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East and West in the Early Middle Ages: The Merovingian Kingdoms in Mediterranean Perspective

East and West in the Early Middle Ages: The Merovingian Kingdoms in Mediterranean Perspective

The aim of the proposed project is to study the Merovingian kingdoms of the early Middle Ages in a broader Mediterranean context. The working hypothesis of this project is that apart from being post-Roman Barbarian kingdoms, deeply rooted in the traditions and practices of the western Roman Empire, the Merovingian kingdoms had complicated and multi-layered social, cultural and political relations with it eastern Mediterranean counterparts, that is, the Byzantine Empire and the Umayyad Caliphate. Not only were the Merovingians aware of the politics and culture of Byzantium and its relations to the Persians, they also had a fair amount of knowledge on the ins and outs of the Muslim East from the seventh century onwards. By analysing Merovingian and Eastern accounts, as well as various archaeological findings and artefacts, the proposed project will seek to offer a new perspective on the history of Merovingian Francia and its relations with the Eastern Mediterranean. It will also clarify the importance and significance of eastern religious and cultural phenomena to the understanding of the social, as well as the political history of the early medieval West.

The politics and culture of the Merovingian kingdoms in Gaul had most often been interpreted as a local phenomenon. The reasons for that are complex. In part, this view was due to some nationalist historiographic traditions (especially in Germany) that understood the early Middle Ages as part of a national past in Germanic terms. But it also reflects a general tendency to look at early medieval West through a predominantly “western” prism, framing the early Middle Ages as an era of its own, which had to be treated separately from “Roman”, that is, Antique, or “Byzantine” history. Whereas the study of the early medieval West in general, and the study of the Merovingian kingdoms in particular, had witnessed an immense resurgence of interest in recent years, there is no monograph, and only a handful of (mostly out-of-date) papers dedicated to the relations between the Merovingian kingdoms and its Eastern counterparts. These studies, more often than not, present a misleading image of the complicated and multilayered social, cultural and political relations between the Merovingians and their eastern Mediterranean counterparts. It is indeed extremely rare to find modern scholars asking questions on the place of the Merovingian kingdoms in the larger context of the Mediterranean world, and especially on ways the Merovingian perceived and understood both the Byzantine Empire, and the Umayyad Caliphate. This collaborative project will address precisely these issues, and it will open up a new line of investigation into Merovingian history.

The project seeks to place Merovingian history and culture within a wider “Mediterranean“ perspective, which includes not only Italy and North Africa, but also the Byzantine and Muslim Near East. Its prime purpose is to investigate the impact of the “East” in terms of politics, culture and religion on the West, including migration of ideas and traditions from East to West and the ways in which Eastern politics, religion and culture were perceived in the West. To achieve this, a joint research group including Israeli and German professors and research students will meet regularly in Berlin and Beer Sheva in order to discuss relevant texts, unpublished manuscript evidence, coins, archaeological findings, and artistic artefacts. By doing so, the students will be given a first hand experience of handling and analysing different sources rarely used in traditional studies of early medieval history. At the same time, this wholesale approach will, we hope, increase the awareness of modern historians to new avenues of research, and will draw their attention to the limits of traditional historiographic traditions.

The proposed study will be conducted in four consecutive thematic stages, each of which will culminate in a workshop (either in Berlin or in Beer Sheva). Each of these stages and meetings will be devoted to a special topic and a relevant corpus of various sources, which the group will discuss, analyse and debate. The four stages are „Politics and Diplomacy“, „The Migration of Ideas“, „Culture and Religion“ and „The East in Western Eyes“.

The research team will include, apart from the two PIs (Prof. Stefan Esders and Prof. Yitzhak Hen), a group of PhD and MA students, who shall write their theses on topics related to the project’s main interest. The core of the co-operative activity will be the four workshops, in which the two groups will get together to present their findings, and to discuss relevant texts, methodological issues, and new material. Each group will be responsible for the organisation of the workshops. The fourth workshop will take the form of a small international conference, in which members of the group will present and discuss their findings in front of a broader scholarly audience. We intend to invite to that gathering leading experts from all over the world.

 

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