THE CONSTRUCTION OF COMMUNITIESIN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

THE TRANSFORMATION OFTHE ROMAN WORLD

a scientific programme of the european science foundation

Coordinators

JAVIER ARCE . EVANGELOS CHRYSOS . IAN WOOD

Series Editor

IAN WOOD

VOLUME 12

THE CONSTRUCTION OF COMMUNITIESIN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

Team Leaders

Miquel BarcelMark BlackburnGianpietro BrogioloAlain DierkensRichard HodgesMarco MostertPatrick PrinWalter PohlFrans TheuwsLeslie Webster

Steering Committee

Gunilla kerstrm-HougenVolker BierbrauerNiels HannestadPrzemyslaw UrbanczykMario MazzaH.H. van Regteren AltenaHeid Gjstein ResiL. Cracco Ruggini

THE CONSTRUCTION OFCOMMUNITIES IN THE EARLY

MIDDLE AGES

Texts, Resources and Artefacts

EDITED BY

RICHARD CORRADINIMAX DIESENBERGER

HELMUT REIMITZ

BRILLLEIDEN BOSTON

2003

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is also available

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-EinheitsaufnahmeThe construction of communities in the early Middle Ages: Texts, Resources and Artefacts / ed. by Richard Corradini,Max Diesenberger and H. Reimitz. Leiden ; Boston : Brill

ISBN 90 04 11862 4

ISSN 13864165ISBN 90 04 11862 4

Copyright 2003 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored ina retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written

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printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ........................................................................ viiList of plates, figures, and tables .............................................. ix

The construction of communities and the persistence ofparadox: an introduction .......................................................... 1

Walter Pohl

Structures and resources of power in early medievalEurope ........................................................................................ 17

Dick Harrison

Gens. Terminology and perception of the Germanic peoples from late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages ........................ 39

Hans-Werner Goetz

The refugees and evacuees in the age of migrations .............. 65Wolf Liebeschuetz

The gold hoards of the early migration period insouth-eastern Europe and the late Roman Empire ................ 81

Michael Schmauder

The nomads greed for gold: from the fall of the Burgundians to the Avar treasure ............................................ 95

Matthias Hardt

Alaricus rex: legitimizing a Gothic king ...................................... 109Hagith Sivan

Changes in the topography of power: from civitates tourbes regiae in Hispania ................................................................ 123

Gisela Ripoll

Deconstructing the Merovingian family .................................... 149Ian Wood

vi

Hair, sacrality and symbolic capital in the Frankishkingdoms ...................................................................................... 173

Maximilian Diesenberger

The ritual significance of vessels in the formation of Merovingian christian communities .......................................... 213

Bonnie Effros

Social networks and identities in Frankish historiography. New aspects of the textual history of Gregory of Tours Historiae ........................................................................................ 229

Helmut Reimitz

The rhetoric of crisis. Computus and Liber annalis in early ninth-century Fulda ................................................................ 269Richard Corradini

The History of Ibn Habib and ethnogenesis in Al-Andalus .... 323Ann Christys

Abbreviations .............................................................................. 349

Bibliography ................................................................................ 351

Index ............................................................................................ 397

Notes on Contributors ................................................................ 415

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This volume is a result of the European Science Foundation pro-gramme The Transformation of the Roman World, and of further coop-eration initiated and inspired by it. During the programme, in theyears 1993 to 1997, one sub-group of scholars regularly got togetherto discuss Imperium, gentes et regna. From these discussions, twoprevious volumes in the TRW series have resulted: Kingdoms of theEmpireThe Integration of Barbarians in Late Antiquity (TRW 1), andStrategies of DistinctionThe Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300800(TRW 2). Already at the last workshops of the programme in 1997/98,a further volume was projected to look at the construction of com-munities in a broader context. Since then, the group, or some of itsmembers, have repeatedly met in other occasions, which has allowedthe completion of this volume. Some of its contributions go back topapers already presented at the last meetings of the group and weresuccessively prepared for publication. Others were written specificallyfor the volume.

As with the previous two volumes, editing was done at the Forschungs-stelle fr Geschichte des Mittelalters of the sterreichische Akademie der Wissen-schaften in Vienna, supervised by its director, Walter Pohl, who hadalso acted as team leader of the group during the TRW programme.The Academy (and in particular, Herwig Friesinger) has to receivespecial credit for creating a space for early medieval research thatis almost unique, and from which the editors have benefited. To putVienna on the map as a centre for early medieval studies was notleast the achievement of Herwig Wolfram. Thanks should also goto the European Science Foundation for funding the TRW project;this volume, as several others, demonstrates that the investment hasbeen fruitful. Javier Arce, Evangelos Chrysos and Ian Wood havecoordinated the programme and encouraged the publication of itsresults. We are also grateful to Brill, and in particular to Julian Deahland Marcella Mulder, for their patience and their swift handling ofpublication.1

1 Several colleagues helped with the task of preparing the manuscript. For theirhelp with the register we should like to thank Gerda Heydemann, MariannePollheimer and Vladimira tipkov.

viii

For translations into and corrections of the English,2 we wouldspecifically like to thank Steve Rossa, Christina Pssel, AndrewMerrills, Ian Wood, Ann Christys, Kate Cooper and Conrad Leyser.

2 of the articles

LIST OF PLATES, FIGURES, AND TABLES

Figures 13 can be found on the pages 53, 54, and 56, and Tables 13 canbe found on the pages 6264 in the paper by Hans-Werner Goetz:

Fig. 1. Frequency of the mentioning of the Germanic peoples.Fig. 2. Ethnic and territorial terms for the Germanic peoples.Fig. 3. Attributes to the expressions of Germanic peoples.

Table 1. Frequency of the mentioning of the Germanic peoples.Table 2. Ethnic and territorial terms for the Germanic peoples.Table 3. Attributes to the expressions of Germanic peoples.

Plates 113 can be found between pages 84 and 85 in the paper by MichaelSchmauder:

Pl. 1. Map of the area of Pietroasa.Pl. 2. Drawing of the Pietroasa-hoard by Henri Trenk.Pl. 3. Golden jug from the Pietroasa-hoard.Pl. 4. Silver jug from the Seuso-treasure.Pl. 5. Bird headed golden brooch from the Pietroasa-hoard with

engraved almandin plates.Pl. 6. Backview of the great, the middle, and the little brooch from

the Pietroasa-hoard.Pl. 7. Golden cup with leopard modeled handles from the Pietroasa-

hoard.Pl. 8. Goblet from the Treasure of San Marco (Venice).Pl. 9. Two golden buckles and a triming of a lost bowl from the

Apahida-grave.Pl. 10. Golden crossbow brooch from the Apahida-grave.Pl. 11. Silver jug from the Apahida-grave. Pl. 12. Fingerring with the name OMAHARVS from the Apahida-

grave.Pl. 13. Golden medaillon of Constantius I (326327 AD) from Szil-

gysomly.

x , ,

Plates 13 (Reimitz) and plates 15 (Corradini) can be found between pages268 and 269 at the end of the paper by Helmut Reimitz, and at the begin-ning of the paper by Richard Corradini:

Pl. 1. Paris, BN lat. 17655, fol. 11v (Gregory of Tours, Historiae).Pl. 2. Heidelberg, Univ.bibl., Pal. lat. 864, fol. 7r (Gregory of Tours,

Historiae).Pl. 3. Heidelberg, Univ.bibl., Pal. lat. 864, fol. 112r (Fredegar,

Chronicae).

Pl. 1. Mnchen, Bayerische Staatsbibl., Clm 14641, fol. 38r (tabulaepaschales).

Pl. 2. Mnchen, Bayerische Staatsbibl., Clm 14641, fol. 38v (tabulaepaschales).

Pl. 3. Mnchen, Bayerische Staatsbibl., Clm 14641, fol. 39r (tabulaepaschales).

Pl. 4. Mnchen, Bayerische Staatsbibl., Clm 14641, fol. 39v (tabulaepaschales).

Pl. 5. Mnchen, Bayerische Staatsbibl., Clm 14641, fol. 40r (tabulaepaschales).

xi

of a volume on late Antique archaeology of south Spain and haspublished many articles and chapters on the transformation of RomanSpain (cemeteries, architecture, urban organisation, Visigoths, Byzan-tines, . . .). She is joint editor of the book Sedes regiae (ann. 400800)(2000).

M S is curator at the Rheinische Landesmuseum inBonn and teaches early Christian and early Medieval archaeologyat the Rheinische-Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Bonn. His researchfields are late Antique, migration period and early medieval arche-ology. He has written several articles on these topics. His bookOberschichtgrber und Verwahrfunde in Sdosteuropa im 4. und 5. Jahrhundert.Zum Verhltnis zwischen sptantikem Reich und barbarischer Oberschicht auf-grund der archologischen Quellen has also just been published.

H S teaches history at the University of Kansas. Her mainarea of interest are late Antiquity and ancient Judaism. Among herbooks, Ausonius of Bordeaux (1993), Dinahs Daughters. Gender and Judaismfrom the Hebrew Bible to Late Antiquity (2002). She is currently workingon a book on the history of Palestine in late Antiquity.

