Home » Medieval Books

Category: Medieval Books

Vase of St. Martin at Agaune. Source: Wikipedia

Burgundy 450-535

A new book gathers together the results of Ian Wood’s life-long immersion into the events in Burgundy AD 450-535

Burgundy, 450-535.Politics and religion in the Gibichung Province.
By Ian Wood
Series: Saggi di Storia Antica vol 38
“L’Erma” di Bretschneider 2026

Cover Burgundy 450-535This book examines the early medieval Burgundian polity, which attempted in the 5th and 6th centuries to establish itself less than a successor kingdom and more as a Roman province; and did not succeed.
In the final years of the Western Roman Empire and during the following half-century, the valleys of the Rhône and Saône were governed by members of a royal Burgundian family, the Gibichungs. They ruled not as barbarian kings but as Roman magistri militum. Their prominence derived from their association with the magister militum praesentalis Ricimer, and they operated in close cooperation with members of the late Roman senatorial aristocracy, including Sidonius Apollinaris and some of his contemporaries.
This region under their control was a centre of religious and cultural life, distinguished by the works of Sidonius, Claudianus Mamertus, Faustus of Riez, and Avitus of Vienne. The interaction of politics and religion culminated in the foundation of the monastery of Agaune, a major episcopal gathering at Épaone, and the promulgation of an important body of legislation issued by King Sigismund, before collapsing dramatically in the wake of a political crisis caused by the ruler himself. The failure of the Gibichung state in AD 534 marked the end of a remarkable experiment in governmental continuity in post-Roman Gaul.

This book is written by one of the most authoritative scholars of the Early Middle Ages, Ian Wood, Professor Emeritus at the University of Leeds. Renowned for his long-standing engagement with the cultural history and historical anthropology of the Early Middle Ages, Wood here offers a long-awaited full account of events in a region that, during the fifth and early sixth centuries, became entangled in conflicts between the Romans, the Huns, the Franks, the Visigoths, and finally the Ostrogoths. None of these powers appears to have been willing to allow this political gatekeeper to establish itself permanently at the threshold of one of the principal Alpine passes through what is now western Switzerland. Not least, perhaps, because the so-called Burgundian realm represented a genuine experiment in the fusion of Roman and Germanic cultural forms. The realm—if it was ever truly a kingdom, which this book argues it was not—came to an end when it was absorbed into the Frankish Empire in AD 534. As Ian Wood states in his introduction, this is therefore a history written “primarily through the eyes of late Roman aristocrats and those who interacted with them, and not through the perspective of the Völkerwanderung and the Germanic kingdoms”.

 

READ ALSO:

Cover farrod BurgundesLes Burgondes: un royaume oublié au coeur de l’Europe
Favrod, Justin
Pu Polytechnique, Lausanne 2002
French Edition.

The Burgundians, the people of the Nibelungen, left the Rhine at the command of the Romans. They settled around Geneva, where their kings were charged with ensuring military control of the Alpine passes. However, between the fifth and sixth centuries, the Empire they were meant to defend collapsed. In a political movement that transformed Europe, the Burgundian kingdom expanded across parts of what are now France and French-speaking Switzerland and began to exercise independence. This is a fascinating and little-known period, in which the author, through a critical analysis of historical knowledge and a remarkable contribution of his own research, describes the coexistence in this first “Burgundy” of a people from the North and the Gallo-Romans.

Interethnic harmony was regulated by a law issued by King Gundobad. Gradually, the linguistic boundary between French and German took shape and has endured to the present day. Here the past takes on the face of a royal family whose tribulations—marked by bloodshed, wisdom or fury, success or disaster—are inscribed in the broader transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages

 

Cover Les BurgLes Burgondes: Ier – VIe siècles apr. J.-C.
By Katalin Escher
Errance, Paris 2021
French edition

A Germanic people originating in what is now Poland, later settled on the Rhine and then in the Rhône valley of Gaul, the Burgundians inscribed their name both in the geography of Europe—where a “Burgundy” still exists today as the heir to several kingdoms—and in its great epic traditions, such as that of the Nibelungen. They were among the principal actors in the period of the Great Invasions in the West. This book takes stock of current knowledge concerning this people.

