Early medieval kingship

Boniface of Canossa is a figure of great importance to the political and military history of eleventh century Italy. Modern historiography has almost universally argued that Boniface gained his power through a close relationship and alliance with a series of German emperors. Most accounts see Boniface’s fall and eventual murder in 1052 as a direct consequence of the breakdown of this relationship.
However, this analysis is flawed. It rests predominantly on the evidence of a single source: the Vita Mathildis by Donizone of Canossa. This document was produced more than half a century after the death of Boniface by an author who held complex political goals, but these have not been fully considered in the discussion of Boniface. Through the examination of the charter sources, this article argues that Donizone misrepresented Boniface’s actions and that there is considerable evidence that Boniface was not a consistent ally of the German emperors.

As the paradigm of Germanic sacral kingship has lost its appeal, historians have begun to rethink the concept of Merovingian kingship. Most of the arguments once used in support of its alleged Germanic and pagan character have now been refuted. However, the meaning of their long hair has thus far proven difficult to explain. This article will argue that the Merovingian hairstyle took up Christian meaning shortly after their conversion, presenting them in the image of the biblical Samson. Consequently, their use of biblical analogies to legitimize royal power further challenges the once-held dichotomy between Merovingian and Carolingian kingship.

There are two objectives behind this article. First, it seeks to trace down the pedigree of a theory described in scholarly discourse as the 'ethnogenesis model'. As is often believed, the theory originally was, essentially, an innovative concept proposed by Reinhard Wenskus, the German researcher. My article puts forth the idea whereby it was Walter Schlesinger who had laid the foundations for the theory, whose concept was further developed by Wenskus. My other purpose was to verify the basics of the theory itself, based on relevant empirical material; specifi cally, I mainly deal with original sources reporting on the ethnic composition and history of the Vandal people.

The cult of the ruler, its ideology and practice and the related official art are among the most interesting and challenging issues of historical knowledge. In different cultural circles and societies the manifestations of the ruling cult have a diverse character, and their study from a modern perspective helps us to get a deeper and truer knowledge of the past.

To show how a frontier power of pre-modern South Asia defined its history and identity in different ways in changing political contexts, this article presents an analysis of the unusual asura lineage of three lesser-known dynasties between the seventh and twelfth centuries in succession: the Varmans, the Mlecchas and the Pālas, who sequentially all ruled Kāmarūpa, a historical region located in the present state of Assam. Examination of three distinct phases of genealogical claims enables us to understand the ways in which the peripheral rulers negotiated with dominant supra-regional discourses, challenged political tradition of their predecessors, and carved out their own space in a new world of regional sovereignty.

Author has asked an interesting question in his study. That is, the
question of the so-called bestowing of rule by Slavs to non-Slavic rulers chosen by the Slavic community. This action is, as far as world history is concerned, known from the case of the Rurik dynasty as Russian rulers. The Slavs
from Central Europe acted in this way in the case of the Frankish merchant
Samo. As opposed to the Ruriks, Samo did no establish his own dynasty, but
the fact of “appointing” foreign rulers in itself allows for certain generalizations. It allows us, for example, to form the hypothesis that the number and
quantity of Slavic tribes and their degrees of development made it impossible
to identify their “own” prince, so it was easier to appoint an able foreign ruler
to protect and control the territory. Peter Bystrický also presents a terminological question – the question of the naming of rulers. This question has
recently launched a debate, which was not initiated by the scientific community itself, but by the political sphere and nationalistic mythology.

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Merovingian society lacked longer periods of peace as during the Pax Romana. The military was of central importance, not only on the field. Although the militarisation of post-Roman society has never seriously been in doubt, the Merovingian elite has not yet been studied more particularly in consideration of its military role. This paper analyses which military groups could be considered part of the elite and which criteria might be used to define it from a modern perspective. As the military and the secular increasingly converged, this is not an easy task indeed. The study argues that even though several groups may be gathered as being part of a military elite, this is much more difficult at less elevated levels of the upper social strata, at which the transition between the elite and the rest of the freeborn military active population is fluid.

