Est-ce qu'une "mutation de l'an 600" a eu lieu en Austrasie ?

[Here is the paper that I presented on Saturday to the conference on 'L'Austrasie: Pouvoirs, espaces et identitésà la charnière de l’antiquité tardive et du moyen-âge' held in St-Dizier and Reims.  It was a very good conference and my congratulations go to the organisers, Bruno Dumézil, Sylvie Joye and Adrien Bayard.  It was great to catch up with my French friends and colleagues and make new contacts. 

It was, as it always is to me, a little vexing to see archaeological papers, including ones on Metz and its region, making no reference to Settlement and Social Organisation, which seems to be much better known among French historians than archaeologists, and thus restating things that I have been saying for 20 years, or posing questions to which I have already suggested answers, but there you go...  Enough of my 'amour propre'.

As a result of a whole series of mishaps - well, not so much mishaps as of me forgetting stuff (notes, drafts, adapters...) I ended up (re-)writing this during the conference.  As a result I make absolutely no claims to the accuracy or idiomatic quality of the French!

For non-francophones, the argument essentially goes like this (not much of it will be very surprising for followers of my work or this blog):

Introduction:

Paragraph 1: We might be able to answer, guardedly, 'yes' to the question 'was there a transformation of the year 600 in Austrasia?'

2: Some personal historiography tracing my interest in the subject back to Settlement and Social Organization.

3-6: Four preliminary remarks: This isn't a singular point of revolution cutting one long, static period off from another; the different thematic areas under review moved at different speeds on their own trajectories; the periods on either side of the proposed transformation weren't static; there were 6th-century precursors and 7th-century continuations.

A: The Transformation

A: Cemeteries and Grave-Goods

7: We've known there was an important shift in material culture c.600 since the C19th, but this came with other developments in burial ritual.  6th-century grave-goods were deposited according to various general norms.  These broke down in the C7th.

8: There was a major reduction in gender-related objects, especially feminine

9: Above-Ground Monuments became more frequent

10: There was a change in the organisation of cemeteries, with rows on tombs less prominent.  There were more, and smaller, cemeteries in the C7th than the C6th.  This probably represents the fragmentation of earlier, large communal cemeteries into more local ones.

B: 'Élite' graves

11: The 'aristocratic emulation model', which sees aristocrats being buried in churches after c.525 probably underestimates the unusual nature of early founders' graves.  There are clearly prestigious burials in the period 525-75 but they are often more subtly marked out.

12: Around 600, the means of demonstrating prestige in burial changed.  Various strategies involve 'separation' from the community, the breaking of norms, etc.  There were probably more burials in churches albeit at this date mainly in the urban centres and secondary agglomerations (vici, castra).

C: Implications

13: What were the implications of all this?  In the 6th century, burial reveals competition for social status.  This does not mean that, for example, the 'chieftains' of St-Dizier weren't from a powerful family: just that that power was transmitted with difficulty.  This situation made the early Merovingian state powerful

14: Around 600, the visible changes suggest a greater security of power and an ability to project status into the future.

15: This can be linked to a whole bunch of other transformations that suggest a more powerful aristocracy, at this time: legal changes, foundation of monasteries, increases in documents, etc etc.

16: There was a long list of other socio-economic changes at this time, many of which can be linked to a change in aristocratic power, in one way or another.

17: These changes altered the relations of power between king and aristocracy and gave Merovingian politics of the 7th century a different flavour from those of the 6th century.

Explanations

18-19: The explanation I put forward in 1995, linking these changes to the political crises brought about by royal minorities, especially in Austrasia, between 575 and 613.

20: That's still valuable but it needs to be broadened and deepened. First: there was a range of transformations across Western Europe at this time - some very similar to those in Austrasia, some not.  Austrasian politics can't explain all these.

21: I had too readily assumed that the political crisis in Austrasia would automatically lead to the aristocracy appropriating power to themselves and away from the kings and that that would naturally lead to a weakening of state power.  This may have been the result but it didn't have to be that way.

22: For a decline in consensus there must have been important changes.  These took place in the mid-C6th, with the plague, perhaps natural catastrophes, and Justinian's wars.  I will concentrate on the latter.

23: Between 476 and the 2nd quarter of the C6th, the West continued in a sort of political twilight zone.  Roman claims to power continued.

23: Justinian's ideology of reconquest undermined all these claims to power.

24: That required ideological response by the kings, who responded with imagination, above all using the Old Testament.

25: The aristocracy also required new bases of power, and chose ones which did not refer to old pre-Justinianic Roman ideas - like monasteries etc.

26: They were reinforced by other changes in ideas about time and history.

27: To conclude, a wave of changes swept across western Europe c.600.  These created a context in which the political crises in Austrasia c.600 had even more important results.  The Transformation of the Year 600 was not the only important phase of change in early medieval Europe but was very important because it marked the end of the Roman world.

The questions were very useful and focused on the linkage between Justinian and a crisis of consent.]

***

On a souvent dit qu'une communication qui pose une question dans son titre - comme les questions posées dans les manchettes du journal anglais 'The Daily Mail' - attend toujours la réponse 'non'. Je voudrais cependant suggérer qu'on aurait le droit de répondre à la question dans mon titre - est-ce qu'une mutation de l'an six cent a eu lieu en Austrasie? - d’une façon plus affirmatif, pourvu qu'on comprenne bien ce qu'on voudrait dire par le mot 'mutation'. 

J'ai publié, il y a vingt ans presque exactement - le livre est paru en Septembre 1995 - une étude de la région de Metz, fondé sur ma thèse de doctorat sur le même sujet. Dans ce livre j'ai proposé une phase de changements importants dans cette période comprenant le dernier quart du sixième siècle et le premier quart du septième.  Je travails maintenant sur une étude de l’Europe de l’ouest dans la période après les guerres de Justinien et avant le milieu du septième siècle. Les « mutations de l'an 600 » (entre guillemets) sont visibles dans la plupart des domaines de la société et la culture mérovingiennes et à travers beaucoup de l'Europe occidental.  Évidemment, je ne peux pas discuter cette longue liste de transformations.  J’ai choisi donc de concentrer sur quelques éléments qui concernent l’histoire socio-politique de l’Austrasie et qui peuvent contribuer à notre compréhension des tombes de St-Dizier.

Je voudrais faire quatre remarques préalables. 

1 : En premier, je souligne que je ne propose pas une vraie révolution dramatique qui bouleverse un monde antique assez statique ou, pour utiliser les termes plus Marxistes, un mode de production esclavagiste, pour le remplacer par un monde médiéval, ou un mode de production féodal, également peu changeant. Pour l'exprimer autrement, je n'envisage pas le choix devant nous comme le choix entre les positions extrêmes tenues parfois dans le débat sur la prétendue mutation de l'an mille, c'est à dire entre une révolution radicale, d'assez courte durée, renversant tout un système socio-économique, ou, par contre, un lent développement - ou même la continuité - qui se prolongeait pendant des siècles. J'envisage plutôt un moyen âge, un haut moyen âge même, dynamique, ponctué par des périodes de changement significatives assez fréquentes, dont la « mutation de l'an 600 » en était une.  Cela dit, je voudrais aussi suggérer que les changements qui ont eu lieu pendant les décennies autour de l'an 600 avaient une signification particulière.

2 : Deuxième remarque préalable: je ne vais pas suggérer que tous les changements ou transformations ont eu lieu à exactement la même date ou avec la même rapidité.  Évidemment, personne n'a sonné une cloche, le 31 Décembre 599 pour que tout-le-monde se change immédiatement.  Les sphères diverses ont eu chacune son propre rythme et son propre trajet.  Mais je voudrais proposer qu'elles se soient tous reliées et qu'en Austrasie un Schwerpunkt se trouvait dans les décennies juste avant et juste après l'an 600.

3 : En troisième: je ne voudrais pas suggérer que les périodes avant ou après  la mutation proposée ont été des périodes stables.  La période entre la déposition de l'empereur Romulus en 476 et les guerres de Justinien était une époque très particulière et très important qui mérite plus d'attention du part des historiens et des archéologues.  Je reviendrais à ce point.  Et le milieu du septième siècle a vu d’autres changements, surtout dans l’histoire des habitats. 

