Wickham - Framing the early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400-800

Framing the Early Middle Ages

Europe and the Mediterranean 400800

CHRIS WICKHAM

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Christopher Wickham 2005

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First published 2005
First published in paperback 2006

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ISBN 019926449x 9780199264490
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For LESLIE

I HAVE BEEN working on this book for nearly seven years, and have discussed issues relating to it with nearly every late Romanist and early medievalist I have met during that time; I have gained insights from too many people to list. First of all, I should like to thank those who commented on sections of the book: Leslie Brubaker, who read almost the whole text; Paul Fouracre, John Haldon, Hugh Kennedy, and Eduardo Manzano, who read sections of . They were often sharp critics, and I gained immensely from their insights, suggestions, and bibliographical references; I know they do not all agree with my conclusions.

Another group of people, partially overlapping, consists of friends with whom I started when I needed to get a sense of the bibliography of a given region: people I could not do without as guides to one area or another. These include Steven Bassett, Julio Escalona, Simon Esmonde-Cleary, Lisa Fentress, Riccardo Francovich, Hugh Kennedy, Eduardo Manzano, Ulf Nsman, Pierre Ouzoulias, Claude Raynaud, Peter Sarris, and Paul Van Ossel. I must also here express my great debt to Rosamond McKitterick, Ghislaine Noy, and Pierre Toubert, who invited me to teach in, respectively, the University of Cambridge (to give the 2003 Trevelyan Lectures), the Ecole des Chartes, and the Collge de France; the lectures I gave there are all, in more or less revised form, in this book and I gained enormously from the conversations and library accessand the time to research and writethat I had both in Cambridge and in Paris.

I benefited from ideas and bibliographical or other help from, apart from those mentioned above, Stuart Airlie, Donald Bailey, Franois Baratte, Bernard Bavant, Andrea Berlin, Franois Bougard, Monique Bourin, Alan Bowman, Luis Caballero, Federico Cantini, Gill Clark, Simon Corcoran, Bill Day, Paolo Delogu, Archie Dunn, Santiago Feijoo, Laurent Feller, Rebecca Foote, Sauro Gelichi, Sharon Gerstel, Mary Harlow, Jill Harries, Catherine Hills, Richard Hodges, Sonja Jilek, Jeremy Johns, Olga Karagiorgiou, Sean Kingsley, Luke Lavan, Stphane Lebecq, Rgine Le Jan, Wolf Liebeschuetz, Antonio Malpica, Cyril Mango, Alessandra Molinari, Jinty Nelson, Margaret OHea, Lauro Olmo, Helen Patterson, Walter Pohl, Andrew Poulter, Dominic Rathbone, Mark Redknap, Paul Reynolds, Charlotte Rouech, Riccardo Santangeli, Sven Schtte, Chris Scull, Trish Skinner, Jean-Pierre Sodini, Frdric Trement, Marco Valenti, Alan Walmsley, Mark Whyman, Ian Wood, and Enrico Zanini. A particular thanks is owed to Sue Bowen, who has spent what amounts to years typing this book, and to Harry Buglass, who drew the maps. The index was compiled by Alicia Corre. Here the list is certainly incomplete, but can be added to with some of the more specific acknowledgements in footnotes; I am also very grateful to the wide range of people who sent me their books and articles, many unpublished, including doctoral theses; I could not have written this book without you. I have tried to restrict this list to those who, knowingly or unknowingly, had a direct effect on the book; if I was to include the rest of the people with whom I have dealt fruitfully and intellectually since 1997, the list would be at least twice as long.

I must finally thank three institutions: the University of Birmingham Main Library, and the Ashmolean (now Sackler) Library in Oxford, where I did most of my researchI could not have written without the latter in particular; and the British Academy, whose granting of a Research Readership in 19979 enabled me to start this project in the first place. This book is the (delayed) result of that Readership.

Birmingham

April 2004

C.J.W.

For this paperback edition, only minor corrections have been made. There has of course been a steady stream of books and articles in the last two years which could be taken into account, and I have been greatly stimulated by the variety of critical reactions to the book, in public or private, some of which would result in modifications to the argument. But I stand by my main claims, and also by my empirical characterizations; I would not want to make any major changes to the text. Adding in new work would thus be not only an enormous operation, but also mostly cosmetic, so I have not attempted it. The book should be seen as remaining a work of 2004.

August 2006

. The regions discussed in this book and other placenames

. The Roman empire in

. Africa

. Egypt

. Syria and Palestine

. The Byzantine heartland

. Italy

. Spain and Mauretania

. Central and southern Gaul

. Northern Gaul

. Britain

. Ireland

. Denmark

In Maps 310: