ECST 705 Lived Religion in Merovingian Gaul
Ruled by the Merovingians and other barbarian groups between AD 481 and 751, the formerly Roman provinces of Gaul and Germany, largely but not exclusively Christian, exhibited a high degree of cultural continuity in the midst of political and military disruption and change. Abundant sources, both textual and material, attest to the everyday religious practices of both urban and rural populations across a diverse sequence of geographic regions. This seminar will examine sermons, saints' lives, chronicles and histories, legal documents, liturgical texts, as well as evidence from art, architecture, and archaeology (particularly the evidence from burials) to try to recover as many aspects as possible of the lived experience of religion in the Merovingian age. What counts as "religious" will be broadly defined to include sacred time and space, rituals of the life cycle, exorcism, healing, divination, magic, prayer, almsgiving, pilgrimage, ascetic practices, monasticism, church organization, and other topics.