4 : Enfin, quatrièmement, il n’y avait pas une différence binaire « manichéenne » entre le sixième siècle et le septième.  Il y avait des précurseurs au sixième et de prolongements au septième, mais, vu les limitations de temps, il me faut décrire cette différence d’une façon peut-être un peu simplifiée.

2. La « mutation »

A. Cimetières et mobilier funéraire
Les archéologues du dix-neuvième siècle tardif ont reconnu l'importance des décennies autour de 600 en marquant une charnière entre deux phases de l'archéologie mérovingienne.  Cette phase – entre älter Merowingerzeit et jünger Merowingerzeit - reste confirmée par les études chronologiques, même si nous préférons aujourd'hui penser d'une période plus large, entre 575 et 625, plutôt qu'une simple rupture vers 600.  Ces changements étaient accompagnés des autres transformations dans les pratiques funéraires.  L'analyse des cimetières montre des transformations en la distribution de mobilier funéraire.  Aux sixième siècle mes analyses ont montré qu’il existait des règles ou des normes qui gouvernaient, d’une certaine manière, la distribution de mobilier dans les tombes.  Ces résultats ont été confirmés par d’autres analyses de cimetières dans d’autres parties du monde mérovingien.  Je pense en particulier aux analyses des cimetières de l’Allemagne du sud menés par Sebastien Brather.  Ces règles concernaient surtout l’âge et le sexe, et les trois tombes de chef de St-Dizier conforment exactement au schéma que j’ai proposé en 1995.  Ces règles sont beaucoup moins visibles au septième siècle. 

L’un des raisons pour ce fait est le nombre et la variété réduite des objets enterrés avec les morts.  Surtout les objets qui marquaient le sexe du défunt se réduisaient.  Les objets féminins sont beaucoup moins nombreux au septième siècle qu’au sixième.  Pendant que, parmi les tombes pourvues d'un mobilier, les armes sont plus répandues dans les tombes masculines du septième siècle, elles sont beaucoup moins nombreuses et moins variées ; souvent il n’y a qu’un seul scramasaxe ou une lance.  Dans les cimetières fondés au septième siècle, le dépôt de la céramique dans les tombes devient peu fréquent. 

Les monuments au-dessus de la tombe deviennent plus fréquents.  Ces monuments comprennent, par exemple, des stèles, des sarcophages avec couvercles visible en surface, des monuments faits d’anciennes pierres romaines, les petits murs autour de tombes ou groupes de tombes. 

L'organisation des nécropoles s’est changée.  Les célèbres rangées de tombes me semblent beaucoup moins rigides au septième siècle et les petits groupes de tombes, d'apparence familiale, deviennent plus fréquente.  La carte de distribution des nécropoles, y comprenant tous les sites possibles, montre beaucoup plus de cimetières du septième siècle que nécropoles du sixième.  Puisqu'il y a plus d'objets qui peuvent marquer l'existence d'un site du sixième siècle même dans un récit bref d'un découvert par hasard dans les revues du dix-neuvième siècle par exemple, cette différence doit être réel.  J'ai l'impression que les sites du sixième siècle sont plus grands, comprenant parfois des centaines de tombes.  Les nécropoles du septième siècle me paraissent plus petites, mais beaucoup plus nombreuses.  Sur la base de ces différences j'ai proposé l'existence de grandes nécropoles au sixième qui servaient de point focalisé d'une grande communauté y comprenant peut-être plusieurs habitats.  Ces cimetières fragmentaient au septième siècle et le ratio entre habitats et nécropoles devenait plus proche a un pour un. Ce n'est pas, sans doute, la seule explication possible mais il me semble raisonnable.

B. Tombes privilégiées

Avec ces mutations dans les rites funéraires on attendrait avec raison une transformation dans les manifestations de haut statut social dans les cimetières.  On a souvent proposé que les familles élites aient enterré leurs morts dans les églises après le premier quart du sixième siècle.  Cette hypothèse est sans doute valable pour une partie de l'aristocratie franque mais c'est fondé peut-être sur une sous-estimation de l'importance du contexte funéraire dans lequel ont été établis les grands cimetières du sixième siècle.  L'acte de fondation a exigé une grande manifestation du statut du fondateur et du statut social de sa famille.  Ce fait rend hasardeuse la comparaison entre les tombes privilégiés du cinquième siècle tardif ou du sixième siècle précoce et celles des phases suivantes.  L'analyse soigneuse des tombes de la période entre 525 et 575 - c'est à dire le zénith du rite d'inhumation avec mobilier - révèle des tombes bien différenciées de leurs contemporains.  Mais cette différentiation pouvait être assez subtile.  Nous avons vu des exemples hier et j’étais heureux de voir confirmés, avec des données plus scientifiques, des hypothèses qui je proposais depuis vingt ans. On exagérait les normes, comme à St-Dizier; l'emplacement de la tombe dans la nécropole pouvait importer, ou, également, la disposition du corps dans la tombe.

Autour de l'an 600, les tombes privilégiées était marquées par d'autres stratégies assez bien connues, surtout par le mot allemand Separierung.  Le plan du cimetière à Hayange en Moselle, par exemple, montre une petite zone funéraire avec quelques tombes, séparée du reste de la nécropole.  En plus, ces tombes sont orientées différemment aux autres. Autres tombes dans la région montrent la différence entre la famille du défunt et le reste de la communauté en transgressant des normes.  Donc, par exemple, des sujets âgés ou des enfants, ou membres d’autres groupes avec lesquels ce n’était pas la règle d’enterrer beaucoup d’objets, reçoivent des inhumations assez bien fournies de mobilier.  C’est probable que le nombre des membres des familles élites enterrés dans les églises croît à cette époque.  Il y a beaucoup plus d’églises connues dans la ville de Metz et dans les castella (à Tarquimpol par exemple) et vici de la région.  Il ne me semble pas, pourtant, que beaucoup d’églises ont été établies dans les communautés rurales de cette région avant le milieu du septième siècle. 

C : Implications

Quelles sont les implications de ces changements ?  L’analyse des cimetières par rangées classiques du sixième siècle montre que la hiérarchie sociale dans l’Austrasie était à cette date assez floue.  On ne peut appeler les tombes comme celles de St-Dizier « tombes de chefs » que si on accepte que le titre de « chef » ne décrive une position fixe, de statut formel.  Sans doute les gens comme ceux de St-Dizier étaient d’une famille puissante dans la communauté, mais leur autorité n’était pas établie.  Il a constamment dû être réaffirmé par des rites, des échanges, des manifestations publiques et les stratégies de mariage.  Les funérailles en étaient l’une des plus importants de telles occasions rituelles de la réaffirmation de liens sociaux, notamment à cause de la crise dans les relations de pouvoir locales que la mort a provoquée.  Le statut social dans les communautés rurales de l’Austrasie au sixième siècle n’a pas pu être facilement transmis d’une génération à la suivante.  La stratégie la plus effective pour établir une puissance locale était de chercher le patronat du roi merovingien ou de ces aristocrates palatins.  Cette situation a donné beaucoup d’avantages aux rois Mérovingiens du sixième siècle, en particulier dans leurs relations avec l’aristocratie, d’où venait la puissance de l’état Mérovingien précoce.

Par contre, les cimetières du septième siècle montrent une concurrence beaucoup réduit pour le pouvoir local.  La déposition des objets devient moins importante pour la manifestation ou la confirmation du statut.  Inversement, l’importance des monuments visible montre la capacité de projeter le statut ou le place d’une famille dans la société locale à l’avenir.  La séparation graduelle, dans la mort, des familles puissantes du reste de la communauté marque aussi cette augmentation de confiance et de pouvoir du part des familles aristocratiques locales.