Drawing on ancient sources, it reconstructs the three major phases of Burgundian history: a kind of “preface” extending from their origins to their settlement on the Rhine (established by no later than the beginning of the fifth century); the “first” Rhine kingdom, whose destruction by the Huns in 436 inspired the Nibelungen cycle and certain Scandinavian sagas; and finally the “second” Rhône kingdom, which marked the apogee of Burgundian power before being incorporated into the Frankish kingdom in 534. For each of these periods, the archaeological remains that constitute the material traces of the Burgundian people are presented, with particular emphasis on the second kingdom. Consideration is also given to linguistic and toponymic evidence.

This study makes it possible to sketch as faithful a portrait as possible of the Burgundian people, who, at the end of their historical trajectory, became a constituent element of the French and Swiss populations. At the same time, it highlights the importance of their interactions with other major actors of Late Antiquity: the Huns, destroyers of the first kingdom; the Goths; the Alamanni; the Alans; and the late Roman world, which the second kingdom both extended and replaced. The composite culture of Burgundian Gaul in the fifth and sixth centuries, shaped by these various influences, reflects a period of intense interaction and the formation of new identities.

FEATURED PHOTO:

Vase of St. Martin at St. Maurice d’Agaune. Source: Wikipedia.The myth is, the vases was gifted to the Monastry at Agaune by St. Martin of Tours. Likely, hoever it was a gift from Sigismund while king to his new abbey. The core of the vase is from the 2. century BC, while the setting is likely to have been worked at the end of the 5th century. Thus, the vase illustrates the point made by Ian Wood that the Burgundian politi was a cultural patchwork.

READ ALSO:

Saint-Maurice d’Agaune

History of Saint-Maurice d’Agaune

The Treasure of the Abbey of Saint-Maurice d’Agaune

Textiles from Saint-Maurice d’Agaune

Archaeological excavations at Saint-Maurice d’Agaune

Port of Genoa 1481. By Christoforo Grassi. © Galata Maritime Museum. Source: Wikipedia

‘The Desire for Syria in Medieval England

Silks, spices, fruits, jewels, glass… desired and coveted exotica were luxury products out of Syria in the Late Middle Ages. New Book by Myerson tells the story

The Desire for Syria in Medieval England
by E. K. Myerson
Cambridge University Press 2025

Cover the desire for syriaThis book explores how desire for Syrian luxury goods reshaped English culture in the late Middle Ages. Focusing on the circulation of commodities known collectively as Syriana—sweet wines, spices, silks, jewels, and minerals—it shows how international trade connected England to the eastern Mediterranean and embedded the Levant deeply within English imagination, material life, and systems of meaning.

The study is anchored in a dramatic historical event. In June 1458, two English merchant ships returning from the Levant were attacked by pirates off the coast of Malta. Their captain, the Bristol merchant Robert Sturmy, was killed, and a cargo worth an extraordinary sum was seized. Recovered through legal records and inventories, this lost shipment provides a point of entry into a wider history of commerce, violence, longing, and cultural encounter.

Using this incident as a lens, the book reconstructs the afterlives of Syrian goods in medieval England. These commodities, once associated with the Holy Land and later traded through the markets of the Mamluk Empire, carried layered meanings: sacred, medicinal, aesthetic, and erotic. They circulated not only through ports and marketplaces, but also through texts, images, recipes, churches, workshops, and domestic spaces.

Drawing on archival research alongside art history, literary analysis, and theoretical perspectives, the book argues that Syriana functioned as a powerful cultural category. It shaped English art and language, transformed practices of medicine, cuisine, craft, and religion, and revealed an ambivalent relationship to the East—marked by fascination, appropriation, and desire as much as by fear or hostility.

