someone had responded to an item of the review with something like, "What do you think of Jane Smith's book detailing new evidence which directly counters this?" I'd have to reply with, "I don't know." Not good.

This is the second time I've received an offer like this in the past six months (the other was for a book on the development of the Arthur legend). One reason I was tempted to say yes is that there's enough content on this blog for a publisher to get a pretty good sense of what I do and don't know. They were OK with me reviewing it, maybe I should have been too.

What I really want is for someone to send me the same type of request for a book about Aetius, Stilicho, Clovis, the Avars, the Ravenna-Papacy conflict, even Liutprand(pick which one, I think I could manage any of 'em). I'm hoping that turning these last two down doesn't end the requests.

A Post About Books, Inspired by Guilt

2011-09-19T17:42:00.002-04:00

I really have nothing medieval to say but I'm feeling very bad about not having posted anything historical in about a month.

There is a reason for this. Work's been busy and this coming week is the penultimate one for this group I've been working with for the past year. It's also the last week, but penultimate is such a cool word. Purdue also has this fun little tradition where every September 15 we're required to report on everything we've done for the entire year. Of course one could keep track and input information over the previous 51 weeks but who'd want to give up the panicked adrenaline rush?

But all of this is not why I haven't posted. The real reason is I've done very little Medieval reading. And while work's been busy, there's still been some time available. I've just been doing other things, which I'll explain with a true story.

A couple of weeks ago I received an offer from an academic book publisher offering a substantial discount on some books. Those of you who know me or who have been following this blog will be unsurprised to discover that I took advantage of this opportunity. I ordered five books, saving a chunk of change (once you set aside the fact that I could have spent no money and still had plenty on hand to read), and in doing so saved over a hundred bucks on another book I found almost by accident (not the book, the offer).

This all happened while I was in the office busily entering data onto Purdue's website. I looked through the book sale, found five I didn't have, ordered them, and went on my way.

A day later, back home, I went to enter the books into my spreadsheet and, well, if anyone is interested in a copy of either Origen and the History of Justification: The Legacy of Origen's Commentary on the Romans by Thomas P. Scheck or Christianity's Quiet Success: The Eusebius Gallicanus Sermon Collection and the Power of the Church in Late Antique Gaul by Lisa Kaaren Bailey, e-mail me and we can work something out. Haven't read either of 'em yet or this little problem wouldn't have happened.

Now, being out $70 for buying books I already have isn't going to cause me to miss any meals. At the same time, while I like the publishing industry, I'm not keen on making this a habit. It's one thing to see something in a used bookstore for five bucks, wonder whether I already have it and decide to buy it. That's only five dollars, not fifty. So I've spent the bulk of my spare time the last couple of weeks re-cataloging my entire collection, books in my possession as well as my wishlist, to prevent a recurrence.

While I was at it, I decided this would be the time to figure out just what sources I already have. I have a ton of these on my wishlist but haven't cataloged (this spelling of "cataloged" just looks wrong but my dictionary likes it), for example, all of the individual sources contained in the 14 volumes of my Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series collection. No point in buying Saint Augustine: The Teacher, the Free Choice of the Will, Grace and Free Will, Russell, trans., from the Fathers of the Church series when I already have it in another form - I haven't reached the point where I feel the need to have a specific edition of a source.

This is taking some time. I was pretty sure it would which was why I was waiting for a blizzard or something before I set to it. I think it's gone beyond being a task or a chore and is a full-blown project. I'm at about the halfway point which means that it may be another week or two before I get back to posting substance. The plus side, from a blogging perspective, is that I have the outlines for several posts I'd like to put up. In any case, I apologize for not posting much lately and even more for the boring post - hopefully you're reading this just before going to bed.

This is Not at All Medieval

2011-09-03T10:24:00.011-04:00

I have previously said this website would be reserved for Medieval History, or at least stuff related to it. I'm going to break that today for one post.

My home community of Schoharie County, New York, was devastated by Tropical Storm Irene last Sunday. The Schoharie Valley was completely flooded by several feet of water as over 10 inches of rain fell in a few hours in that area and in the Northern Catskills, which is drained by the Schoharie Creek. 1

This area is prone to flooding, folks there have dealt with those in the past and when the first reports came in last weekend with items such as, "This is unlike anything we've ever seen," I initially passed those off as media hype.

They weren't.

The Schoharie Valley before and after Irene

It was obvious from the pictures coming in on Sunday that the water was higher than it had ever been before - the homes and farms in the lower right of the pictures have not flooded in the past, as far as I know. What wasn't obvious until I saw pictures and video the following day was the force of this flood. My memory of floods in the Schoharie valley is that while the water in the creek moves swiftly, that in the flood plain does not. It generally starts rising, moving fairly gently downstream. This time floodwaters a half mile or more from the creek were moving at 50-60 miles an hour. I've seen images of buildings, beyond where floodwaters usually reach, which look like someone had hit them with rockets - one side of the building is blown in, while the downstream side is blown out.

It's hard for me to quantify the damage; I'm sure assessments are ongoing. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the two largest towns in the valley, Middleburgh and Schoharie, historical towns settled in the early 1700's, were devastated.

The main road into Middleburgh, above, and Bridge Street, a back way into Schoharie, below

In the valley I've been told that 75% of the homes are unlivable - I've been hearing that they expect them to be condemned but I hope this means you can't live in them now but they can be repaired.

Schoharie county has an interesting geography. A good chunk of it is valley, with a low point of 520 feet (158 m) elevation. The Southern portion of the county is in the Catskills which consists of an escarpment, generally over 2000 feet (600 m) and elevations as high as over 3200 feet (980 m). All of this drains into the Schoharie Creek. Along the side roads running down from the mountains, small drainage ditches along minimally improved roads became torrents, eating away at the roads and destroying homes.

A home, or what's left of it, along a side road

You can find additional pictures here.

This is not a wealthy place and it's in trouble. Donations of supplies have flooded into the community, which is great, and I think everyone's being fed. The problem is, as of yesterday (September 2) over 7,000 people out of a county of about 30,000, remained without power. I would guess that this is roughly equal to the number of people who are homeless and housed in various shelters, schools, etc. I have no doubt there will be federal assistance but federal assistance isn't designed to return things to how they were - it's designed to get people to where they can help themselves recover. This recovery will be slow.

USGS Water flow data for Breakabeen, located just upstream from Middleburgh. The previous record flow rate for this site was 4420 cubic feet/second in 2003. The gauge height in the same period jumped from under 5 feet to over 20.

Everyone has problems and we all have groups and causes we donate to. However if anyone would like to make a donation, the Schoharie County Community Action Program has established a flood relief fund. Include "flood fund" in the memo portion of your check made out to "SCCAP" and send to:

Schoharie County Community Action Program
795 East Main Street,Suite 5
Cobleskill, NY 12043

If you live closer to the area, this page has other ways to help. As a caution, quite often sending "stuff" is less helpful because not everyone needs everything. I believe, for example, many donation sites have stopped taking used clothing. Perishable "stuff" like soap, shampoo, hygiene items, toilet paper, etc. are usually more in need.

I was hoping to get back there this weekend and stay through next week to help but that will have to wait for a few weeks from now. Schoharie County is certainly not the only rural area impacted. Several neighboring counties were also hit pretty hard and Vermont has also suffered, badly.

There is a very significant, almost miraculous bright spot in all this. When the water began to arrive, there was an evacuation of the valley for fear of a dam upstream failing. This involved evacuation sirens and local law enforcement going door-to-door. No lives were lost in Schoharie County, though much else was.

This isn't medieval but I felt compelled to post it. Things are not good back home. I'll return to medieval topics before long.

1 My family lives in another area of the county and is fine - a lot of water ran down the hill but their road didn't wash out and their power was restored relatively quickly.

Readings on the Roman Empire I: Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire

2011-08-13T10:58:00.011-04:00

I'm just back from a week in KC and completely exhausted (when I restore myself I'll respond to some of the comments that have been posted over the past few days). It's not because I over-partied or anything (did party a little but not much) but because of ice. Yup - ice in August. My hotel room was situated near the elevators, which was great, I thought. Between myself and the elevators were only a utility room for housekeeping and the vending alcove. And then there was the bane of my existence, the ice machine.

I'm a light sleeper. I've mentioned before how, when I drive, I bring a small fan with me for white noise (I flew this time). When someone filled their ice bucket, the resulting sound reaching my room (at least when my head was on the pillow) resembled the primordial roar of a beast intent on destroying whatever had dared to approach its lair. There had to be an echo factor. And when it recharged, it produced more of a warning growl as if it was within its burrow. Tuesday and Thursday nights must have been the party evenings (Thurs. was the last night). I think I woke up six times Tues. and four or five times on Thurs. Fortunately, I managed to restrain myself before I ran into the hallway to confront whoever was agitating the ice machine beast (the thought entered my mind more than once as I woke in a soporific haze). At least, based on the evals & questions, my presentation was well-received and my booth received a lot of traffic. But next time I'm housed next to an angry vending machine, I'm asking to change rooms.

As is my usual custom, I took something to read which I wouldn't feel compelled to take copious notes on. This was William A. Johnson's Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2010). ISBN: 978-0-19-517640-7.

This is a good book. What Johnson set out to do was explore and discuss elite literary culture during the Roman Empire from the late 1st century BC into the early 3rd century AD. He used detailed examinations of sources in a case-study format to illustrate the characteristics of literary elites and their peers which formed a restricted, (relatively) closed social circle in the Empire.

Issues discussed include; what were the characteristics of this culture; who were considered members; how might one gain admittance; what type of hierarchy existed within this circle; what were acceptable and unacceptable behaviors of members and; how did members of this circle view themselves and the circle?

I found this to be an interesting and informative book. I knew this literary group existed and that membership in it was fairly restricted, however I was less familiar with specifics such as how a student who was not considered "experienced" might be viewed if he chose to comment on a reading (rather than raising a question), or how a literary elite might respond to a perceived threat or challenge to the group.

I have always known that I must become fairly familiar with and knowledgeable about the Roman Empire to learn about the 4th century and beyond, including the transition to the Medieval Period in Western Europe. This book is very beneficial to me for this purpose. As I finished it, I find myself with a few issues I would like to explore. The continuation of classical literary culture beyond the ending of the Empire is one of the characteristics of Late Antiquity. Ralph Mathisen has argued that the end of this culture can be viewed as an endpoint for Antiquity. I'm familiar with most of the Late Antique "players" and have many of their writings, in translation. I'd like to look into how they continued to view themselves. My sense is that, as their numbers dwindled, they became more open to new admissions to their group, but were unable to find individuals capable of joining.

Another interesting comparison is the contrast between this and Carolingian Literary Culture. I don't think there's much of an argument that this existed in the late 8th and 9th centuries. How does this compare with the Roman culture? Was it as restrictive? Were the hierarchies and patterns of acceptable behavior as strict? Most importantly, I think, is; How did members of the Carolingian literary culture view themselves and it? I don't believe there's much (any?) evidence for direct continuity between them and the Romans. Did the Carolingians believe there was? Did they view themselves as recreating the Roman culture or did they recognize that this was something new? Did they recognize it as something at all or was this simply an aspect of their environment? Right now I have 22 books on the Carolingians on my "to-read" shelf. I have a sheet of paper with issues I want to be sure to explore tucked in there. The above questions have been added to it.

I don't have the knowledge to provide a detailed review of this book however I found it useful and an enjoyable read. It's fairly pricey but if you can find a copy in a library, it's definitely worth a look.

Public Library Books

2011-08-06T18:21:00.000-04:00

You may remember that earlier this year an individual was looking to buy some medieval history books to donate to his local public library and was soliciting suggestions for what to get.

Those books have been bought and are in place. Some pretty good ones too - I doubt if many public libraries have a copy of Chris Wickham's Framing the Early Middle Ages. I have one correction to the original post - the request about the books did not come from a librarian but from a young man who wanted to improve the selection at his local library in Nevada. Pretty cool.

The Books. Photo used by permission.

Review: Romans, Barbarians and the Transformation of the Roman World

2011-08-06T12:02:00.003-04:00

Ralph W. Mathisen and Danuta Shanzer, eds., Romans, Barbarians and the Transformation of the Roman World, Surrey: Ashgate (2011) Pp 379, xix. ISBN: 978-0-7546-6814-5.

This useful book evolved from the Sixth Biennial Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity Conference held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in March, 2005. The essays contained in the book are, to a large extent, those given at the conference. They are, of course, updated and revised and some additional essays have been added.

This volume contains 25 essays. Attempting to review these, even in a cursory fashion, is impractical for a blog review. Instead I will attempt to provide an overview of the volume, while focusing on a select few essays.

A list of the essays is as follows:

Introduction, Ralph W. Mathisen and Danuta Shanzer

Part I: Constructing Images of the Impact and Identity of Barbarians

A. Literary Constructions of Barbarian Identity
1. Catalogues of Barbarians in Late Antiquity, Ralph W. Mathisen
2. Augustine and the Merciful Barbarians, Gillian Clark
3. Reguli in the Roman empire, Late Antiquity and the Early Medieval Germanic Kingdoms, Steven Fanning;
4. Were the Sasanians barbarians? Roman Writers on the 'Empire of the Persians', Scott McDonough
5. A Roman image of the 'Barbarian' Sasanians, Jan Willem Drijvers

B. Political and Religious Interpretations of Barbarian Activities
6. Banditry or Catastrophe?: History, Archaeology and Barbarian Raids on Roman Greece, Amelia Robertson Brown
7. John Rufus, Timothy Aelurus, and the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, Edward Watts

C. Imperial Manipulation of Perceptions of Barbarians
8. Imperial Religious Unification Policy and its Divisive Consequences: Diocletian, the Jews and the Samaritans, Yuval Shahar
9. Hellenes, Barbarians and Christians: Religion and Identity Politics in Diocletian's Rome, Elizabeth DePalma Digeser
10. Barbarians as Spectacle: the Account of an Ancient 'Embedded Reporter' (Symm. Or. 2.10–12), Cristiana Sogno

Part II: Cultural Interaction on the Roman/Barbarian Frontiers

A. Becoming Roman: Movements of People across the Frontier and the Effects of Imperial Policies
11. The ius colonatus as a Model for the Settlement of Barbarian Prisoners-of-War in the Late Roman Empire?, Cam Grey
12. Spies Like Us: Treason and Identity in the Late Roman Empire, Kimberly Kagan
13. The 'Runaway' Avars and Late Antique Diplomacy, Ekaterina Nechaeva

B. Becoming Roman: Social and Economic Interchange
14. Captivity and Romano-barbarian Interchange, Noel Lenski
15. Barbarian Raiders and Barbarian Peasants: Models of Ideological and Economic Integration, Hartmut Ziche

C. A New Era of Accommodation
16. Kush and Rome on the Egyptian Southern Frontier: Where Barbarians Worshipped as Romans and Romans Worshipped as Barbarians, Salim Faraji
17. Petra and the Saracens: New Evidence from a Recently Discovered Epigram, Jason Moralee
18. Elusive places: a Chorological Approach to Identity and Territory in Scythia Minor (Second-Seventh centuries), Linda Ellis
19. Barbarian Traffic, Demon Oaths, and Christian Scruples: (Aug. Epist. 46–47), Kevin Uhalde

Part III: Creating Identity in the Post-Roman World

20. Visigothic Settlement, Hospitalitas, and Army Payment Reconsidered, Andreas Schwarcz
21. Building an Ethnic Identity for a New Gothic and Roman Nobility: Córdoba, 615 AD, Luis A. García Moreno
22. Vascones and Visigoths: Creation and Transformation of Identity in Northern Spain in Late Antiquity, Scott de Brestian
23. Identity and Ethnicity in the Era of Migrations and Barbarian Kingdoms in the Light of Archaeology in Gaul, Patrick Périn and Michel Kazanski
24. Text, Artifact and Genome: the Disputed Nature of the Anglo-Saxon Migration into Britain, Michael E. Jones

Part IV Epilogue: Modern Constructions of Barbarian Identity

25. Auguste Moutié, Pioneer of Merovingian Archaeology and the Spurlock Merovingian Collection at the University of Illinois, Bailey Young and Barbara Oehlschlaeger-Garvey

As is evident from the titles, these essays cover a broad range of topics. Even so, it is impossible to cover everything. I would have liked to see more information on economic systems. Ziche's essay is the only one which addresses this in any depth, and even this is from the perspective of Roman attitudes toward barbarians and how they might impact economic systems, not the systems themselves. The majority of the essays are written from the perspective of what Romans and barbarians thought of the "other." This is a very useful course of inquiry however the reader should not expect this volume to discuss what was happening so much as the opinions of the players, largely Romans (where far more evidence exists), regarding what was happening. This focus involves a great deal of analysis of textual source material.

