Merovingian Kingdom

A new book outlines the political arguments put forward in the Merovingian hagiographical writings

BOOK: The Social Life of Hagiography in the Merovingian Kingdom
By Jamie Kreiner
Series: Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series
Cambridge University Press 2014
eBook
ISBN: 9781139899444

ABSTRACTThe Social Life of Hagiography- cover

This book charts the influence of Christian ideas about social responsibility on the legal, fiscal and operational policies of the Merovingian government, which consistently depended upon the collaboration of kings and elites to succeed, and it shows how a set of stories transformed the political playing field in early medieval Gaul. Contemporary thinkers encouraged this development by writing political arguments in the form of hagiography, more to redefine the rules and resources of elite culture than to promote saints’ cults. Jamie Kreiner explores how hagiographers were able to do this effectively, by layering their arguments with different rhetorical and cognitive strategies while keeping the surface narratives entertaining. The result was a subtle and captivating literature that gives us new ways of thinking about how ideas and institutions can change, and how the vibrancy of Merovingian culture inspired subsequent Carolingian developments.

  • Addresses the theory and practice of history in accessible terms
  • Combines various historical methods to provide a new model for analysing already well-studied fields of history and historical texts
  • Connects two historical periods, the Merovingian and the Carolingian, that are normally isolated from each other in monographs

CONTENT

Introduction
1. Hagiographical argument and legal culture
2. The style and science of persuasion
3. Double-scope narrative and the economy of government
4. Property and community beyond the cult
5. The Carolingian synthesis
Appendix
Bibliography
Index

 AUTHOR

Jamie Kreiner is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Georgia where she researches and teaches the history of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. She recently published an article about Autopsies and Philosophies of a Merovingian Life: Death, Responsibility, Salvation 

 

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