By following these goods and the fantasies attached to them, the book reframes medieval England as a place formed through global entanglements. It shows how commerce and imagination worked together to produce enduring ideas about luxury, difference, and power—ideas whose legacies continue to shape the present.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

E. K. Myerson is an artist, writer, and curator, currently studying at the Royal College of Art. His academic and creative writing has appeared in publications including GLQ, The TLS, Wasafiri Magazine, New Medieval Literatures, postmedieval, and Wellcome Collection Stories. He received his PhD in medieval literature from Birkbeck College in 2022, and have held postdoctoral fellowships at the Wellcome Trust / ISSF Fund, the Parker Library, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

FEATURED PHOTO:

Port of Genoa 1481. By Christoforo Grassi. © Galata Maritime Museum. Source: Wikipedia

READ MORE:

Medieval Cookbooks from Syria, Egypt and El Andalus

 

Pomegranates and a Medieval Royal Dress from 1400

Mamluk silk from Syria or Egypt

Bamberger Apocalypse Folio 43, Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, MS A. II. 42 detail/ source; wikipedia

Books about Apocalypses

Apocalyptic thinking was a common topic in Late Antiquity, reaching into the early Reformation. The following lists recent books outlining the history behind the topic and its different forms of artistic renditions. 

Read more

Medieval Emotions st Amiens Cathedral

Managing Emotions in the Middle Ages

We live in emotional times, where people constantly trump truth and enlightenment with sentiments. The question explored in this book deals with how people in The Middle Ages managed their emotions to achieve power and positions. 

Read more

Domesday book © Uk National Archives (open source)

Medieval recordkeeping and financial management in the high and later Middle Ages was witnessed by  numerous accounts. New book provides an introduction to this source material

Read more

Dedication scene from the Armorial of Gilles Le Bouvier

The Observations of Gilles le Bouvier

Gilles le Bouvier (1386 -1455) was the senior herald to the French king, Charles VII. In his lifetime he wote a geographical treatise based on his travels. New English edition offers a fascinating view of Europe in the beginning of the 15th century

Read more

Head of a youngster or female from Manuscript in the Universitätsbibliothek Klagenfurt: Signatur PA 109

Millstatt Abbey and its Library

Millstatt was founded c 800 by the Duke of Carinthia, who built the first church after he allegedly destroyed one thousand pagan statues by throwing them into the lake. A later Abbey housed a significant collection of texts in high medieval German literature

Read more

Four horsemen in the Apocalypse of St Sever Beatus. Source: Bnf/wikipdiea / open domain

Is the Environment a Weapon?

War belongs to a handful of crises such as environmental disasters, extreme climatic events, epidemies, and hunger. New book tells the story of the interplay

… the obstacles that made me fail did not come from men; they all came from the elements. In the south, the sea has been my undoing; in the north, the burning of Moscow and the cold of winter. Thus water, air, and fire, all of Nature, nothing but Nature-these have been the enemies of a universal regeneration which Nature herself demanded!
Napoleon Bonaparte, in exile on St. Helena, 1816 (Quoted by Charles Travis)

Environment as weapon - coverEnvironment as a Weapon
By Charles Travis
Springer Verlag 2024

The book “Environment as a Weapon” considers how the confluence of war and nature from the time of the Agricultural Revolution (10,000 BCE) to our present day has been represented in works of history, geography, and literature. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Torah,  Greco-Roman myths, and the New Testament, warfare is a trope commensurate with environmental disasters, extreme climate, and plague.

One of the more pregnant vignettes of this may be found in the motiv of the Four Apocalyptic Horsemen. However, other stories sets the scene for similar horrors. To name but a few, the Táin and Beowulf environments become allies and enemies in the Middle Ages. Somewhat later, the equestrian steppe is considered as the foundation of Genghis Khan’s Pax Mongolica, and is chronicled in The Secret History of the Mongols and The Travels of Marco Polo. The West African Griot legend of Sundiata and the Little Ice Age wreck of the Spanish Armada in 1588 speak to oceanic and atmospheric dimensions of warfare. Further up in history, the motiv become even more pronounced. Thus, during the American Revolution political pamphlets, poetry, diaries and weather logs reflect the severe weather and terrain deployed by George Washington’s early campaigns in the War of Independence. Napoleon’s midwifing of Total War is captured in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and Charles Minard’s carto-graph, Carte Figurative of the disastrous 1812 French invasion of Russia. The U.S. Civil War and the industrial-organic assemblages of its battles, arguably the first Anthropocene War, are parsed by the clarifying poetry of Emily Dickinson. Geopolitik and geo-hazards of flood and fire feature in the Global War works of Samuel Beckett, Kurt Vonnegut, and James Dickey. The literature of Vietnamese and American war combat veterans reveals how North Vietnam’s Environmental Military Complex stalled the American Military Industrial Complex in the jungles, and R&R districts of southwestern Asia. Finally, the sci-fi of H.G. Wells’ World Set Free and David Mitchell’s Cloud-Atlas frame Oppenheimer’s sub-atomic deployments at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, James Lovelock’s “Gaia,” and U.S. military discourses situating global warming as a national security threat to America.