There is not one essay I consider to be bad, or of poor quality. This is rather remarkable with this many titles. I will focus on a few which piqued my interest however this should not be taken to reflect on the quality of the others; it is simply a measure of my interests and where a particular essay showed or taught me something I found valuable.

Disparaging passages about the barbarians are a common theme among authors of Late Antiquity. Galla Placidia is described as disgracing her heritage in marrying a barbarian king. Claudian reserved some of his most critical remarks regarding Rufinus in describing him as a barbarian sympathizer. Others, such as Jerome, Salvian, and Prosper of Aquitaine considered the barbarians to be a source of great destruction and hardship. In "Augustine and the Merciful Barbarians," (33-42) Gillian Clark opens with a notable passage from Prudentius' Contra Symmachum in which he states, But Roman and barbarian stand as far apart as quadruped from biped, or as dumb from speaking .... (33) He then proceeds to discuss Augustine's writings regarding the barbarians and how he portrayed them differently.

For Augustine, barbarians can be considered a sign of God's mercy. While he describes them as savages, one step above animals, in City of God he stresses how, during the 410 sack of Rome, they allowed citizens to take refuge in Christian shrines. He credits God with allowing Alaric, a Christian (Augustine neglects to mention an Arian) to take the city, rather than the pagan Radagaisus. Radagaisus would have enacted unrestrained slaughter while Alaric is described as, "mild in slaughter through the love of God." (36)

An interesting contrast between Augustine and other Christian authors, in particular Orosius and John Chrysostom, is explored in this essay. Augustine does not appear to consider the barbarians beyond their impact on Rome and their symbolic role as merciful punishers. As Clark says, "As in Rome in 410, so in City of God: the barbarians appear, do some damage, and go away." (41) Orosius considers the barbarians to be an opportunity to expand Christianity and convert a multitude of others. For him, "... the purpose of the barbarian invasions was to fill the churches." (38) Chrysostom lists numerous barbarian groups who now subscribe to Christian philosophy. Augustine is not so hopeful. The barbarians are a tool of God, not potential allies and Christians.

In Constantinople on April 12, 409 a law was issued in the names of Honorius and Theodosius regarding the terms under which the Sciri would be settled in the Empire. In, "The ius colonatus as a Model for the Settlement of Barbarian Prisoners-of-War in the Late Roman Empire?" (147-60) Cam Grey explores this text, its meaning, and its implications in developing a more generalized model of barbarian settlement.

Grey explores the status of coloni as stated in laws. They were settled as tenants, usually farmers, under the supervision of a landowner and registered even to a particular field. (151) There were various restrictions on coloni including prohibitions on their alienating property or moving. (151) Even though much of the language discussing coloni is harsh and restrictive, they are explicitly referred to as free and given certain rights and privileges. (152) Prior to the issuance of this law, coloni are known and mentioned in various laws and agreements, however the specifics of their tenure varies substantially with different situations. These agreements generally share three characteristics; dispersing the barbarians so they do not represent a cohesive threat; the prospect of future military service and; coloni being subject to taxation. (157)

The 409 law may represent a new stage in these arrangements. While the law contains the three elements mentioned above, it created a new, explicitly stated private relationship between the settled tenant coloni and the landowner. (159) Grey recognizes that these arrangements may have been customary prior to 409, however this is their first appearance in a text. He sees the placement of responsibility for coloni with private individuals as, "another example of a [Roman] preoccupation in the legislation of the period with control and limitation on the behavior of potentially threatening, liminal groups in society." (160)

In, "Barbarian Raiders and Barbarian Peasants: Models of Ideological and Economic Integration," (199-219) Hartmut Ziche explores Roman and Greek stereotypical attitudes towards barbarians and how these stereotypes relate to reality. Stereotypical perceptions of barbarians are not new. They are portrayed as smelly, wild, violent, unkempt, skin-clad, etc. Late Roman sources seem to place barbarians in one of two categories; as raiders or peasants. (200) Once settled, this distinction eased and barbarians disappear from the sources as they are transformed from barbarian settlers to Roman peasants. (202-3). This creates a significant difficulty in assessing the economic impact of barbarian peasants as, based on the sources, they become indistinguishable from native peasants.

Ziche discusses several sources discussing the prospect of settling warlike barbarian invaders in Rome as peasants. In 4th century sources, barbarians are not natural peasants and unsuited to farming. They must be treated harshly and watched carefully. However some sources, such as Themistius, believe that while barbarians are not suited to farming, "... they will in time stop being barbarians and then also become peasants." (211) During the 4th century the contributions of the barbarians, once settled, to the Roman economy receive virtually no mention.

This begins to change in the fifth century. While the stereotypes continue, authors such as Salvian and Sidonius mention, indirectly, barbarian contributions. (214-6) Ziche believes it possible, and I consider it likely, that this resulted more as a result of the authors being forced to accommodate barbarians and "make the best of it" rather than a true change in their perspectives. The alteration of Roman and Gallo-Roman opinions is largely found beginning in the sixth century.

Throughout this essay, Ziche uses other, often archaeological, evidence to show that the contributions of barbarians to the Roman economy were much more substantial than the sources indicate. However the most interesting conclusion in the paper is that the opinion (at least among source authors) of barbarians and the stereotypes used in sources changed very little even into the last days of the empire.

Part III of this book is excellent. In, "Vascones and Visigoths: Creation and Transformation of Identity in Northern Spain in Late Antiquity," (283-97) Scott de Brestian examines the consensus that "... the Basques of the High Middle Ages were the descendants of the Vascones that appear in peninsular and Frankish sources of the sixth and seventh centuries, who in turn were ethnically identical to the Vascones of the Roman period." (286) Brestian considers this to be largely a creation of nationalistic and racially motivated perspectives and that when textual and archaeological sources are examined closely the creation of the Basques should not be seen in this manner. While the roots of the Basques may be the product of a confluence of events beginning with the end of the Roman Empire, the continuity of "... ethnic traditions that had existed since time immemorial." (297) is insupportable.

Patrick Périn and Michel Kazanski in, "Identity and Ethnicity in the Era of Migrations and Barbarian Kingdoms in the Light of Archaeology in Gaul," examine burials and other archaeological evidence, including pottery, to discuss the acculturation of new barbarian arrivals into the lands of the Roman Empire. While they note some exceptions and in particular the growth among barbarian elites of "... what might be called an 'international' barbarian culture resulting from their widespread experiences. ..."1 (308) they do not hold with the view of Peter Heather and others that the arrivals represented cohesive ethnic groups, or that whatever ethnicities did exist long survived their settlement in Gaul. They argue that archaeology shows the migrations not as an invasion but that this should instead be viewed as a process of integration.

The final essay I will discuss is Michael Jones' "Text, Artifact and Genome: the Disputed Nature of the Anglo-Saxon Migration into Britain." There are two aspects of this essay which I find interesting. One, which I will gloss over with a single statement, is that Jones does not believe that currently available DNA evidence supports a theory of massive Anglo-Saxon migrations. What I found fascinating was his discussion of the type of DNA evidence necessary to draw any real conclusions. Currently, most of this work has been done by examining the DNA and genetic patterns of modern inhabitants of different regions and attempting to work backwards to reach conclusions regarding settlement and migration patterns. He believes that there are inherent methodological flaws with this approach and that it "... can inform but not answer the question of the nature of the Anglo-Saxon migrations." (339) Instead he believes that archaeologically recovered DNA is the only reliable genetic evidence which should be used to reach any sort of conclusions regarding the migrations. "If and when large samples of DNA recovered from both eastern Britain and the continental homelands before and after the Anglo-Saxon migrations can be compared, we will be in a position more confidently to assess the genetic changes associated with the Anglo-Saxon migrations." (339)

This is an excellent book. The editors are to be commended for the variety of subjects addressed and the quality of the contributions. As I stated above, there is not one essay which I consider weak, a rather remarkable statement. There are another eight essays which I believe are as worthy of discussion as those I chose to mention, and remember that even this statement is based on my primary areas of interest. This book is a welcome addition to the study of Late Antiquity and one which I am certain I will refer back to regularly.

1 I want to be clear that they do not consider this to be associated with ethnic origins. "One should not be surprised that the material culture of this princely barbarian caste was very international in flavor, and that the splendid artifacts from their graves or the treasure finds of the period usually do not betray the geo-cultural origins of their owners." (308)

Why I Love Bookstores

2011-07-25T20:59:00.001-04:00

Yes, in this day and age everything's available online. Except maybe love and there are websites claiming you can find that there too. I do a fair amount of business online myself, especially when faced with a 40% discount. But I still try to make "the rounds" to bookstores, particularly independents and particularly used bookstores.

So Friday I took the day off (then spent a chunk of it on work-related stuff). I went to an Army surplus store in Indianapolis which I hadn't been to before, for two reasons. One was that my emergency "go bag" needed a bit of replenishing and I decided to check this place out. The second was to buy a few ammo cans.

For the first purpose, I met with mixed results. I found some light sticks and some parachute cord (I replaced lower-quality rope in my bag) but the MRE's, which was what I was really looking for, were priced too high. For the second purpose, no, I'm not a survivalist or anything. I do some work with GIS and teach it to kids and ammo cans are fantastic for geocaches. They're waterproof and for more advanced caches do quite nicely to bury (not all the way - just enough to make someone have to work a bit to find 'em) with a log book and "stuff." Anyway, I bought a few 7.62mm cans (you can get much larger ones) so the next time I want to wander around the woods for a few hours I can set a couple of caches.

Since I was in Indy with some time on my hands I decided I'd neglected the bookstores long enough - I don't think I had been to them this calendar year.

As usual, I bought a chunk of books - 39 total. Most of these were not anything I'd targeted previously. Books over 20 years old like Ramsey MacMullen's Christianizing the Roman Empire (A.D. 100-400) and Paul Balchin's Urban Development in Renaissance Italy, a bunch of Classical stuff like Terence's The Comedies, a few foreign language dictionaries, etc. I did get Galbert of Bruges' The Murder of Charles the Good and James O'Donnell's The Ruin of the Roman Empire, both of which were on my wishlist. But everything was priced right and I spent a touch under $7/book. That included buying Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror for $1 off the clearance shelf. I doubt it will provide me with the humor value of Manchester's A World Lit Only by Fire but I may work through it and review it someday. It pops up in book discussions a lot and I should comment on it other than, "reviews of it have said ..."

But here's the real Indy bookstore promo. I picked up a complete 14-volume set of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: First Series. The version I have was published in 2004 and if it's used, I can't see how.

I now have the 10-volume Ante-Nicene Fathers set to go along with my new acquisition. All I need is the Second Nicene/Post-Nicene 14-volume set and I will have completed a section of my library I never thought I'd have.

There they are - the top shelf is the Ante-Nicene Set, the bottom shelf my new purchase. Ignore the dust, it has preservative properties - just look at Pompeii!

I picked up both these sets somewhat by luck but also by being opportunistic. They weren't cheap - but for each of them I paid less than a quarter of what they're listed for by finding them at independent bookshops (my $7/book statement, above, includes these 14 volumes). And I intend to "get lucky" by finding the second series under similar circumstances. So folks, don't just buy online, or even at conferences. Go to your Indy & used bookstores. There's absolute gold in them thar hills!

My apologies for my second "fluff" post in a row. However I deleted my most recent post as it referred to a post on another blog which has been removed and didn't want to go through the entire month of July without posting anything. I have a few posts in draft, including a review of what I think is a very good book, but nothing ready to go just yet.

Evidently academic freedom ain't what it used to be - or what I portrayed it as in my blog. Yup, I'm a little pissed. Even more unfortunate, as I write this Guy Halsall's excellent blog has disappeared. I hope that situation is only temporary. I've gained a LOT from it and appreciate his sharing his knowledge and insight with the world at large. Disseminating information to a larger audience (and saying what you think) should never be considered a bad thing.

My Sin is Gluttony

2011-06-27T22:24:00.006-04:00

If you've been reading this blog a while, you may recall that the above fact has been established already. Problem is, at the time I believed I was hogging labels. It took this weekend for me to realize it's books.

I'm not sure why it took me so long to figure it out. It's not like there hasn't been ample evidence of this before now. Even my moments of control lack, er, control.

What with the K'zoo binge I felt embarrassed to mention this before but it's time to fess up. Not long after getting back from Kalamazoo I received a 50% off coupon from Borders. I seriously considered ignoring it but since I'm posting this, you know how that worked out. Anyway, I bought Alice Rio's Legal Practice and the Written Word in the Early Middle Ages: Frankish Formulae, c. 500-1000. Ever since I read her first formulary book I've had this targeted and the chance to get it for half price was too good to pass up. 1

So a couple of weeks pass by and another Borders coupon appears, this one for 40% off. I think I may have even waited a day before giving in and buying James T. Palmer's Anglo-Saxons in a Frankish World, 690-900. It wasn't too long before another coupon, this time for 30% off, appeared. You see where this is going?

Except I drew the line and didn't bite at 30%. See? I can be strong. Problem is, this weekend another 40% off coupon showed up. This time I bought The Rhetoric of Power in Late Antiquity: Religion and Politics in Byzantium, Europe and the Early Islamic World, edited by Elizabeth Digeser. After this I opened the three catalogs that have come in the mail over the past month. Two were no problem; just a couple more added to the wishlist. Unfortunately, the Oxford University Press one was for their spring sale. This one didn't quite match my experience with their last sale but I still ended up buying Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities by William Johnson.

So even though I saved a bunch of money, in essence I ended up buying four books (good ones though!) when I don't think I'm running out of literary material any time soon. And it clinches my need to buy a new bookcase this weekend.

I seriously think publishers who will be at Leeds would make out very nicely if they decided to pay half my way there. Pretty sure I'd make it worth their while.

1 At Kalamazoo in 2009 I picked up Rio's The Formularies of Angers and Marculf: Two Merovingian Legal Handbooks, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press (2008). ISBN: 9-781846-311598. Good book and in a different price category than these others. I recommend it.

Digeser, Elizabeth DePalma, ed., The Rhetoric of Power in Late Antiquity: Religion and Politics in Byzantium, Europe and the Early Islamic World, London: Tauris Academic Studies (2011). ISBN: 978-1848854093.

Johnson, William A., Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2010). ISBN: 978-0195176407

Palmer, James T., Anglo-Saxons in a Frankish World, 690-900, Turnhout: Brepols (2009). ISBN: 9-782503-519111.

Rio, Alice, Legal Practice and the Written Word in the Early Middle Ages: Frankish Formulae, c. 500-1000, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2009). ISBN: 9-780521-514996

Empires and Barbarians, Part II

2011-06-19T09:56:00.030-04:00

At long last I'm ready to follow up my Empire and Barbarians Part 1 post of well over a year ago in which I discussed a portion of Peter Heather's Empires and Barbarians: Migration, Development and the Birth of Europe. If that initial post had died a quiet death I would have happily left this alone. However it has consistently been the second most read post on this blog, after my World Lit Only By Fire review. 1

I need to start this post by explaining why I did not follow up in a more timely manner. I've previously mentioned that I tend to review one of two types of books; those I really enjoyed and those that really ticked me off. In the case of this book, I really enjoyed the first three chapters. Heather provides a great deal of evidence, he copiously cites sources, and while I disagree with some specifics, I was willing to accept that the Barbarian groups were moving toward greater cohesion during the later Roman Empire and that this had been at least somewhat through their interactions with the Empire itself.

And so I made a mistake. This blog was about three weeks old, I had nothing that was leaping at me to talk about and I didn't want to begin my blogging existence by waiting several weeks between posts. So, after reading three chapters and enjoying them, I decided I'd post comments in sections. I will not do this again. It's fine for books which are essay compilations, not for a single book written by one author centered around a dominant theme or themes. After finishing the book, I ended up with the "just OK" feeling about it. I still think the first three chapters were solid. The next four, however, have substantial problems and for the final three chapters he covers Eastern Europe, for which I'll recommend Florin Curta's The Making of the Slavs, and Scandinavia. I lost my impetus for finishing the review when this book which started off as very good ended up being what I consider to be mediocre. I've started this post several times and I think I've finally figured out how I want to finish this off.

I will not be providing a detailed examination of chapters 4-7 in this post. Instead I'll point out a couple of serious issues I have with Heather's arguments and how these have impacted my opinion of the book.