Ces transformations, bien visibles dans les cimetières Austrasiens, conforment bien avec toute une série d’autres développements que l’on peut voir dans d’autres sources archéologiques ou écrites.  Je peux citer : l’apparition dans les sources des familles ou même les dynasties aristocratiques que l’on peut suivre à travers les documents et qui semblent avoir une contrôle plus assurée des titres comme comes ou dux; des transformations dans l’organisation fiscale et l’organisation militaire qui ont donné plus de pouvoir aux aristocrates ; lié à ça, les immunités paraissent; les signes plus nombreuses dans les lois d’une aristocratie indépendante; une augmentation fort évident dans l’importance et donc la survivance des documents, qui montrent une renforcement du pouvoir aristocratique ; les monastères célèbres fondés par les aristocrates. Etc.

Hors de ce thème strictement aristocratique, il y avait beaucoup d’autres mutations.  Il suffira peut-être de mentionner les transformations dans l’économie, dans les villes, dans la monnaie ; des transformations d’identités comme le gender et l’ethnicité (que j’ai discuté ailleurs) ; des transformations possibles dans la pratique de la guerre ; les développements dans les idées, et ce que Robert Markus a appelé « l’invasion ascétique ».

Les éléments que je viens de discuter soulignent le rôle central joué, en Austrasie, par les transformations dans le pouvoir local de l’aristocratie.  Celle-ci est devenue beaucoup plus puissante au niveau local.  Le pouvoir plus établi de ces aristocrates explique beaucoup des autres développements que je viens de lister – la croissance économique, les transformations dans les villes, la fondation des monastères ruraux – parfois parce qu’il les a pu soutenir et parfois parce qu’ils étaient eux-mêmes des stratégies pour solidifier ce pouvoir local ou régional.  Enfin, la domination des familles aristocrates était plus enracinée, et cela a changé les relations entre le pouvoir central et les puissants des localités.  Cela donne l’histoire politique du septième siècle des caractéristiques sensiblement différentes de celle du sixième.

3. Explication
Comment l’expliquer?  En 1995 j’ai proposé lier ces changements avec l’histoire politique des royaumes mérovingiens après l’assassinat de Sigebert I en 575.  Un des plus grands succès de Clovis et ses fils était d’établir le monopole de la légitimité royale de la dynastie mérovingienne par des stratégies bien connues.  C’est ça qui explique comment ont pu survivre des petits enfants, comme Childebert II, qui a succédé son père à l’âge de cinq ans, ou Clotaire II, qui n’avait que 4 mois quand il est devenu roi.  Cela ne serait pas possible dans aucun autre royaume de l’occident haut-médiévale à cette date, et c’est une signe remarquable du succès des premiers rois mérovingiens.  Mais cela a apporté également des problèmes quand il n’y avait pas un roi adulte parce qu’aucune faction aristocratique qui pouvait contrôler le palais pendant la minorité d’un roi n’avait le seule titre, ou le seul droit au pouvoir légitime accepté, sauf ce qu’elle pouvait établir par les opérations de la politique ou de force.  Ce manque de légitimité rend la politique, surtout en Austrasie, très incertaine, très hasardeuse et très floue, comme le sait tout-le-monde qui a jamais lu les histoires de Grégoire de Tours et de Frédégaire.  Les fameux aristocrates du récit de Grégoire – Loup, Gontran Boso, Rauching, Urso et Bethefried, la reine Brunehaut, et bien sûr l’évêque Égide de Reims – se sont concourus pour le contrôle du palais Austrasien et de la personne du jeune roi. 

Dans ce contexte, ce n’est pas difficile de voir pourquoi les factions aristocrates palatines ont dû, pour parler ainsi, acheter le soutien des hommes de pouvoir local avec des dons de droits plus permanents qu’auparavant.  C’est ça qui a commencé la transformation de l’aristocratie franque d’une aristocratie de service, et de gens de domination locale incertaine, en familles, même parfois en dynasties, de pouvoir établi qui on a pu commencer d’appeler – à la différence du sixième siècle – nobles - nobiles.  Évidemment c’était un long processus mais les événements des décennies autour de l’an 600 ont joué un rôle déterminant. 

Cette explication est peut-être valable pour l’Austrasie, et je ne voudrais pas la renoncer.  Cependant, il y a deux raisons pour vouloir une explication un peu plus large et peut-être plus profonde.  Premièrement, des transformations ont eu lieu à travers de l’Europe occidental à cette époque.  Elles ont pris de formes assez semblables dans quelques régions – l’Angleterre du sud et de l’est par exemple – mais elles ont eu d’autres formes dans d’autres régions, comme le nord de la Grande Bretagne et, peut-être, l’Espagne.  Bien qu’il y ait quelques raisons de lier les changements en Gaule aux mutations en Angleterre du sud, les événements de l’histoire politique Austrasienne ne suffisent pas pour expliquer un grand courant de change qui, entre la deuxième moitié du sixième siècle et le premier quart du septième enveloppait l’Europe de l’ouest de la Scandinavie jusqu’à l’Italie et l’Espagne.

Deuxièmement, j’acceptais auparavant avec peut-être trop d’alacrité l’existence d’un conflit d’intérêt presque naturel entre les puissants locaux ou régionaux et le pouvoir central du royaume.  J’ai présumé trop rapidement qu’une croissance de pouvoir aristocratique au plan local menait naturellement à un affaiblissement de l’autorité royale – c’est á dire ce qu’on appelle en anglais « a zero-sum game ».  Je pense que tout ça a bien été le résultat des changements mais ça n’a pas forcément dû être le cas.  Ce résultat n’arriverait pas automatiquement.  La noblesse romaine a évidemment été beaucoup plus puissante que la mérovingienne tardive aux plans local, régional et même suprarégional mais cela ne l’a pas empêché de participer dans les structures étatiques de l’Empire Romain; bien au contraire.

Pour que l’état franc perde le consentement de son aristocratie, il a dû arriver des changements très importants de mentalité entre le sixième siècle précoce et le septième siècle précoce.  De telles transformations ont été produites par les événements dramatiques du milieu du sixième siècle : la peste « jaune », peut-être des catastrophes naturelles et les guerres terribles de Justinien I.  Je voudrais seulement discuter ces dernières : les guerres.  Après la chute de l’empereur Romulus et l’assassinat de Julius Nepos, l’Europe de l’ouest est vécu dans une sorte de « twilight zone » politique : elle faisait partie de l’Empire Romain mais elle manque effectivement un empereur.  Les gens connaissaient que l’empire occidentale ne fonctionnait pas mais ils ne connaissaient pas que cette situation était définitive.  Les royaumes continuaient être organisées de façon romaine; l’administration romaine restait en place ; les titres officiels civils et militaires continuaient être valables.  C’est un mythe légiste que les rois barbares ne pouvaient devenir empereur, et c’est probable que quelques-uns abritaient des ambitions impériales.  S’ils n’ont jamais adopté le titre, c’est pourtant vrai que Clovis et Théodoric ont permis les gens de leur saluer comme augustus.  Si les Mérovingien, les Amal, les Balte ou les Gibichung ont pu battre leurs rivaux pendant cette période, il me semble très probable qu’ils prendraient le titre impérial.  Les prétentions célèbres de Théodebert I vers 540 (y compris ses efforts d’établir son capitale à Trèves) me semblent marquer les dernières ambitions de cette sorte.

L’idéologie et surtout les guerres lancées contre l’Ouest par Justinien ont terminé cette situation.  Justinien a annoncé la fin de l’Empire Romain de l’Ouest ; il l’a proclamé conquis par des barbares ; il a déclaré la nécessité de la reconquérir de ses rois sauvages.  Quand Justinien a cédé la Provence à Théodebert I, il est devenu le premier empereur de céder volontairement un territoire impérial.  Grâce à son idéologie il a bien pu le faire, sans aucun coût politique.   Mais les énoncés idéologiques de Justinien ont détruit tous les fondations de pouvoir légitime dans l’Ouest qui remontait ultimement à l’empereur et ses offices, ses titres, etc.  Quand les campagnes des armées est-romaines finissaient sans conquérir tout l’Ouest, une nouvelle frontière, des nouvelles limites, formelles même si assez peu définies, ont été établies.  Une nouvelle ligne de démarcation a été créée entre les zones qui étaient dans l’Empire Romain et celles qui n’étaient pas.  Et les rois de l’Ouest se retrouvaient en dehors, effectivement dans un nouveau barbaricum.