I W, Professor of Early Medieval History, University of Leedswas a coordinator of the European Science Foundation scientific pro-gramme on the Transformation of the Roman World, and is serieseditor of the volumes which come out of the programme. He haspublished numerous articles on the early Middle Ages, a short bookon Gregory of Tours (1994), as well as more substantial works on TheMerovingian Kingdoms 450751 (1994), The Missionary Life (2001), andAvitus of Vienne: the Prose Works (with D. Shanzer, 2002).

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THE CONSTRUCTION OF COMMUNITIES AND THEPERSISTENCE OF PARADOX: AN INTRODUCTION

Walter Pohl

In a sense, we can regard the new kingdoms and peoples of thewest in the course of the transformation of the Roman world ascommunities under construction, and the title of the book underlinesthis aspect: perhaps a proper perspective for the third in a series ofvolumes that have emerged directly from the work of theme group1 of the TRW project.1 But the aspect of construction also representsa variety of theoretical implications, rarely made explicit in debatesamong historians. Some of them go back to the ground-breakingstudy on the sociology of knowledge published in 1966 by Peter L.Berger and Thomas Luckmann under the programmatic title TheSocial Construction of Reality.2 A similar approach to study the impactof (scientific) language on the perception of the world was developedby constructivist philosophers.3 More radical were the attempts by

1 The European Science Foundation project The Transformation of the RomanWorld made a series of international workshops possible, among them about adozen encounters of the theme group on Imperium, gentes et regna. The twoprevious volumes from this group were: Kingdoms of the Empire. The Integration ofBarbarians in Late Antiquity, ed. W. Pohl, The Transformation of the Roman World1 (Leiden, New York and Kln 1997); Strategies of Distinction. The Construction of EthnicCommunities, 300800, ed. W. Pohl and H. Reimitz, The Transformation of theRoman World 2 (Leiden, New York and Kln 1998). A further volume is in print:Gentes, Kings and Kingdoms, ed. H.-W. Goetz, J. Jarnut and W. Pohl, The Transformationof the Roman World (Leiden, Boston, forthcoming). Group 1 also contributed con-siderably to the volume The Transformation of Frontiers. From Late Antiquity to theCarolingians, ed. W. Pohl, I.N. Wood and H. Reimitz, The Transformation of theRoman World 10 (Leiden and Boston 2000).

2 P.L. Berger and T. Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (New York 1966).For a critical discussion: N. Luhmann, Gesellschaftsstruktur und Semantik. Studien zurWissenssoziologie der modernen Gesellschaft 4 (Frankfurt am Main 1995) pp. 161f.

3 Cf., for instance, the Konstruktivismus of the Erlangen School in Germany,mainly interested in the relationship between scientific language and practical life:W. Kamlah and P. Lorenzen, Logische Propdeutik. Vorschule des vernnftigen Redens (Mann-heim 1967). Implications for historical research: P. Hoyningen-Huene, Bemerkungenzum Konstruktivismus in der Geschichtswissenschaft, sterreichische Zeitschrift frGeschichtswissenschaft 8/2 (1997) pp. 282289; see also O.G. Oexle, Deutungsschematader sozialen Wirklichkeit im frhen und hohen Mittelalter, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichtedes Wissens, Mentalitten im Mittelalter: Methodische und inhaltliche Probleme, ed. F. Graus,Vortrge und Forschungen 35 (Sigmaringen 1987) pp. 65117.

2

deconstructionists, who mostly departed from a text-oriented, post-modern paradigm, to challenge traditional notions of reality.4

The problem that most of these positions set out to solve is therelationship between text, knowledge, or discourse on the one sideand social reality on the other. Language does not simply reflect theworld as it is; it is a medium of its construction.5 For early medieval-ists, this has led to a troublesome question: do we have access toan objective reality through our texts, or are these texts the onlyreality that we can grasp? However, it seems that the more radicalclaims of the linguistic turn have not gained much ground amonghistorians. It would be difficult to argue, with all consequences, that(for instance) the Roman Empire was only a literary creation. Onthe other hand, the linguistic turn has promoted a variety of inter-esting studies that have explored to what extent it may have beena literary creation; and, in response to the constructivist challenge:in what ways concepts may have shaped realities.6 After all, an empirecannot exist without the knowledge of empire. Thus, the old modelof the text as a simple mirror of objective reality has been super-seded, even as the impulse of the linguistic turn is beginning to fade.7

Closer to the topic of this volume, sociologists and modern histo-rians have discussed the construction of nationhood in a rathercontroversial manner.8 An influential school of thought, inspired byBenedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm, has established that mod-ern nations were to a considerable extent imagined communitiesbased on invented traditions.9 Foremost among its critics, Anthony

4 The impulse of deconstruction has reached modern historiography only indi-rectly, through American translations of Jacques Derridas work, for instance: J.Derrida, On Grammatology (Baltimore 1974). One of the most influential discussionsof postmodernism in medieval studies was G. Spiegel, History, historicism and thesocial logic of the text, now in ead., The Past as Text. The Theory and Practice ofMedieval Historiography (Baltimore and London 1997) pp. 328.

5 Here, Michel Foucaults discourse theorysee, for instance, M. Foucault,Larchologie du savoir (Paris 1969)has been most influential.

6 An example is the recent historiography of Roman frontiers, especially C.R.Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire. A Social and Economic Study (Baltimore andLondon 1994).

7 Cf. Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture, ed.V.E. Bonnell and L. Hunt (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 1999).

8 This is the title of a book by A. Hastings (Cambridge 1997).9 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

(London 1991); The Invention of Tradition, ed. E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (Cambridge1983); E.J. Hobsbawm, On Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Programme, Myth, Reality(Cambridge 1990).

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D. Smith has termed this the constructionist approach.10 Perhapsin a slightly reductionist fashion, he sums up its assumptions as fol-lows: nationalism creates nations rather than the opposite; nationsare social constructs deliberately engineered by elites who promotethese invented communities among the masses through a variety ofmedia; this is only possible under modern conditions.11 According toSmith, however, national sentiments were much more diffused anddeeply-rooted. A sense of ethnic identity already existed in pre-mod-ern times (and here, the medievalist can only agree). The ethnic pastis only partly invented or shaped by present concerns, on the con-trary, the past has the power also to shape present concerns.12

Smith describes his own position as ethnosymbolism; it regardsthe central components of ethnic and national phenomena as bothsociocultural and symbolic, rather than demographic or political.Apart from various symbols, like language, dress, emblems, rituals,and artifacts, these elements consist in memories, myths, values, andtraditions and in the institutionalized practices that derive fromthem.13 In many respects, this sounds familiar to early medievalistsacquainted with the work of Wenskus and Wolfram in which eth-nic myths, memories and symbols also play a key role.14 But per-haps Smiths model puts too much weight on a sociocultural/symbolicfield that is pictured as essentially separate from power and politics,and as almost immutable in the course of history?15

In research on early medieval ethnic identities, in any case, theconstructionist and the ethnosymbolic approach do not seem asirreconcilable as Smith presents them in the context of the debateon modern nationhood. The power of the past over the present andof the present over the past are in fact two sides of the same process,which in early medieval studies is particularly well researched.16 Origin

10 A.D. Smith, The Nation in History. Historiographical Debates about Ethnicity andNationalism (Hanover/NH 2000) esp. pp. 5277.

11 Smith, The Nation in History, p. 52.12 Smith, The Nation in History, p. 62.13 Smith, The Nation in History, p. 66.14 R. Wenskus, Stammesbildung und Verfassung. Das Werden der frhmittelalterlichen gentes

(Kln and Graz 1961); H. Wolfram, Origo et religio. Ethnic traditions and literaturein early medieval texts, Early Medieval Europe 3 (1994) pp. 1938; for a discussionof Wenskus approach and an overview of current debates, see W. Pohl, Ethnicity,theory and tradition: a response, On Barbarian IdentityCritical Approaches to EthnogenesisTheory, ed. A. Gillett (Turnhout, forthcoming 2002).

15 Cf. P.J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton 2001).16 A fundamental study: P.J. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance. Memory and Oblivion

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myths and ethnic memories (mythomoteurs, in Smiths terminol-ogy)17 had a similar function whether they were invented traditions(for instance, the Trojan origin of the Franks) or contained pre-ethnographic elements presumably based on oral traditions (the caseof the Goths or Lombards).18 They were in many respects constructsand fictions, but not in the sense that they remained enclosed in apurely literary universe: they contributed in the construction of iden-tities, although perhaps to a varying degree. The issue thus is notso much whether the gens existed prior to its perception, or whetherethnic discourse created it; both ways, a simple answer would riskto obscure our understanding of the complex process involved. Diffusedsentiments of belonging and their manipulation by powerful insidersor outside observers both may have played a part. When Julius Caesarcame to Gaul, a regional group of Germani probably existed on bothsides of the lower Rhine; he used the name to describe a much largerand more heterogeneous territorial unit east of the Rhine and northof the Danube; for three centuries, the Germani in Caesars senseplayed a significant part in Roman politics; and then they gave wayto two new groups, the Franks and the Alamans. We cannot tellwhether by the time when these new names appeared in late-third-century panegyrics, any barbarians would have called themselvesFranci or Alemanni; but in the long run, the two names became self-designations and expressions of ethnic identity, quite unlike the Germanibefore them, a name that never corresponded to a self-consciousethnic community.19

in the First Millennium (Princeton 1994); see also J. Fentress and C. Wickham, SocialMemory (Oxford 1992); The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Y. Hen andM. Innes (Cambridge 2000); E.M.C. van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe,9001200 (Basingstoke 1999). For a short summary of the German debate: H.-W.Goetz, Moderne Medivistik. Stand und Perspektiven der Mittelalterforschung (Darmstadt 1999)pp. 365368.

