Download or read book The Rise of the Carolingians and the Liber Historiae Francorum written by Richard A. Gerberding and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1987 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the 8th-century chronicle, the Liber Historiae Francorum, this book presents a highly accurate view of the society in which Charlemagne's ancestors set themselves on the road to power and throws new light on the early family members themselves and on the factors which directed politics in the Frankish "dark ages."
Download or read book History and Memory in the Carolingian World written by Rosamond McKitterick and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-07-29 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 2004 book looks at the writing and reading of history during the early middle ages.
Download or read book The Rise of the Carolingians and the Liber Historiae Francorum written by Richard A. Gerberding and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1987 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the 8th-century chronicle, the Liber Historiae Francorum, this book presents a highly accurate view of the society in which Charlemagne's ancestors set themselves on the road to power and throws new light on the early family members themselves and on the factors which directed politics in the Frankish "dark ages."
Download or read book History Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity 550 850 written by Helmut Reimitz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-06 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pioneering study explores early medieval Frankish identity as a window into the formation of a distinct Western conception of ethnicity. Focusing on the turbulent and varied history of Frankish identity in Merovingian and Carolingian historiography, it offers a new basis for comparing the history of collective and ethnic identity in the Christian West with other contexts, especially the Islamic and Byzantine worlds. The tremendous political success of the Frankish kingdoms provided the medieval West with fundamental political, religious and social structures, including a change from the Roman perspective on ethnicity as the quality of the 'Other' to the Carolingian perception that a variety of Christian peoples were chosen by God to reign over the former Roman provinces. Interpreting identity as an open-ended process, Helmut Reimitz explores the role of Frankish identity in the multiple efforts through which societies tried to find order in the rapidly changing post-Roman world.
Download or read book Early Carolingian Warfare written by Bernard S. Bachrach and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-03-08 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Without the complex military machine that his forebears had built up over the course of the eighth century, it would have been impossible for Charlemagne to revive the Roman empire in the West. Early Carolingian Warfare is the first book-length study of how the Frankish dynasty, beginning with Pippin II, established its power and cultivated its military expertise in order to reestablish the regnum Francorum, a geographical area of the late Roman period that includes much of present-day France and western Germany. Bernard Bachrach has thoroughly examined contemporary sources, including court chronicles, military handbooks, and late Roman histories and manuals, to establish how the early Carolingians used their legacy of political and military techniques and strategies forged in imperial Rome to regain control in the West. Pippin II and his successors were not diverted by opportunities for financial enrichment in the short term through raids and campaigns outside of the regnum Francorum; they focused on conquest with sagacious sensibilities, preferring bloodless diplomatic solutions to unnecessarily destructive warfare, and disdained military glory for its own sake. But when they had to deploy their military forces, their operations were brutal and efficient. Their training was exceptionally well developed, and their techniques included hand-to-hand combat, regimented troop movements, fighting on horseback with specialized mounted soldiers, and the execution of lengthy sieges employing artillery. In order to sustain their long-term strategy, the early Carolingians relied on a late Roman model whereby soldiers were recruited from among the militarized population who were required by law to serve outside their immediate communities. The ability to mass and train large armies from among farmers and urban-dwellers gave the Carolingians the necessary power to lay siege to the old Roman fortress cities that dominated the military topography of the West. Bachrach includes fresh accounts of Charles Martel's defeat of the Muslims at Poitiers in 732, and Pippin's successful siege of Bourges in 762, demonstrating that in the matter of warfare there never was a western European Dark Age that ultimately was enlightened by some later Renaissance. The early Carolingians built upon surviving military institutions, adopted late antique technology, and effectively utilized their classical intellectual inheritance to prepare the way militarily for Charlemagne's empire.
Download or read book Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages written by Frans Theuws and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2001 with total page 630 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Saint-Maurice d'Agaune - Gudme - Vistula - Francia - Maastricht - Aachen - Gaul - Cordoba.