Indeed, Environment as a Weapon ironically resonates with U.N. Secretary General António Guterres proclamation that “Seventy-five years ago, when the world emerged from a series of cataclysmic events: two successive world wars, genocide, a devastating influenza pandemic, our founders gathered in San Francisco promising to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” And yet, there we are once again, witnessing the environmental horrors which followed in the wake of the destruction of the Kakhovske Dam.

Thus, a holistic approach to studying and mitigating the human and environmental impacts of warfare would benefit from integrating approaches in the arts, humanities, and sciences, to better understand how the historical geographies of the Earth’s planetary systems have been perceived and deployed. Seemingly in the twenty-first century, these systems have emerged as agents of warfare, with the lithosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere transforming into the Earth’s arsenals to combat anthropogenic climate change. Geographers, historians, and scholars in environmental studies, climate change, literature, and military studies, as well as the broader environmental humanities will find this book of interest as humanity grapples with the wicked and existential question of global warming. Medieval historians of warfare may enjoy the geographer battling with Beowulf and the Táin Bó Cúailnge.

About the Author:

Charles Bartlett Travis IV, Professor at University of Texas-Arlington, Arlington, USA

Featured Photo:

Four horsemen in the Apocalypse of St Sever Beatus from the 11th century. Source: Bnf/wikipedia/open domain

 

Photo from Poggibonsi © VisitTuscany/Claudia d'Aliasi

The European Countryside in the Migration period

How transformative were the shifts in the European countryside in the 5th to 7th centuries? To what extent did people resettle less than reuse old structures such as Roman villae? New book presents a series of important casestudies

The European Countryside during the Migration Period
Ed by Irene Bavuso and Angelo Castrorao Barba
De Gruyter 2023

The volume derives from a conference held at the University of Tübingen in 2029, called “Patterns of Change. The European Countryside during the Migration Period (300-700 CE)” as part of the work carried out by the DFG-Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe 2496: “Migration und Mobilität in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter”.

The geographical coverage of the volume ranges from Britain and the Atlantic Coast to Spain and across Europe to the Caucasus between 300 and 700 CE.

Barbarians recieveing land as allotments? Detail from the Lead Medallion from Mainz. Source: wikipedia
Barbarians recieveing land as allotments? Detail from the Lead Medallion from Mainz. Source: wikipedia

The opening chapter concerns the question of the accommodation of the Barbarians and confronts Goffart’s hypothesis from the 1980s, claiming that the Roman administration did not allocate the Barbarians’ land but rather allotments of farmed-out taxes. Once and for all, Ralph Mathiesen lays this old canard to rest, demonstrating the amount of “agri deserti” available to distribute. Essential are his calculations of the available land in Gaul, where the Goths settled, forging one of the first viable successor kingdoms in the first half of the 5th century. He notes the size of a typical barbarian lot of land, approximately 6,3 ha. A reasonable number of Goths would be 10.000, craving 63.000 ha or 630 km2. With Aquitaine covering more than 40.000 km2 and an estimated 7-10% of “agri deserti” in other Roman departments, a measly 630 km2 would not represent a challenge. Not even if the allotments had to be doubled up to furnish decent farmsteads for families to survive, the Roman administration would run dry.

Next up is a chapter analysing the statistics concerning the evolution of the post-villa landscape by Angelo Castrorao Barba concerning reoccupations, reuses, and reorganisations of the Roman villae in Italy. According to this study, the villa disappeared as a typical setting for the Roman economy and landscape between the late 5th and 6th centuries (ca 500 CE). Angelo Castroao Barba parallels this study in the valley of Duoro, while Philipp Heidegger reaches the same conclusion for Southern Germany and Tivadar Vida for Pannonia. The latter also demonstrates the dissolution of vici, demonstrating an apparent discontinuity. In the Caucasus, Dmitry Korobov outlines the contemporary formation of small fortified sites and tribal kingdoms consisting of 3-400 families.