17 A.D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (London 1986).18 For an overview, see H. Wolfram, W. Pohl, H.-H. Anton, I.N. Wood and

M. Becher, Origo Gentis, RGA 22, 2nd edn. (Berlin and New York 2002, inpress). The role of oral traditions in early medieval Origines gentium is a con-tentious issue, see, most recently: On Barbarian IdentityCritical Approaches to EthnogenesisTheory, ed. A. Gillett, especially the contribution by W. Goffart, Did the distantpast impinge on the migration age Germans?, with the response by Pohl, Ethnicity,theory and tradition.

19 W. Pohl, Die Germanen, Enzyklopdie deutscher Geschichte 57 (Mnchen 2000);id., Der Germanenbegriff vom 3. bis 8. JahrhundertIdentifikationen undAbgrenzungen, Zur Geschichte der Gleichung germanischdeutsch, ed. D. Geuenich andH. Steuer, RGA, Ergnzungsband (Berlin and New York, forthcoming). For theearly Franks, see P.J. Geary, Before France and Germany. The Creation and Transformationof the Merovingian World (New York and Oxford 1988).

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Cognitive models that shape present concerns on the one handand profound social change that goes beyond contemporary per-ceptions on the other hand both contribute to the development ofethnic communities. Therefore, all the instruments available in ourmethodological tool-box have to be employed. The construction ofpast communities has to be recorded, to use an image from mod-ern cinema, not from one camera position but from as many anglesas possible. Construction, in this sense, is not only, as it has some-times been understood, the fabrication of fictions and constructs, butrefers to a wide variety of social efforts to create meaningful com-munities. The advantage of the term is that it covers both knowl-edge and action, both collective and individual efforts. This volumeattempts an exemplary discussion of the various forms in whichsignificance and cohesion could be achieved.

In this introductory piece, only a few observations can be offered.This is not the place to return to the debate on early medieval eth-nic identities, which was at the centre of the TRW volume Strategiesof Distinction.20 In this volume, the role of ethnicity as a factor ofintegration will be regarded in the context of other ways in whichcommunities were pulled together. Not all of these forms of socialcohesion could be called, in a way analogous to the TRW 2 vol-ume, strategies of integration, because conscious efforts formedonly a part of them. A community (or a social system in general)does not only exist by efforts aimed at its perpetuation.21 Sociologicaland philosophical discussions of the social construction of reality haveoften raised the question how individual actions were related to socialagency, and how individual knowledge and perceptions could addup to, or be explained by a discourse formation. Any harmonizingview is bound to fail in this respect.22 Community was not simply

20 See W. Pohl, Telling the differenceSigns of ethnic identity, Strategies ofDistinction, ed. Pohl and Reimitz, pp. 1769; for a synthesis in German, see alsoW. Pohl, Tradition, Ethnogenese und literarische Gestaltung: eine Zwischenbilanz,Ethnogenese und berlieferung. Angewandte Methoden der Frhmittelalterforschung, ed. K. Brunnerand B. Merta, Verffentlichungen des Instituts fr sterreichische Geschichtsforschung31 (Wien and Mnchen 1994) pp. 926.

21 N. Luhmann, Soziale Systeme. Grundri einer allgemeinen Theorie (Frankfurt am Main1987).

22 This view owes a lot to Philippe Bucs critique of a functionalist understand-ing of anthropological models in recent historiography, especially in the analysis ofritual: P. Buc, The Dangers of Ritual (Princeton 2001); see also id., Political ritual:medieval and modern interpretations, Die Aktualitt des Mittelalters, ed. H.-W. Goetz(Bochum 2000) pp. 255272.

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the common denominator of individual interests, or the result of itsmembers views on how it should be. Sometimes, identity was rootedin projections that had little to do with contemporary realities, forinstance among the romanized Lombards of ninth- to eleventh-century Southern Italy who stylized their remote pagan origins. Inthis context, gender roles might also be reversed; fighting womenand amazons play an important part in ancient and early medievalorigin narratives.23

One element that has to be taken into account is what might becalled the persistence of paradox. Communities do not exist byavoiding conflict but by channeling it and by privileging certain typesof conflict over others. The early medieval texts that have been pre-served are mostly expressions of discord, not of unanimity, and therhetoric of concord often is a sure sign of conflict. In fact, it is bymapping resistance and dissent that we can most easily transcendtext and get a glimpse of the realities beyond. Niklas Luhmann hasmaintained that reality can only manifest itself through resistance,and systems can only learn and develop through conflict.24 What isaccessible to historians, therefore, is not the self-assured working ofa community but rather its inner and outer tensions. The modernmyth of the autonomous author-as-creator, who writes about theworld from behind the shelter of his desk, has seriously distortedmodern perceptions of late-antique and early-medieval historiogra-phy.25 Many modern historians have in fact pictured their early-medieval colleagues in a strangely secluded literary universe remotefrom society at large and its concerns. Such aloofness seems moreinspired by the role of scholars or novelists of our time than by theearly-medieval evidence. We should rather read these works as if wewere listening to someone talking to unknown persons on the tele-phone, and try to find out more about the lector in fabula.26 It isfascinating to discover how full of tensions, contradictions, hopes,disappointments, and paradox texts such as Paul the Deacons Historia

23 W. Pohl, Gender and ethnicity in the early middle ages, Gender and theTransformation of the Roman World, ed. L. Brubaker and J.H.M. Smith (forthcoming);P.J. Geary, Cur tamdiu in feminas perseverat? Women in origin narratives, and H. Wolfram, Die Suche nach den Ursprngen, both in Die Suche nach den Ursprngen,ed. W. Pohl (forthcoming).

24 Luhmann, Gesellschaftsstruktur und Semantik 4, pp. 168ff.25 On the debate of authorship in early medieval texts, cf. P. Geary, Authorship

and authority in early medieval chartularies (forthcoming).26 U. Eco, Lector in fabula. La cooperazione interpretativa nei testi narrativi (Milano 1979).

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Langobardorum or Gregory of Tours Histories are.27 The way wehave learnt to look at their world through their eyes often is ratherdifferent from their own world-view.

We need to be careful. We have, for instance, become so used toperceiving the Roman Empire as one of the most successful statesand cultures in the history of mankind that we hardly pay attentionto the way in which generation after generation of contemporaryauthors have depicted it as corrupt, decadent and inhumane. Onthe basis of such voices, Orosius could write Roman history as aseries of disasters. We know better, for we understand that the authorsintention was to minimize the significance of the sack of Rome byAlarics Goths in 410. But was Rome in its glory really an empireof light as opposed to the ensuing Dark Ages? Tacitus may havedisagreed. Still, the Roman authors, many of them dissidents in theirspecific time and place, have constructed Rome for us; and thesame goes, for instance, for the historians of the Normans, many ofthem sceptical, disappointed or even bitter, like many medieval his-torians were.28 Consent is not necessary for construction.

The persistence of paradox also applies to human action, notonly to perceptions. One of our methodological tools as we followthe fates of early medieval peoples or states is to look at the longuedure of their respective communities. We can, to a certain degree,try to analyse conditions and consequences of their success or fail-ure: the Franks were more successful than the Gepids, the arianChurch failed whereas the catholic Church prevailed, Constantinopleremained a metropolis while Sirmium lay in ruins. Quite often, asWolf Liebeschuetz shows in this volume, it was not so much a bar-barian invasion that destroyed the Roman infrastructure in a provincebut the evacuation of populations by imperial authorities. Thus, forinstance, Odoacers order to the provincials of Noricum ripense to with-draw to Italy stopped their more or less successful integration intoa Rugian kingdom on the Danube (at least, this is the picture pre-sented in some circumstantial detail in the Vita Severini ).29 Successful

27 W. Pohl, Paulus Diaconus und die Historia Langobardorum. Text und Tra-dition, Historiographie im frhen Mittelalter, ed. A. Scharer and G. Scheibelreiter, Verffent-lichungen des Instituts fr sterreichische Geschichtsforschung 32 (Wien and Mnchen1994) pp. 375405; I.N. Wood, Gregory of Tours (Bangor/Oxford 1994).

28 Cf. E. Albu, The Normans in their Histories (Woodbridge and Rochester/NY 2001).29 Cf. Eugippius und Severin. Der Autor, der Text und der Heilige, ed. W. Pohl and

M. Diesenberger, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 2 (Wien 2001).

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efforts to construct a community might in the end come to nothing.Much of what accounted for success or failure of communities betweenAntiquity and the Middle Ages was probably due to what in Germanis very aptly called die List der Geschichte, historys cunning. When Titusdestroyed the temple of Jerusalem, he would hardly have believedthat his successors would eventually venerate as God the son of aJewish carpenter crucified there as a criminal a few decades before.

