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The Visigoths from the Migration Period to the Seventh Century
Between 376 and 476 the Roman Empire in western Europe was dismantled by aggressive outsiders, "barbarians" as the Romans labelled them. Chief among these were the Visigoths, a new force of previously separate Gothic and other groups from south-west France, initially settled by the Romans but subsequently, from the middle of the fifth century, achieving total independence from the failing Roman Empire, and extending their power from the Loire to the Straits of Gibraltar. These studies draw on literary and archaeological evidence to address important questions thrown up by the history of the Visigoths and of the kingdom they generated: the historical processes which led to their initial creat...
The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples
An account of the Germanic peoples and their kingdom between the 3rd and 8th centuries, as they invaded, settled in and transformed the Roman empire.
The Nitrian Principality: The Beginnings of Medieval Slovakia
In The Nitrian Principality: The Beginnings of Medieval Slovakia Ján Steinhübel offers an account of the early medieval West Slavic realm which laid the national, territorial and historical foundations of Slovakia.
Barbarians, Maps, and Historiography
To complement his first collection of articles (Rome's Fall and After, 1989), Walter Goffart presents here a further set of essays, all but two published between 1988 and 2007. They mainly focus on two types of historiography: early medieval narratives, with special attention to Bede's Historia ecclesiastica; and printed maps designed to portray and teach history, with special attention to the ubiquitous 'map of the barbarian invasions'. The wide-ranging concerns represented extend from the underside of the Life of St Severinus of Noricum, and further evidence for dating Beowulf, to the questions whether the barbarian invasions period was a 'heroic age' and how Charlemagne shaped his own succession. Attention is also paid to the earliest map illustrating the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy and to the historical vignettes of the Vatican Galleria delle carte geografiche. The collection opens with the appraisal of certain writings dealing with what is now called 'ethnogenesis theory'. To conclude, Professor Goffart adds brief second thoughts about each of these essays and supplies an annotated list of his articles that have not been reprinted.
The Making of the Slavs
This book offers an alternative approach to the problem of Slavic ethnicity in south-eastern Europe between c. 500 and c. 700, from the perspective of current anthropological theories. The conceptual emphasis here is on the relation between material culture and ethnicity. The author demonstrates that the history of the Sclavenes and the Antes begins only at around 500 AD. He also points to the significance of the archaeological evidence, which suggests that specific artefacts may have been used as identity markers. This evidence also indicates the role of local leaders in building group boundaries and in leading successful raids across the Danube. Because of these military and political developments, Byzantine authors began employing names such as Sclavines and Antes in order to make sense of the process of group identification that was taking place north of the Danube frontier. Slavic ethnicity is therefore shown to be a Byzantine invention.
The Avars
"Though the book was first published in German in 1988, this English version includes many revisions and updates and will be the definitive English-language study of the Avar empire for years to come. It will be invaluable for those interested in medieval history or in the impact of nomadic steppe empires on sedentary civilizations." ― Choice The Avars arrived in Europe from the Central Asian steppes in the mid-sixth century CE and dominated much of Central and Eastern Europe for almost 250 years. Fierce warriors and canny power brokers, the Avars were more influential and durable than Attila's Huns, yet have remained hidden in history. Walter Pohl's epic narrative, translated into English...
Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West, 411–533
Warfare and dislocation are obvious features of the break-up of the late Roman West, but this crucial period of change was characterized also by communication and diplomacy. The great events of the late antique West were determined by the quieter labours of countless envoys, who travelled between emperors, kings, generals, high officials, bishops, provincial councils, and cities. This book examines the role of envoys in the period from the establishment of the first 'barbarian kingdoms' in the West, to the eve of Justinian's wars of re-conquest. It shows how ongoing practices of Roman imperial administration shaped new patterns of political interaction in the novel context of the earliest medieval states. Close analysis of sources with special interest in embassies offers insight into a variety of genres: chronicles, panegyrics, hagiographies, letters and epitaph. This study makes a significant contribution to the developing field of ancient and medieval communications.
Transformations of Romanness
Roman identity is one of the most interesting cases of social identity because in the course of time, it could mean so many different things: for instance, Greek-speaking subjects of the Byzantine empire, inhabitants of the city of Rome, autonomous civic or regional groups, Latin speakers under ‘barbarian’ rule in the West or, increasingly, representatives of the Church of Rome. Eventually, the Christian dimension of Roman identity gained ground. The shifting concepts of Romanness represent a methodological challenge for studies of ethnicity because, depending on its uses, Roman identity may be regarded as ‘ethnic’ in a broad sense, but under most criteria, it is not. Romanness is indeed a test case how an established and prestigious social identity can acquire many different shades of meaning, which we would class as civic, political, imperial, ethnic, cultural, legal, religious, regional or as status groups. This book offers comprehensive overviews of the meaning of Romanness in most (former) Roman provinces, complemented by a number of comparative and thematic studies. A similarly wide-ranging overview has not been available so far.
Society and Culture in Late Antique Gaul
Late Roman Gaul is often seen either from a classical Roman perspective as an imperial province in decay and under constant threat from barbarian invasion or settlement, or from the medieval one, as the cradle of modern France and Germany. Standard texts and "moments" have emerged and been canonized in the scholarship on the period, be it Gaul aflame in 407 or the much-disputed baptism of Clovis in 496/508. This volume avoids such stereotypes. It brings together state-of-the-art work in archaeology, literary, social, and religious history, philology, philosophy, epigraphy, and numismatics not only to examine under-used and new sources for the period, but also critically to reexamine a few of the old standards. This will provide a fresh view of various more unusual aspects of late Roman Gaul, and also, it is hoped, serve as a model for ways of interpreting the late Roman sources for other areas, times, and contexts.
People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489-554
The barbarians of the fifth and sixth centuries were long thought to be races, tribes or ethnic groups who toppled the Roman Empire and racist, nationalist assumptions about the composition of the barbarian groups still permeate much scholarship on the subject. This book proposes a new view, through a case-study of the Goths of Italy between 489 and 554. It contains a detailed examination of the personal details and biographies of 379 individuals and compares their behaviour with ideological texts of the time. This inquiry suggests wholly new ways of understanding the appearance of barbarian groups and the end of the western Roman Empire, as well as proposing new models of regional and professional loyalty and group cohesion. In addition, the book proposes a complete reinterpretation of the evolution of Christian conceptions of community, and of so-called 'Germanic' Arianism.