Cela a manifestement provoqué une grande crise dans la politique des royaumes occidentaux.  Il a fallu trouver d’autres moyens ou idiomes pour exprimer la légitimité du pouvoir, et d’autres fondations de l’autorité et les rois ont répondu avec beaucoup d’imagination.  Les rois francs de l’ère de Grégoire de Tours en fournissent de bons exemples, comme le fait aussi les rois Visigots de la même époque.  Comme Yitzhak Hen a montré dans un bel article, il y a longtemps, l’Ancien Testament du Bible a fourni une riche source des idées qui ont permis les rois de garder les mêmes idéals qu’auparavant – la justice, la piété, la générosité, la force dans la guerre – mais avec des nouvelles modèles bibliques.  Ce n’est pas par hasard que Chilpéric a nommé l’un de ses fils Samson.  Aussi anciens que soient les cheveux longs des rois francs, Chilpéric a considéré nécessaire une nouvelle association pour ce trait royal.  William Daly a montré les différences entre le Clovis de Grégoire de Tours et le Clovis des documents du temps du roi lui-même.  Ce n’est pas par hasard que le Clovis de Grégoire est bien moins romain, pas plus païen comme a pensé Daly, mais plutôt un vrai roi terrible de l’Ancien Testament.  Le transfert de la capitale de l’Austrasie à Metz doit être vu dans ce context.

La nouvelle aristocratie que j’ai discutée plus haut a aussi dû trouver de nouvelles bases de pouvoir, de nouvelles façons d’exprimer l’autorité légitime.  Les nouveaux monastères ruraux ne sont pas seulement les signes d’une nouvelle richesse et pouvoir aristocratiques et de ressources foncières plus stables, mais le choix particulier d’exprimer cette autorité dans une façon nouvelle, sans rapport au monde romain traditionnel pré-Justinianique. 

Tous ces changements ont été renforcés par d’autres idées concernant le temps et l’histoire, que je ne peux pas discuter aujourd’hui.  Pour l’instant, pourtant, il faut souligner que les guerres de Justinien et leurs effets sur l’idéologie et le pouvoir ont en grande partie dissous les liens traditionnels entre roi et aristocrate.  L’autorité a fallu être réimaginée et les relations de pouvoir aussi.  Je voudrais suggérer que c’était ça qui a donné le royaume mérovingien et l’histoire politique mérovingienne du septième et, peut-être, du huitième siècle leurs caractères distinctives.

Pour conclure, une vague de changements a parcouru l’Europe de l’ouest après les guerres de Justinien.  Elle a créé un contexte dans lequel les événements et la crise politiques mérovingiens entre 575 et 613 ont eu des effets même plus sérieux et, je voudrais suggérer, a donc changé l’Austrasie et le monde franc pour jamais.  La mutation de l’an 600 n’était pas le seul moment de transformation pendant le haut moyen-âge mais elle était néanmoins une des plus importants de l’histoire.  En ce qui concerne les mentalités elle a signalé la fin du monde romain.

Graves and Sexuality: Multiple readings

[I was inspired by a critical discussion by Karl Steel here, of an attempt to project same-sex marriage into the past, to post my (I think only) discussion of sexuality and queer readings of archaeology, for your thoughts/comments, especially form those of you who are more literate in theory than I am.  The quote comes from pp.347-9 of Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul, in a chapter (9) which contains other thoughts about archaeologists' and historians' fear of including same-sex love/emotional attraction within their range of interpretive options.]

Ennery (Lorraine) 'Graves' 6 and 8

Finally in this section I should like to draw attention to the double burials of young males that are known in Merovingian archaeology.  In the cemeteries in Lorraine which I studied the best examples were ‘graves’ 6 and 8 at Ennery (dating to the sixth century), and grave 103 at Audun-le-Tiche, from about a century later.  Logically, the subjects of the graves must have succumbed close in time.  What seem at first sight to be linked arms are on closer inspection no such thing; the arms of the subjects of the Ennery double grave simply lie on top of each other.  This might have been deliberate or it might not.[1]  There is a wide range of possibilities behind these double graves.  They might be those of relatives, perhaps most plausibly those of brothers.  There were a number of other social ties in Merovingian society that might equally have led the community to join two young males in death.  For instance, the male child of the foster father or god-parent of another young man would be regarded as that young man’s brother.  The son of one family, serving as an apprentice in another might have been regarded as, effectively, kin – a surrogate brother – to the sons of that household.  Two young men serving together in a household could have been regarded as sharing a bond.  In all such cases the families of the deceased and perhaps that of the head of the household might, following the interpretation of furnished burial proposed above, have come together in funerary ritual to ease the rupture in relations between the families produced by the deaths in question.  Alternatively, as will be discussed below, young males might have bonded in age groups.  The deaths of two such men might have united their families in grief and led them to create links between them through involvement in a joint funeral.  Lastly it is possible that a joint interment might have been a means of smoothing over tensions created by killing and vengeance.  Nevertheless, we probably ought not to apply a single explanation to all of the instances of such burials.  Double graves might well represent different aspects of society from those manifested by occasional triple burials, such as at Niederstotzingen.[2]

My purpose in mentioning these graves in this chapter is simply to consider a further issue raised by the possibility that the occupants of such graves were united other than by close kinship.  The close homosocial bonds between young men serving together in various contexts (from the monastic to the military) are well known throughout history, as is the frequency with which these bonds encompass homosexual love and sex.  In spite of this, as in other periods of history, accusations of anal sex with men were nevertheless regarded as serious slurs on a man’s standing or honour.  Interestingly, the other bases for insult were cowardice and unreliability in battle.[3]  As has been long debated, such homosexual love is usually not commensurate with a self-consciously gay identity, seen as different from or antagonistic to normative heterosexuality: this seems to be the product of more modern sexual classifications.  It is nevertheless surely a mistake either to deny that such emotional and sexual relations existed (in the latter case – sexual relations – the concern of monastic regulators and authors of penitentials with sodomy ought to be proof enough to the contrary[4]) or that the classifications of sexual behaviour and the views of male homosexual relationships held by medieval people were automatically similar to those of modern observers.  This matters because it presents two possibilities (they are not more than that) to the reading of double burials like Ennery 6 and 8 or Audun-le-Tiche 103.  One is that such emotional bonds were given sufficient recognition to result in shared inhumation.  The other, possibly the more interesting, perhaps the more likely, takes us to the issue of the polysemy of burial display.[5]  The ‘dominant’ reading intended by the creators of a funerary monument like this might to have been to stress the social relations between the two families, or to have valorised the comradeship, trust and fidelity of shared military service, traditionally ‘honourable’ within masculine culture.  Other readings open to contemporaries at the graveside, however, might have dwelt on different issues, such as real or suspected sexual or emotional relationships between the two men.  These might have involved no particular value judgement, simply being alternative.  They might also have been subversive, and they might have been derogatory (as in the insults referred to above).  The latter could be open to members of rival families or to those men barred from participation in what was becoming the normative, military form of masculinity, as discussed in the next chapter.

---

[1] See below, pp.357-60

[2] R. Christlein, Die Alamannen: Archäologie eines lebendigen Volkes (3^rd edition, Stuttgart, 1991), p.89.

[3] PLS [Pactus Legis Salicae] 30, using the translation I proposed in W&S [Warfare and Society], p.11.

[4] Although what, precisely, was meant by the term sodomy is usually vague; many non-procreative forms of sexual encounter could be bracketed under the heading.  Nevertheless, in the context of penitentials I assume it means some form of sexual, physical contact between males.

[5] BW ['Burial Writes'], pp.64-65 (above, pp.219-20).