The rise of Christendom is a good example of the paradox involvedeven in the conscious and extraordinarily focussed construction ofchristian communities.30 Thanks to the amount of written commu-nication involved, we know much about the efforts that went intotheir making. We should not underestimate the extraordinary amountof spiritual ambition that motivated an impressive number of themost gifted citizens of the Empire. Conversion was not just rhetoric,it represented the most massive collective effort to change the worldthat history had seen so far. This also entailed, as Peter Brown hasrecently shown, a new sense of society in which the care for thepoor became the watershed of good government.31 Quite under-standably, barbarian invasions and the formation of new peoples inthe west were of minor importance to many christian intellectualswho strove to transform the Roman world according to the neces-sities of salvation. The contribution by Bonnie Effros in this volumeoffers an interesting glimpse of the concerns with ritual purity inchristian communities in Merovingian Gaul, which do not fit a sim-ple model of Romans vs. barbarians. The construction of ethnic com-munities, so dear to 19th- and early 20th-century historians, shouldnot be detached from the context of these efforts to build an inclu-sive spiritual identity. Gregory of Tours, for instance, was much moreconcerned with the church in Gaul than with the Frankish king-doms.32 The political outcome of the massive efforts to transform the

30 Peter Brown has explored much of the paradox in the history of theChristianization of the Roman Empire; see, for instance, P. Brown, Power andPersuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison 1992); id., The Rise ofWestern Christendom: Triumph and Diversity A.D. 2001000 (Oxford and Cambridge/Mass.1996); cf. also the masterly synthesis by R.A. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity(Cambridge 1990); and the recent study by C. Leyser, Authority and Asceticism fromAugustine to Gregory the Great (Oxford 2000).

31 P. Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Hanover/NH 2002).32 In this respect, the otherwise quite contrasting interpretations by W. Goffart,

The Narrators of Barbarian History, A.D. 550880. Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede andPaul the Deacon (Princeton 1988); M. Heinzelmann, Gregor von Tours (538594) Zehn

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Roman Empire into a truly christian civitas was totally different invarious parts of the Empire: christian-barbarian kingdoms in theLatin west, a christian Empire in the Greek provinces around Con-stantinople, and Islamic rule in the ancient orient. In many ways,this variety of political options was the paradoxical result of theattempt to create a unified christian community guided by spiritualresources, inspired by the sense of urgency and the reluctance tocompromise that such an enterprise required.

The rise of christian communities can serve as an example for adouble focus needed to understand the construction of community:On the one hand, the conscious efforts of individuals and socialgroups, and the rhetoric that accompanied it, should be studied; onthe other hand, it should be remembered that efforts and resultsmight not always coincide. We should take the professed aims ofearly medieval individuals serious, but without sharing the narrowedfocus that following these aims necessarily entailed. Even in a periodrenowned (perhaps more than it is adequate) for its scarcity of sources,we thus gain a multiplicity of viewpoints. For a long time, modernhistoriography has treated large communities of the past as thepseudo-subjects of history without even raising the problem of agency.Histories of France, of the Germans, of the church or of the medievalcity explicitly or implicitly assumed that it was France, the Germans,the church or a medieval city that actually acted through their rep-resentatives and thus made history in the full sense. This idea isbased on the way in which medieval historiography recorded theevents: the Franci waged war, and the ecclesia acted on earth in thename of God. It is not clear to everyone that these are abstractions;there is no way to define once and for all who exactly belonged tothe Franci, the early medieval ecclesia or a certain civitas because con-temporary definitions differed and might change dramatically.33 It ispointless to try and be more precise than contemporaries were or

Bcher Geschichte. Historiographie und Gesellschaftskonzept im 6. Jahrhundert (Darmstadt1994) Engl. trans.: Gregory of Tours. History and Society in the Sixth Century, trans. byC. Carroll (Cambridge 2001); Wood, Gregory of Tours, coincide. See also the contri-bution by Helmut Reimitz, in this volume.

33 I.N. Wood, Defining the Franks: Frankish origins in early medieval historiogra-phy, Concepts of National Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. S. Forde, L. Johnson and A.V. Murray, Leeds Texts and Monographs. New series 14 (Leeds 1995) pp. 4757;W. Pohl, Alemannen und FrankenSchlubetrachtung aus historischer Sicht, DieFranken und die Alemannen bis zur Schlacht von Zlpich (496/97), ed. D. Geuenich,Beihefte zum RGA (Berlin and New York 1998) pp. 636665.

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even wanted to be. Rather, it seems promising to observe how thesecommunities were constructed, deliberately or unwillingly, throughthoughts or actions. In late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages,numerous texts and actions were directed at communities and intendedto support, perpetuate, represent, explain, change, improve, criticizeor deny them. A people, a state or a church cannot exist withoutthe continuous efforts to construct them, or perhaps also, to seek anindividuals proper benefit in activities that continue to reproducethem. This is what construction of communities in the title is meantto indicate. The contributions in this volume can only offer glimpsesof this process, but they are inspired by related research interests.

Many communities throughout the pre-modern era were rathersmall and self-contained. Their reproduction was largely a matter ofday-to-day experience in face-to-face groups. This volume deals mostlywith much larger and more heterogeneous communities whose exist-ence could hardly be rooted in the small world of the village or the clan. However, it should not be forgotten that even the largestgentes and kingdoms still relied on an element of shared experienceand personal acquaintance. According to the Liber Historiae Francorum,omnes Franci still got together in the eighth century to discuss impor-tant matters and to march against their enemies in the exercitusFrancorum. Surely there was an element of ideology in this historio-graphical stress on collective action and decision. But it is very likelythat the leading groups in the post-Roman kingdoms for the mostpart knew each other, and that their sense of community was basedon personal experience and not only on abstract concepts. This wasall the more important in the wandering armies of the fourth tosixth centuries, such as the Goths who raised Alaric (the subject ofHagith Sivans contribution in this volume). There, a sense of com-munity could easily result from a common experience of hardshipand dangers, hopes and victories. These leading groups and theirnetworks, however, did not only include members of one gens; Romans,and people who originated from other gentes, were also involved.

In the western Empire in the fifth century, the most successful groupswho competed for power were mostly Roman-barbarian alliances;even Alarics Goths had their Roman counterpart, Attalus, whomthey raised as emperor, and who later took part in the ceremony atthe wedding of Athaulf with Galla Placidia. But such networks ofpower were not stable enough to last; neither Boniface, Aetius, Ricimer,nor Odoacer, to name but a few, were able to build a position that

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would outlast them. The only one among the chief players at thecourt in Ravenna whose power proved more stable was Gundobad;but that was because he could leave the shifting sands of late Romancourt politics and return to the Burgundian kingdom.34

What we need to explain is how these kingdoms of the Empirecould establish a lasting dominion in the western half of the Romanres publica.35 Contemporary authors highlight their ethnic name andcharacter. Some of this may be ethnographic ideology.36 Their suc-cess may in part be explained by the fact that the bishops, and otherchristian leaders, actually favoured their rise to power and may haveseen them as better guardians of a thoroughly christianized societythan an emperor whose intervention in matters of the church bish-ops did not always appreciate. Thus, Caesarius of Arles, Avitus ofVienne and Remigius of Rheims played important roles in the inte-gration of barbarian kingdoms on Roman soil.37 But barbarian net-works of power, even if supported by Roman bishops, would nothave sufficed to pull together (for instance) the Frankish kingdomsover many generations, and to give a sense of identity and belong-ing to the Franks and their subjects. The post-Roman gentes neededa firmer cohesive structure to survive. It is not unlikely that ethnicsolidarity had some part in it.

How did the power acquired by the post-Roman kings shape thecommunities under their rule? Hans-Werner Goetz, in his contribu-tion to this volume, discusses the relationship between gens and reg-num.38 The problem has many facets. One of them are the resourcesaccessible to barbarian rulers, a question Dick Harrison, MichaelSchmauder and Matthias Hardt raise in their articles. Even bar-barian rulers beyond the Roman frontiers depended on the lateRoman state and the Mediterranean economy for their supplies ofgold and prestige goods that alone could help them to maintain their

34 I.N. Wood, The Kingdom of the Gibichungs, Gentes, Kings and Kingdoms, ed.H.-W. Goetz, J. Jarnut and W. Pohl (forthcoming).

35 Cf. Kingdoms of the Empire, ed. Pohl; on the general argument, W. Pohl, DieVlkerwanderung. Eroberung und Integration (Stuttgart, Berlin and Kln 2002).

36 P. Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489544 (Cambridge 1997).37 See the new commented translation of Avitus of Vienne, Prose writings, transl.

D. Shanzer and I.N. Wood, Translated Texts for Historians (Liverpool 2002).38 See also the forthcoming TRW volume edited by H.-W. Goetz, J. Jarnut and

W. Pohl, Gentes, Kings and Kingdoms, which discusses this issue on the basis of a sys-tematic comparison between the kingdoms.

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position.39 These artefacts could, at the same time, acquire a sym-bolic role in the context of a language of power derived from thatof the Romans but meaningful in a barbarian universe. On Romanterritory, post-Roman kings could, to some extent, rely on Romanadministration, agriculture and structures of surplus extraction. Inmany provinces, they also inherited urban economy and culture.Throughout the late Roman Empire, however, the civitates werechanging, and in many regions their potential and their civic iden-tities declined.40 Gisela Ripoll gives an overview of the aspects ofthis process under Visigothic rule in Hispania, where the royal courtcame to play an important role in the transformation of urbanism.

