1. Sources
Archaeology
Law Codes
Histories
Roman Records
Overall concern over whom texts written for,
by and about

2. Questions of Identity
Ethnic
Geographical/“National”
Kinship
Lordship

3. Kinship
Family/clan/tribe as primary tie on loyalty
Merovingians
Merovech

4. Kinship
Impact of family:
Protection - danger of feuds - wergeld
Marriage - limited rights of women
Inheritance

5. Lordship (Voluntary Relationship)
Swear loyalty in return for protection and
plunder
Permanent relationship from end 1st c.
Classes: Nobles
Freemen
Freed-men
Slaves
Warrior nobility supported by others

6. Justice
Popular courts - assemblies of free warriors
Compurgation and ordeal
Assembled people as witnesses to holy rite

7. Role of Government
Warriors having limited influence on choice
of leadership
Councils of war as “pep rallies”
Limited roles of government: leadership in
war, restraint on feuds

8. Role of Clergy
Increasingly influential in civic affairs, esp.
bishops:
Major leader in diocese
Representative of town’s patron saint
Director of religious festivals: reinforcing
loyalties
Some bishops were married

9. Nobility
Warrior nobility living on estates, supported
by peasantry

10. Tacitus: Germania
Cornelius Tacitus (c. 55-c. 117)
Historian
Born in S. Gaul, upper class
Studied rhetoric in Rome
Held various government positions

11. Tacitus: Germania
Various works, including:
Histories
Annals
De Origine et Situ Germanorum
(Germania)

12. Lex Salica/Pactus Legis Salicae (Law of the Salian Franks)
Issued btw. 508 and 511
by Clovis (r )