This is chapter 2.6. from my thesis Corda regum in manum Dei. Here I have analyzed the story of the parental group known as Letingi in the Lombard Kingdom, with attention to the asptect of the royal deposition, the matrilineal legitimization and territorial representation posed also by other Lombard dynasties.

Uno studio che analizza l'editto di Rotari per estrapolarne le informazioni sul potere del sovrano longobardo, che ne chiarisca la posizione rispetto all'influenza del diritto romano e che espliciti il rapporto di legittimità che intercorre tra potere regale e diritto

The earliest monastic foundation in England was that of SS Peter and Paul at Canterbury, which obviously followed the traditions of Gregory the Great. In the North Irish traditions have attracted more attention, because of the significance of Iona for Lindisfarne and its dependencies, and because of the evidence provided by Bede, and by the anonymous Life of Cuthbert. In contrast to these two traditions, the influence of Merovingian monasticism has been rather less considered, and yet the Gallo-Roman and Merovingian monastic tradition was much more substantial than that of either Rome or Ireland, at least in terms of the number of early foundations, the wealth which they gained, and the surviving documentation, in terms of charters, rules and hagiography. Not surprisingly, the influence of Merovingian monasticism in England was considerable, reaching to Hexham, Ripon, Wearmouth and Jarrow. It is also well attested for more southern centres such as Bath and Barking, and it can be eas...

Abstract di Tesi di laurea magistrale in scienze storiche che intende proporre uno studio sul fenomeno della deposizioni nell'Italia longobarda e più in generale nell'Europa altomedievale, al quale si accompagna anche uno studio comparativo con alcuni casi franchi selezionati di deposizioni.
Master's Degree thesis in Historical Sciences.

King Solomon, the famously wise ruler of the Old Testament and successor to King David, was a popular model for kings of Europe’s Middle Ages. This chapter aims to examine the way in which King Solomon was employed as a royal exempla in the medieval West between the 9th and the 14th centuries.

https://routledgetextbooks.com/textbooks/9781138703322/chapters.php

Charlemagne and his son Louis the Pious were active supporters of the biblical typology. In the Byzantine court Leo VI the Wise was also concerned to present himself as a new Solomon. In the 13th century, Saint Louis IX of France’s Solomonic image was mostly significant at the time of his canonization in creating his hagiographic portrait; his contemporary, Henry III of England, selected King Solomon for his representation in the Painted Chamber of Westminster. The magical part of the Solomonic image also featured in the 13-14th centuries, appearing, for example, at the court of Alfonso the Wise, who was interested in commissioning magical treatises that contained allusions to Solomon. Charles V “the Wise” developed his own image of the wise kingship image with the help of the biblical king. This chapter shows the expanse of using King Solomon as royal model, and focuses on the ambivalence of this biblical exempla.

Esta monografía está dedicada a la historia de las relaciones entre el Estado y la Iglesia en los Reinos visigodos de Tolosa (418–507) y de Toledo (507–ca. 713). El Reino de Tolosa fue el primero de los así llamados reinos romano-barbáricos que aparecieron en el territorio del Imperio Romano de Occidente. El Reino de Toledo, la primera de estas instituciones cuasipolíticas, recorrió toda una trayectoria de transformación histórica: de ser una provincia formalmente sujeta a Roma, aunque usurpada de hecho por los generales romanos de procedencia barbárica, pasó a ser un estado stricto sensu, íntegro y autosufi ciente, modelo desarrollado más tarde en el sistema del estado carolingio. En una época en que las instituciones del poder público heredadas del pasado romano se encontraron en una crisis profunda, las doctrinas e ideas de la Iglesia fueron casi el único elemento de cohesión entre un sistema de poder en degradación y una sociedad que se desintegraba. La conquista musulmana a comienzos del siglo VIII terminó con la historia del Reino de Toledo, pero no pudo destruir su herencia cultural, ideológica y política, la cual fue verdaderamente enorme.

This essay engages with the earliest medieval urban panegyric (or laus civitatis) in Italy, the Versum de Mediolano civitate (739). Thanks to a fresh approach, which lies at the intersection between linguistics and history, Gamberini provides a reappraisal of the crucial passage in which the anonymous author hints at the link between the Lombard king Liutprand and the city of Milan. In so doing Gamberini unveils one of the Versum’s ultimate goals: to portray Milan’s greatness on the grounds of Liutprand’s Milanese origins.