A second aspect of the problem of the relationship between powerand communities specifically dealt with in this volume is the per-sonal and symbolical role of the king. Hagith Sivan presents Alaricsrule over the Visigoths as an experimentation with the grammar ofauthority which used existing late Roman forms of political com-munication.41 Two contributions return to the long-haired kings andthe supposedly Germanic, archaic nature of their legitimacy.42 IanWood argues convincingly that the Merovingian family was to a con-siderable degree constructed as well: every generation of kings selectedthose heirs who were fit to rule from a multitude of male offspring,and marked their idoneity in public ritual. In some cases, it is verylikely that the princes designed for succession were not Merovingiansby blood at all; in other cases, the issue was contentious. MaxDiesenberger supplements this point with an analysis of the longhair, symbol of the Merovingian reges criniti. Seen in the context ofother practices connected with cutting hair in Merovingian Gaul,the caesaries of Frankish kings looses much of its presumed ancientsacral character, and can rather be described, with Bourdieu, as aform of symbolic capital.43 The ethnosymbolic argument here obvi-

39 See also W. Pohl, Die Awaren (Mnchen 1988); an English translation is inpreparation.

40 W. Liebeschuetz, Oligarchies in the cities of the Byzantine east, Integrationund Herrschaft. Ethnische Identitten und soziale Organisation im Frhmittelalter, ed. W. Pohland M. Diesenberger, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 3 (Wien 2002)pp. 2535.

41 For the context, H. Wolfram, History of the Goths (Berkeley, Los Angeles andLondon 1988), still is the best introduction; cf. P.J. Heather, The Goths (Oxford andCambridge/Mass. 1996).

42 Still a valuable introduction: J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-Haired Kings andOther Studies in Frankish History (London 1962).

43 P. Bourdieu, Raisons pratiques. Sur la thorie de laction (Paris 1994), esp. pp. 175ff.

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ously has its limits; ancient traditions and their symbolical role werebalanced, in various degrees, by contemporary constructions.

The third aspect leads us back to the problem at the basis of theconstructivist approaches sketched in the beginning of this introduc-tion, and it is perhaps the most difficult question. What is the rela-tion between knowledge and reality, or, more specifically: what wasthe role of discourse in the shaping of early medieval regna and gentes?Ideology as a set of ideas consciously promoted by the king and hisadvisers to legitimate their power is only part of the answer. Whatpeople thought about power and community can hardly be describedfrom a purely functionalist point of view. We owe to Michel Foucaulta fundamental analysis of the way in which power is related to theway in which knowledge is organized, defining not only what wasright or wrong, but also what was thinkable and unthinkable, pos-sible or impossible: a kind of grammar for the cognitive and politi-cal language of the period.44 Such an archologie du savoir mayalso offer some insights into the way late antique and early medievalcommunities were conceived.

Several fundamental changes of perspective were necessary to makegovernment by barbarians acceptable to Roman minds. They hadto acknowledge that barbarians were susceptible to Roman civilitas;that barbarian peoples did not necessarily belong to a chaotic otherin which lasting order could not be established; that they could betransformed from a people by blood to a people by constitutionafter the Roman model;45 that they could become part of a christiancivitas, and even exceed the Romans in piety (as the prologue of theLex Salica claims); and that they might be related to the Romans, asthe Trojan origin myth and the so-called Frankish Table of Nationsclaim for the Franks.46 Biblical models allowed the integration of thepost-Roman gentes into a genealogy of salvation going back to Noah.47

Indeed, that was the time when the perception of the world as asociety of nations imagined through the mirror of the Bible beganto spread in western Europe, a process that Adrian Hastings hasdescribed as fundamental for the construction of modern nationhood.48

44 Foucault, Archologie du savoir.45 Geary, The Myth of Nations.46 W. Goffart, The supposedly Frankish table of nations, Frhmittelalterliche

Studien 17 (1983) pp. 98130.47 Still fundamental: A. Borst, Der Turmbau zu Babel. Geschichte der Meinungen ber Ur-

sprung und Vielfalt der Sprachen und Vlker, 5 vols. (Stuttgart 19571965, repr. Mnchen 1995).48 Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood, p. 3.

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The shaping of identities in the new kingdoms required no lessthan the gradual integration of the vast majority of the populationinto a new ethnic identity, until the core of Frankish Gaul (or thewhole of it) had become Francia, and the heartland of Lombard Italy,Lombardy. This process was accompanied, from generation to gen-eration, by a careful reconstruction of social memory. Both HelmutReimitz and Richard Corradini contribute detailed studies of thetraces such changes of identity have left in manuscripts of Frankishhistoriography. This approach, currently developed in several researchprojects at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, goes beyondthe material offered in printed editions, and attempts to open upthe relative wealth of manuscripts transmitted at least since the eighthcentury (in the case of Gregorys Histories, even earlier) for a sur-vey of the changes, variants, and rcritures that attest both to par-ticular concerns of the scribes and their communities, and to a generalreconceptualisation of memories and identities.49 Those who copiedGregorys Histories, at successive stages, redefined the spaces ofFrankish history, whereas the monks of Fulda embedded both thebasic memory of their community and the cornerstones of the his-tory of the kingdom in a new and carefully-reckoned order of time.

Elsewhere, the ethnic communities formed in the process of thetransformation of the Roman world faded with the fall of the respec-tive kingdoms, and were only recovered from a very different per-spective, as Ann Christys demonstrates in her study of recoveredmemory of the Visigoths in Islamic Spain.50 Her contribution mayalso serve to remind us that the rise of christian kingdoms in thewest was in no way a linear and inescapable process. One maydebate the reasons for the relatively little resistance that the king-doms of the Visigoths, or later the Lombards, and in fact severalother post-Roman kingdoms had to offer. Perhaps we should not

49 For an introduction see W. Pohl, History in fragments: Montecassinos poli-tics of memory, Early Medieval Europe 10, 3 (2001) pp. 343374, cf. id., Werksttteder Erinnerung. Montecassino und die Gestaltung der langobardischen Vergangenheit, Mitteilungendes Instituts fr sterreichische Geschichtsforschung, Ergnzungsband 39 (Wien andMnchen 2001); H. Reimitz, Ein frnkisches Geschichtsbuch aus Saint-Amand,TextSchriftCodex. Quellenkundliche Arbeiten aus dem Institut fr sterreichische Geschichts-forschung, ed. C. Egger and H. Weigl (Wien 1999) pp. 3490; R. Corradini, DieWiener Handschrift Cvp 430*. Ein Beitrag zur Historiographie in Fulda im frhen 9. Jahrhundert.Fuldaer Hochschulschriften 37 (Frankfurt 2000).

50 See also her recent book: A. Christys, Christians in Al-Andalus, 7111000(Richmond/Surrey 2002).

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understand those kingdoms so much as fixed entities whose unfore-seeable failure needs special explanation, but as precarious commu-nities established in times of transition which needed considerableefforts for their preservation. The post-Roman kingdoms may serveas an example that human communities do not simply exist, but arethe results of human agency and understanding. Only through theincessant activities of individuals do they acquire the significance thatis a necessary condition for their existence.

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STRUCTURES AND RESOURCES OF POWER IN EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE

Dick Harrison

There are those who believe that history exists for the benefit ofitself, that historians exist for the sole purpose of describing whatactually happened a long time ago, and that any attempt to breakfree from the bonds of specific historical periods and fields of researchby way of models, typologies, theories and broad comparisons arescholarly failures as such. According to these persons, not only canhistorians dispense with apologies for spending their lives digging industy archives and writing big, unreadable books on obscure sub-jects, they may also be proud of the fact that they, in their capac-ity as specialists in a particular historical field (like the early MiddleAges in Western Europe), know next to nothing of other historicalfields (like South-East Asia in the eighteenth century). According tothis line of thinking, a good historian should also be careful not tointroduce any modern concepts to the study in question; for instance,any attempt to understand the development of early medieval king-doms by using sociological and anthropological theories would bebound to fail. The only real way of doing good research would bethe old-fashioned historicist wayto try to understand the period onits own terms and shut out the twentieth century as much as pos-sible in order to avoid anachronistic patterns of thought.

When confronted by these traditionalist ways of thinking, whetherexplicit (as is seldom the case today) or implicit (as is still often thecase in various books and articles), I have a tendency to react withanger. In my view, history should not be studied as lart pour lart.We need history in order to view our contemporary world in a newlight, to attain new perspectives on contemporary society as well ason the past. In my view, bringing twentieth-century concepts andtheories into the early Middle Ages is not only fruitfulit is neces-sary. More than that, we should use interdisciplinary models, partic-ularly from related disciplines within the social sciences (like sociologyand anthropology), both because this helps us to see the past in anew perspective and because it helps us to use our results in orderto throw more light on the present.