Officers or Gentlemen? The Frankish Aristocracy in the Sixth Century: Part 4

[In the last installment of this piece (which begins here), I examine the role of royal service in maintaining aristocratic power.  It is argued to have been essential and this fact allows us to see the sixth-century Merovingian kingdom as a state in a very real sense.]
Part 3 is here

Gregory describes the redeployment of royal patronage on one occasion.  Following the suppression of the ‘Revolt of the Dukes’ (587) in Austrasia, Gregory says that a number of other dukes were demoted and others promoted to replace them.  All of the Frankish magnates whom we encounter in the pages of the Histories occupy positions within the administration of the realm, as duke, count, patricius and so on.  None of these titles, it is worth reminding ourselves, was hereditary; as implied in the preceding discussion, it is very difficult to find a title (even the general rank) remaining in the same family before the late sixth century.  Obviously it is impossible to know how they obtained their position in the hierarchy; one imagines that they probably came from the loosely-defined de facto aristocracy mentioned earlier.  Nonetheless, what emerges very clearly from Gregory’s account is the absolute dependence of these powerful aristocrats upon the royal court for their status.  We simply do not find an equivalent of the late Roman senatorial nobleman who spent brief intermittent periods in the service – negotium – of the state between longer spells of otium on his estates, or of the brooding late medieval noble plotting in his castle.  When demoted from office, such figures disappear from history.  Consequently the possibility that one might lose one’s position at court drove magnates to extreme actions, such as the Revolt of the Dukes just mentioned. 

The actions of the Austrasian dukes and those of the Neustrian aristocrats after Chilperic’s assassination (584) are very revealing.  The Neustrian magnates who found themselves away from court (generally accompanying an embassy to Spain) sided, on the whole, with Gundovald, a claimant with Byzantine backing.  The Austrasian dukes planned to murder Childebert II and replace him with his infant sons.  Clearly there were two principal options.  Ideally, an aristocratic faction wanted a malleable king (especially a child) whom they could control.  This allowed them to monopolise access to the court and to control the distribution of royal patronage, while still acting with the legitimacy of royal officers.  It is significant, therefore, that the Revolt of the Dukes occurred as Childebert II entered his majority (technically from Christmas 585); the faction of the dukes involved had controlled the court for most of his minority and were now threatened with demotion and replacement.  The Neustrian aristocrats who were at court in late 584 found themselves in the happy position where they could control the court of the infant Chlothar II.  On the other hand, the palatine magnates accompanying Princess Rigunth to Spain were now likely to find their return to favour barred by other factions.  Therefore they took the option of siding with an adult king, Gundovald.  An adult king, even if unlikely to be controlled by particular faction, at least had the corresponding merit of distributing and redistributing patronage between groups, ensuring that all had access and all had their turn.  This was better than exclusion from the court by a rival group.  Note, though, that there was no question of replacing the Merovingian dynasty.  By this stage the Merovingians had clearly established the idea that they were the only throneworthy family in the realm.  There was no Frankish noble lineage to match them; certainly none that could persuade other families to accept their pre-eminence.  Thus it is significant that one of the rebellious Austrasian dukes, Rauching, took to claiming that (like Gundovald) he was a son of Chlothar I.

Those excluded in this way tended to leave the kingdom altogether, as Duke Lupus did during Childebert II’s minority.  Similarly, after the Revolt of the Dukes, Gregory tells us that many men moved to other regions for fear of (pertimescens) Childebert II.  One assumes that they were linked in some way to the subdued rebellious faction.  Their fears were justified.  Childebert II was not a man to cross.  In one of Gregory’s more chilling stories, when the king and his court were watching bear-baiting at Metz, a certain Magnovald was dragged from Childebert’s presence and butchered, his body being thrown into the street as a sign that this killing had been carried out legitimately.  This was done causis occultis.  Some suggested that Magnovald’s alleged murder of his wife was the cause but no one knew; there was not even a show-trial.

Magnovald’s property was confiscated by the fisc.  This indeed was the fate of the property of all those who fell foul of the king: Guntramn Boso, Rauching, Eberulf and many others.  Some stories imply, furthermore, that the king was by no means necessarily disinheriting their heirs in such action.  Even those who were not in disfavour might have their property taken back into the fisc when they died.  The fact that the sons of another Bodegisel were able to inherit their father’s land without forfeiting any of it appears to have been a point of some note to Gregory.  The implications of the story are elucidated by another tale wherein, after their father was killed (evidently near Poitiers) in pursuit of a petty dispute, the sons of Waddo had to go to the king (again, Childebert II) before they were allowed to inherit his lands.  Childebert seems, however, soon to have changed his mind, stripped them of these estates and given them to his rebellious cousin Chlothild.  Royal interference in matters of inheritance is further suggested by Gregory’s repeated complaint that Chilperic of Neustria tore up the wills (testamenta) of those who died leaving land to the church.  This might in part stem, as Edward James suggested, from the fact that Pactus Legis Salicae did not envisage that the inhabitants of the northern Frankish realms could make wills at all.  Indeed no sixth-century northern Gallic wills survive.  If correct, this in turn would support the interpretation of the Law as having some practical import.  Another reason for Chilperic’s ire, however, might be that – given that the king is unlikely to have taken much interest in the social strata below that of the more powerful aristocrats – royal grants were not gifts in perpetuity and thus not the recipient’s to give away.  Parallels can be sought in a roughly contemporary antiqua (old law) in the Visigothic Forum Iudicum, concerning property acquired by a saio whilst in someone’s service.  Any weapons given by the patron may be kept if the saio leaves the patron’s service, but any other property ultimately remains that of the patron.  The Visigothic Law concerning the permanence of royal donations belongs to the seventh century, when it would – equally – evidently not be out of step with contemporary Frankish practice.  

Frankish practice might descend from late Roman, with the ‘salary’ of royal officers being paid through the grant of tax revenue from particular, defined assets – probably referred to as villae.  The existence of the system is confirmed by a story in the Histories and it makes sense of the apparent ease with which villae could be granted away, taken back and re-granted, as in the story of Waddo’s villa near Poitiers.  It also allows us to understand the meaning of the term villa as it appears in seventh- and earlier eighth-century usage.  A further advantage of this reading is that it makes sense of the social relationships witnessed in the Pactus Legis Salicae.  A freeman (ingenuus) granted the right to take the tax from a designated villa or small geographical unit would remain a freeman like the inhabitants of the villa; the latter would stand in no legally inferior or dependent status to him.  This means of salarying state officers would make sense in an effectively non-monetary economy like that of sixth-century northern Gaul.  The relevant surplus could be extracted and used by the recipient without leaving the locality, any responsibility for converting payments in kind into gold (whether from villae assigned to him as his salary or from other villae from which he was tasked with tax-collection) becoming that of the salaried officer in question.  The only currency we know about in Gaul at this time (outside a small-denomination coinage effectively restricted to Marseille) is imported Byzantine solidi and Gallic imitations struck by the Merovingian kings.  Such coins were of very high value and doubtless therefore circulated (alongside their late Roman predecessors) only among the most powerful socio-political classes, something that made these coins ideal vehicles for royal and imperial propaganda.  With a more or less fixed content of 1/72 of a pound of gold, they should, however, be understood more as convenient units of bullion than as coins proper.  Even in the monetized late Roman period, the value of the solidus to the other elements of currency had been inflationary.  The only other coinage in use appears to have been residual Roman currency, which is frequently found in the pouches with which many Merovingian males were buried.  When taken alongside the presence of balances in lavishly-furnished male burials, we might conclude that local leaders, and especially (one assumes) those with an official title, had a responsibility for ‘weights and measures’.  These old coins presumably circulated as bullion and it was a local leader’s word that determined their worth as pieces of precious metal.