A third group of papers focus on whether grave goods are indicative of ethnic or social status, questioning the governing standpoint that social status is at the forefront, while ethnic identification may not be deduced, even to specific items such as, for instance, the form of fibulae. Michel Kazanski and Anna Mastykova nonetheless propose that while men’s ornaments might primarily indicate status, female costumes were built around heirlooms, which were seldom traded as commodities. Thus, female burials are considered starting points for exploring social relations within both rural and urban contexts in the 6th century Crimea.

Following these reflections, a group of papers discuss the discrepancy between the sparse written evidence of the period and the archaeological contributions concerning the different social and economic reorganisations following in the footsteps of the migratory movements. With the availability of a new crop of studies analysing aDNA, we now know that the migration to Britain played out in several ways, depending on the character of the migratory movements – whether military, subsistence-driven or undertaken for “the betterment of life prospects”. Acknowledging the vast movements of people, these papers focus on the study of mobilities from a variety of perspectives.

Of particular interest is the study by Nicholas Schroeder concerning the mountainous landscapes of the Vosges and Jura with the different mental perceptions of the wilderness as either a resource or a spiritual and inaccessible desert. Opening up to a new framework for understanding the countryside in the Early Middle Ages, this evolves around investigations focusing on human-environment-ecology. Finally, this leads to a similar study of the Merovingian Northern Francia by Irene Bavuso between the 5th and the 8th centuries. As a vibrant borderland, the region was early on characterised by an elite engaged in trade and exchange transgressing the local region (as witnessed by the material culture excavated at central places at Uppåkra, Uppsala, Tissø, Lejre and elsewhere in Scandinavia).

Killing the pig in Carolingian time. From calendar page. Munich, CLM 210/818
Killing the pig in Carolingian time. From calendar page. Munich, CLM 210/818

Throughout the papers, the decisive role of the climate and the Justinian plague is debated. While the role of climate in the form of the Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA) is now less disputed than ten years ago, the impact of the Justinian Plague outside Byzantium is currently hotly contested. What were the consequences of the Bubonic plague, in view of the events in the 14th century, when more than 40% died in 1348-51, and social inequality grew as a function of the economic upheavals at that time? Thus, Pilar Diarte-Blasco argues “that the decrease in temperature and the increase in soil aridity influenced changes in the landscape of the Iberian Peninsula, including the development of extensive agriculture, deforestation, grazing, and transhumance”. On the other hand, other localities appear to have suffered or reacted in diverse ways. In this perspective, it is a pity the volume does not consider the very vibrant research currently carried out in Merovingian Norway, where the various consequences of a marked lowering in temperature – up to 3º C – have shown a variety of shifts in settlements and use of natural resources.

Thus, as is proper in the humanities at present, the introduction ends with a reflection “celebrating” the diversity of the different situations characterising the various geographical areas and research traditions. Nevertheless, “the contributions illuminate how different territories and societies underwent common transformations and distinctive changes, opening new avenues for appreciating the vitality of these areas during the Migration Period”, the introduction concludes.

So, what were the general shifts registered in the European countryside during the Migration period? Based on this collection of articles, we may conclude that:

  • The old Roman villa economy deteriorated in Britain, gaul, Iberia, Italy, and further east.
  • At the same time, the size of animals shrunk while people moved to the hillsides (whether for protection or to develop transhumance and agriculture of forestry (hazel, walnuts, and oak).
  • A subsistence economy characterised this new landscape based on fewer cash crops (wheat) and a larger variety, including barley, rye and oats.

To what extent this development was forged in the climatic crucible of the LALIA, and furthered by the Justinian plague will need more research of the aDNA as well as sedeDNA, shedding better light on the actual timelodged transformation of the landscapes in question than palynology might come up with. One of the sites which may yield such new detailed insights might be the continued excavations in the Maremma in the valleys east of Elba. Or, alternatively, the continuing explorations of Early Medieval Poggibonsi

The book is highly recommended

Karen Schousboe

FEATURED PHOTO:

Photo from Early Medieval Open Air Museum at Poggibonsi © VisitTuscany/Claudia d’Aliasi

READ ALSO:

Agrarian Life in Early Medieval Hilltop Villages in Italy

Medieval Poggibonsi and Surroundings