The author studies the problem of continuity of Roman Law in the Romano-Barbarian kingdoms. Modern scholars (K.F. Eichhorn, F. Dahn, K. Zeumer, W.Reinhardt, A. Schultze, P. Merêa, A Guarino, H. Wolfram, E.A. Thompson, P.D. King, R. Collins and others) often support the view that different legal regimes existed at that time for the Romans and for the barbarians (the so-called «personal character» of law). This view is based on a broad interpretation of an article in the Burgundian Code (Lex Gund [8]). If one assumes this interpretation to be correct, this would mean that western legislation of the 5th–6th centuries witnessed a breach in the tradition of the post-classical Roman law (Theodosian Code and novellae issued by emperors of the middle and the second half of the 5th century), which was territorial in its character, i.e. applied equally to all the inhabitants of the Empire. The article shows that the idea of broken tradition contradicts both the structure and contents of the barbarian kings’ legislation of the 5th and 6th centuries. Analysis of the legislatorial activity of the Visigothic king Euric (466–484/485) and other Romano-Barbarian rulers of the period in question (Vandal, Frankish, Ostrogothic, Burgundian) shows that they not only copied the outer form of the late Roman edicts issued by prefects of the pretorium, but were guided by the essential contents of Roman Law. There was no special law for the barbarians: the law of the barbarian kings (like emperors’ constitutions before them) were equally valid for the barbarian and Roman population. At the same time Visigothic and Burgundian kings sanctioned the usage of the books of excerpts
from the imperial law in court (excerpts from the Theodosian Code, from 2nd half of the 5th century novellae, etc. – the so-called Lex Romana Visigothorum and Lex Romana Burgundorum), thus underlining the continuity of the legal system and their status of direct successors of Roman law-givers. Very typical in this respect is the edict of the Visigothic king Theudis (531–548), included, together with imperial constitutions, in the very part of the Lex Romana Visigothorum which reproduces the Theodosian code. Taking all this into consideration, the author of the paper joins those who support the view of the territorial character of the law system in the Romano-Barbarian kingdoms (A. García Gallo, A. D’Ors, R. Gibert, A. Iglesía Ferreiros and others).

Attempts to study the mythological and the cultural traditions of the ancient Irish people will never be as exact or as certain as those of the Greek and Roman traditions are often thought to be. Despite the wealth of written materials available from certain periods in Irish history, there are no clear lines drawn between myth and history in this body of this material. As with many peoples throughout the world and throughout history, these lines were often blurred for political and other practical reasons, but in the Middle Ages, especially in the case of the Irish and the other Celtic