There are two pretty substantial problems with chapters 4-7 (I'm ignoring 8-10 - please read something by Curta or someone with more expertise in that area). One is Heather's use of evidence which often involves conjecture and sheer appeals to logic, without much basis in evidence. I'm not going to cover this here because I hope one day to do a series of posts about how different historians see and use the same evidence to reach (often) very different conclusions.

The second area, which I believe will be much simpler for me to summarize, is where Heather decides to group aspects of migrations where, to me, the evidence for this grouping is thin. I hope this will give people a clear idea why I am fairly lukewarm on this book. It's OK to read, but read it with some other volumes covering the same period/event. You will find very different uses of evidence and conclusions by different historians. I've found this to be very interesting which is why I hope to explore it further one day.

To summarize, in this book Heather's overall theme is to argue for a fairly robust theory of barbarian migrations occurring toward and immediately following the end of the Roman Empire. These migrations involved large, relatively cohesive groups which include family units; not just small raiding parties or large military forces, but women, children, and a relocation of cultures. Others have argued a variety of alternatives for this, among them that these forces were largely military, did not bring their families with them and, once in the lands of the Empire, developed new family units from the resident population.

So leaving aside the actual evidence itself, I'm going to take two examples for what I consider to be flawed logical arguments.

Goths: This is the group which included Alaric's force which sacked Rome and set up shop in Southern Gaul in 418 where they remained until 507 when they were defeated by Clovis and driven into Spain. Heather argues that this was a very substantial group involving family units and was a large-scale migration of most of the Goths who had lived in Thrace. He then chooses to equate this group, for which we have a fair amount of evidence, with various other groups, for which evidence is lacking. These groups include the Vandals, Alans and Sueves. In essence his argument is that we can reasonably conclude from the evidence that the Goths comprised family groups so it is reasonable to conclude that the same holds true for these other barbarians.

I disagree. While there are serious and substantive disagreements with Heather's thesis for the family grouping of Alaric's Goths after leaving Thrace, let's set those aside for the moment. A significant problem with how Heather presents his argument is, to me, "Many of these points [regarding the Goths] also apply to those other great practitioners of repeat migration: the Rhine invaders of 406," and, most damning, "Whatever view you form of Alaric's Goths, therefore, will tend to spill over into your understanding of the Vandals, Alans and Sueves." (202)

Why? Why must an argument about the Goths, where a fair amount of evidence exists, be automatically applied to these other groups, where evidence is lacking? Why would you take a single example and extrapolate to include multiple other groups? I can accept having evidence for three or four examples and applying it to one or two others where some similarities exist, but don't give me an argument that because we know a fair amount about one example, this creates a model which must then be applied to multiple others. That line of reasoning is a big problem for me. It's an attempt to shoehorn everything to fit a single theory, something which to me is a real issue with some historians. 2

And are these other groups so similar to the Goths as to deserve this type of comparison? I don't believe so. The Goths were allowed to peacefully enter the Empire under a treaty and settle in their lands. There were serious problems after this settlement, but their entrance was permitted by Rome. These other groups had to invade militarily, by force, though in many cases they met with little resistance. To me there's a substantial difference between the potential makeup of a group entering the Empire peacefully, under terms, and those entering by military means. I think it would be reasonable to believe that these Goths included family units (I have more problems with whole family units following Alaric around) however why would they have accompanied these other groups on a military invasion? I don't think this comparison works. Now I want to be careful to say that evidence should always trump logic, however Heather's argument is based on the logic of comparing the Goths with the 406/07 invasion force which crossed the Rhine. So I'm choosing to use logic as a counter. 3

Anglo-Saxons: OK, so I disagree with Heather's applying his argument based on a single barbarian group, the Goths, to other groups, for the reasons I stated above. But I can at least see where you might get to that point, though I think the reasoning is flawed and inadequate. However Heather also provides a basis for assessing the Anglo-Saxon invasions which I consider very strange, "It starts by thinking a bit harder about that classic case of elite transfer, the Norman Conquest of England." (298)

Wha-huh? This was the point at which I became disenchanted with this book. Why bring them into this? I know Heather uses them as a contrast (at least here), not a comparison, but this doesn't work. There is no basis for using two such disparate events in such a way - one might as well use the American invasion of Iraq. Yes, the Norman invasion was different and resulted in different impacts on England, but the two events are so disconnected that I can't find a reason for using the two together, beyond making a huge stretch to find a way to fit an argument together. If you want a different sort of invasion to compare and contrast, find something which is at least related to the A-S event and involves peoples, including the lands and culture being "invaded", with some similarities, beyond that of geography.

Later he equates the Norman invasion with barbarians as a whole, including using "Norman analogy" in his discussion of benefits bestowed on immigrants. (350) Here he decides to equate events of the fourth and fifth centuries with those of the 11th; "Among the immigrant groups of the late fourth and the fifth century direct landed rewards from the king may well not have gone further down the social scale than leading members of the higher-grade (free?) warrior class, though its lesser members and even some or all of the lower-status warriors are likely, on the Norman Conquest model, [my emphasis] to have received something from the higher-status warriors to whom they were attached." (351) Here his error is even more severe as he turns from using the Norman invasion as a point of contrast to a point of comparison. I'm not particularly fond of using pejoratives but this just seems strange, given the disparity in so many specifics between the groups and events involved. Maybe "sloppy" would be the better term. Is it appropriate to compare and contrast events, strategies, tactics, economic/social/legal/political structures, etc., between two cultures or events? Absolutely - but the cultures/events must have some basis, some commonalities which make these comparisons logical. I don't see these commonalities here.

These are two examples showing why I found this book to contain some serious flaws. Examining Heather's use of the evidence will reveal others. He disagrees with Florin Curta, who has considerable experience with Eastern Europe, over the Slavs. There may certainly be cases where invading groups contained family units and was more of a migration than others have argued, but this tactic of Heather's in applying this to all such groups doesn't work for me, and any equation of the Anglo-Saxon "invasion" and Norman Conquest, even as a point of contrast, seems strange.

Does this mean the book is useless? Absolutely not. As I opened with, this book did not become something I felt compelled to post about based on disgust. I continue to believe that the opening chapters were comprehensive and well done, and that it is reasonable to believe that barbarian groups had become larger, more cohesive and more militarized over time, at least partly due to their interaction with the Empire. Throughout the book Heather provides numerous mentions of primary sources which helped me to develop a reading list. He is also willing to discuss arguments which disagree with his, though I'd suggest that, rather than relying on his portrayal of these arguments, you read them for yourself. In any case, I hope these comments have served two purposes; to explain why these follow-up comments are so late and; to describe some of the substantial flaws I found with later sections of the book.

In essence, do not read this book in a vacuum. I strongly suggest adding Burns(2003), Halsall(2007), Goffart(2006), and James(2009) to your reading list if you are deeply interested in the subject of how Western Europe evolved in the wake of the Roman Empire.

1 I keep hoping a post will replace this as consistently being the most read on this blog. Instead my review is now the number one result when you Google either "A World Lit Only by Fire Review" or "A World Lit Only by Fire Summary." I suppose I should be happy I've done the world or at least some portion of it a service but really - IMO I have many much better, more substantial posts.

2 For another example of this shoehorning, see Walter Goffart's argument for how barbarians were settled in Roman lands, as argued in Barbarian Tides, pp 119-186. I won't go into his argument in detail however in essence he argues that this settlement involved barbarians receiving tax revenues rather than lands. He based this in large part on a discussion of the various barbarian law codes. I have most of these (in translation) and read through them while reading this section and while I believe his argument holds up for many successor kingdoms; unless Katherine Fischer Drew (1972) completely screwed up the translation, I don't see how you can get there for the Burgundians. Just because it doesn't work for them does not invalidate Goffart's entire hypothesis however it seems very important to him for all barbarian settlements to have followed the same "tax revenue" model.

3 There are some serious problems, based in evidence, with Heather's believing Alaric's force included family units. A glaring example is that once the Visigoths settle in Southern Gaul, they disappear. Not in textual sources, where they are frequently mentioned, but archaeologically. There is almost nothing to distinguish them from the native Gallo-Roman population. They appear to have adopted Roman customs and lifestyles wholesale. If this group had included family units, wouldn't they have retained their own customs and lifestyles? Wouldn't women have continued to create their, Gothic, handspun pottery for use in homes? Wouldn't they have continued their traditional patterns of dress? Their level of integration into Roman society, to the point of becoming archaeologically invisible, is a powerful argument against the Visigoths of 418 being comprised of family units. See, for example, p. 306 of Patrick Périn and Michel Kazanski, "Identity and Ethnicity during the Era of Migrations and Barbarian Kingdoms in the Light of Archaeology in Gaul" in Mathisen and Schanzer, eds., Romans, Barbarians, and the Transformation of the Roman World. Surrey, UK: Ashgate (2011). ISBN: 978-0-7546-6814-5.

Burns, Thomas S. Rome and the Barbarians, 100 B.C. - A.D. 400. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press (2003). ISBN: 978-0-8018-7306-5

Curta, Florin. The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region c. 500-700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2001). ISBN: 9-780521-036153.

Drew, Katherine Fischer, trans. The Burgundian Code: Book of Constitutions or Law of Gundobad; Additional Enactments. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (1972). ISBN: 0-8122-1035-2.

Goffart, Walter. Barbarian Tides: the Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (2006). ISBN: 978-0-8122-3939-3

Halsall, Guy, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376-568. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2007). ISBN: 978-0-521-4353-7

Heather, Peter, Empires and Barbarians: Migration, Development and the Birth of Europe. London: MacMillan (2009). ISBN: 978-0-333-98975-3

James, Edward, Europe's Barbarians, AD 200-600. Harlow, UK: Longman (2009). ISBN: 978-0-582-77296-0.

History vs. Progress

2011-06-17T07:30:00.003-04:00

I'm back from DC and woefully behind on reading other blogs, as well as posting. As I forget how to speak Politician, I found an article posted by Paul Halsall to Mediev-L. Many of you will know Paul as the founder of The Medieval Sourcebook. He is now at the University of Manchester.

The article, by Claire Berlinski, discusses the issue of a badly needed new transit system in Istanbul where construction has run into a historical site of major importance.

This is something I've often thought about and discussed with friends (even in our culture, which has existed in place for about two centuries, we run into this). Ultimately, every piece of land in the world has existed for far longer than modern society and has the potential to reveal a site of historical significance. As the world's population increases and the need for land becomes more urgent, how will we balance this with historical preservation? This is by no means a new issue and there are systems in place in many areas to address this, in some places even approaching the ideal which would be to change the title of this post to History With Progress, but this article is quite good at illustrating it.

Cool Stuff on Other Blogs II

2011-06-11T23:47:00.010-04:00

I had a post I really wanted to get out before I leave tomorrow until realizing that it may generate some discussion and while I'll have internet access, I should be near my books, depending on what questions or comments come up. It's mostly written so I should get it out next weekend.

Since I have nothing else to offer, here are a few recent posts by other bloggers which have caught my attention.

Steve Muhlberger put up a post a week or so ago which I found very interesting. In the US at least, and this may be true of other countries in what we'd call Western Civilization, we have a tendency to think of an entire country as being of basically the same culture. I'd argue that while this is more true in the US than many places, it's not absolute even here. His post is a nice reminder that multiculturalism is the rule, not the exception even today, and was so to an even greater extent in the past. When I started reading about the Crusades one of the things that struck me was how many different Arab groups there were and how this had such an impact on their initial inability to resist the crusaders and crusade states. They were very willing to enter an alliance with Christians if it gained them an advantage against a rival Arab group. The Crusades have often been portrayed as a simple "Christian vs Islam" struggle. It was much more complex than that.

This is a bit of an old song here but once again I'm impressed with the latest post by Jonathan Jarrett detailing his travels in Catalonia. This one, in addition to having a lot of excellent historical information, includes some great pictures.

Magistra et Mater has two very good posts detailing IHR Early Medieval Seminars. Between her and Jonathan I feel like we got the whole set of sessions. I'm particularly interested in the earlier of the two, discussing continuity with some comments on the use of evidence, two topics I'm really interested in. I started to reply to that post three (I think) times and each time I got to over a hundred words with more to say - too long for a post comment, even for an over-writer like me. Her second post, on the, sort of, survival of free speech into the Middle Ages is also interesting and has its own implications for continuity.

Michelle Ziegler has two good blogs, Heavenfield and Contagions. She recently put up a post discussing her thoughts on Cuthbert's impact on Aldfrith's succession to the English throne in the late 7th century. Contagions is good if you're interested in a more scientific discussion of diseases and their evolution, spread, and impacts. She also periodically puts up summaries of what other people are blogging about - and I'm not saying this just because I received a mention in her latest one! It's a good way to find out what people are talking about.

My final reading suggestion isn't exactly about history but about how to do academic work. Another Damned Medievalist and Notorious PhD have started an online writing group. I've been following this and find it very interesting. I debated signing up but my current major writing project is much more along the lines of "unwriting." I have been asked to take elements of a two-hour presentation I've given probably two dozen times over the past 2 years and break it down into several 1,000-2,000 word publications, along the lines of fact sheets. I decided not to curse the group with this particular task.

However I've been following the discussion and I think, even by lurking, I'm going to learn a lot. The folks in this group are so much more disciplined than I. It's also interesting to see, once again, how very different humanities presentations are from those in my field. I received an e-mail yesterday asking me to give an hour-long presentation on June 30. Now it's on a topic I'm very familiar with but I've never presented on it before. If I had to present it from an academic paper, I don't think I could get that put together in less than three weeks, however well I know the topic. But I'm going to create an outline, flesh it out, develop a powerpoint (I don't read from ppt's - I use them like I used index cards in the pre-digital age) and am very comfortable with being able to do that, though this has changed what I'll be doing on my flight tomorrow. Anyway, if you are involved with writing, I encourage you to keep an eye on this discussion. Very good stuff.

WordPress is Starting to Look Very Attractive

2011-06-05T23:20:00.003-04:00

I use an html code called an internal anchor for footnotes - you click on the number and it takes you to the corresponding note, then click your browser's "back" button to return to the text. I've noticed (and fixed) three posts where clicking on this internal anchor takes you to a footnote in a completely different post. If anyone finds some of these, please e-mail me so I can fix them.

Enough to honk me off. You should see what Blogger does to your html if you click on "preview."

Kalamazoo 2011 Summary

2011-06-05T23:01:00.009-04:00

Next Sunday I leave to spend a week in DC confabbing with a bunch of government types (though I'm afraid many discussions will involve, "once Congress passes a budget/raises the debt ceiling so we can actually fund _____"). Anyway, in looking at my schedule I'm afraid June 12 will kick in my annual 3-month summer when I go from busy to absolutely swamped which will substantially impact my blogging. I have one more post after this one I need to get out before then. After that you likely won't hear a lot from me until mid-August at the earliest.

I just deleted a long, sort of whiny section where I complained about my lack of socialization at this year's Congress. In essence, I had a lot of work I had to do, some of it with a deadline so instead of hanging out with and/or talking to people, I buried myself in my room evenings and in my laptop between sessions. All this is fine as I enjoy my job but my K'zoo experience was less personally rewarding than usual.

But it was still good. I already posted about books, though I'll bring them up again later in this post. I didn't do so well with the people so that leaves the sessions.

Every year it seems that the majority of my sessions, or at least a large minority, cover one topic area. In 2009 this was archaeology, particularly in Eastern and Central Europe. Last year it was Carolingian sessions. This year I went to a lot of sessions on dead holy people. I was sure, going in, that I'd end up at a lot of Anglo-Saxon sessions but that didn't happen.

I enjoyed the sessions and learned a lot from them. Last year I went into Congress knowing I was going to do session reports (without realizing the time this would take) for each session so I took notes on everything. This year I knew I wouldn't be doing that so if a paper didn't interest me, I took very few notes. I'm sure the fact that I was somewhat distracted didn't help. So I probably didn't learn quite as much as last year but it was still a very good Congress from a session perspective. My two favorites were the papers by Jennifer Davis and Jonathan Jarrett. I think this was because each of these covered limited, distinct and, to me, very interesting topics. They then provided detailed information and presented it in a clear, logical manner. I have a mental list of presenters I want to hear and these two are now on it. I don't always get to their sessions - this year I didn't hear Paul Kershaw speak as he was opposite a Late Antiquity session and two I've very much enjoyed in the past, Graham Barrett and Angela Kinney, did not attend - but I try. I'll also heartily recommend Phyllis Jestice. She's a bit later than my core period so she won't make "the list" but she gives an excellent presentation and knows her stuff.