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The need for theories, typologies, interdisciplinary models and broadcomparisons is especially evident when discussing structures andresources of power. Power, and the various ways in which this isachieved and used, is a key concept within many of the social sciences,including history. Unfortunately for historians using the traditionalistapproach, it is also a big, dangerous element that requires a consider-able effort, mostly of a non-traditionalist nature, in order to be suf-ficiently grasped. Indeed, the range of elements and possibilitiesinvolved in the process of attaining power, using power and losingpower are so many that no historian (at least, no honest historian)can hope to grasp all aspects of the problem within the span of alifetime. By rejecting the possibilities offered by various theories, thetypical old-fashioned traditionalist makes his or her task even moredifficult. The situation can be compared to a scene in which a blindman attempts to understand his environment by using merely hishands. When asked why he does not use his ears and his nose aswell, the man replies that this would violate the scholarly principlesto which he adheres. Consequently, many big issues, particularly theproblem of social power, is often avoided in historical studies. It iseasier, more comfortable, to focus on comparatively small, less dan-gerous, questions. By keeping the problems on a relatively low levelof historical complexity, several theoretical dangers are automaticallyremoved. Instead of asking why a certain kingdom disintegrated, manyhistorians choose to discuss particular aspects of the process, such asthe specific actions of a king, certain implications in legal texts, theimportance of specific rituals and the building of a certain monastery.

As a typical example of this general tendency to avoid crucialissues, I would like to mention Ian Woods book The MerovingianKingdoms (1994).1 Let me at first emphasise that I agree with mostof the things that are actually written in the bookwhat I do notlike is the fact that the most important issues are explicitly neglectedby the author. Wood refrains from discussing a number of key issues,such as the material foundations for aristocratic influence, the impor-tance of the Frankish army on a structural level and the basic eco-nomic functions of the fisc. His explicit argument is that these problemsare too difficult, that we do not possess enough information to solve

1 The following criticism is based on my review of the book in (Svensk) HistoriskTidskrift 1995 (Stockholm 1995) pp. 114120.

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the riddles.2 While it is undoubtedly true that the problems aredifficult, it is, however, also important to realise that the problemsin question are highly significant. Regardless of whether we can (orbelieve that we can) solve them, we, in our capacity as scholars, nev-ertheless have a moral obligation to address the issues and discussthem. To avoid the issues is, in my view, not only cowardly butdangerous. When we stop asking the big questions, the value of ourworkas seen from the point of view of a broad, scientific field ofresearchloses in value and becomes less significant. In the specificcase of Woods book, his explicit reluctance to discuss some of themost important questions concerning Merovingian Gaul has dam-aging effects to the value of the book as a whole. The book doesnot contain a discussion concerning the very foundations of theFrankish kingdomstaxes?, plunder?, systems of clientelar relation-ships?, infrastructure?, efficient use of the fisc?, churches and monas-teries?, etc., nor about how and why things happened. We neveractually learn why the Merovingians lost power. According to a tra-ditional explanation, the kings simply donated too much land. Wood,correctly, remarks that these donations could often be compensatedby confiscations of new lands.3 However, he refrains from giving hisown explanation as to why these kings were eventually replaced bythe Carolingians. Ultimately, this question depends upon which par-ticular social element (or elements) the author regards as the mostimportant asset (or assets) of power. Supposing that the most impor-tant basis for royal power was land, the answer to the questionshould be sought in how the kings actually used their landed resources.Hypothetically, they might have lost, or simply failed to use, someof their possibilities of controlling and using the fisc. At the sametime, other Frankish aristocrats (like Charles Martel and Pippin), hadno difficulty using their resources in a fruitful way. Another thingthat would have to be discussed is how the image of aristocraticpower changed from the sixth to the eighth century, i.e., how theconcept of attaining the status of king slowly matured. In the mid-dle of the seventh century, the Frankish noblemen started deposingand murdering their kings, actions that had previously been a

2 I.N. Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms 450751 (London and New York 1994)p. 3.

3 Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, pp. 204205.

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Merovingian family matter. In the middle of the eighth century, theimage had changed so much that one noble family even founded anew royal dynasty.

Woods reluctance to discuss important issues also affects the bestparts of the book, parts that could easily have been twice as goodas they are now, if the author had not chosen to avoid the crucialquestions. For instance, according to Wood, the fragmentation ofpolitical power in early eighth-century Francia was largely due tothe fact that one group of noblemen, centred around Pippin ofHerstal and later Charles Martel, managed to achieve a monopolyof political power at the centre. Other groups of noblemen (lat. fac-tiones) could no longer compete for influence at the Merovingiancourt. As as result, they chose to revolt and break away from thepolitical system altogether.4 As a hypothesis, I personally find thisvery plausible. However, I do not understand the hypothesis. Whydid the Frankish aristocrats start behaving in a centrifugal way? Whydid not the ascendancy of Pippin and Charles result in an evengreater degree of centripetality? Why did not the success of theArnulfings/Pippinids induce other families to attempt to achieve asimilar monopoly of power? If that had been the case, the situationmight have resembled the one in Visigothic Spain or Lombard Italy,where several short-lived dynasties replaced each other.

Another example is Woods failure to explain the functions of themonasteries. His chapter on the foundation of monasteries in theseventh century is one of the best in the book.5 However, his accountof what happened remains a straight-forward account, a description ofwhat occurred. He does not attempt to evaluate the qualitativesignificance of having a lot of abbots, monks and rich monasteriesas your allies. How important was itfrom a broad, societal pointof viewto have all these monks and nuns praying for the welfareof a king or a family? Did the foundation of a monastery bring addi-tional military support (for instance, in terms of potential bases fortroops)? What about economic benefits (such as clearance of lands)?Questions like these are crucial to ask if we are to understand thereal importance of early medieval monasteries. Regardless of whetherwe are fully prepared to answer them or not, they nevertheless deserveto (and ought to) be discussed. The same can be said for other infra-

4 Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, esp. pp. 237238.5 Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, pp. 181202.

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structural points of reference, places of power like the old Gallo-Roman cities. How were these used? Did they benefit the centralauthority of the kingdom simply by existing, or did they primarilyserve to strengthen the assets of episcopal power?6

Before outlining my own view on sources of power in the earlyMiddle Ages, I would like to present some initial examples by focus-ing on these two issues: monasteries and cities. Both entities are goodexamples of hypothetical assets of social power in the early MiddleAges. They may therefore serve to illustrate how these and similarassets of power have been treated on the historiographical scene andhow, in my view, they should be treated. Let us begin with themonasteries.

The primary function of a monastery is, of course, to serve as aretreat for persons wishing to devote their lives to the service of God.However, in the early Middle Ages, monasticism had developed intoa considerably more complex phenomenon. When discussing it, weshould, at least in my view, consciously use models and hypothesesaiming at elucidating as many of these functions as possible. If werefrain from doing this, we may in some cases overlook the mostimportant social functions of the monastery in question. Since wealways have to read between the lines anyway, due to the scarcityof early medieval sources, we may as well do this in a systematicmannerand not by using a traditionalist, impressionistic approachto the problem. A good way to start is therefore to use the fourbasic sociological categories of ideology, administration and politics(including legal structures), military structures and economy. In thisway, monasteries may tentatively be regarded as:

(1) Ideological centres, devoted to the service of God and fulfillinga number of cultural functions.

(2) Administrative centres, used by ecclesiastical and/or secular author-ities (for instance as residences for travelling kings).

(3) Military centres, used by ecclesiastical and/or secular authorities.(4) Economic centres (land clearance, market functions, etc.).

6 At the eighth workshop (Power in Transformation) of Working group 1Imperium,gentes et regna of the ESF project on the transformation of the Roman World, thatwas held in Los Angeles 1011 January, 1997, Ian Wood was given ample oppor-tunity to answer these questions and defend his points of view. However, he didnot. Wood simply referred to the criticism presented in this paper as being old-fashioned and refused to discuss the problems.

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This broad outline, however, is not sufficient. Each of these mainfunctions can be divided into a number of subfunctions, and thepossibilities of combinations of a number of functions and subfunc-tions are virtually limitless. For instance, many monasteries wererecipients of various gifts and donations, thereby serving to strengthenthe psychological well-being of the donors (e.g. in the case of giftsfor the purpose of keeping the memory of a deceased relative alive).In many cases, monasteries (and donations to monasteries) also servedas focal points in the construction of social networks and familyalliances.7 In both of these cases, control of a monastery impliedinfluence in local and regional society on several levels, dependingon the wealth and political importance of the benefactors. Elementsof economic and ideological power were thereby closely knit togetherin a way that could have serious political consequences. In the end,the monastery could easily become an important administrative andmilitary asset of power as well. In the most extreme case, the abbotsmight become key agents in a network of royal influence, such as inearly Capetian France, or create virtually independent states, as hap-pened to some of the great monasteries in medieval Germany (likeFulda and Hersfeld). In some cases, the ideological and economicinfluence of monasteries may develop to the degree that monasticismbecomes dangerous to the survival of the political entity. A famousexample is the situation in twelfth-century Burma, where royal powerwas gradually eroded by generous donations to Buddhist monasteries.8

Much of this is well-known to historians. My point is that a sys-tematic survey using consciously constructed theoretical models mayreveal even more, may force us to look at combinations and hypothesesthat we would otherwise have ignored out of scholarly habit. We tendto regard certain monasteries in a traditional way, and it is hard tobreak away from this and similar perspectives that have served uswell in the past. To take another non-European example, it is well-known that the huge temples and monasteries of the Kings of Angkorin present-day Cambodia served as ideological tools to strengthenthe monarchy. It has also been generally supposed that they wereimportant as leading institutions in the construction of irrigation

7 B. Pohl-Resl, Vorsorge, Memoria und soziales Ereignis: Frauen als Schenkerinnenin den bayerischen und alemannischen Urkunden des 8. und 9. Jahrhunderts,Mitteilungen des Instituts fr sterreichische Geschichtsforschung 103, 34 (1995) pp. 265287.

