Roman Barbarians: The Royal Court and Culture in the Early Medieval West

Roman Barbarians investigates the nature of early medieval culture, and what place the royal court had in it. It explores the place of the royal court and the operation of patronage through it in several European kingdoms of the early Middle Ages, such as the Ostrogothic court of Theoderic the Great, the Vandal court of Thrasamund, the Frankish courts of Dagobert I and the Visigothic court of Sisebut. It seeks to identify the roots of later medieval developments, and especially of the so-called Carolingian Renaissance, in the centuries immediately succeeding the period of Roman rule. After all, it was in that formative period that Roman and Christian ideas and practices came together to be mingled with indigenous Germanic practices, to produce the seeds of what we now call 'the medieval civilization'.

Author: Y. Hen
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Published: 11/09/2007
Pages: 228
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.49h x 5.51w x 0.53d
ISBN: 9780333786666

About the Author
YITZHAK HEN is Professor of Medieval History at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. His previous publications include Culture and Religion in Merovingian Gaul (1995); The Sacramentary of Echternach (1997); The Royal Patronage of Liturgy in Frankish Gaul (2001). He is the General Editor of the series Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.