The Merovingians

The studies collected here cover a period of about 33 years, from 1986 to 2019, and represent a sustained effort to understand the institutions of the Merovingian kingdom and its history.

Alexander Callander Murray is Professor of History Emeritus, University of Toronto, Canada. He is the author of Germanic Kinship Structure: Studies in Law and Society in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (1983); editor of After Rome's Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History, Essays Presented to Walter Goffart (1998) and A Companion to Gregory of Tours (2016); and editor/translator of From Roman to Merovingian Gaul: A Reader (2000) and Gregory of Tours: The Merovingians (2006).

1. Post vocantur Merohingii: Fredegar, Merovech, and 'Sacral Kingship' / 2. Gregory of Tours (Hist. II 10) and Fredegar (Chron. III 9) on the Paganism of the Franks: The Relation of the Texts and What They Say / 3. The Position of the Grafio in the Constitutional History of Merovingian Gaul / 4. From Roman to Frankish Gaul: Centenarii and Centenae in the Administration of the Merovingian Kingdom / 5. Immunity, Nobility and the Edict of Paris / 6. Merovingian Immunity Revisited / 7. The Merovingian State and Administration in the Times of Gregory of Tours / 8. Review Article: The New MGH Edition of the Charters of the Merovingian Kings / 9. So-called Fictitious Trials in the Merovingian Placita / 10. The Law of the Post-Roman Kingdoms / 11. Reinhard Wenskus on 'Ethnogenesis,' Ethnicity, and the Origin of the Franks / 12. The Composition of the Histories of Gregory of Tours and Its Bearing on the Political Narrative