El objeto de la investigación es el problema del carácter de la evolución de la naturaleza del poder real en la Hispania visigoda de la segunda mitad del siglo VI. Cronologicamente este periodo sigue a la época de la história visigoda descrita por el gran historiador Jordanes, quien escribió su obra en Ravenna cerca del año 550. El análisis de los testimónios textuales (los textos de Gregorio de Tours, pseudo-Fredegaro, Isidoro de Sevilla, Juan de Biclaro y otros) nos muestra el desarrollo de las tendencias fijadas ya por la pluma de Jordanes. En la segunda mitad del siglo VI el poder de los reyes hispano-visigodos perdió su base incial. La dinastía de los Baltos se interrumpió con la muerte de Amalarico II. La ausencia del legitimismo del poder real provocó la situación del casos y de las revueltas continuas, cuando ningun rey no podía controlar todo el territorio del reyno. Al mismo tiempo los últimos reyes arianos de Hispania tenían que resistir a las invasiones francas y bizantinas. En esta situación los reyes visigodos tuvieron que fomar los fundamentos nuevos de su poder. El sentido principal de las reformas regias promovidas desde la época de Aguila y hasta la de Leovigildo fué la recepción de los elementos y symbolos de la ideología del poder tardoromana y bizantina. Pero la base de la nuevas construcciones ideológicas fué la reelaboración de la ideas políticas reflegadas por los textos bíblicos y por la tradición patrística. La síntesis de los elementos de la exeriencia política del Imperio y de algunos aspectos de Cristianismo (especialmente tomados del Testamento Viejo) producieron la nueva ideología del poder. El nuevo legitimismo del rey visigodo fué basado en la sinfonía del Estado y de la Iglesia ariana. En este contexto el rey aparece como el defensor de la creéncia cristiana y no como el usurpador con el poder basada exculsivamente en la fuerza militar. Los simbolos de su poder (la capital (la urbs regia), el trono, el púrpuro, la corona y otros) tenían que acentuar el carácter legítimo de su status, que le defería de todos los otros candidatos al título del rex.  El último título ya figura no como la seña de la superioridad de hecho, pero como un análogo del título imperial bizantino. Al fin del gobieno del rey Leovigildo ya podemos constatar la formación del “anti-Byzacio” leovigidiana, es decir del estado ariano de tipo imperial contrapuesto al Imperio ortodoxo. Como sabemos, el potencial de este “anti-Byzancio” fué muy limitado, porque Leovigilo no realizó sus planes de la “arianización” de Hispania. Pero después de la conversión de Recaredo (586) y del III Concilio Toledano (589) las ideas políticas leovigildianas en su mayor parte fueron conservadas y utilizadas para constuir la nueva relidad política del Reyno Visigodo católico.

This article offers a sympathetic appraisal of the career of Donnchad mac Briain, an over-looked eleventh-century king of Munster. In addition, it is argued that his association with the Crown of Ireland and position as a genuine and supposed ancestor of various Gaelic and Anglo-Irish families (as portrayed in bardic poetry and genealogies) suggests that he possessed a positive legacy during the medieval and early modern periods.

The article is dedicated to the problem of the reconstruction of the biography of the early medieval king Leovigild (568-586), who vas a governor of the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo. His image was transformed by the centuries of the historical memory: in the Hispanic chronicles of the 7th – 13th cen. we see the different interpretations of it. Leovigild’s contemporaries (Isidor of Seville, Gregry of Tours, Pseudo-Fredegar and others) appreciated negatively the religious policy of the arian King. But if we compare their stories, we see that really Leovigild was not a kind of religious fanatic, and that the perception of he like the last was made by the Christian Hispanic clergy, which became a mane guardian of the historical memory in the Early Middle Ages. The concrete facts of king’s biography shows us the great politician, whose deals were artificially connected in the medieval written histories with the name of Reccared the Catholic, who his son and successor.

This text is the conclusions to the sessions of the symposium on The Collapse of Kingdoms in Early Medieval Europe, held in Salamanca on the 22nd-23rd of October 2015. The contributions are published in a Special Issue of Reti Medievali Rivista (The collapse of the early medieval European kingdoms (8th-9th centuries), ed. by Iñaki Martín Viso, Reti Medievali. Rivista, 17, 2 (2016)).
This short article presents reflections drawn from the essays collected in this special issue as well as from the debates of the Salamanca symposium where they originated. It does not purport to represent the authors’ ideas beyond what is strictly necessary for my argument. Firstly, I make a critical review of how political collapse is addressed in the different contributions, within a comparative perspective. Secondly, I suggest some theoretical approaches than can contribute to develop a comparative perspective on the endings of the early medieval kingdoms, based upon the notions of complexity, scale and agency.

Some years ago a revolution took place in Early Medieval history in Scotland. The Pictish heartland of Fortriu, previously thought to be centred on Perthshire and the Tay found itself relocated through the forensic work of Alex Woolf to the shores of the Moray Firth. The implications for our understanding of this period and for the formation of Scotland are unprecedented and still being worked through.