Taken together, the advantages of royal service were clearly considerable for northern Gallic aristocrats.  Legal privilege was only one of these.  In addition, responsibility for taxation and for levying the army from an increasingly broad stratum of ‘Franks’ constituted an important source of local patronage.  The revenue from royally-bestowed villae could be considerable, especially where numerous such ‘fiscal assets’ were accumulated by an officer like a duke or count.  Royal gifts were also prestigious as well as valuable.  Thus it is not surprising that the competition for patronage was fierce and that this outweighed any nascent magnate identity.  It is not surprising that a king like Childebert II could very rapidly call out an army of a sufficient size to spell doom immediately, even for an allegedly large force assembled by the rebellious dukes Ursio and Berthefried.  With all these points made, it is clear that the early Merovingian kingdom can and should be considered a state.  It had the ability to raise an army and use it as an independent coercive force, as well as being able to pay its officials through a, however obscurely, functioning taxation system.  It thus had the means to make its writ run in the myriad communities that were located within its bounds.  Ideologically too, it appears to have managed to monopolise conceptions of legitimate power.  Nowhere is this clearer than in the ability of the third generation of Merovingians (the sons of Chlothar I) to maintain a tight grip on authority while rarely taking the field at the head of their armies.  Unlike other realms, the Frankish kingdoms endured serious military reverses in this period (at the hands of Bretons, Goths and Lombards) without political crises ensuing.  On the other hand, while failure does not seem to have redounded to the kings’ shame, any credit for victories does seem to have allowed the Merovingians to maintain the ideology of triumphal rulership.

When the Merovingians took over the governance of northern Gaul in the later fifth century they were, with few exceptions, not confronted by a powerful, independently wealthy magnate class.  Over the next century, the kings managed to reduce the status of this group further, so that it became yet more dependent upon royal service for its local pre-eminence.  The kings’ actions should probably not be regarded as policy.  Many can be viewed as continuations of the later Roman emperors’ style of governance, maintaining checks and balances and the even distribution of royal favour.  Because of this they find parallels in the activities of other post-imperial kings.  It may be no more than the happy genealogical accident that the Merovingians were able to maintain father-to-adult-son succession for four generations between Childeric I and the sons of Chlothar I that enabled them to be more successful than any other post-imperial dynasty.  Nonetheless that factor reveals the inherent weakness of the system.  Much like the late Empire, political stability relied upon the tenure of the throne by an adult capable of distributing and redistributing patronage and maintain balance between different aristocratic factions.  Again like the Empire, a series of royal minorities, in this case after Sigibert I’s assassination in late 575, produced a critical situation.  This occurred, furthermore, at a point when other contingent factors could come together to exacerbate any crisis in the legitimacy of government carried out in the young king’s name.  The transformations in the nature of the Frankish aristocracy that occurred as a result of this combination of circumstances lie outside the scope of this paper.  As the sixth century entered its last quarter, contemporaries could only have perceived the Merovingian kings as exercising a tight control of legitimate power and a literally life-and-death authority over their aristocrats.  In these circumstances the idea that the latter formed an independently powerful social class would have seemed a long way from reality.

Officers or Gentlemen? The Frankish Aristocracy in the Sixth Century: Part 3

[The third installment of this draft article on the sixth-century aristocracy (which begins here) looks at the significance for the debate of the legal evidence and of terminology for aristocrats in the narrative sources.  The argument is that both forms of evidence, while they permit the reasonable supposition that some families maintained social pre-eminence within their localities, this position was not secure or recognisable by southerners as amounting to a real form of social distinction.  The failure of the laws to recognise an aristocratic stratum might have originated as a royal strategy but by the middle of the sixth century it seems to have been a reasonable approximation of reality.]

Part 2 is here

In this context we can reconsider the earliest of the Frankish law-codes, the Pactus Legis Salicae, and its failure to mention any sort of a noble caste.  The Pactus only recognises two types of freeman: the Frank, with a wergild of 200 solidi and the Roman tributarius, whose wergild was 150 solidi.  The only men raised above this general stratum are the presumably Frankish members of the trustis regis (the royal retinue: wergild 600 solidi or double that of the Frank), the Roman members of the convivia regis (the royal table: wergild 300 solidi or double that of the tributarius), the pueri regis (the “King’s Boys”) and comites (companions; here meaning counts: royal officers).  All of these exceptions are defined by a connection to the king.  As mentioned, the interpretation of this fact has been a matter of debate.  On its own, it is difficult to make the absence of a legally-recognised aristocratic stratum bear much weight in proposing that such a class did not exist in reality.  Arguments against it have been numerous.  The kings deliberately did not recognise such a group as a means of strengthening their own position.  Alternatively, the law-makers felt that they could not legislate for a noble wergild; in practice the magnates would set their own blood-price.   Another possibility is that the class of ‘Franks’, with a higher wergild than ‘Romans’ is itself the aristocracy.  Or the coverage of the Pactus is hardly comprehensive and the absence of laws specifically relating to the aristocracy might not therefore be significant.  Indeed there are legal ‘documents of practice’ which decree that ‘Salic law’ be followed in circumstances not covered at all by the Pactus.  Finally, the law itself was only a symbolic text with no necessary grounding in reality; texts actually showing that the Pactus and its provisions were followed in practice are entirely lacking.  By contrast we have later documents recording legal decisions that flatly contravene what the Pactus said should be done.

These arguments against the significance of the Pactus’ silence are of uneven weight but there is something in all of them.  The weakest – like a crude progression from the law’s silence to actual absence – turn on the idea that the law was directly applicable in practice.  In the sixth century, the extent to which this was the case is impossible to gauge.  In defence of the idea that there was some connection between code and practice, we can point to some similarities between the processes it envisages and those described in narrative sources and the fact that the law set geographical boundaries on the area within which it thought it was applicable (between the Ardennes and the Loire).  The best way forward seems to be to remember that the law was a deliberate composition, not a simple, passive transmission of age-old custom.  Even if, as seems very plausible, it was assembled at least in part from pre-existing royal decrees, the Pactus is very consistent in its vocabulary, especially when using ethnic terminology (here it differs from Burgundian law, for example).  It does not seem unreasonable to hypothesise that its authors assembled materials, and phrased their discussion of issues, in a deliberate fashion, whether this was to provide a practical law-book, or simply an object text that symbolised Clovis’ capacity as a law-making king, in Roman fashion. 

Viewed thus, several suggestions are possible.  One is that, as Chris Wickham wrote nearly twenty years ago, it is significant that the range of relationships and legal situations envisaged by the legislators did not encompass the activities of major, wealthy landlords or their intrusions into a society of small-landowners.  For it is not simply the absence of a recognised aristocratic stratum, with its own wergild, that matters.  There are no references to the relationships that suggest the existence of such a class, either.  This becomes clear through comparison with seventh-century Lex Ribvaria.  Comparison with other codes suggests that the failure to mention a magnate stratum with a higher wergild than the normal freeman is deliberate.  We should not expect this absence, as a matter of course, because of the de facto ability of aristocrats to set their own blood price.  Burgundian, Anglo-Saxon and Lombard laws all recognise such a class.  Furthermore, why ordinary aristocrats could not be legislated for because of their ability to set their own wergild, but aristocrats with royal backing could be so restricted is a problem left unanswered.  Thus the lack of recognition of an aristocracy with status independent of royal approval might indeed have been a deliberate royal statement.  This need not imply that such a group did not exist in practice but the absence from the law of other indices of its presence, which comparison with other codes suggests would normally act to restrict its power, argues that it was not, in reality, very significant.

Other sixth-century evidence permits the argument that even if, when the Pactus was issued, the law-makers’ deliberately ignored a magnate class as a statement of royal power, by the middle of the sixth century the dependence of northern Gaulish local leaders upon royal legitimation was a normal state of affairs.  This is suggested from the analysis of the region’s rural cemeteries during the middle quarters of the century, as already discussed.  That reading of the excavated data finds support in some aspects of the written sources.  The first such aspect to consider is that of terminology.  Gregory of Tours, for example, only employs the term nobilis once to describe a northern Gallic family, referring to the brothers Bodegisil and Bobo.  Otherwise, within Gaul, Gregory restricts his use of the term nobilis to the Merovingian royal family itself, and to southern Gallic senators.  His description of an embassy to Constantinople, one of the occasions when Gregory refers to Bodegisil, suggests why this might have been.  He describes the ambassadors as ‘Bodegisil son of Mummolenus, from Soissons, Evantius son of Dynamius, from Arles, and Grippo, a Frank’.  For Gregory, then, it seems that one’s civitas of origin and the name of one’s father were the principal criteria for inclusion in the social stratum that encompassed the senatorial nobility.  In this, he does not seem too different from his near contemporary Isidore of Seville, whose definition of nobilis, within the category of ‘terms for people’ (de quibusdam vocabulis hominum), was one whose ‘name and lineage are known’.