Download or read book Late Merovingian France written by Paul Fouracre and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of documents in translation brings together the seminal sources for the late Merovingian Frankish kingdom. It inteprets the chronicles and saint's lives rigorously to reveal new insights into the nature and significance of sanctity, power and power relationships. The book makes available a range of 7th- and early 8th-century texts, five of which have never before been translated into English. It opens with a broad-ranging explanation of the historical background to the translated texts and then each source is accompanied by a full commentary and an introductory essay exploring its authorship, language and subject matter. The sources are rich in the detail of Merovingian political life. Their subjects are the powerful in society and they reveal the successful interplay between power and sanctity, a process which came to underpin much of European culture throughout the early Middle Ages.
Download or read book The Carolingian World written by Marios Costambeys and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-12 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive and accessible survey of the great Carolingian empire, which dominated western Europe in the eighth and ninth centuries.
Download or read book The Merovingian Kingdoms 450 751 written by Ian Wood and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-23 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive survey which begins with the rise of the Franks, then examines the Merovingians.
Download or read book A History of the Franks written by Gregory of Gregory of Tours and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-12-06 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Saint Gregory of Tours (November 30, c. 538 - November 17, 594) was a Gallo-Roman historian and Bishop of Tours, which made him a leading prelate of Gaul. He was born Georgius Florentius, later adding the name Gregorius in honour of his maternal great-grandfather. He wrote in form of late Vulgar Latin; however, it has been argued that this was a deliberate ploy to ensure his works would reach a wide audience. He is the main contemporary source for Merovingian history. His most notable work was his Decem Libri Historiarum or Ten Books of Histories, better known as the Historia Francorum ("History of the Franks"), a title given to it by later chroniclers, but he is also known for his credulous accounts of the miracles of saints, especially four books of the miracles of Martin of Tours. St Martin's tomb was a major draw in the 6th century, and Gregory's writings had the practical aspect of promoting this highly organized devotion. Written in the 6th century by the Bishop of Tours, "Historia Francorum" is a ten volume work that recounts the world's history from creation, focusing on the movement of Christianity into Gaul. From the life of Saint Martin of Tours to the conversion of the Franks and the conquest of Clovis, "Historia" also details the procession of Frankish kings down to Gregory's own time. The later books grow more personal, ultimately reflecting the author's arrest from a misplaced charge of treason. Though written largely as a fight against heresy, "Historia" is widely considered a dramatic narrative of French history. Detailed and engaging, this historical document is also a skillful unraveling of many years of transition from the Roman period to Medieval period, reflective of the little-known flowering of historical recovery in the 'Dark Ages.' In this volume we have a selection of this expansive work edited and translated by Earnest Brehaut.
Download or read book Charlemagne s Early Campaigns 768 777 written by Bernard Bachrach and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-02-15 with total page 744 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charlemagne's Early Campaigns is the first book-length study of Charlemagne at war. The neglect of this subject has truncated our understanding of the Carolingian empire and the military success of its leader, a true equal of Frederick the Great and Napoleon.
Download or read book The Uses of Literacy in Early Mediaeval Europe written by Rosamond McKitterick and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-04-23 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the importance of literacy in early medieval Europe in a number of different societies between c. 400 and c. 1000.
Download or read book Mercenaries and Paid Men written by John France and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008-03-31 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mercenaries have always had a poor press. Theirs is one of the world's oldest professions, but the very word has profoundly negative connotations of infidelity and ruthlessness. But were they so different from soldiers? Why, in any case, were they so omnipresent in the warfare of the medieval and early modern period? What kind of men became mercenaries and where did they come from? These are some of the questions which the essays in this volume address. Contributors are: Richard Abels, Bernard Bachrach, David Bachrach, Adrian Bell,Charles Bowlus, David Crouch, Guido Dall'Oro, Kelly Devries, Sven Ekdahl, John Hosler, John Law, Alan Murray, Stephen Morillo, Laura Napran, Eljas Oksanen, Carlos Andrez Gonzalez Paz, Ciaran Og O'Reilly, Muriosa Prendergast, Nicolas Prouteau, John Pryor, Ifor Rowlands, Spencer Smith.
