Merovingian Letters and Letter Writers

Abstract

This dissertation is a survey of the more than six hundred letters that form the surviving epistolographical output of the Merovingian era, i.e. circa AD 500-750. These pieces of correspondence have been gleaned primarily from the epistolae, auctores antiquissimi, passiones vitaeque sanctorum aevi Merowingici, and formulae Merowingici et Karolini aevi sections in the monumenta Germaniae historica; a few have been taken from the libri historiarum decem of Gregory of Tours. Much of this corpus has never before been translated into English, or indeed into any modern language. It has also been underutilized by scholars. Although work has been done on some of the collections in isolation, no study to date has approached the material as a whole. This study focuses on the letter as a conveyor of personal and private information, and the letter collections as a corpus that contains important historical, sociological, and cultural implications for our understanding of Merovingian Gaul. iii Five chapters discuss various aspects of Merovingian epistolography. Chapter 1 examines letters to and from women. Chapter 2 focuses on the large body of poetic epistles composed by Venantius Fortunatus. Bishops were prolific letter writers and Chapter 3 discusses various aspects of these. Chapter 4 is in two sections: the first examines that shadowy third party in an epistolographical transaction, the bearer, while the second focuses on the gifts that sometimes accompanied letters. Finally, Chapter 5 investigates the role of the Bible in Merovingian epistolography by analyzing the sources, extent, and purpose of the Scripture quotations employed by letter writers. Also included with the chapters are an Appendix of Unusual Poems and carmina figurata with translations, an Appendix of Biblical Quotations, and several charts that serve to quantify the material. The last half of this dissertation consists of a comprehensive Appendix containing summaries of each letter in the Merovingian collections, with historical context. This is followed by an Index of Epistolographical Prosopography that matches each individual with his or her epistolographical output, which can extend over a number of collections.