I've said before that Kalamazoo really defines my Medieval Year. In the past I've always come back with some resolutions about things I need to work on/learn about which I'm pretty intense about. For a change, I don't have anything like this to bring up. I suppose increasing language skills fits in there but I've done some of that. I had to re-learn Spanish somewhat for a trip to Mexico a few weeks ago and I've kept up on that, trying to read some Spanish every day. I need to re-learn French but I've done some of that too, which is a good thing because three of the books I bought are wholly or partially in French (I already fought my way through one essay in French). A couple have the odd essay in German or Italian. For now that will have to remain a point of ignorance. Latin? Maybe - I've started working on it a bit but "a bit" likely won't cut it. We'll see if I have the time.

I do have to readjust my reading though and figure out what my focus will be. Prior to my book binge I'd planned to continue working backward chronologically from the late 4th century through Christianity. Libanius, Ambrose, Jerome, Rufinus, Symmachus if I could find him, working back to Origen, Tertullian, Porphyry and finally the New Testament. I think that may be put on hold for a bit.

The way I generally do my reading is to focus on a topic/period/geographic region and start by reading secondary, newer books; starting with overviews and then into specific aspects; then grab all the sources I can get my hands on (which I'll hopefully have identified through reading secondary stuff). My to-read list of books I own now stands at 144. Now some of those are books outside of my period I've picked up, usually because I found them cheap at a used bookstore and are in the "I'll get to them someday" category. Lucrezia Borgia and Ancient India are undoubtedly very interesting subjects but they can wait. So as a way to begin to organize myself, here are categories and numbers of unread books I have on my shelves. Hopefully by now folks understand that one of the purposes of this blog is to force me to organize myself by putting things in writing.

Late Antiquity - generally 4th-7th centuries: 50
Christianity - most are Late Antique: 41
Carolingian: 19
Ancient - anything pre-4th century: 17
Crusades: 12
Islam/Arabs: 9
Law - this is a broad category as it includes heresy(Church law), prisons, law codes, etc.: 10
Byzantine: 9
Vikings: 9
Ottonian: 7
Anglo-Saxon: 7
Women: 7
Spain - post Arab Conquest: 6

Obviously there's some overlap and a lot of the stuff I have in Late Antiquity, once I get into it, will have a Byzantine (and possibly Persian/Arab) focus. I could break it down even more but that's enough for now. Should give me something to keep me off the streets in my down time.

So, to end my Kalamazoo stuff, I enjoyed it, though less than in most years. To those I managed to run into or meet, I enjoyed it. To those I didn't, maybe next year. And again, if you get the chance to go, I encourage it. It is an academic conference but if you're an interested amateur you'll find plenty for you too and anyone is welcome.

Kalamazoo 2011 - Day Four and Home

2011-06-04T12:08:00.009-04:00

The fourth and final day of the 2011 International Congress on Medieval Studies was another cold and wet one. In my Day 3 update I neglected to mention one item; running through the exhibit area on Saturday evening to pick up the display copies I'd bought. This was unremarkable except I missed the Mead-tasting, which was a shame.

So the next day I started off with multiple trips to the car to load luggage and books. It was raining but not hard right then so that was OK. Then I headed up to Schneider for Session 531: The Court and Courts in the Carolingian World.

This has been a good session for two years running. I wonder if they could move it to a different time? Looks like a good Friday PM session to me. In any case, Jonathan Jarrett of Oxford was first up with, "2:1 Against: Cereal Yields in Carolingian Europe and the Brevium Exempla." This paper addresses the question of what sort of grain yields might be expected in Carolingian Europe. Jonathan began by summarizing the existing argument in Georges Duby's Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West where he discusses an estate survey from Annapes, contained in the Brevium Exempla and concludes that for the year of the survey, the ratio of harvested yield to grain sown was 1.6:1. This is a pretty big problem - with that sort of yield it's hard to see how you could even feed the families involved doing the field work, much less the entire estate, much, much less have any kind of surplus available to the Carolingian Empire or to support military operations. Jonathan's paper focuses on contrasting Duby's account with an experimental archaeology project taking place in l'Esquerada, Catalonia, which was a Carolingian settlement. Using crops and (mostly) methods which are similar to those grown/used by Carolingians, at l'Esquerada they had yield ratios of at least 15:1 and often well above that. At the field plots they used a drill to plant, which studies have shown results in 45% less seed being eaten by birds than if broadcast however even with this the yield ratios would be in the 8:1 to 10:1 range. 1 He also examined the Brevium Exempla which says some grain was ground before the surveyors took their measurements. Dr. Jarrett concludes that the estate survey was not for the estate's actual harvest but for the surplus beyond what was needed for local use and that there was sufficient yield both for use by the Empire and to see the settlement through one bad year. Jonathan provided a post on his blog with much of this information a little while back (before I started blogging or I'm sure I'd have recalled it - and if I'd found it before doing a search for "Annapes" for some footnote info this summary might have been much shorter as I'd have referred you there first). Good paper, one of my two favorites of the week.

Lynley Anne Herbert followed with an interesting paper, despite it being in one of my areas of weakness, "A Bishop and an Abbott Walk Into a Scriptorium: Uncovering the Clerical Courtiers Behind the Gospels of Sainte-Croix." This paper examined the illustrations in several documents, among them the the Gospels mentioned in the paper title and a Feast Days Calendar from Poitiers. Unfortunately, while I have a fair amount of notes, I never wrote down any sort of summary of an overall theme. I have some use of the imagery to counter heresy, particularly Adoptionism, mixed language with some Greek in the manuscript and the use of gold and silver in the pigments. I recall the paper being very good but I may have been thinking of the trip home already. I really need to get a bit more up to speed on art history.

There was no presenter for the final paper which of course precluded its being offered. This gave everyone a chance to chat for a bit before dispersing.

I did not go to a 10:30 session as, while I had marked a couple as possibilities, neither was extremely interesting to me. I headed out to the car, gave Cullen Chandler a ride to his, necessitating some book relocating so he could find a seat, and by 11 or so I had wheels on the road headed south with an uneventful trip home other than to note that the previous evening had been a bad one for deer on southwestern Michigan interstate highways.

1 This was a dangerous paper to give with someone with professional training in Agronomy in the room. I studiously avoided asking questions about soil types, differences in rainfall between Annapes and l'Esquerada, etc. I will comment that in using a drill, a field implement mechanically cuts open a furrow and a combination of coulters and a press wheel closes the furrow behind (and over) the seed. Obviously, seed would then be less exposed to being eaten by pests such as birds and mice. It also provides superior seed-to-soil contact which can be important sometimes, not other times. I haven't done any kind of detailed examination of this but Annapes was a pretty fertile area. If anything, I would expect the deeper, richer soils there to yield better than a hillside Catalonian estate in all but very wet years. Maybe one day I'll feel like working my way through characteristics of French soil types but that's not today and even if I wanted to, I don't know if detailed online soils information like we have for the US is available for France.

The Case of Radegund's Missing Brother

2011-06-01T19:20:00.027-04:00

As I mentioned in my first Radegund post, I originally intended to discuss this issue there. I'm interested enough in this item to give it its own space.

As I've read accounts of Radegund, one item has begun to trouble me. Radegund left Clothar because he murdered her brother. 1 I’ve read a theory that he was a threat because he was last of a royal Thuringian line and that he may have been active in a revolt against Clothar.

Here’s my problem with the brother. He has no name. Gregory and Fortunatus both mention him, but he’s an anonymous figure. A substantial poem, "The Thuringian War," was written either by Radegund or by Fortunatus with Radegund's input. A large portion of this poem, written from Radegund's point of view, laments her dead brother, yet he remains nameless. 2 As I've read more books on the Merovingians, Radegund is consistently mentioned and each time I've read, "Radegund left Chlothar after he murdered her brother," I asked myself, "And who was this brother, exactly?" For some time I've been wondering; Did he really exist?

I have two reasons for questioning this. First and what really stands out for me is the simple fact of his namelessness. Gregory and Fortunatus wrote after Radegund’s death, roughly 40 years after she left Clothar. They were both well acquainted with Radegund. Gregory was bishop of Tours, just down the road from The Convent of the Holy Cross and conducted her funeral, even though he wasn't her bishop. Fortunatus corresponded with her regularly and wrote poems for her. In the decades the two of them knew her, with this being the trigger; the single key, life-altering incident by which she entered into a religious life, she never mentioned him by name to either of them? If her brother's murder bothered her enough to drive her from her husband, you'd think he would be important enough to be named.

Second, leaving one’s husband was a big friggin’ deal. It was highly frowned upon. There are plenty of cases of women seeking to leave their husbands for a religious life and being forced to return. 3 For whatever reason, Clothar didn’t seem to try to get her back very hard and in fact helped her establish The Convent of the Holy Cross. All I can do is conjecture but he’d been married to her for 10-15 years, she’d had no children, he had either other wives or a houseful of concubines, depending on the account you read, and she didn’t seem to be very interested in sex or even very affectionate toward him. When given a choice she'd rather lie stretch out on an unheated stone floor in a hair shirt next to the privy than lie in bed with him. Beyond this, he never knew when she might chuck money at poor people or stir up his entire household whenever he decided to execute a criminal. 4 Maybe he decided that her being gone was OK by him.

But 40 years later, there had to be a reason. Gregory and Fortunatus, in promoting her as a Saint, had to come up with a darn good explanation for why a woman could legitimately leave her husband for the Church. They would also have scrupulously tried to avoid any implication that it was OK to just leave one's husband without a very good reason. An anonymous Thuringian brother would do just fine for these purposes. Thuringia was a new addition to the Frankish holdings and people wouldn’t be very familiar with it. But if you mentioned a name, there was a chance someone might say, “Huh? Who was that? I fought in Thuringia and I don’t remember him. You say he was heir to the Thuringian throne?” But a nameless brother from an obscure region? That stood a much better chance of passing muster. 5

A bigger issue is the poem, The Thuringian War, generally attributed to Radegund but sometimes to Fortunatus. This gives me the same problem. Writing decades later, this reads very much as an ode to Radegund's brother, a lament that she had not honored him more - and she doesn't mention him by name? This namelessness of a loved relative is huge for me. Names are how people were remembered. People were entered into prayer rolls by name - not as, "the brother of Radegund" (for this, I won't say this never happened but I'm unaware of it). Panegyrics, which Radegund and Fortunatus would have been familiar with, are remembrances of a person with a name. Yet in 34 lines about her brother he is not named one time. This of course brings Radegund inventing her brother rather than Gregory or Fortunatus into the picture, if she was indeed the author. She would have had sound reasons for doing so, including explaining to Constantinople why a fragment of The One True Cross should be entrusted to someone who had deserted her husband. 6

An additional but relatively minor argument is that Baudonivia makes no mention of a brother in her account of Radegund’s taking the veil. She would have read it in Fortunatus' account but chose not to include it in hers. This seems somewhat odd as the reasons for Radegund's entrance into religious life is a pretty vital aspect of her story. However I consider it minor because a counter argument is that Baudonivia would have considered Radegund to be acting from a purer motivation if she left for the love of Christ, not from bitterness over the loss of a loved one - altruistic vs. selfish reasons. 7

As always, this is not completely one-sided. Chlothar killing a Thuringian noble who may have been a threat to him is hardly shocking and may even be considered legitimate if Thuringians were involved in a Saxon revolt. Of course if we take that to the next logical step, Radegund's leaving loses legitimacy if her husband was acting against her brother in a justifiable manner to secure his control over the kingdom. 8

The simple fact that the brother exists and was written about by at least two and perhaps three separate authors also must be taken into account. However I believe that, as close as these three were with one another based on the source evidence, it is reasonable to posit one of the three as the initial source with the other two not questioning the account but adding it to their writings. And when we come to the possibility of this being an invention, I've previously said that I do not believe Gregory was a liar. I've not studied Fortunatus as closely but I have no reason to consider him as anything other than basically truthful. However I doubt that either of them would consider embellishing a story in promotion of a Saint's cult to be lying. This seems to be a well accepted hagiographical convention.

Finally, there's the potential fallout from Fortunatus and Gregory, and possibly even Radegund, making up a story that would portray Chlothar in a negative way. They would not bring this up if they thought doing so would seriously threaten their own safety and welfare. (I don't believe so anyway, though Gregory had shown a fair degree of bravery in his conflicts with Chilperic and Leudast.)

This last is the most difficult aspect for me to evaluate. Chlothar had a bunch of kids and some of them were pretty powerful. However all were dead by the time the Radegund accounts were written, though not the The Thuringian War, if we accept its inclusion in the Byzantine mission. There were plenty of grandchildren living, some of them also powerful but it's difficult to say how they would perceive the killing of a Thuringian, last of a royal line that their grandfather had gone to war with. And it's very possible they wouldn't have known enough about events from forty years past to even raise a protest against the account of the murder. I don't see a lot in the family line which would have prevented Gregory or Fortunatus from making up this part of the story. Maybe Fredegund would have been concerned with the reputation of Chilperic's father, Chlothar, but Gregory's writings already reveal that he didn't much care what she thought of his writings. Another option is that Radegund herself started the story with her poem, The Thuringian War. By around 570 (when the poem is believed to have been written) she was largely immune from threats. And keep in mind, the poem went to Constantinople. No one in Francia needed to have known about it, if the poem actually went there and wasn't something written by Fortunatus and not disseminated until his poems were published.

In the end, I think the existence of Radegund's brother is in question, with the balance of the evidence against it. He is unnamed even in a poem where he is a major character, there is a real need, in the eyes of the biographers (and Radegund herself), to come up with an explanation for Radegund's leaving her husband, and I can't find a compelling reason why Gregory, Fortunatus, or Radegund would be threatened by coming up with this story - in fact the grandchildren may not have known enough to call it into question. I think Radegund's brother was a literary invention to provide justification for her leaving her husband for the Church in order to aid in the promotion of her cult. (I could go on - I have more - but this is a blog post, not a paper.)

It puzzles me that I’ve not run across this argument before. If someone knows of anyone discussing this, please let me know. 9 The historicity of Radegund's brother seems to be unquestioned by modern historians.

Abbreviations used in notes:

VR I - Vita Radegundii by Venantius Fortunatus
VR II - Vita Radegundii by Baudonivia (These are usually referred to as books I and II of her Vita) Both found in McNamara, et al. (1992).

1 VR I.12, "Thus her innocent brother was killed so that she might come to live in religion."

2 For Gregory, Historiae III.7

3 Rather than listing names, let me quote James Brundage (1987), discussing the 6th-11th centuries, "Discussions of this possibility [leaving one's spouse for religious life] emphasized that the decision must be mutual; no one could unilaterally terminate a marriage in order to enter a monastery or convent. Anyone who attempted to do so should be refused admission to the religious life and required to resume co-habitation with his or her spouse." p. 202.

4 For Radegund's sleeping habits see VR I.5. For condemned criminals see VR I.10.

5 I've seen secondary accounts that say Radegund's brother was also captured and held as a hostage. If true, this would be much harder to hide but I haven't seen this in any of the source material.

6 McNamara, et al.,(1992) contains a translation of the poem on pp 65-70. They indicate that the poem is commonly believed to have accompanied the mission to Constantinople to recover a fragment of The One True Cross to be delivered to a relative of Radegund's, but it was found in an appendix of Fortunatus' verses. p 65, n 22

7 VR II.3

8 The theory about Radegund's brother being involved in a revolt or other treacherous activities is only mentioned in secondary analyses of the incident. I am unaware of any source material calling this anything but a murder. For Gregory, Historiae III.7, he was murdered by assassins. For Fortunatus, see note 1, above. In The Thuringian War he is referred to as murdered.

9 I went six pages deep with a Google search using the term, "Did Radegund's brother exist?" without finding any discussion of the question.

Brundage, James A., Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press (1987). ISBN: 9-780226-077840

George, Judith, trans., Venantius Fortunatus: Personal and Political Poems. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press (1995). ISBN: 9-780853-231790

McNamara, Jo Ann, Halborg, John E. and Whatley, Gordon, ed. and trans., Sainted Women of the Dark Ages. Durham and London: Duke University Press (1992). ISBN: 978-0822312000

Thorpe, Lewis, trans., Gregory of Tours: The History of the Franks. London: Penguin Books (1974). ISBN: 9-780140-442953

If You Couldn't Live as a Virgin at Least You Could Die as One

2011-05-31T19:14:00.015-04:00

I originally had written a much longer post but I have one significant aspect of Radegund's portrayal (or at least I consider it significant) that I decided deserves its own post, which will follow soon. Don't worry, it's mostly written since I simply copied it from this one.