Wickham downplays the significance of Gregory’s failure to use the word nobilis for northerners, by stating that Venantius Fortunatus, unlike Gregory, does employ the term for Frankish aristocrats.  In fact, scrutiny reveals Venantius’ use of the term to be more or less the same as Gregory’s.  He describes as ‘noble’ southern Gallic senators, the Merovingians and one northern Frank, who dwells in Toulouse.  Otherwise he uses the word to qualify virtues or objects in a religious context.

Nonetheless, looking at the usage of particular terms is not without its problems, given the almost total lack of written evidence from northern Gaul itself.  The sources available are essentially from Aquitaine or – in the case of the works of Venantius Fortunatus – of a poet from Italy.  One issue is whether the failure of these writers to discuss the northern, Frankish aristocracy in the terms usually employed for nobility is significant, or at least in what ways it is significant.  If the northern Gallic magnates were not recognisable as noblemen in the traditional Roman way, does that really mean that they cannot – functionally – have formed a similar type of ruling stratum?  There are, after all, other words which are used to describe northern aristocrats.  Some – seniores, proceres, potentes, or optimates for example – do not have a bearing on the precise enquiry as their general meaning of ‘leading men’ does not necessarily carry with it an implication about the relationship between their status and royal service one way or the other.  Other phrases do, however: maior natu for example.

This is important because, if nothing else, it demonstrates that no position taken on this topic is likely to represent a hard-and-fast ‘right answer’.  Indeed none of the argument presented thus far implies that there was no Frankish aristocracy, defining the latter in a loose sense as a group of people more powerful, in de facto terms at least, than their fellows.  The analysis of the archaeological cemetery evidence discussed earlier does not by any means suggest that some families did not remain dominant within their localities right through the period from the fourth century to the seventh.  Members of such kindreds might indeed be described as maiores natu.  In some areas, in any case, what we might term a noble class – using the word noble to distinguish an aristocracy more narrowly defined by its birth and culture as well as its wealth and standing – certainly did exist.  The ‘senators’ of Trier are the clearest example. 

Another point that must be made is that royal service contained mechanisms that could foster some of the characteristics of such a nobility.  Service in the schola palatina – the royal military household, where the training of the Pueri Regis presumably took place – clearly included literary education, enabling Frankish service aristocrats to partake in Latin literary culture to some extent at least.  Bonds forged between the Pueri themselves could create a sense of group solidarity (maintained by an epistolary culture derived from that of late imperial times), as is most famously attested at the end of the period covered by this paper with the circle of Desiderius of Cahors, which was formed when in the service of Chlothar II and Dagobert I.  Royal service, like late imperial, also brought with it certain honorific titles.  Viri illustri are attested and, in the capitularies, even viri magnificentissimi optimates.  These honorifics might also be used to foster a class identity amongst an essentially service aristocracy.  Such titles, however, were not hereditary. 

Nonetheless, conclusions are possible.  It is clear that, to writers like Gregory and Venantius, most of the Frankish aristocrats – even the powerful ones – whom they met or who featured in their accounts of sixth-century history did not, unlike the Merovingian kings themselves, meet the criteria for nobilitas normally used by their own class.  Some people who appeared in Gregory’s other tales or who commissioned poems from Venantius seem, in a local context, to have been members, by birth, of a stratum of leading families.  It would be difficult indeed to envisage a situation, even within the fluid sixth-century context proposed here, where such families did not exist.  What is at stake is the security of such families’ power and the relative  of royal patronage and of local pre-eminence in terms of lands, wealth and so on.

To shed further light on this issue, one obvious source of information is Gregory of Tours’ Histories, with its account of the doings and, usually, violent ends of numerous Frankish aristocrats.  Gregory’s evident refusal to incorporate the Frankish magnates within his category of nobiles has been mentioned.  One reason for this might have been the fast turn-around of post-holders within the Merovingian realm that resulted from the kings’ adept control of patronage.  This would usually mean that Gregory (and Venantius) was rarely aware of the names of these aristocrats’ fathers or their family relationships.   It is interesting to speculate, too, on the self-presentation of such men, however, and to wonder whether they presented themselves simply as, for example, ‘Grippo the Frank’.  Perhaps patronymics were not habitually given precisely because aristocratic southerners would likely be none the wiser for it.  By way of modern English analogies, questions such as ‘what school did you go to?’ or (for instance) ‘would that be the Hampshire Fortescue-Smythes?’ are questions that can only be, and therefore are only, properly answered by members of the same, privileged class as the questioner.  They aim primarily at elucidating that class-relationship and only secondarily at extracting actual information.  They do not necessarily put all the power in the hands of the questioner as difference can be just as aggressively asserted by a negative response, but social space is nevertheless marked by the exchange.


Part 4 is here

Officers or Gentlemen? The Frankish Aristocracy in the Sixth Century: Part 2

[In this second chunk of the article, I look at the dynamics of royal-aristocratic relations and how the maintenance of patronage could work to undermine the local status of aristocrats.  Archaeological evidence is then adduced to show a further weakening of local aristocratic power by the middle quarters of the sixth century.]

Part 1 is here

The exception to this rule, just mentioned, was the aristocracy of the Triererland.  This serves as an instructive case study of the problems that the Frankish kings might have faced, and how they dealt with them.  The aristocracy of the middle Moselle Valley had been closely connected with the imperial Roman presence in the region, when the western Empire’s main capital was located at Trier (western Emperors residing regularly at Trier between the 280s and 388). As well as holding large estates and lavish villas, which might have survived the early fifth-century crises better than those in other regions, it had a powerful sense of its own Roman identity.  References to the senators of Trier are known – uniquely for Merovingian Gaul north of the Loire.  Indeed, the rapacious aristocracy of northern Gaul, so long (probably mistakenly) employed as a paradigm for the late Roman aristocracy, may be specifically located to this region.  Their senatorial identity is represented not only in the statements of the evidence but also in its form.  Trier has produced about a quarter of all the late antique epigraphy from Gaul, and almost all such data found north of the Loire.  In regional context, this Roman means of commemoration stands out like a sore thumb.  As well as a self-confident Roman aristocracy, Trier also possessed an episcopate with an awkward tradition of speaking out against secular rulers, actively maintained during the first half of the sixth century by Saint Nicetius.  With all this in mind it is perhaps unsurprising that the attempts by the Merovingian kings of Austrasia to establish themselves at Trier failed.  By the middle of the sixth century they had abandoned the former imperial capital and moved up-river to Metz.  Against the physical backdrop of the old imperial buildings (in one of which, the cathedral, Nicetius staged one of his confrontations with King Theudebert of Austrasia) and against the ideological background of Justinian’s attempted reconquest, accompanied as it was by the proclamation of the West’s loss to barbarians, any early Merovingian efforts (like Theudebert’s) to present themselves simply as legitimate successors to the Roman Emperors – as emperors in new guise – was surely doomed to failure.  When the audience for such attempts was composed of a noble stratum far more confident about its traditional Roman credentials, their failure was assured.  

The Merovingians therefore, like most other post-imperial rulers, betook themselves to lesser Roman centres, like Paris and Metz.  Metz was a Roman city which offered all the elements of an ‘imperial complex’ like that at Trier or Constantinople: a cathedral, and audience chamber and an amphitheatre.  These however had not been unified into such a complex by the emperors.  Metz thus presented a suitably Roman ‘canvass’ upon which the Merovingians could nevertheless inscribe their own political identity.  Here, moreover, the Merovingians could appoint their own men to the episcopate, largely removing the threat of awkward confrontations with bishops.  As a result of this attention, Metz had, by the middle of the eighth century, largely eclipsed Trier.  Used to having their rulers living amongst them, the Trier aristocracy now had to travel up the Moselle to Metz to obtain the patronage of the Merovingian kings.  Once there, of course, they found themselves in competition with the kings’ own servants and with aristocrats from across the rest of Gaul.  Their local wealth and pre-eminence availed them little in this context.