8 M. Aung-Thwin, Pagan. The Origins of Modern Burma (Honolulu 1985).

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systems. After all, this is what learned specialists often do in pre-industrial kingdoms with an economic basis consisting of agriculturalresources. However, these temples and monasteries are today regardedas even more important units of social power than was previouslythe case. It would appear that they formed a part of a political net-work serving to subordinate the local nobility to the central author-ity in terms of ideology (i.e., by stressing the religious importance ofthe king and his supreme temples), economy and administration.9

Turning back to early medieval Europe, it is clear that manymonasteries, and monastic systems, have never really been thoroughlydiscussed from this point of view. Usually, those discussing monas-ticism have studied one single aspect, like the purely spiritual devel-opment of the monastic orders or the foundation of monasteries bylandlords, queens and others. In other words, the functions of anearly medieval monastery has often been determined by the specificinterests of the twentieth-century scholar in question, despite the factthat most historians strive to achieve an understanding of the his-torical period of study on its own terms. In my view, this under-standing can never be achieved until someone invents a time-machine,so we may as well acknowledge our modern way of thinking anddo the best we can. To take just one example of an aspect that hasoften been automatically avoided, we may look at the monastery asa military centre. Some monasteries could have had a military func-tion that is usually invisible in the sources (because it was taken forgranted). It is hard to believe that a rich, economically and ideo-logically important centre in the countryside was left completelyunguarded in the troubled times of the early Middle Ages. It is hardto imagine a king not speculating on the military potential of sucha centre. In fact, some scholars have speculated along these lineswith regard to the monasteries of Lombard Italy,10 but no real, sys-tematic effort has been made, for instance with regard to studies ofrural topography, the archaeology of castra (which, in itself, is anextremely neglected subject) and studies of patterns of donations andlandholding. As for early medieval Gaul, there are a number of illu-minating studies concerning the relations between nobility, monasteries

9 K.R. Hall, The temple-based political economy of Angkor Cambodia, TheCambridge History of Southeast Asia 1, ed. N. Tarling (Cambridge 1992) pp. 229240.

10 T.O. De Negri, Storia di Genova (Milano 1968) (on Liguria); K. Schrod, Reichsstrassenund Reichsverwaltung im Knigreich Italien (7541197) (Stuttgart 1931) (with morereferences).

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and episcopal offices by scholars like Prinz, Graus, Angenendt,Heinzelmann and others,11 but our knowledge of the social and polit-ical connections that have been revealed by these studies have rarelybeen put to good use in attempts to explain the larger, politicalscene. For instance, it would be interesting to see these studies usedin order to explain how the Merovingian monasteries of the seventhcentury functioned in their capacity as assets of social power if com-pared with the patterns of power generated by aristocratic land-holding and the assumption of political offices.

The study of early medieval monasteries is only one of many pos-sible examples of how medievalists have neglected important fieldsof research by avoiding the use of theory. An even better exampleis the study of towns. When I was working on my book on townsin Lombard Italy, I read hundreds of books, articles and archaeo-logical reports all devoted to the subject of Italian towns. I made apoint of checking exactly how each author visualised the townswhether they were regarded as economic centres, ideological cen-tres, juridical centres or military centres. In other words, I wassearching for an awareness of the potential functional complexity ofcentres and central places. In many other disciplines, like culturalgeography, this approach is not at all controversial; in fact, it is oftentaken for granted. Before starting my own investigation, I carefullystudied what geographers like Dietrich Denecke and archaeologistslike Hans Andersson have said on the subject.12 It did not take melong to realise that the theoretical models and typologies availablefor the study of towns are quite elaborate and often quite good,

11 Mnchtum, Episkopat und Adel zur Grndungszeit des Klosters Reichenau, ed. A. Borst,Vortrge und Forschungen 20 (Sigmaringen 1974) (containing several articles); M. Heinzelmann, Laristocratie et les vchs entre Loire et Rhin jusqu la fin duVIIe sicle, Revue dHistoire de lglise de France 62 (1976) pp. 7590.

12 D. Harrison, The Early State and the Towns. Forms of Integration in Lombard ItalyA.D. 568774 (Lund 1993) pp. 2932. See especially H. Andersson, Zentralorte,Ortschaften und Stdte in Skandinavien. Einige methodische Probleme, Kiel Papers72. Frhe Stdte im westlichen Ostseeraum. Symposion des Sonderforschungsbereich 17. Skandinavien-und Ostseeraumforschung, ed. H. Hinz (Neumnster 1972); D. Denecke, Der geo-graphische Stadtbegriff und die rumlich-funktionale Betrachtungsweise bei Sied-lungstypen mit zentraler Bedeutung in Anwendung auf historische Siedlungsepochen,Vor- und Frhformen der europischen Stadt im Mittelalter. Bericht ber ein Symposium inReinhausen bei Gttingen vom 18. bis 25. April 1972, Teil 1, ed. H. Jankuhn, W. Schlesinger and H. Steuer (Gttingen 1973) pp. 3355; M. Mitterauer, DasProblem der zentralen Orte als Sozial- und Wirtschaftshistorische Forschungsaufgabe,id., Markt und Stadt im Mittelalter. Beitrge zur historischen Zentralittsforschung, Monographienzur Geschichte des Mittelalters 21 (Stuttgart 1980) pp. 2251.

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founded on years of careful research and a lot of serious thinking.They are excellent tools of historical research, provided that we wantthem. However, it turned out that hardly anyone of the authors writ-ing about Italian towns had grasped the idea of functional com-plexity. Most of them simply described those aspects of the townsthat were most interesting from their own points of view. Some choseto emphasise the towns as market centres. Others subordinated thetowns to general ideas concerning the paramount importance of themilitary sector. Some chose to discuss the early medieval towns fromthe point of view of antiquity, i.e., as centres for both secular andecclesiastical administration.13 I think it is fair to say that most ofthese studies were seriously harmed by the fact that the authors didnot stop to reflect on the possibility of using models and theories.In fact, some administrative aspects (especially the function of townsas centres for everyday juridical acts) are almost completely absentfrom most previous research on Italo-Lombard towns. As I was ableto show myself later in the book, there is much to be gained bystudying the functional complexity of early medieval Italian towns.From the point of view of medievalist scholarship, it is tragic thatnoone thought about this sooner. It is even more tragic that so manycontemporary medievalists still adhere to an old-fashioned set of opin-ions that includes an outspoken animosity towards theories as such.Many medievalists regard these as completely superfluous, sometimeseven dangerous. In an otherwise positive review of my book on theLombards, Reinhold Schumann complained, in American HistoricalReview, that Dick Harrison, in writing this book, is like an archi-tect who leaves the scaffolding in place after he has erected the build-ing.14 What Schumann apparently fails to understand is that thescaffolding has a purpose. By making the theories and the modelsexplicit, the fundamental reasons for studying and discussing historybecome apparent. By placing studies on early medieval history withina large theoretical system, the results can easily be discussedandused by non-medievalists. What would otherwise have been just anotherstudy of a period that, even for the majority of the historians of the world, is dark and obscure may instead be consciously and fruit-fully used in comparisons with, for instance, contemporary studies

13 Harrison, The Early State and the Towns, pp. 5986.14 R. Schumann, review of Harrison, The Early State and the Towns, American Historical

Review ( June 1994) pp. 88283.

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of infrastructural problems in the Third World as well as problemsof warfare, tributary systems and ideology in non-European historicalsocieties. In this way, we mayas was stated in the beginning ofthis paperuse our results in order to throw more light on the pre-sent. By keeping the scaffolding intact, we give history a purpose.To oppose this way of using scholarly results is, in my view, an actof dangerous anti-intellectualism.

For some reason, it would seem that medievalists in general, andearly medievalists in particular, are doing their best (or rather theirworst) to avoid theories and models. If we were to take a historio-graphical leap forward to the early modern period, i.e., the sixteenthand seventeenth centuries, we would find a general openness to theo-retical thinking that has few parallels in the world of early medieval-ist scholarship. The most famous example would probably be themajor work on the formation of national states in Western Europethat was edited by Charles Tilly in 1975.15 In this work, a numberof models and theories are explicitly used in order to advance ourunderstanding of the transformation from medieval to early modernsocietya similar work on the transformation from antiquity to theMiddle Ages does not exist. If we look at some of the prominenthistorians studying early modern society today, like Peter Burke, weoften encounter explicit discussions of works by, for instance, Bakhtin,Foucault, Elias and other non-historians.16 Despite the fact that manyof these theories may easily be used in studies of early medieval his-tory as well, this is very rarely done.

How, then, should we approach the gigantic problem of resourcesand structures of power in the early Middle Ages? In one of themost interesting works on power as a historical category, MichaelMann (1986) suggests that social power should be regarded as a sys-tem of networks. Societies are, according to Mann, constituted ofmultiple overlapping and intersecting sociospatial networks of power.The sources of social power are, of course, largely determined bythe specific cultural environment of the period in question. However,most sources can be summarised in four broad categories: ideologi-cal sources, economic sources, military sources and political sources.17

15 The Formation of National States in Western Europe, ed. C. Tilly (Princeton 1975).16 P. Burke, History and Social Theory (Cambridge 1992). In this book, Burke dis-

cusses the value of sociological concepts and social theory to historical research aswell as the use of historical methods and results within sociology.