One of my favorite Saints is Radegund. There are a lot of reasons for this. First and foremost, she's a Merovingian woman and women and peasants are, IMO, the two most underrepresented groups in the Middle Ages, even more so in the Early MA. Second, we have a lot of source material for her. 1 Third, some of the source material says different things. And finally, it's just a good story. She ranks high on my list of favorite Dead Holy People.

I recently finished reading Transformations of Late Antiquity: Essays for Peter Brown by Philip Rousseau and Manolis Papoutsakis. It's a good book with some pretty solid essays. So I'm reading along and I get to Essay XVI, "Radegundis peccatrix: Authorizations of Virginity in Late Antique Gaul," by Julia M. H. Smith. Good deal - I know Radegund pretty well. Then Dr. Smith writes, "Because she read about virginity, wrote about it and, although not herself a virgin, was extensively written about in virginal terms, she should be evaluated in the context of late antique virginity literature." (304-305) Cool.

The remainder of the essay talks about how Radegund was portrayed by her various biographers - Gregory of Tours, Venantius Fortunatus and Baudonivia. The vita written by Fortunatus is equated with that of Eugenia who underwent symbolic martyrdom. Good essay.

But I'm going to go in a bit of a different direction and offer my own interpretation of Radegund and how she was portrayed. I can do that because this is my blog and also because I'm not a historian so I can chuck words around when the topic is fun and not damage my professional reputation too much. And I think the Radegund story is fun, from an analytical point of view - there's a lot to work with.

A brief bio is probably the first order of business. Radegund was born around 520 in Thuringia and was captured around 531 by Clothar/Lothar. She received schooling and became a Christian before marrying Clothar around 540. Somewhere around 550-555 Clothar killed her brother and Radegund fled to Menard where she was consecrated as a deaconess. Around 560 she founded the Convent of the Holy Cross in Poitiers and was named Abbess. She ruled the convent until her death in 586/7 with two notable accomplishments; adopting the rule of Caesarius of Arles and being given a fragment of the One True Cross by Justin II.

We have three main sources for her. Gregory of Tours provides most of his information in his Histories but she also is mentioned in Glory of the Confessors and Glory of the Martyrs. Venantius Fortunatus wrote a vita and she is mentioned frequently in his poems. Baudonivia, a nun from Radegund's convent, also wrote a vita. All of these, except the poems which are often addressed to her, were composed after her death. These sources have some interesting things to say about Radegund and I think they are very enlightening as to how biographers would portray a subject to promote his or her cult.

Fortunatus’ vita is of most interest to me. While it is never claimed that she is a virgin, virgin references fill the account. It starts early on, “Therefore, though married to a terrestrial prince, she was not separated from the celestial one ... she was more Christ’s partner than her husband’s companion.” 2 And, “Because of this, people said that the King had yoked himself to a monacha rather than a queen.” 3 Also, “Who could believe how she would pour out her heart in prayers when the king was away? How she would cling to the feet of Christ as though He were present with her and satiate her long hunger with tears as though she was gorging on delicacies! She had contempt for the food of the belly, for Christ was her only nourishment and all her hunger was for Christ.” 4

So, though trapped in an Earthly marriage, she was at heart a bride of Christ. Of course once she moved into a convent that eased off and the martyrdom began. Even while living with the king she would wear a hair cloth for religious holidays and would regularly lie on the stone floor, praying, under a hair cloth. 5

Once she moved to the convent, things began in earnest. She ate no meat, fish or eggs and gave up bread and drank very little water during the Quadragesima (Lent). 6

But it gets better (or worse). Once during Lent she encircled her neck and arms with iron bands and inserted chains into them. Her body swelled around these to where the chains were embedded in her flesh. 7 During another Lent she took a brass plate “shaped in the sign of Christ,” heated it and pressed it against herself so her flesh was roasted. Another time she took a basin full of burning coals and, “She drew it to herself, so that she might be a martyr though it was not an age of persecution.” 8

Of course mixed in with the burning and freezing and starving and hair cloths were a bunch of acts of charity and miracles. I won’t go into these because they’re pretty standard fare but Radegund’s re-virgination and martyrdom are very interesting, particularly because, while virginity was prized, married Saints, even with kids, are known. 9

In contrast, while Baudonivia mentions the hair shirts and fasting, as well as other acts of abstinence and asceticism, she doesn’t say anything about the self-mutilations Fortunatus relates. Fortunatus chose to portray her as removed from the world but Baudonivia, who knew of his vita and wrote hers as a complement to it, discusses her letter writing, her actions on behalf of the Church and individuals, her traveling to collect relics and, most importantly, her efforts to gain a fragment of The One True Cross from Justin II, the Byzantine Emperor.

Two very different accounts and it’s pretty clear from the use of language and from the incidents mentioned that Fortunatus wanted Radegund to be considered a virgin, or as close to this as someone who had been sexually active could be, and he also wanted her to be considered a martyr. Neither was a requirement to be named a Saint but Fortunatus was clearly a big fan.

Radegund is a great figure to examine. Her vitae and other accounts have everything. You have your violence, you have a martyrdom account, re-virgination – the only thing you don’t have is sex and for that, check out Gregory’s account about what happened to the Convent after Radegund died. 10

Abbreviations used in notes:

VR I - Vita Radegundii by Venantius Fortunatus
VR II - Vita Radegundii by Baudonivia (These are usually referred to as books I and II of her Vita) Both found in McNamara, et al. (1992).

1 Of course it would be nice to have even more. Radegund wrote a lot of letters but unfortunately only one has survived.

2 VR I.3

3 VR I.4 According to McNamara, Halborg and Whatley(1992), the word monacha is a term which later fell out of usage to be replaced by sanctimonial which they translate as nun.

4 VR I.6

5 VR I.5,6

6 VR I.22. At one time Quadragesima could mean any Christian ritual of fasting and prayer but as Fortunatus consistently identifies this as if it were the only one, without providing additional information, it seems almost certain that this was the Lenten Fast.

7 VR I.25

8 VR I.26. This type of self-abuse is rare in hagiography. Saints almost always engaged in some sort of ascetic, strict lifestyle which is portrayed as unpleasant and quite frequently they wore hair shirts or engaged in self-flagellation however behavior such as Fortunatus portrays Radegund as engaging in is unusual.

9 For example, Monegund and Chrothilda. Also, Angela Kinney recounts several of these, though later than this period, in her paper, "The Elusive 'Happy Marriage' in Hagiography," given at the 2010 International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

10 What you basically had was a Medieval version of Girls Gone Wild. A revolt in the nunnery, prostitution, pregnant nuns, etc. Gregory gives quite the account. See, Historiae IX.39-43 and X.15-17.

Special Note: Sometimes events happen that slap you in the face. This post had mostly been written when the news story about women undergoing "virginity checks" in Egypt came out. I scrupulously steer clear of current events in this blog. However I want to stress that though I am somewhat light in my use of the term "re-virgination" and with the title of this post I am not, in any way whatsoever, as light about the abuses and atrocities committed upon women in the name of sexuality and sexual reputation. In a world where "honor killings" are committed because a woman has the temerity to be sexually active, where women go to prison for being raped, where female genital mutilation and operations to restore hymens are commonplace, it is impossible for these things to be taken lightly. I'm going to leave the post as written (I considered a total re-write) because I do think the examination of how biographers portrayed their subjects is fun however these things happening in our world today are atrocities. I hope the tone I wrote this post in will not offend anyone. This note may well take some of the fun out of it, and that's OK.

Sources:

George, Judith, trans., Venantius Fortunatus: Personal and Political Poems. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press (1995). ISBN: 9-780853-231790

McNamara, Jo Ann, Halborg, John E. and Whatley, Gordon, ed. and trans., Sainted Women of the Dark Ages. Durham and London: Duke University Press (1992). ISBN: 978-0822312000

Rousseau, Philip and Papoutsakis, Manolis, eds., Transformations of Late Antiquity: Essays for Peter Brown. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company (2009). ISBN: 9-780754-665533

Thorpe, Lewis, trans., Gregory of Tours: The History of the Franks. London: Penguin Books (1974). ISBN: 9-780140-442953

Leeds Looking for Papers

2011-05-30T18:43:00.002-04:00

OK, I can't for the life of me imagine that anyone who might respond to this wouldn't know of this already via some other means but John Dillon just sent out a message to Mediev-L announcing that they have some open spots on the Leeds program and are looking for additional papers. So if you're going to be there and have something that can be ready in six weeks, here's your chance. You can find details at The International Medieval Congress Website.

Kalamazoo 2011 - Day 3

2011-05-30T10:33:00.019-04:00

I've decided to insert anchors to help people find individual session reports more easily. I've added those to my reports from the first two days.

Session 398, Early Medieval History

Session 455, Early Medieval Europe I

Session 511, Early Medieval Europe II

If you're wondering what happened to day two, I used a different nomenclature. So Saturday dawned, er, dark and gloomy. Had a nice drizzle going on which occasionally strengthened to a full-on rain with periodic moderation to a cold dampness. And the high for the day was about 30 degrees less than it had been the previous two days. Typical May in Michigan weather.

All my books were bought and I for darn sure wasn't going back to the Exhibit Hall after I'd taken account of the damage the previous evening so I headed up to Bernhard as soon as I finished breakfast and grabbed a spot for myself so I could pull out the laptop and work until it was time to head to, Session 398, "Early Medieval History."

The first presenter was Benjamin Wheaton of the University of Toronto with a paper on, "Reasons for Byzantine Support of Gundovald through 584 CE." OK, it'll come as no surprise that the Merovingian nobility fought a lot. This paper looks at the events of 582-4 and how the Byzantines may have influenced them. This is another paper that stresses my self-imposed space limitations because of the detailed way Wheaton presented his argument. In this paper Wheaton discusses Gundovald from 582-584 and the Byzantine role in his activities. According to Gregory of Tours Gundovald was born, raised and educated in Gaul and once he was grown, was presented as the son of Lothar/Clothar. This was the start of his troubles. He got kicked around and eventually fled to Constantinople. In 582 he returned, apparently with Byzantine support but was quickly defeated by Guntram Boso and retreated to a Mediterranean island. In 584 he showed up again, after King Chilperic's death and was hailed as King. He tried to set up in Aquitaine but got along even worse than the previous time and was eventually killed. Wheaton believes that initially the Byzantines had supported him so that he would act against the Lombards and help protect their Italian possessions however in 584 the Byzantine goal was for him to intervene in Spain in support of Hermenegild against his father, Leovigild. Interesting stuff. 1

Luigi Andrea Berto from Western Michigan University gave the next paper, "In Search of the First Venetians: Some Notes and Proposals for a Prosopographical Study of Early Medieval Venice." I'm not very familiar with the rise of the Italian City-States. In fact, my knowledge of the Italian peninsula is pretty sparse for the years after 774. Berto discussed a study he is beginning where he's going to try to trace the evolution of Venice by tracking the establishment and rise of the great families of the city. There was a fair amount of prosopographical information given; not specific names but how names often evolved from offices and occupations and how early on three names dominated Venice; Iohannes, Petros and Dominocos, which makes tracking their evolution a bit tough. Berti will be scouring Byzantine sources for name information to help determine how power structures and powerful families evolved. He also provided a fair level of detail regarding how study information will be displayed, which I won't go into here.

What makes a settlement a town? Sébastien Rossignol, an Independent Scholar and someone whose papers I have enjoyed in past years, took at look at this with, "New Perspectives on the Origins of Towns in Early Medieval Central Europe." I took two full pages of notes for this but basically Rossignol looked at references in charters and literature as well as archaeological finds to examine settlement status prior to the issuance of charters which began in the 12th century. He went into a fair amount of detail with this discussing whether a settlement was described as a civitas, castra, castellan, vicus, urb, etc. Most of these places had little military significance but were primarily the dwelling places of Frankish elites. Even when a place was fortified it was usually described in non-military terms and fortifications may have been as much a status symbol as a defense. Ultimately, he believes that before charters were issued it is very difficult to determine if a place should be considered a town. He suggests using the term, "early urban phenomenon" to describe a settlement. He makes a good argument re the difficulty of determining the "townness" of a place but I'm not terribly enthusiastic about inventing an arcane term because of this. The idea of a town is a relatively recent one and this may be something which just needs to be set aside however Rossignol's term seems to be as problematic and lacking usefulness. Even with that, I enjoyed this paper very much and considered the entire session quite good. Yet another example of the difficulty of interpreting what people meant when they said something a thousand years ago.

Maintaining my status as hermit in the midst of people, after pecking away at my laptop for a while I returned to the same room for Session 455, Early Medieval Europe I. The first speaker was Walter Goffart, now of Yale University. There are a few folks who won't need an introduction to anyone familiar with this period and he's one of them. His paper was, "An Introduction to Christianity for Today's Novices in Medieval History: An Experiment." Goffart provided an outline of how he would approach teaching Christianity in the fourth to sixth century to a beginning student of Medieval History. He had seven main points in his outline and the following will only make sense to those who were in the room. It was actually pretty good but I have two areas where I have a difference of opinion with him. One of his seven items was, "Intransigence." For this point Goffart returned a couple of times to Christianity being a forced, sometimes violent conversion. And it was, but I don't believe the evidence shows that this is where the bulk of the bloodshed took place. Where the violence really got going was in forcing all Christians to believe the same thing - part of the transition from an underground (though large) movement of scattered groups to a cohesive religion with one belief. This involved the suppression of entire churches, such as in North Africa, or belief systems, such as Arianism (does anyone really believe Arius was the first person to come up with this?). Now once you get into the 6th century, particularly in the East with Justinian, the suppression of paganism became much more hard core but for much of this period, the bulk of the violence was about enforcing orthodoxy/suppressing heresy within Christian groups. The area he left out is the transformation of Christianity from a religion which was practiced largely at homes, in private places, either by families or in small groups, to one which was practiced largely in a communal setting in authorized, holy spaces. I'd need a whole post to really cover this one paper, maybe because I think the evolution of Christianity is absolutely fascinating but I want to stress that this was overall very good, there are just a couple of areas I would change.

The next paper was by Glenn McDorman of Princeton, "Diplomacy in the Post-Imperial West and the Gallic War of 507-510." This was an examination of Clovis and his actions in the war in which, ultimately, Clovis drove the Visigoths out of Gaul. McDorman argued that Clovis' actions were perfectly acceptable according to the standards of the time. He did this by framing the discussion around three areas; 1)That there were established practices determining acceptable conditions for engaging in warfare; 2)That Clovis followed these practices and; 3)Examining Clovis' motivations for the war with the Visigoths. Within this framework, Clovis and his Burgundian ally, Gundobad, had no familial affinity with Alaric (the Visigothic ruler) so warfare was acceptable. McDorman also argued that it is very possible that Clovis did not initiate hostilities and that there is evidence for Alaric being enraged at Clovis to the point where Theoderic (the Ostrogoth ruler in Italy) asked Alaric to allow him to mediate. He believes, contrary to Theoderic's claim, that while Clovis wanted to remove Alaric's influence, he had no desire to harm the Visigoths as a people. Ultimately, McDorman wanted this specific war to be viewed as part of a broader set of relations between polities.

The final paper was by Jonathan J. Arnold of the University of Tulsa, "Theodric's Invincible Moustache." The purpose of this paper was to provide evidence against the theory that the portrayal of Goths and Theodric with a moustache without a beard was a convention in depicting Goths. The theory is that only Goths are shown with a moustache sans beard. Arnold provided a variety of images to show that this is untrue, including images of Emperors with moustaches, as well as other Barbarians. 2

I really enjoyed this session. Goffart's and McDorman's papers were about issues I find very interesting and Arnold's was just plain solid and another example of people sometimes reading too much into certain pieces of historical evidence.

Next up was Session 511, Early Medieval Europe II. I think this was probably my favorite session this year. Even though it was a bit later than my core period, I was fairly familiar with the issues covered in the papers, yet not so much that I already knew what the speakers were talking about. I have a page and a half of notes from each paper which is going to make a single paragraph summary interesting.