This relationship between the royal court and local aristocrats is paradigmatic for understanding early Merovingian northern Gallic social structures.  Royal patronage was even more important to the aristocrats of the other parts of the region, whose wealth and familial standing were less secure than those of the Trier ‘senators’.  Reduced to precarious authority even within their own localities, the best means of cementing this leadership and of involvement in politics on a wider stage (such as had been possible to their fourth-century ancestors) was to obtain the patronage of the Merovingian rulers.  This dynamic is important as, as already noted, it removes the need to assume a widespread programme of political assassination or purges.
    

By the opening of the second quarter of the sixth century, which this paper takes as its rough chronological starting point, other developments had further strengthened the Merovingians’ hand.  In addition to the removal of rival branches of the Frankish royalty, already mentioned, which (as is less widely appreciated) continued into the reigns of Clovis’ sons, the defeat of the Visigothic kingdom and the acquisition of Aquitaine from 507 onwards was a decisive moment.  Although the conquest of southern Gaul was a more complex and drawn-out process than is often imagined, with much territory retaken by the Goths under Theudis and thus having to be conquered again (perhaps as late as the 530s), by 535 Burgundy and Provence had also been added to the Frankish kingdom.  These conquests massively increased the Merovingians’ store of patronage.  Northern aristocrats could be rewarded with offices (such as those of count or duke) south of the Loire.  This may not have happened on a large scale but it did not have to do so to have crucial effects.  The imposition of northerners as local civil and military governors, with royally-bestowed rights to collect taxes, hear court cases and levy the army, will have made a considerable difference to a southern Gallic nobility, used to having a powerful Gothic ruler living amongst them for the best part of a century.  Now they had to compete with Frankish royal officers for the favour of a monarch who dwelt to the north, rapidly becoming Francia.  While this dynamic enabled the Merovingian realms to secure their control over Aquitaine, Burgundy and Provence, to a greater degree than their Carolingian and later successors, it similarly maintained the kings’ ability to play off the northern aristocrats against each other in the contest for royal patronage.  This competition for patronage could be played out in various formal settings.  Gatherings of the army, the chief political assembly of the kingdom, and of the Franks especially, were occasions for the kings to reward and punish, as the famous story of the Vase of Soissons makes clear.  Gregory calls this a meeting on the campus martius.  Whether this was named for a place, on the model of the campus martius in Rome, or for a date (1 March) is not clear.  Certainly an annual assembly on 1 March (the Marchfield) seems to have been in existence by the 590s, when Childebert II issued all three of his edicts on that date.  It is possible that by the 590s a fusion of the date and the location had occurred.  Some adaptation of Roman practice is probable.

Thus the kings had, by the second quarter of the sixth century, established themselves in a position of more or less unassailable authority within their realms.  There were other policies that helped to underline this position.  One was their well-known practice of avoiding marriage with the daughters of their aristocrats, preferring low-born women and foreign princesses.  This ensured that no Frank could claim membership of the family without the recognition of a reigning king.  Royal daughters, too, appear to have been kept out of the marriage market, except for alliances with neighbouring kingdoms.  Though decried by some contemporaries, and whether or not it was designed to do so, the division of the realm in fact also helped to bolster the Merovingian supremacy.  Opposition to one king only crystallised around his brother or cousin in another of the Teilreiche.  More probably based upon the pragmatic division of the Roman Empire than upon any kind of ‘Germanic’ inheritance custom, the provision of more than one court facilitated admittance to royal presence.  This further enabled the tight control over the distribution of patronage mentioned earlier.  While this was to the kings’ advantage, the ease of access and the prevention of a monopoly of the court by any particular faction were doubtless seen as aspects of good governance by many aristocrats.

The kings’ dominance and their evident reduction of local leaders to the level of a service aristocracy can be seen further in social and economic developments of the second and third quarters of the sixth century.  This can be traced archaeologically in two or three areas.  The first is the further deterioration of the late Roman fine-ware tradition.  By 540, Argonne Ware production, which had hit a critical point in the mid-fifth century, entered a final phase of decline.  Between that point and its final disappearance from the record around 600, only a limited range of undecorated forms were produced.    A similar trend might also be manifest in the fact that artefacts of Böhner’s Stufe II (c.525-c.575/600) manifest much less craft-specialisation than was visible in, for example, the polychrome garnet-inlaid objects of the late fifth-century Flonheim-Gültlingen Horizon.    Although the belt seemingly remained a key item of masculine costume, the belt-buckles of the middle quarters of the sixth century are for the most part plain, unadorned ring-and-tongue designs, sometimes with a simple incised decoration on the loop or tongue, occasionally on the ‘scutiform’ terminal of the latter.  Where plaques are attached these too are often undecorated.  Most of the decoration that we see is invested in female apparel such as brooches but here too the objects are, for the most part, simply cast.

One reason for this must be that the security of local leadership was now even less than it had been in the preceding 100 years.  Surplus was now spent on a cycle of rituals that involved the display and consumption of resources, the bestowal of food, weaponry and other movables or parcels of land in return for alliances and support.  Such rituals clustered around the life-cycle, particularly the processes of socialisation (evidently a long, many-staged procedure for males), betrothal and marriage. Death and burial were the other key focus for such activity and it is from the practices associate with this that we have our most plentiful evidence in the form of archaeological cemetery data.  Between c.475 and c.500, in the Flonheim-Gültlingen Horizon proper, most furnished burials were of adult males.  In the subsequent quarter of a century, children and females became more common, giving the phase some similarities with the archaeological horizon of the so-called Föderatengräber in the late fourth and earlier fifth centuries.  We appear to have some locally prominent families marking their status within the community through the use of elaborate ritual. The increase in numbers of such graves seems to reveal a growing number of such kin-groups using material culture linked with the Franks to symbolise a claim for local authority.  The gradual use of the burials of women and children as foci for display suggests that the competition for local authority was becoming more severe, as deaths of all sorts of family-members could bring status into question and require smoothing over with ritual activity.  This activity not only displayed claims for legitimate authority to an audience assembled for the funeral, via appropriate material cultural symbols and emblems; it appears to have been accompanied by feasting and the bestowal of other gifts, maintaining or strengthening ties with other kindreds within the community.  A burial appears to have been an occasion to show that a family could inter one of its members with the appropriate obsequies to the best of its ability.  Within this, there was – obviously – a competitive element.  It is important, therefore, to underline that the ‘wealth’, or otherwise, of a burial is not a passive index of the formal rank or status of the deceased or his/her family, but an active claim to local standing.

By the second quarter of the sixth century, however, this practice had become very much more widespread.  For example, at the cemetery of Lavoye (dép. Meuse), there were only a dozen graves in its first phase (c.475-c.525) but about two hundred in the phase spanning the remainder of the sixth century.  Of these, at least three quarters were buried with grave-goods.  Rather than being clustered with particular families, though, grave-goods were now very clearly distributed according to the age and gender of the deceased.  Community norms appear to govern the forms of material deemed appropriate for individuals of particular ages and gender, as well as the overall lay-out of the cemetery itself.   Clearly the extent of competition for authority had increased with the participation of a wider range of families in the rituals that served to augment as well as cement local relationships.  Burials which are marked out from their contemporaries have to be sought more subtly than in previous phases, usually marked by having more of the correct forms of artefact – and especially gender-related artefacts – for a person of that age and sex.  More obviously unusual burials are nevertheless known, and on some sites distinction is created through the breach of the cemetery’s usual norms.

Thus we can propose from a variety of archaeological sources that authority within a community was now much less secure than had earlier been the case.  In these circumstances a connection with the royal court and its patronage was one of the best means of securing such pre-eminence independently of local political allegiances. 


Part 3 is here