Download or read book Charlemagne written by Roger Collins and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 1998-09-28 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charlemagne remains one of the most compelling figures in European history. In this lively, vivid portrait of an extraordinary monarch and his achievements, Roger Collins profiles the most powerful and significant ruler in Western Europe between the end of the Roman Empire and the Italian Renaissance. While his achievements were in some ways ephemeral (after all, his great Empire soon broke up), he can still clearly be seen as the figure who transformed the nature of Europe and ushered in a period which has an explicit and comprehensible connection with our own. The reign of Charlemagne (768-814) saw the unification under his rule of many areas of France, Italy, Germany, Spain and central Europe as part of his attempt to create a single European-wide state. He revived the office of emperor in the West and his achievements inspired a succession of both military conquerors and would-be unifiers of Europe up to the present day, earning him the name, 'Father of Europe'.
Download or read book God s Crucible Islam and the Making of Europe 570 1215 written by David Levering Lewis and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2009-01-12 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning author, God’s Crucible brings to life “a furiously complex age” (New York Times Book Review). Resonating as profoundly today as when it was first published to widespread critical acclaim a decade ago, God’s Crucible is a bold portrait of Islamic Spain and the birth of modern Europe from one of our greatest historians. David Levering Lewis’s narrative, filled with accounts of some of the most epic battles in world history, reveals how cosmopolitan, Muslim al-Andalus flourished—a beacon of cooperation and tolerance—while proto-Europe floundered in opposition to Islam, making virtues out of hereditary aristocracy, religious intolerance, perpetual war, and slavery. This masterful history begins with the fall of the Persian and Roman empires, followed by the rise of the prophet Muhammad and five centuries of engagement between the Muslim imperium and an emerging Europe. Essential and urgent, God’s Crucible underscores the importance of these early, world-altering events whose influence remains as current as today’s headlines.
Download or read book History Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity 550 850 written by Helmut Reimitz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-06 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pioneering study explores early medieval Frankish identity as a window into the formation of a distinct Western conception of ethnicity. Focusing on the turbulent and varied history of Frankish identity in Merovingian and Carolingian historiography, it offers a new basis for comparing the history of collective and ethnic identity in the Christian West with other contexts, especially the Islamic and Byzantine worlds. The tremendous political success of the Frankish kingdoms provided the medieval West with fundamental political, religious and social structures, including a change from the Roman perspective on ethnicity as the quality of the 'Other' to the Carolingian perception that a variety of Christian peoples were chosen by God to reign over the former Roman provinces. Interpreting identity as an open-ended process, Helmut Reimitz explores the role of Frankish identity in the multiple efforts through which societies tried to find order in the rapidly changing post-Roman world.
Download or read book Rewriting Saints and Ancestors written by Constance Brittain Bouchard and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2014-10-13 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thinkers in medieval France constantly reconceptualized what had come before, interpreting past events to give validity to the present and help control the future. The long-dead saints who presided over churches and the ancestors of established dynasties were an especially crucial part of creative memory, Constance Brittain Bouchard contends. In Rewriting Saints and Ancestors she examines how such ex post facto accounts are less an impediment to the writing of accurate history than a crucial tool for understanding the Middle Ages. Working backward through time, Bouchard discusses twelfth-century scribes contemplating the ninth-century documents they copied into cartularies or reworked into narratives of disaster and triumph, ninth-century churchmen deliberately forging supposedly late antique documents as weapons against both kings and other churchmen, and sixth- and seventh-century Gallic writers coming to terms with an early Christianity that had neither the saints nor the monasteries that would become fundamental to religious practice. As they met with political change and social upheaval, each generation decided which events of the past were worth remembering and which were to be reinterpreted or quietly forgotten. By considering memory as an analytic tool, Bouchard not only reveals the ways early medieval writers constructed a useful past but also provides new insights into the nature of record keeping, the changing ways dynasties were conceptualized, the relationships of the Merovingian and Carolingian kings to the church, and the discovery (or invention) of Gaul's earliest martyrs.