Jennifer Davis from the Catholic University of America was first up with, "Charlemagne and Tassilo in 794: A Final Encounter." Tassilo was Duke of Bavaria and Charlemagne's cousin. In 788, after various treacheries, according to the Royal Frankish Annals, he was tried, deposed, sentenced to death with the sentence commuted to his being tonsured and stowed away in a monastery, St. Jumièges. His wife and daughters were also "nunnerized" in a package religiosity sort of deal. In 794 Tassilo reappeared when Charlemagne dragged him out of the monastery back to his Council where he was again condemned and then shipped back. The conventional wisdom has been that Charlemagne's bringing Tassilo out the second time is a sign of weakness; he was having trouble with Bavaria and paraded Tassilo to provide a visible sign of his authority. Davis believes this should be interpreted differently. She thinks Tassilo's reappearance should be looked at as Charlemagne feeling comfortable enough with Bavaria to risk bringing him back out, that he could be brought back out and the old memories stirred up precisely because Bavaria was no longer a threat. This also gave Charlemagne the opportunity to use him as an object lesson, sort of a, "See what happens if you screw with me?" Davis provided a fair amount if evidence in support of her interpretation. Good paper, one of my two favorites of Congress. 3

Courtney Booker of the University of British Columbia followed with another really cool reinterpretation in, "The Fama Ambigua of Ebbo, Bishop of Reims and Hildesheim." Ebbo was one of the many people who got caught up and yanked around in the events of Louis the Pious and his sons which took place from 830-840. When the sons rebelled, Ebbo initially remained loyal but eventually joined the rebellion and presided over a synod where Louis admitted to crimes and did public penance. A couple of years later, Louis got the upper hand and Ebbo was forced to admit at another synod that Louis was innocent of what he'd confessed earlier. For a few years Ebbo got shuffled around, confined to monasteries. He got a brief respite when Louis died but then was deposed as Bishop of Reims by Charles the Bald before later being named Bishop of Hildesheim by Louis the German, a position he held until he died. Ebbo was portrayed fairly negatively by contemporaries and Booker took a detailed look at this. Plenty of others took basically the same actions as Ebbo but he was singled out for punishment. Booker believes he was a scapegoat and a primary reason for this is that Ebbo was born to servile status which made him an easy target. However he showed considerable abilities and was sort of a rising star until the events of the 830's derailed him. Once that was sorted out he again attained pretty significant status. I don't recall this being mentioned but to me, a key point in all this is that Ebbo was one of the last to remain loyal to Louis. His heading the synod may have been as a way for the rebels to say, "If his most loyal follower is willing to run this, what Louis did must have been really bad." And for Louis, to have been publicly denounced by his last loyal follower may have felt like a betrayal of the worst type, on a personal level. Ebbo had a lot of chips stacked against him.

The final paper was, "Constructing a Queen: Adelheid's Great Escape and the Ottonian Image," by Phyllis Jestice of the University of Southern Mississippi. Before I get started let me say that Dr. Jestice gives a great presentation. I heard a paper she gave in 2009 on heresy during the Ottonian period which I still recall vividly (the basic premise was that according to the Ottonian chroniclers, in particular Thietmar of Merseburg, the Ottonians weren't too worried about heresy). In this paper she explored the "making" of a person, Adelheid. Adelheid married Otto I in 951 after the death of her first husband, Lothar II, King of Italy. This was almost certainly to provide Otto with legitimacy to claim Italy. A poem (I neglected to note by whom - Odilo?) was influential in the evolution of her cult and a focus of Jestice's paper. In this poem she is imprisoned, starved, tortured, and held in chains by Berengar of Italy who was attempting to rule Italy. She escaped and married Otto, gave him Pavia and helped him subjugate Berengar. The torture is mentioned in some accounts but not in others. Jestice believes this reads as a fairly tale and while she may have been imprisoned, was not tortured or held in chains, as evidenced by the fact that she later forgave Berengar. Another good paper to close an excellent session. 4

That evening I went to the Pseudo Society Session, something I do every year. I won't give an account of the papers because, well, you had to be there. They were all very good. Most years it seems that there are two good ones and one clunker but nothing clunked. They were funny, we laughed, drank (beer for me), ate (I had a sub but there was plenty of pizza). The highlight, other than the papers, was meeting Chris Armstrong, Professor of Church History at Bethel Seminary and author of the blog, Grateful to the Dead. He was sitting behind me and I was having one of those, "trying to stare without staring" moments because I thought he looked familiar. Fortunately, from his vantage point behind and above me, he figured out who I was and we chatted for a bit before things got started.

I had thought I might make the dance this year for the first time since my initial Kalamazoo in 2001 but in the end I went back to my room and to bed. I know how to live large, don't I? Good day, lots of info, I mostly stayed a hermit.

1 For Gundobad, see Gregory of Tours, Historiae, VI.24 for the events of 582 and VII.10-38 for 584-5.

2 Yup - two different spellings for Theoderic/Theodric. I've always spelled it with the second "e" but Arnold did not so for his paper I'll respect his spelling. I still like the extra "e."

3 For Tassilo see the Royal Frankish Annals for the years 787-8. Pretty much any book on Charlemagne will mention the Tassilo incident. Most recently (that I have anyway) see Rosamond McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press (2008), pp. 118-127 with the "traditional" perspective of this incident on p. 126.

4 I've seen Adelheim referred to as Adelaide of Italy. Though less renowned, she's sort of a 10th century parallel to Eleanor of Acquitaine. She was extremely influential. For accounts of the imprisonment see Adalbert's Continuation of Regino's Chronicle for the year 951 and Thietmar of Merseburg's Chronicle, II.5.

Friggatriskaidekaphobia at Kalamazoo

2011-05-22T07:07:00.030-04:00

Session 201: Cyril and Methodius: New Research on the Cyrillo-Methodian Mission and Its Aftermath

Session 255: The Archaeology of Early Medieval Europe: Hoarding

Session 319: Miracles and Politics in the Development of Early English Saints' Cults

Cassian's Long Shadow

Or if you prefer the Greek form, paraskevidekatriaphobia. I'm a pretty non-superstitious person. I'm mean of course it's bad luck to walk under a ladder - it might fall on you or the person working up there might drop something. I didn't see much fear of Friday the Thirteenth going on in Michigan this year either but I like it better than "Kalamazoo: Day 2" as a title, though it may not do much for people doing web searches for ICMS summaries.

After breakfast I walked up to Valley I for the Blogger meetup. I knew of this event last year but didn't go - I wasn't sure if it was an academic thing (Medieval academic anyway) and nobody invited me. Since Jonathan Jarrett gave me the thumbs-up, I decide this year I'd show. 1

This was a good move. I got there just about at 8, maybe a touch early and took a seat at a table by myself. I thought I might recognize exactly two of the bloggers and neither of them were there at that point. I didn't recognize Steve Muhlberger for the second year in a row either. After a few minutes a gentleman came over, asked if I was who I am and it was Steve. Last year Paul Gans, Steve and I were supposed to go out to dinner together. Paul told me the next day that we'd walked right past him. This time I sat 20 feet from him. Must work on my facial recognition skills.

Anyway, Steve and I visited for a bit and other folks started to show up. Lisa Carnell was first. Now if Lisa has a blog, I don't know what it is but I know she's the Congress Coordinator so that was way cool. More folks started to arrive. By the time everyone was there, we had Another Damned Medievalist or ADM (who neglected to tell us that she's thinking of joining The Evil Empire), Jonathan, Notorious Ph.D., Vaulting & Vellum, Larry Swain, and a couple of folks who I don't remember - I'm thinking Heptarchy Herald was one of them but I'm not 100% on that. Check Jonathan's blog when he gets his K'zoo stuff up. He's about 2 months behind by the calendar with his catching us up with what he's been doing so it may be a little while but I'm sure it'll be worth it.

This was a good time and I can see why it might have gone over well in a bar. I got to hang out with a bunch of folks who are smarter than me and they managed not to laugh at me (at least I think they were laughing with me). So I had a lot of fun. I enjoyed the Acronym discussion, among others. The bloggers are as smart and entertaining in person as they are on their blogs. 2

After the meetup I drove up to Schneider for Session 201, "Cyril and Methodius: New Research on the Cyrillo-Methodian Mission and Its Aftermath." 3

The first paper was by Maddalena Betti of the University degli Studi di Padova, "The Rise of 'Sancta Ecclesia Marabensis': The Missionary Letters of Pope John VII (872-882)." I'm looking at a page and a half of notes and wondering how to summarize it into a paragraph, which is all the space I've given myself for each paper this year. I have a feeling I'm going to violate some rules of grammar in these posts. Betti's discussion centered around John VII's letters found in a Monte Cassigno manuscript which she believes shows the Pope's missionary emphasis. I'm going to gloss over a historiography review she gave summarizing some ways in which history has been misrepresented more recently for various reasons and get to what I considered the most interesting aspect of this. At this point Rome was looking for ways to strengthen its claim against Constantinople for primacy over the Eastern European Church. John's letters dating from around 873 to Carolingian and Bavarian Bishops use the term "Pannonian" to illustrate, by using the Roman provincial name for (roughly) the region in question, that this region was subject to Rome and should remain so as the church was organized. Later, beginning in 880, in his instructions for how to organize the area into a Metropolitan Church he uses the term, "Moravian" to describe the Church. In Betti's opinion this was directed to those in the region and would ethnically define the Church. There's a lot to go through here and entire books have been written about the tug-of-war between Rome and Constantinople over who got their hands on this piece of real estate from an ecclesiastical standpoint. This is one piece of that struggle and shows the ability of the Papacy to tailor its message based on how it wanted to frame a discussion. That last should be no surprise to anyone but the way in which John VII did this is interesting. Lisa Wolverton asked a very interesting question afterwards as to whether the use of the term Moravian would have been an effort to use locally familiar terms rather than a change in the focus of the message. For me, one does not preclude the other and it may have been for both purposes.

Roland Marti of the University des Saarlandes gave a paper, "'... quasi in signum unitatis Ecclesiae': East and West in the Cyrillo-Methodian Heritage" which looked at things from the perspective of what the residents of Eastern Europe thought of their new-found religion. They adopted a neutral stance, despite Cyril and Methodius favoring Byzantine interests. The Bulgarians used Slavonic as a language of religion which Marti believes was a means of distinguishing themselves from the Byzantines. Their lettering was Cryllic but they retained the Slavonic for use and the Bulgarian Church showed considerable western influence to the point of their calendars including western saints. Above all, Marti believes they wanted to carve out their own identity and not be either an Eastern or Western Church.

The final paper was, "Interpreting Holy Men: Cyril and Methodius as Saints in the Earliest Tradition and in the Later Bohemian Hagiography (Ninth to Fourteenth Century) by David Kalhous, an Independent Scholar. It took me a while to sink my teeth into this paper. Ultimately, Kalhous wanted to show how the Cyril/Methodius story changed over time and what that meant. Basically, in the earlier recountings the emphasis was on the Church. As described in the stories, the Slavonic liturgy was equal to the Eastern and Western liturgies and the Bulgarian Church was worthy to exist alongside the Roman and Byzantine. The later tradition focused much more on ethnic/nationalistic concerns. All was lost for Moravia until the arrival of Christianity. Much more emphasis was placed on the Moravian nobility and the stories were intended to create a Bohemian identity and engender a sense of worth as a people.

This session was a bit tougher. None of the speakers were presenting in their native language and there was a tendency for them to focus on what they were reading, which took away from the presentation. It was still a good session with some very interesting information.

After that I headed back to Valley for my final shot at the books. All I had left were two used bookstores, Loome and Powell's. Of course those are two of my favorites. My mistake is that I was wearing a sports coat and left it on, and Friday was another warm one. By the time I'd gone through those two shops and made my final Congress purchases I was pretty well soaked. Fortunately I had a few minutes to get to my room and sit in front of a fan so I wasn't too repulsive (I hope) by the time I went back to Schneider for Session 255, "The Archaeology of Early Medieval Europe: Hoarding."

I'm only going to discuss two of these papers. For the second paper I have almost no notes so either it didn't interest me, I didn't follow it or, more likely, both. A dim possibility is I pretty well knew the topic already but I'm going to discount that alternative. Marcin Woloszyn of the Instytut Archeologii I Etnologii started things off with a very interesting paper, "Avars, Scandinavians, Slavs and Byzantine Coins: Hoard and Hoarding in East-Central Europe between the Sixth and Eighth Centuries." This paper examined coin finds from the area which comprised the Avar Khaganate and just north; Eastern Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia. He divided the finds into three periods and discussed those finds and their implications. The finds indicate substantial Byzantine influence to the later 7th century, afterwards more Western influence. There are few documented finds of bronze coins though he believes there may be more than have been reported as many museums have finds in their holdings and exhibits, but the finds were so poorly documented at the time of excavation that they tend not to be attributed to the region. An interesting fact is that there are very few finds in the center of the Khaganate, most are from the periphery. He gave two explanations for this, one I agree with and one not. He thinks the Avars had a different way of displaying social status and much of the gold was melted down into jewelry, an explanation I like. He also stated that Charlemagne seized much Avar treasure in wars however, for me, this would have been a reason for Avars to start burying the stuff so he couldn't find it. Granted, Charlemagne could move swiftly, but not so swiftly as to preclude someone from going into the woods and digging a hole.

The final paper of the session was by Florin Curta, the organizer of this and the previous session, from the University of Florida and someone who, if you feel the urge, you can "like" on Facebook. He also has a Wikipedia page. Each of the last three years I've tried to get to his sessions if they don't conflict with something I'm really interested in. I am interested in this area but it's not number one on my list. However in my experience the sessions have always been very good. Dr. Curta's paper was, "Trade or Taxes? Hoards of Iron Implements and Weapons in Ninth-Century Moravia." In this paper he discusses several Moravian iron finds. One was the site of Pohansko-Lesni Skolka in Moravia where a ceramic container holding a variety of iron tools as a hoard was found in a sunken-floor building however what was of most interest to me were the iron ingots found at a variety of sites. These did not originate from Moravia but came from elsewhere and he believes these were tribute payments, not trade items. I was going to add more but you can read pretty much the entire thing yourself (which I'm going to - I found it because I was looking for an image of the axe-shaped ingots he discussed in his paper to post here). This fits in rather well with an essay of his I read a little while back discussing the 6th century amber trade in Eastern Europe.

For this session the first and third papers were very good and evidently, from my notes, the second one didn't do much for me.

The next session started half an hour later in the same building and I was fortunate enough to meet Michelle Ziegler of Heavenfield and Contagions fame and chat with her for a few minutes while I re-hydrated from my swim through the book exhibit. I enjoy her blog as I think the Justinian Plague is very interesting, though I don't have anything close to her knowledge of it.

So I made a 90 degree rotation through Schneider to Session 319, "Miracles and Politics in the Development of Early English Saints' Cults" - more Dead Holy People!

The first paper was, "Divide and Conquer: West Saxon Relics in the Reign of Cnut," by Nicole Marafioti of Trinity University. This was a very interesting paper and she gave a nice presentation. Marafioti discussed how Cnut used his treatment of English Saints to indicate his approval/disapproval of a region of England and for political purposes. He had Aelfheah's relics translated from St. Paul's Cathedral, London, to Christ Church at Canterbury. London was the Church of Edmond Ironside and a location which held out against Cnut for a long time. The translation may have been a pointed lesson to Londoners. He treated the remains of Edmond very respectfully - and carried them away to be buried 150 miles from London where a cult resistant to him couldn't form. He also distributed Edward the Marty's relics to many locations, dispersing his cult. Marafioti also related a story from William of Malmesbury regarding Edith of Wilton and Cnut where on opening her tomb the saint bodily rose up and assaulted the King for disturbing her. The King did not believe that the daughter of so evil a man as Edgar could be a saint. After this Cnut became a patron of her cult and Marafioti believes this story may have been a later story to help legitimize his reign. Good paper.

In looking at my notes, I'm going to refrain from commenting on the other two papers. I took a fair amount of notes for the second one which discussed St. Cuthbert but I didn't write down any kind of dominant theme and I'm afraid that for the third I was drifting, badly. Bad Geek. But the first paper was very good.

That evening, after a couple of beers, I made a brief foray to the Digital Medieval Poster Session, which I've previously mentioned. Then I went to an evening session sponsored by WMU's Center for Cistercian and Monastic Studies and the American Benedictine Academy, "Cassian's Long Shadow."

The first paper was by Duncan Robertson of Augusta State University, "Experientia Praecedente: Cassian on Reading." This was a good paper but the sum purpose was simply to illustrate that Cassian wanted people to do more than just read but to experience the scriptures. Reading is valueless unless the text is intellectually and emotionally internalized. An interesting sidebar is that Cassian advises teaching children to read very early, even carving out wooden blocks with letters. This may be very 20th century but when I was a kid we had blocks with letters on them so that piece of advice had some legs to it.