This is the first account of this northern heartland of Pictavia for a more general audience to take in the full implications of this and of the substantial recent archaeological work that has been undertaken in recent years. Part of the The Northern Picts project at Aberdeen University, this book represents an exciting cross disciplinary approach to the study of this still too little understood yet formative period in Scotland’s history.
Available 23 May 2019

The article analyses the structures that join the members or society together in mutual positions of dependence. Based on two aspects: I ) that Viking Age society was a poli-structural community in which the social relations could assume the form of both the egalitarian, feudal and slave society, and 2) that during the transition to historical times the poli-struct ural society was about to be broken up and social and  economic relations were developing which assumed a distinctly feudal character. This development was by no means completed during the final phase of t he Viking Age, but  the author attempts  to show, by analyses  of  distribution  of  land,  proprietary  conditions,  mechanisms  for  the acquisition  of  the agricultural surplus and, not  least, the vassal-like relationships entered  by  the kings of the realms of the Late Viking Age with the large landowners within  the hird  organization, that in South-Scandinavia the forms of  the social  relations during the last part  of  the Viking Age seem largely to be determined  by feudal  social and economic  institutions.

The fundamental argument of this paper is that the charter of 1014 to the arimanni of Mantua was designed to balance or even limit the growing power of the Canossan family. Three charters were issued to the arimanni and the cives of Mantua in the eleventh century. The first in 1014 by Henry II, the second in 1055 by Henry III and the last in 1091 by Henry IV. Both the 1055 and 1091 charters have been conclusively linked to royal attempts to undermine the position of the Canossan family by such authors as Hampe, Castagnetti and Moreselli. But, although the 1014 charter issued almost identical rights in a very similar manner, I do not believe that it has been previously connected to a comparable move against the Canossans.

The article is devoted to the role of liturgy as an instrument of the political propaganda in the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo, which existed from the middle of the 6th to the beginning of the 8th centuries in the territory of the former Spanish provinces of the Late Roman Empire, as well as the province of Narbonne Gaule. The so-called “Gothic” or “Mozarabic” liturgical tradition was basically formed in the period of Late Antiquity and was further developed in the time of the Toledo kingdom. The main sources in the article are the late (VII century) editions of a number of Spanish liturgical texts – the service book (“Liber Ordinum”), the Leon antiphonary and hymnal (“Hymnodia Gothica”). The author also drawn the information contained in the resolutions of the Toledo councils and the “History of King Wamba”, written by an outstanding political and religious leader Julian of Toledo (circa 642–690). It is concluded that in the situation of utmost instability of the political system of the Kingdom of Toledo during the great part of its history the role of political propaganda increased significantly. It became an important mean to support the royal power authority. The fundamental part of the Church in that sphere was determined not only because of the political theory innovations elaborated by the most educated persons of the clergy, but by the significance of liturgy as a mean to inculcate some important political ideas in the minds of the broad masses of believers, representing the Christian society as a whole. The main consequence of that Church activity was the preservation of a positive image of royal power to a certain extent compensating for the weakness of the political system.
В статье рассматривается роль литургии как средства политической пропаганды в Толедском королевстве вестготов, существовавшем во второй половине VI – начале VIII века на территории бывших испанских провинций Поздней Римской империи, а также провинции Нарбоннская Галлия. Так называемая «готская», или «мосарабская», литургическая традиция в своей основе сложилась в период поздней античности и получила дальнейшее развитие в эпоху Толедского королевства. В качестве
основных источников в статье использованы поздние (VII век) редакции ряда испанских богослужебных текстов – служебника (“Liber Ordinum”), леонский антифонарий и гимнарий (“Hymnodia Gothica”). Привлекалась также информация, содержащаяся в постановлениях толедских соборов, и «История короля Вамбы», написанная выдающимся политическим и церковным деятелем Юлианом Толедским (ок. 642–690). Подчеркивается, что в
условиях крайней нестабильности, свойственной политической организации Толедского королевства на протяжении значительной части его истории, существенно возросла роль политической пропаганды как средства поддержания авторитета королевской власти. Основополагающая роль Церкви в этой сфере определялась не только разработками в сфере политической
теории, осуществлявшимися наиболее образованными представителями духовенства, но и значением литургии как средства утверждения важнейших политических идей в сознании широких масс верующих, представлявших все слои христианского общества. В конечном итоге следствием этой деятельности Церкви являлось сохранение позитивного образа королевской власти, в
определенной мере компенсировавшее слабость политической системы.