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This book provides a collection of documents in translation which brings together the seminal sources for the late Merovingian Frankish kingdom. The collection of documents in translation includes Liber Historiae Francorum, Vita Domnae Balthidis, Vita Audoini Episcopi Rotomagensis, Acta Aunemundi, Passio Leudegarii, Passio Praejecti, and Vita Sanctae Geretrudis and the Additamentum Nivialense de Fuilano. The Liber Historiae Francorum was written while a Merovingian king still ruled over the Franks and by someone geographically very close to the political centre of that realm. Late Merovingian hagiography tends to emphasise miracles which heal and eliminate the maladies of the life, and the Vita Audoini follows the pattern. The Vita Sanctae Geretrudis makes no mention at all of Columbanus and his mission among the Franks, a strange omission if the Irish were all one group. The Passio Praejecti provides information on the relationship between the politics of the locality and the politics of the centre, for a land dispute between Praejectus and Hector, the ruler of Marseilles, was heard at the royal court at Autun at Easter 675. The Passio Leudegarii has an overt peace-making element, although the issue of who was on which side is much clouded by the complexity of the political narrative.
. Late Merovingian hagiography (post-650) tends to emphasise miracles which heal and eliminate the maladies of this life, 14 and the Vita Audoini follows the pattern. The author relates five miracles which happened during the saint’s lifetime: two are of the other-worldly type 15 and three are thaumaturgical. 16 Then, as is usual in Merovingian hagiography, the author recounts many
Serious appreciation of such piety does not sit easily with a picture of spiritual decadence. So too, while Merovingian hagiography is rather more concerned with politics than are many of the saints’ Lives from outside Francia, political hagiography is certainly not confined to the limits of the Frankish Kingdom: Stephen of Ripon’s Life of Wilfrid fits into the mould of the Passio Praeiecti and the Lives of Leodegar. Nor are all Merovingian texts entirely political, even if none of them avoids politics altogether: religious standards matter a great deal in the Lives of
F. Prinz broke new ground in relating the texts to their social and religious backgrounds. Along with P. Riché’s survey of early medieval learning and education, the work of these scholars provided the basic terms of reference within which Merovingian hagiography is generally read and understood. What emerges from their studies is a picture of a socialised sanctity in which the conventional
. This is further evidence for Ian Wood’s contention that we should not see the Irish on the Continent as one group: the Luxeuil Irish were different from Foillan’s and Ultan’s group. I. N. Wood, ‘The Vita Columbani and Merovingian Hagiography’, Peritia , I ( 1982 ), 68. We shall examine this more closely when we treat the Vita Sanctae Geretrudis , below, pp. 313
people and forces in the palace, P. Fouracre, ‘Merovingian history and Merovingian hagiography’, Past and Present , 127 ( 1990 ). On Aunemund, see above, pp. 177–9. 81 For strong caveats against presuming that medieval people were subject to blind faith, S. Reynolds, ‘Social mentalities and the case of medieval scepticism
. 63 I. N. Wood, ‘The Vita Columbani and Merovingian Hagiography’, Peritia , 1 ( 1982 ), 69–70. 64 It was once thought that the only two widely used monastic rules in seventh-century Gaul were the Benedictine and the ‘Mixed Columbanan–Benedictine’, with the
: Studies in the Construction of Power (Farnham: Ashgate Variorum, 2013). Fouracre, P., ‘Merovingian history and Merovingian hagiography’, Past and Present 127 (1990), 3–38 (reprinted in Fouracre, Frankish History , no. II). Fouracre, P., The Age of Charles Martel (Harlow: Longman, 2000). Fouracre, P., ‘Why were so many bishops killed in Merovingian Francia?’, in N. Fryde and D. Reitz (eds), Bischofsmord im Mittelalter. Murder of Bishops (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2003), pp. 13–55 (reprinted in Fouracre, Frankish History , no
. 105 The Latin is Quod postea in eiusdem martyrium perficiende fomis scandali fuit . Such a critical attitude towards a martyr is unique in Merovingian hagiography. It reinforces the impression that Leudegar was a controversial figure, and helps explain the extraordinary delicacy with which this episode is treated in the Passio Leudegarii . The remark also tells us