17 M. Mann, The Sources of Social Power 1 (Cambridge 1986) pp. 518521.

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In some societies, military sources are more important than politi-cal ones. In other societies, power generated by economic sourceshas a tendency of providing more social influence than power gen-erated by political and ideological sources, and so on. From ourpoint of view, as historians, this general social theory has the advan-tage of creating both a model for the transformation of society interms of changing network patterns and a model for empirical analy-sis of a particular society. By using the economic, ideological, admin-istrative (political and juridical) and military sectors of society asprimary fields of research, our ability to empirically grasp the sig-nificance of a historical phenomenon increases considerablyas wasdemonstrated previously in this paper with regard to the study ofmonasteries and towns.

I will now attempt to use these four basic categories in order toconstruct a hypothetical model of the transformation from antiquityto the Middle Ages as seen from the perspective of fundamentalchanges in the relative importance of various sources of social power.

Economic sources of power

The landed resources of an early medieval kingdom, i.e., the fisc(the royal domain) and the various kinds of estates controlled by theleading strata of society, must be regarded as a factor of fundamentalimportance in any discussion concerning power in the Middle Ages.This is very apparent in the high Middle Ages, when Louis VI andhis descendants transformed le-de-France into the fiscal core of thekingdom of France and when the kings of Germany in vain attemptedto create their own fiscal networks both in Germany and in Italy.The general importance of landed resources in the early MiddleAges, especially during the seventh and the eighth centuries, is muchless discussed, despite the fact that the relative value of this sourceof power must have experienced a marked increase during this period(due to the disappearance of taxation).

When studying landed resources, we should note that, althoughwe might know that some kings controlled a large fisc, this does notmean that we also know that the fisc was of paramount importanceto the political influence wielded by the kings. On the contrary: pos-session of land is one thing, control of the landor, rather, controlof the possibilities inherent in landholdingwas another. If land had

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been enough, most early medieval kings in all of Europe would havebeen very successful and strong. That they were not leads us to theassumption that the degree of control of landed resources varied con-siderably. For instance, it is clear that the network of socio-economicallyimportant cities in Lombard Italy provided a number of firm basesfor the control of the royal domain south of the Alps. In this case,the continuing existence of late Roman infrastructural traditionshelped to facilitate the exploitation of landed resources. In this way,the royal finances were kept in order, loyal servants were rewardedwith occasional gifts, royal monasteries were founded and the agentsof the king had a firm economic and political basis for their work.18

As for the situation north of the Alps, one might suggest that, whendebating the downfall of the Merovingians, the ways of controllingthe fiscal resources should receive greater attention than has previ-ously been the case. How easily could the Frankish royal estates becontrolled by the central authority? Who actually ran them? Whatabout infrastructural access (such as distance to towns and roads)?If landed resources were as important to the Franks as they were tothe Lombards, then this line of questioning is extremely important.

Searching for other sources of income, we quickly realise that, inmost early medieval kingdoms, a number of taxes, dues and dutiesstill existed. The kings also received an irregular income from sourceslike fines, inheritance, confiscation and minting. Usually, these sourcesof income are difficult to comprehend both on a quantitative and aqualitative level. It is doubtful that the early medieval kings anddukes believed that they could actually run a kingdom by using theseresources; and if they did, they would certainly have been discouragedvery soon. Still, these sources of power were sufficiently important tobe kept alive for centuries. While it is impossible to ascertain their quan-titative value, we can in fact speculate on their qualitative importance.

To take a famous example from Lombard Italy, we may look atthe charter given by Liutprand to merchants from Comacchio trav-elling on the Po. According to the charter, the merchants had topay a number of duties to the riparii, the royal officials at the ports.19

18 This is one of the main arguments of D. Harrison, The Early State and the Towns,esp. p. 229.

19 L.M. Hartmann, Zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte Italiens im frhen Mittelalter. Analekten(Gotha 1904) Anhang 1, pp. 123124.

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One reason was, of course, the fact that the Lombard administra-tion, like most administrations, was greedy. However, there mighthave been additional reasons for this control. In many pre-industrialsocieties, merchants in general have a tendency to be regarded asspies. The riparii may, to use modern terms, have been detectives aswell as tax collectors. In that case, a network of income that appearsto be of a strictly economic nature may turn out to be a part ofthe military sector as well.

Ideological sources of power

When discussing ideology, I mainly refer to belief systems, to man-ifest ideas and explicit patterns in human mentality. Another way ofdescribing this is to use the term value systems. Today, we havemany value systems, such as the value systems of scientists in thepost-Darwin era, the value systems of postmodernist thinkers, thevalue systems of Western democracy, the value systems of environ-mentalists and ecologists, the value systems of religions and sub-cul-tures, and so on. Few, if any, epochs in human history have beenmore flexible and rich in terms of ideological variety than the latetwentieth century. The difference between contemporary society andthe Middle Ages is enormous. In the Middle Ages, what I refer toas ideology is mostly referred to as religion. The number of valuesystems to choose from was, if compared to the twentieth century,exceptionally small, especially if you consider the possibilities of edu-cation. However, there were several separate ideological functionsthat could potentially be controlled and used by different individu-als. In order to understand the potential of ideological resources, wemust attempt to locate and study as many of these separate func-tions as possible. I have already discussed one such aspect above,i.e., monasticism.

It was a common feature of many pre-industrial countries all overthe world that the upholders of the dominant ideology (like Christian-ity, Hinduism or Buddhism) supported and sometimes laid the basicfoundations for administrative reforms and royal power. In most med-ieval European kingdoms, Christianity was used as an importantsource of administrative power and as a means of centralisation,although the church did not always develop into a national institution.

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Christianity gave the king the right and the obligation to defend hiskingdom in the name of God and to defeat its enemies.20 Seen froma broad chronological perspective, this early development was fol-lowed by increasingly serious attempts to control not only the visi-ble behaviour of the subjects of the king and the church, but alsoto control the invisible behaviour, the patterns of human thought.This later development, which is clearly apparent in thirteenth-centurystruggles against heretics, eventually evolved into the strict orthodoxyof intolerant seventeenth-century religious institutions, like the SpanishInquisition and the Lutheran Church of Sweden. In this way, thecontrol of the sources of ideological power, or the alliance with thosewho did control them, should be seen as an important step on theroad to the powerful modern state.

The most conspicuous asset of ideological power, especially fromthe point of view of a typical historian working with written sources,is the episcopal organisation and hierarchy. Due to the virtual impos-sibility of not noticing this in the available sources, several impor-tant studies on early medieval bishops have already been made, andit would be unnecessary to list them here. My argument is that schol-ars have seldom attempted to view the bishops as elements in alarger socio-political framework with many important variations invarious countries. It is easy to maintain that bishops were importantsocial leaders in their cities. It is not so easy to determine what thisactually meant. How important was episcopal power if compared tocomital, ducal, gastaldian or royal power? Did the bishop derive hisimportance from his spiritual assignment as such, or should he ratherbe regarded as a secular ruler combining his function in the cathe-dral with his function as landlord, administrator and warrior? Again,the situation in Lombard Italy is sometimes contradictory to mod-ern eyes. While the Italian bishops definitely were less politicallyinfluential in the Lombard period than in the centuries to come,some of themlike Serenus and Calistus of Aquileiaappear aspolitical agents of the king as well as the spiritual heads of Italianchurches.21 Did this mean that the Lombard monarchy benefittedfrom the spiritual charisma associated with its loyal Italo-Lombardbishops? Or, was the political role of the bishops simply a side-effectof their general influence in local society? These are questions that

20 Harrison, The Early State and the Towns, p. 187.21 Harrison, The Early State and the Towns, pp. 203212.

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should be discussed, not only within the framework of studies onLombard Italy but as parts of broad geographical and chronologi-cal comparisons with other countries and other periods.

Another ideological aspect that should not be overlooked is theimportance of smaller churches, both the central baptismal churches ofthe emerging parishes and the even smaller chapels and oratoria. Asis clearly seen in the documents concerning the feud between Sienaand Arezzo in the beginning of the eighth century, these smallerchurches could be extremely important in local society.22 Sometimes,these smaller churches could evolve into focal points for social dom-ination in villages, as was shown by Chris Wickham in his study ofthe Garfagnana valley.23 These Italian examples are excellent remindersof the importance of remembering local society when trying to cre-ate a general picture of early medieval structures of power.

Administrative, political and juridical sources of power

One crucial aspect of social power is the ability to enforce rules andregulations on the subjects of a political unit, such as a regnum.Unfortunately, we have very little information as to how this actu-ally was done, but there are many hints as to the various elementspotentially involved in the process. One of the most important ofthese is legislation.

The actual aims of early medieval legislators have often been mis-understood. For a historian, it is difficult to decide whether a law-code is to be interpreted as an instrument of royal image-building,or whether the legislator was aiming at regulating practice and con-trolling behaviour. It has, however, been generally accepted that mostSouthern European law-codes from the early Middle Ages had a de-finite place in everyday life outside the palatia where they were written.These laws were used by noblemen, priests, merchants, artisans andp