The final paper was by F. Tyler Sergent, "Cassian and William of Saint-Thierry on the Incarnation and the Spiritual Union." In this paper Sergent discusses the use William made of Cassian, focusing primarily on Conferences, X. He wanted people to move from a physical to a spiritual vision of God, to engage in imageless prayer. William believed this was part of the progression of man from an animal, to rational to, finally, a spiritual state. Though man will always be somewhat animal (among other things, he must eat to live) he must move beyond a reliance on the physical senses to a more elevated state. Cassian did not believe in the use of images in worship, thinking these impede seeing Christ spiritually. William picked up on this theme and believed that man, even on Earth, could achieve a unity of spirit with God which, though fleeting, would be a profound experience. These were both good papers though at the end of the second one the questions went in the wrong direction IMO, into a discussion of errors of William. I've gone to these before and usually they have a short break and then get into the religious discussions in the sense of orthodoxy of belief, etc. This year they jumped right to it before I could excuse myself. It was still interesting and I learned a fair amount though I don't know if I'll ever read Cassian. I pulled out Conferences while writing this and my edition, Ancient Christian Writers Series Number 57, Boniface Ransey, trans., New York: Newman Press (1997), is nearly 900 pages. I think it may have to serve simply as a reference. I read Augustine's City of God all the way through - isn't that enough?

That ended my sessions for the day. I went back to my room and called someone to cancel meeting him at Bilbo's that evening (don't worry, he had plenty of others going to make up for my absence). Then I started going through my books, mainly so I'd know which sellers I'd need to visit Saturday to pick up display copies. In the process I discovered that rather than buying fewer and better books, I had indeed bought more and better books than usual. Uh-oh.

1 As I've mentioned before, I am an academic but it's an Extension appointment which is kind of a different sort of setup and sometimes hard to explain to those who aren't in our little corner of the universe (or cult). I feel like I sort of blew off ADM when she asked me what I teach but I've never been able to really explain it in under 20 minutes - I have no "official" teaching appointment or load but I teach a lot and I have no research appointment but I do a fair amount of that too. The reason I don't talk about my real life or job (much) isn't to hide anything (I have a heckuva sales pitch for anyone thinking of getting into Extension) but because for the most part it isn't relevant to my Medieval hobby.

2 When I use the term not smart re Medieval History I'm not referring to basic intelligence but to my knowledge level. IOW, I consider myself topically ignorant, not stupid.

3 As a very brief synopsis for those who may not be familiar with this, two brothers, Cyril and Methodius, were sent by the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Byzantine Emperor on a series of missions to the peoples of Eastern Europe to convert them to Christianity in the mid-9th century. They were very successful but, among other things, this gave the Eastern and Western Churches one more thing to fight about.

The End of Days

2011-05-21T07:30:00.004-04:00

OK, the world's ending today and somehow I didn't know about this until yesterday. If I had, maybe I wouldn't have bought all those books last week. But even if there isn't any beer in heaven, maybe we can bring books?

Though based on this diagram provided by Laura Blanchard via Facebook, I don't think my chances of going are very good. 1

1 Yes, THAT Laura Blanchard, former head of the Richard III Society and Philadelphian. When I first started going to Kalamazoo, every morning you could see her sitting in the Valley III lobby with people literally lined up to see her. She knew everybody.

Kalamazoo 2011 - Day One and a Half

2011-05-19T20:00:00.021-04:00

Man this is long - I think it may be the eternal post. I'll try to shorten the next three installments - at least this takes care of 90% of the book buying. EDIT 5/30/11 - I've just added anchors to help people navigate to the sessions, if that's what you're interested in.

Session 25: Late Antiquity I: Saints: Their Lives and Their Experiences

Session 72: Late Antiquity II: Understanding Barbarians

Session 95: Creating the Holy Dead: Sainthood in the Middle Ages

Before I get started I'll remind anyone who was around then that I will not be posting session summaries like I did last year. Even if I wanted to, I don't have time - and I don't want to.

This edition will cover Wednesday and Thursday, though I sort of covered Woden's Day already. In honor of Woden, I went on my own Wild Hunt for a soap dish. I must have wandered through the pharmacy area at Wal-Mart for 15 minutes trying to find a 97 cent item. I could have spared myself though. My "loo-mate" did not choose to avail himself of such an item and his soap ended up on the only tray in the shower for the duration. I was glad I had mine though - I'm sure he's a fine fellow and everything but I didn't feel like sharing lather with him and even if I brought my own soap in, once I set it on top of his in a warm shower with only one soap tray, I think the two bars would have become intimately acquainted with one another anyway. Of course since he never saw me use any soap since the soap dish I'd spent so much effort in acquiring traveled into my room with me, he likely believes I neglected my personal hygiene and didn't bother showering the entire week.

Thursday post-breakfast found me at my usual post, waiting at the doors of the exhibit area, AKA (borrowing from the Congress Facebook Group) Book Heaven waiting for 8 a.m. I had two books I wanted to make sure I got before worrying about grazing my way through so my first stop was at the Boydell and Brewer Booth. This was a popular destination so I worked through the entire booth before finding a single display copy of Jonathan Jarrett's new book, Rulers and Ruled in Frontier Catalonia, 880-1010. I got my mitts on it and took it to the front along with another couple of books I'd picked up. My first question for the young lady was, "You should have brought more than just one of these." Her response, "We brought two - someone already bought the other one." This was at about 8:15. I believe Boydell & Brewer prevented Jonathan from becoming an instant best-selling author. It's simple math. Two were purchased in the first quarter hour the exhibits were open. That figures to 8 an hour. The exhibit area was open 35.5 hours. If they had brought a sufficient quantity, Jonathan would have sold 284 books in the 4 days. Maybe that wouldn't beat out J.K. Rowling but it would rate fairly well in the nonfiction category.

My next stop was Oxford to make sure I left with a copy of Alan Cameron's The Last Pagans of Rome. Evidently the person running that booth hadn't arrived the day before as she was unloading boxes when I got there and said she'd be ready for business in about an hour. So I reversed steps and started working my way through booths - Motte and Bailey was a revelation. I don't know who Mike Belding is (was? RIP?) but I now own about six books that used to be his including a few I never thought I'd have because of the price. Among others, I now have Burgess' The Chronicle of Hydatius and the Consularia Constantinopolitan which is OOP and, when I've seen used copies for sale, has been upwards of $300. If they'd had Steve Muhlberger's The Fifth-Century Chroniclers. Prosper, Hydatius and the Gallic Chronicle of 452 and Blockley's Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire similarly priced I think I could have died happy right then.

So I bought some books, including the Cameron volume, hauled them up to my room (I was staying in Harrison, right above the books) and headed up to Fetzer for a 10 AM session.

The first session I attended was Session 25, sponsored by The Society for Late Antiquity, "Late Antiquity I: Saints: Their Lives and Their Experiences."

The first paper was presented by David Price of the University of Toronto, "Saints and Their Communities: Reading Sixth-Century Italian Hagiography in Its Oral and Popular Context." David discussed hagiography and in particular those written by Gregory the Great. David believes that Gregory's miracle stories were not invented by him or sent to him as texts but were Gregory's recounting of stories which had become widespread in Italy. These stories had been developed by a popular audience which was familiar with the standard Hagiographical "forms" and through oral transmission became widespread. He discussed how Italy possessed a vibrant story telling culture at the time and also how Gregory specifically identifies individuals he heard the stories from. David believes that while Gregory almost certainly did some editing, the stories themselves developed and circulated shortly after the death of a saint. For me, this paper left me a little dry. I can accept that Gregory was relating stories which had become widespread by the time he heard of them and decided to write them down, however David offered no real proof of his theory for a popular origin. A question I would have liked to ask, but time ran out before I could was, "Are you attributing the spread of these stories simply through oral transmission by the populace or do you think the respective saints had a local patron, likely clerical but at least highly influential, who acted to promote that saint's cult?" I think you can look at a contemporary, Gregory of Tours, and see an active promotion of Saints' cults and I would have liked more concrete evidence that in Italy these originated by a different method before accepting it. 1

The next paper was by Francesca Bezzone of the National University of Ireland-Galway, "Ancient Medicine and Early Roman Liturgy: The Use of Holy Oil in the Vita Germani by Constanius." She discussed how while oil had been used in religiously significant ways since the Old Testament, particularly for anointing, the Vita Germani is the first instance where Holy Oil is used for its regenerative and healing powers. She related several episodes where Germanus used oil to heal. I enjoyed this paper. She provided solid evidence and I'm willing to accept that this was a significant new addition to hagiography. I don't recall her saying this but according to the forward to the Life of Germanus I have, this vita was likely written between 475-80. 2

Amy Norgard from the University of Illinois followed with, "Traveling With Bonitus: An Analysis of his Seventh-Century Vita and Its Place in Merovingian History." This is basically an account of how a hagiographical author might "dress up" the life of his subject to gloss over some difficult moments. In this case, Bonitus, a seventh century Bishop of Clermont gives up the Bishopric to take a pilgrimage to Rome. In the account of his pilgrimage he spends little time in Rome but instead is trucking around to a variety of locations in Europe. Norgard believes it likely that Bonitus' leaving Clermont was not as voluntary as it is portrayed in the account but that he may have been expelled and sent to Rome to face judgement. Of course this is portrayed as an adoption of asceticism and was evidently Bonitus' "desert" for the purposes of this story. 3 She briefly discussed two other similar accounts in the Vita Apollinaris and Vita Justi. I had recently read the Vita Wilfridi by Eddius Stephanus so I was very familiar with what she was talking about.

The final paper of this session was by Elizabeth Platte from (I hope) The University of Michigan - in the program she's listed as being from Loyola of Chicago but at the top of her handout it says Michigan. Her paper was titled, "The View from the Top: Egeria's Ascent of Mount Sinai." This paper basically recounted Egeria's pilgrimage to the Holy Land and how her physical ascent of Sinai is mirrored by a spiritual ascent. By scaling to the top of the mountain she becomes able to see the world as God sees it and view the entire holy land. This ascent is her penultimate experience which brings her very close to God.

This was a good session. I particularly enjoyed the papers by Norgard and Bezzone but they were all good though I would liked to have had firmer evidence for the first one.

Following this session I became lazy. I stepped outside of Fetzer to catch a breath of air. I was planning to head back in, fire up the laptop and get some work done (I'd taken a banana from breakfast to have for lunch) when lo and behold, a bus rolls up. It was warm -- the high that day was 86/30 with a lot of humidity and I took this as a sign and hopped in to go back to the books. That was the last time I walked across the pond to Fetzer, Schneider or Bernhard. (Bad Geek)

So I bought more books, (anyone beginning to see a pattern here?) including while at Ashgate asking the clerk how much a hardcover was and being told, "Normally it's $110 but all hardcovers are half off." Uh-oh - gasoline poured on a flame. I thought I'd forever be running to the library to read one of their Vivarium series (Vivaria?) and here I am with two on my bookshelf. Cambridge did the same thing to me later. And you wonder why I end up with so many books? As I type this I'm eating steamed rice with a touch of salt. My new diet - oatmeal for breakfast, a fried potato from the 10 lb sack I bought for lunch and rice for dinner. Just kidding - but back in the day I have resorted to that diet to stretch my money to the next payday. And once the cc statement comes ...

I also ran into Richard Nokes of Witan Publishing and spoke briefly with him. The man has become positively svelte. I'm jealous. Congrats to Larry Swain BTW, on getting on their publication list.

The bus experience I'd just had was so gratifying that I decided to, uh, hop in my car and drive back to Fetzer for Session 72, "Late Antiquity II: Understanding Barbarians." Unfortunately, the paper by Ricardo Colon on ethnicity I was hoping to hear was canceled. I've read a fair amount on this but am not "in the field" and was hoping to find out if there was any new thinking out there.

Nevertheless, I settled in for the first paper by Christine DeLaplace from the University de Toulouse-le Mirail. My synopsis of this paper will be extremely short because I completely agree with what she said. She supplied a fair amount of information on the early 5th century barbarians as well as their movements and actions to conclude that the Gallic nobility and barbarians were loyal to the concept of Rome and nobody acted consciously to end it. I completely agree with this; everyone wanted to be part of Rome, they just couldn't figure out how to make it work. It was a good, interesting paper but I spent most of it nodding my head in agreement rather than taking notes.

A great deal of the next paper left me in the dust. Patrick Neff from the University of Illinois presented on, "The Bishop and the Barbarian: The Metric Letter of Auspicious to Arbogast." Neff opened with a discussion of the poetic/grammatical structures of this 5th century letter. As someone who has proudly left his Latin behind, this portion of the paper did the same for me. However in essence, Neff argued that Auspicious had sent an invitation to Arbogast to, despite being a barbarian, join the literary circles of the Empire. He believed that Arbogast was looking for this from Auspicious and also Sidonius who praises him in correspondence. While barbarians as a group were still portrayed as smelly, oafish and dumb, specific barbarians in the late Empire could be accepted into the more cultured aspects of society.

The final paper was by David Harris from the University of Illinois, "Umm El-Jimal: The Material Culture of a Frontier Town." This is a Roman town in what is today Northern Jordan, situated on the Palmyra-Aqaba caravan route. It is about as close to what was Persian territory as a Roman town could be and was under continuous Roman control (there may be a contradiction here in my notes) from the 2nd century until the Persians overran the region in the early 7th century. This was more of a descriptive paper. Harris described the small settlement in some detail. Inscriptions have been found indicating that two cultures lived there, or at least interacted; Sephardic, the language of the nomads and Nabatean, the native language, were both found and for virtually the entire period discussed. An interesting note in the development of the village is that it was destroyed and abandoned in the late 3rd century (here's my contradiction with continuity but both are in my notes), was re-built in the 4th and grew significantly in the 5th and 6th century. Harris believes that the Rome-Persian War may have stimulated the local economy. Ultimately, this is an area which is just beginning to be explored and Harris wanted to bring some of that to us and encourage more people to work in this area.

This was another good session though I was lost for part of Neff's presentation.

Next I hopped into my car and headed for the sauna which was the room for my Session 95, in Valley III, "Creating the Holy Dead: Sainthood in the Middle Ages." I happen to be fond of the term, "the holy dead" or, in my case, dead holy people. Has a certain ring to it though the session title is probably more correct - they're more defined by their holiness than by their deadness.

Anyway, to get back to the topic at hand, the opening paper in this session was from Steven Stofferahn of Indiana State University, "Vitae Verity: Reality and Unreality in Early Medieval Saints' Lives." This paper fit in very well with Amy Norgard's from earlier in the day. At the beginning Stofferahn asked the question, "How did exiles view their own plight?" They were stripped of their titles and authority so what did they do now? He related the tales of my old buddy Wilfrid as well as Sturm (another one I've read which was cool) to get his points across. The main one was that once a cleric had been removed, it wasn't the end. In the first place, they were free to go where they wanted, which often was home. And while they may have been stripped of their ecclesiastical authority, this didn't mean they without power or means. They could try to gain forgiveness, achieved by Sturm, or look for third party intervention as Wilfrid did from the Papacy more than once. Their situation was malleable - just because they were disgraced didn't mean that had to last forever (though Stofferahn was careful to say that more often than not they did not return to positions of authority). Recovery was possible.

The next paper was by Cullen Chandler of Lycoming College, "Saints Eulalia of Barcelona: A Martyr and Her Ninth-Century Church." Eulalia was a young girl who had been martyred in Barcelona (or maybe Mérida). Dr. Chandler related several interesting aspects of her cult, among these that as it progressed, her tortures through martyrdom increased, with 12 being present by the 9th century, which is the period he mainly discussed. Chandler related how, in the 9th century, the Saint took an active interest in her situation. The Archbishop wanted to translate her relics to Narbonne but when he looked for her body, it couldn't be found. After he gave up, the local Bishop, Frodoin, found her, moved her body and built a church as her resting place. This helped Frodoin gain status and also helped the local church, at least when Charles the Bald gave it come money in recognition. It also had some implications for the Carolingians suppressing the Visigothic Liturgy. I had read one of the versions of Eulalia's vita, likely from Mérida where her parents had hid her and she'd run away to be martyred. She was tortured but there definitely weren't 12 of them. Interesting evolution of a story there.

