Explaining what made ancient Greek law unusual, Michael Gagarin observes
that most premodern legal cultures “wrote extensive sets (or codes) of laws for
academic purposes or propaganda but these were not intended to be accessible
to most members of the community and had relatively little effect on the actual
operation of the legal system.” Thi…[Read more]

The purpose of this paper is to examine the notion of Frankish community – that is, the communal identity of those living within the regnum Francorum – as it emerged, developed and changed during the seventh century and into the early-eighth. This examination will focus on two historical texts, the so-called Chronicle of Fredegar, composed c.6…[Read more]

Early Carolingian authors appear to have been acutely aware of ethnic and regional identities, and the sources of the late-eighth and early-ninth centuries contain many references to non-Franks. These ethnic terms alone, however, do not imply a sense of ‘otherness’. The incorporation of these non-Frankish peripheral peoples into a consolidated Fra…[Read more]