This book offers fascinating new thinking about the christianisation of early medieval Gaul, the liturgy of Gaul as a significant component of Merovingian culture, and the place of paganism and superstitions in the Merovingian world.

Although often depicted as a barbaric and uncivilised society, in the full pejorative meaning of these words, Merovingian Gaul was clearly a Christian society and a direct continuation of the Roman civilisation in terms of social standards, morals and culture. Using insights provided by social history, archaeology, palaeography and anthropology, this book studies the problem of Christianisation in early Medieval Gaul from a cultural point of view. While exploiting a huge range of primary and secondary material, Dr. Hen does not confine himself to a functional analysis of various cultural and religious activities in Merovingian Gaul, but goes on to assess the consequences and implications of such activities for the people themselves, and for the subsequent developments in the Carolingian period.

Drawing on a rich variety of sources - histories, hagiographies, ascetic literature, and records of dreams at saints' shrines - Isabel Moreira provides insight into a society struggling to understand and negotiate its religious visions."--BOOK JACKET.

The Bobbio Missal was copied in south-eastern Gaul around the end of the seventh and beginning of the eighth century. It contains a unique combination of a lectionary and a sacramentary, to which a plethora of canonical and non-canonical material was added. The Missal is therefore highly regarded by liturgists; but, additionally, medieval historians welcome the information to be derived from material attached to the codex which provides valuable data about the role and education of priests in Francia at that time, and indeed on their cultural and ideological background. The breadth of specialist knowledge provided by the team of scholars writing for this book enables the manuscript to be viewed as a whole, not as a narrow liturgical study. Collectively, the essays view the manuscript as physical object: they discuss the contents, they examine the language, and they look at the cultural context in which the codex was written.

This book examines the political and social effects brought about by the establishment of Columbanian monasteries in seventh-century Gaul.

Examines research from a variety of fields, including archaeology, bio-archaeology, architecture, hagiographic literature, manuscripts, liturgy, visionary literature and eschalology, patristics, numismatics, and material culture, Diverse list of contributors, many whose research has never before been available in English, Provides substantial research regarding women's history in the Merovingian period, Expands research beyond Europe to include other cultures that came in contact with the Merovingians Book jacket.

In early medieval Europe, dreams and visions were believed to reveal divine information about Christian life and the hereafter. No consensus existed, however, as to whether all Christians, or only a spiritual elite, were entitled to have a relationship of this sort with the supernatural. Drawing on a rich variety of sources—histories, hagiographies, ascetic literature, and records of dreams at saints' shrines—Isabel Moreira provides insight into a society struggling to understand and negotiate its religious visions. Moreira analyzes changing attitudes toward dreams and visionary experiences beginning in late antiquity, when the church hierarchy considered lay dreamers a threat to its claims of spiritual authority. Moreira describes how, over the course of the Merovingian period, the clergy came to accept the visions of ordinary folk—peasants, women, and children—as authentic. Dream literature and accounts of visionary experiences infiltrated all aspects of medieval culture by the eighth century, and the dreams of ordinary Christians became central to the clergy's pastoral concerns. Written in clear and inviting prose, this book enables readers to understand how the clerics of Merovingian Gaul allowed a Christian culture of dreaming to develop and flourish without compromising the religious orthodoxy of the community or the primacy of their own authority.