The final paper in the session was by Austin O'Malley of the University of Chicago, "Worldly Detachment and Filial Devotion: The Reinvention of Bayazid Bistami in the Tazkirat al-awliya." Now I may have read something about Muslim saints but if so, I've forgotten it. O'Malley related the roles which women played in Islamic hagiography. They seem to have had four roles; old women, sisters, mothers, and wives. In this paper the first two roles were explored. Old women typically show up out of nowhere in the desert, impart wisdom on the saint, then disappear equally miraculously. The saints are elevated by showing a willingness to listen to and be subservient to them. Sisters appear who are extremely pious, their piety reflecting the piety of the saint. One interesting fact he related is that while the saints retained all their masculinity, the female saints are stripped of their gender and become metaphorically and internally masculine. Interesting contrast with Christian saints where both genders are often softened; women being portrayed as more masculine and men as more feminine.

This was another very solid session with three good papers covering a topic I'm quite interested in. Plus I had the chance to meet Cullen Chandler in person for the first time, which was a pleasure. After this it was back to the books. Fortunately I ran into Jonathan Jarrett again - he was late to meet people for the second time that day and for the second time he stayed to chat with me for several minutes after telling me this. If he spends much time here we need to teach him that rushing off after telling someone you're late is perfectly acceptable here - you shout salutations over your shoulder as you go. Anyway, the reason this was fortunate is he told me about the blogger meetup scheduled for the following day which I was clueless about.

Following the close of the book exhibit I ran into town, grabbed something to eat, went back to my room and worked on work stuff. I know that's disappointing with all the tales of debauchery out there. I was seriously antisocial this Congress (and regretting that a bit now though it was pretty close to necessary) but I'll talk about that in my final post. I had planned on going to a session on Negotiating Monasticism at 7:30 but two of the papers had been moved to the afternoon (creating a bit of an issue with me deciding where to go just then) and it didn't seem worth it to haul my carcass back up there for just two papers. In any case it was a pretty good day. Went to good sessions, bought some books (would you believe at that moment in time I believed I had been buying fewer but better books than last year?) and ran into a couple of folks I hadn't seen in a year.

1 I mentioned last year that I am happy and willing to ask questions but generally I try to wait until the professionals have had the chance to ask theirs first. This is a professional conference and if the historians have questions to ask, I don't want to get in their way. Unfortunately, this means I don't always get my questions asked though sometimes I'll come up to a presenter at the end of a session. And before anyone points this out; yes, I know 20 minutes is a very short time to cover everything but for this topic I think more evidence for this assertion would have been useful.

2 F. R. Hoare, trans., "Constantius of Lyon: The Life of Saint Germanus of Auxerre", in Thomas F.X. Noble and Thomas Head, eds., Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints' Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press (2000), p 76.

3 One of the earliest Vita was the 4th century Vita Antony or Life of Antony, authored by Anastasius. Antony is a desert monk and his time in the desert is put forward as a time of great trials and hardship while he lived a life of extreme poverty and asceticism. A pretty standard aspect of hagiography since has been some experience of hardship and travail which is sometimes referred to as that individual's "desert" in deference to Antony. It is interesting to read some vita where their "desert" means they only traveled with two attendants instead of 20 or something (Gerald of Aurillac comes to mind here, or Edward the Confessor) but this aspect is almost always present in some form.

Online Medieval Resources and Really Cool Stuff Other Folks have Written

2011-05-16T23:17:00.013-04:00

Before I get to the post I want to note that other bloggers will now find my comments signed as "Medieval History Geek" rather than as Curt Emanuel. This isn't a move toward anonymity or anything. We're going to be developing a blog for work and I don't want people going to that blog to somehow run across my description of my knowledge level for this blog which basically says "I have no training and really am not qualified to say much of anything on this topic but I think it's fun and interesting so I'm going to anyway." When it comes to my job, I am trained and I do know what I'm talking about (for the most part anyway) so I'm going to use my real name for that blogger profile and MHG for this one and hope to avoid any confusion.

Posts to Check Out

Before I start putting together Kalamazoo summary posts I want to put up ~~a quick post~~ one discussing some online resources. 1 First, and something I've been remiss about lately, are good posts from other blogs.

Guy Halsall has two recent posts I strongly encourage people to read, Warfare and Society in the Early Medieval West and Warfare, the "State" and Change Around 600. For the latter post, take a look at it and see what you think about what it says on defining an entity as a state in the medieval period. This is something I am uncertain of myself and unable to say what I think of the various "state" opinions out there as I find myself swinging between arguments however this post made me think about it quite a bit which, for me, is a pretty strong recommendation in itself. 2

For the earlier post I want to pull out an excerpt and emphasize a point that over the last few years I've come to believe is essential for looking at all aspects of medieval history.

"Talking about all this as an issue of Roman continuity or new barbarian methods entirely – as I see it – misses the point. This was neither the take-over of western Europe by immigrant barbarian military societies with new social and military practices and nor was it – evidently – a simple continuation of the Roman regular army. It was an evolution that took place within the particular, distinct circumstances of the fifth and sixth centuries.

This general point, about seeing early medieval warfare in its own terms, applies to another common view of the period, which would understands it by extending the observed features of central and later medieval warfare backwards into our era. Thus it is sometimes said that battles were rare in this period. They were risky and therefore they were not generally sought. Instead sieges were the most important feature of warfare. This is, as far as I can see, a reasonable description of warfare in the age of castles and knights, from the eleventh century, perhaps the tenth, through to the end of the Middle Ages, but, as I will argue later, it is quite mistaken for the period between the sixth century and the ninth."

This points to something I've come to believe very strongly; that examining aspects of history independently and without contamination from knowledge of other aspects, is essential to gain the most unbiased information possible (every single Human, historian or not, has biases) for the aspect under study. Chris Wickham in Framing the Early Middle Ages was highly influential in my believing in this for geographic regions, that they need to be examined on their own terms before you start looking for other regions to compare/contrast/group them with. I've mentioned before how Dr. Halsall, in Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376-568 helped me to realize that the same holds true for other pieces of evidence - each piece needs to be examined independently, on its own terms, before looking at it in relationship to other pieces. Here he applies this same reasoning with regards to warfare - don't allow your knowledge of other periods to contaminate (I don't think this too strong a word) how you perceive or examine the period you are investigating.

The reason these things are important to me is so I can assess what I'm reading. As I've (hopefully) made plain, I am not a historian. I am not engaged in historical research. Among other reasons (there are a lot of them but this is the most critical), I do not have the skills, particularly the language skills, to investigate source material in their original language, even if I had access to them. So what I do is read stuff - stuff written by historians. For me to asses what I think of their work, how much influence it should have on me, I need to be able, as much as possible, to evaluate their argument. A critical component of that is their use of evidence. Now I can't examine the evidence itself so it's the argument, as presented in their writings, that I have to look at.

I apologize for the digression in the previous paragraph but I try to throw something like this in every now and then so you can figure out where I'm coming from, particularly since, based on site traffic, there seem to be some new folks reading this blog recently.

New Online Resources

Right before Kalamazoo I posted about the Digital Poster Session. I had a chance to briefly look at the booths (it was a shame more people weren't there) before the Cistercian session I attended and some seriously good online resources were displayed. I'll note that I'm highlighting the ones which myself, with no Latin or Medieval languages skills, found interesting. Others may well be as or more useful to professionals, or serious amateurs with those skills I lack.

Cusanus Portal - This site is devoted to resources related to Nicholas of Cusa. The main site is in German but some information in English is also available.

Early English Laws - This is a project to provide online translations and editions of all English law codes and related texts produced prior to the Magna Carta in 1215. They do not have anything up yet but are looking for people to help with the translations so if you have language knowledge in Medieval Latin, Old English, Old French, etc., I encourage you to contact them and offer your assistance.

St. Gall Monastery Plan - I know; you read the title and think, "The plan of St Gall? I can already find that online". In some ways I think the title does this site a disservice, though it will likely show up well on internet searches. First, the plan will be displayed in over a hundred images, providing far more detail than has previously been available. However the treasure is, "Besides a variety of digital representations of the plan itself, the site includes a graphic representation of how the plan was physically made, detailed information on each of the component elements of the plan, and transcriptions and translations of its inscriptions. In addition, the site contains a series of extensive data bases including one presenting physical objects found across Europe that add to our understanding of Carolingian monasticism, one devoted to the terminology of Carolingian material culture, descriptions of all known Carolingian religious edifices, and an extensive bibliography on both the Plan itself and Carolingian monastic culture generally." I think this will be a wonderful resource.

1 Uh, sorry - when I started I thought this would be a short, quick post. Then my enthusiasm got the better of me. And it's still too short to really talk about uses of evidence which I'm very interested in.

2 Steve Muhlberger recently posted a link to an interesting essay by Susan Reynolds on this topic. I'd encourage you to also look at the articles she mentions in it.

Halsall, Guy, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376-568. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2008). ISBN: 9-780521-435437.

Wickham, Chris, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2006). ISBN: 9-780199-212965.

Kalamazoo: The Books

2011-05-15T18:41:00.005-04:00

For me, Kalamazoo is about three things; the sessions, the people, and the books. I'm too tired to dive into the first two topics right now so let me give you the story on the books.

I came home with 63 more books than I left with. I was careful how I balanced the car out in loading them (that was altered a bit right before I left but not much) since I didn't want to have a rollover going into a turn. I also have 4 to be shipped. Last year I thought the 60 I picked up was an anomaly - previous years I had always been in the 25-40 range. Well, in the 60's may be the new normal. Once I get my cc statement I may need to come up with a new strategery. This could be scary - then again, I'm going to Michigan instead of on a Caribbean Cruise for vacation (my winter vacay's relatively inexpensive) so if I spend that amount on books, so what? 1

Though I picked up some seriously good books this year. As I mentioned before, the 50% off from Ashgate and Cambridge meant I picked up some I never thought I'd own. And 38 were from my wishlist. I didn't do a lot of wild buying. Of course my wishlist is still over 700 . . . In the long run, I'm going to like having bought these but I'm not sure I'll care for the price. And my "to read" list just went from about 80 to 140.

I do not know how much access non-members have to LibraryThing but if it lets you, you can go to my profile page and see what I bought. Under tags click on "see all tags" and once that page opens, click on the link titled, "ICMS 2011."

Here's a picture of this year's damage. You can compare it with last year if you like. Now I have to find shelf space.

The 2011 Kalamazoo book haul

1 I have a stock set of phrases I use to justify the amount of money I spend on books. One of my old stand-by's is, Well, my house is paid off and it's no more than ___ payments used to be. All of these mean, in essence, "It's my money and I'll spend it how I like, thank you very much." However I would welcome any other rationalizations anyone would like to offer as my phraseology toolkit for this is becoming a bit worn. If nothing else, I'd like something new for my gf when she starts picking on me about it. ;)

Kalamazoo Friday Update

2011-05-13T22:05:00.004-04:00

Since I realized that my Live Blog concept may not work so well with how followers, folks receiving this via e-mail/RSS, etc., are notified of new posts, here's a quick Friday update.

Now I was ready to throw something up yesterday but blogger crashed so this one may be a bit longer than usual. For the most part, I've been going to sessions on Hagiography. Whole lotta papers on dead Holy People. It's been good, especially since I sort of know what folks are talking about there. Interestingly, not one of the sessions has had anything to do with Gregory of Tours.

As usual, I've been buying books. I'm not sure exactly what the final count will be but I'm afraid it will top last year's haul, which I thought was impossible. It's all Ashgate's and Cambridge's fault - 50% off all HC's.

Yup - those are books on a desk in my room. Over 40 of 'em. And I have another 20 to pick up tomorrow. And some to be shipped.

Went to the blogger meetup this morning. There are some seriously cool people blogging. I had a good time. I've also run into a couple of other people and not run into some folks I usually see. That's the way this goes, pretty much every year. I'll fill in the particulars post-K'zoo.

Enough for now. I've been invited to meet some people at Bilbo's tonight but I'm not going since I may actually make my first K'zoo dance since 2001 (or was it 2000?) tomorrow. No guarantees though. I'm still emotionally scarred from 10 years ago.

Live Blog (Sort of) from Kalamazoo

2011-05-13T17:34:00.000-04:00

OK, in my quest to get a free media pass to next year's Congress (yeah, right) I've decided that instead of doing the daily update thing like last year, I'm going to start a Kalamazoo blog and throw stuff up whenever I feel the urge. Newer posts will be on top.

Friday, May 13, 5:35 PM Er, after thinking on it, this live blog idea's kind of dumb since nobody will know when I've updated it and I don't expect people to keep returning to this post. So I'll go back to daily updates. No time right at the moment but I may post something later.

Thursday, May 12, 7:30 AM Looks like my schedule's changing. Two of the papers I wanted to hear originally scheduled for an evening session on monasticism have been moved to the afternoon. The evening session's still happening, it'll just be much shorter. I also pulled my notepad out and found it has about 6 sheets of paper on it. Looks like I'll be visiting the campus bookstore.

Wednesday, May 11, 9:53 PM Today as I was packing I realized I left my little plastic soap dish in (I think) Mexico. I didn't feel like deviating from my route so I figured I'd take care of that here. So I found a Wal-Mart nearby and drove over once I got in, which was quite convenient as it was dinner time (maybe a bit early but I hadn't eaten since breakfast) and found a steak place - Texas something or other. Then I came back and have been doing my work work for the last few hours.

One problem with my room (besides it being a dorm room with no AC, thin walls, etc.). I only have 1 bed this year. First time ever - my spare bed has always been the place to store my book purchases. Oh well - I'll figure something out. Right now I'm hearing thunder and the radar image has all kinds of pretty colors on it just west of here. I have my sessions picked out for tomorrow except for at 3:30 where I have 3 for which the final decision will depend on a bunch of variables, including if it's raining when I decide whether to leave the building I'm in. Haven't run into anyone yet though I have a couple of text messages. Book hunting begins at 8.

Kalamazoo Update

2011-05-10T23:44:00.004-04:00

I'm taking a break from working late on work stuff. Not sure how late I'm going but the more I do tonight the less time I'll need to spend on it in Michigan.

I want to mention a program addendum which may interest some people. This may be in the addendum you get at registration, the Corrigenda but in case it isn't, I thought I'd post it here.

Dot Porter just posted the following on the Congress Facebook group:

Digital Poster Session

The Medieval Academy of America's Digital Initiatives Advisory Board and Digital Medievalist have co-organized a poster session and reception, scheduled for Friday evening at 7pm in Fetzer 1035. The complete list of participants is below. Hope to see you there!

*****

Julian Hendrix and Richard Pollard (UCLA), "Reconstructing the libraries of Carolingian Reichenau and St. Gall"

Joshua Westgard (U. Tennessee), Demonstration of Bede Manuscripts Database

James Ginther (Saint Louis University), Demonstration of T-PEN

Eleonora Litta Modignani Picozzi (King's College London), Early English Laws and Gascon Rolls

Daniel O'Connell (American Cusanus Society), Demonstration of the Cusanus-Portal

Dot Porter (Indiana University), Demonstration of TILE (Text Image Linking Environment)

Grant Simpson (Indiana University), "Proactive Preservation: What Every (Digital) Medievalist Should Know"

Debra Lacoste (Wilfrid Laurier University), Cantus Database Demonstration

Adam Oberlin (University of Minnesota) "XHS: eXtensible Handschrift - A Proposal for Open Source Manuscript Editing Software."

Richard Harris (U. of Saskatchewan), Concordance to the Proverbs and Proverbial Materials in the Old Icelandic Sagas

Kate Helsen (U. of Toronto), The Optical Neume Recognition Project

Michael Drout (Wheaton College), Lexomics group from Wheaton College

I have to say, this looks like one kick-butt poster session. The session is listed in the program but not the details. I'd penciled in to attend a session starting at 7:30, "Cassian's Long Shadow" and still want to make it but it's going to be hard getting through all those posters in under half an hour. I'll work at it though and make sure I have a couple of minutes to spare - the last thing I want to do is be forgetful and lose more years off my life like I did two years ago by entering another Cistercian Studies Session unprepared.

I'm also having trouble figuring out what to bring to read. I just finished reading a couple of Byzantine sources and wanted to start on William Harmless' Desert Christians. The problem is, though I want to start looking into desert monasticism and asceticism more closely, this book contains excerpts and I know I'll want to refer back when those are from something which I have here in full. I have Cassian's Conferences and Institutes but those things are thick. It might be time to grab something from out of my period that I can just sort of read, not study while on the road. I have a book on Beckett and a couple from the Yale English Monarchs series I haven't read.

I'll see some of you up there this week. Have a safe trip everyone - at least, as of now, you don't have a volcano to worry about if you're coming from overseas.