An old review of Bachrach's Early Carolingian Warfare: Prelude to Empire

[Bernard Bachrach occupies a vitally important place in modern medieval studies, a real asset.  We live in a world, in which the tenets of Rankean positivism are avowed to be no longer tenable.  I have dealt with the problems of this before but either way the idea that there is a single right answer is widely admitted to be outmoded.  Thus a plethora of rival interpretations occupies the field.  Indeed this is a world where some historians hold that a multiplicity of equally valid readings is a desideratum, and that there is no right and wrong.  What is the newcomer to do, confronted by this confusing, shifting sea of  - seemingly - equally plausible reconstructions? 

Well, fear not, o newcomer, for help is at hand, thanks to Professor B.S. Bachrach of the University of Minnesota.  Bachrach provides us with an invaluable fixed point, a point de repère as the French would say.  In a fluid historical landscape where truth and falsehood, right and wrong, are chimaera we can at least orient ourselves on Bachrach's work, secure in the knowledge that everything he says is wrong.  It is a kind of Cartesian point of origin, a historical thinking degree zero, from which any move in any direction will represent a positive step towards understanding.

Bachrach continues to churn out massive tomes about early medieval warfare, accompanied by masses of endnotes containing vicious ad hominem attacks on his critics (largely yours truly).  For those who may be taken in I offer this review of an earlier instalment, which appeared in Peritia and is thus perhaps not very widely available.  It sets out most of the key objections to his work, objections with which the overwhelming majority of students of the early medieval period would agree.  This, however, is not quite my text as published, which was very slightly edited.  This is, if you like, the 'director's cut'.]

Bernard S. Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare: Prelude to Empire Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2001, xiv + 430 pp. $55.00. ISBN 0-8122-3533-9

Over the last thirty years or so Bernard S. Bachrach has been painstakingly, indeed fearlessly, building what might best be termed a parallel early Middle Ages.  The names and the events are familiar and the landscape just about recognisable, yet something is not quite right.  In this early Middle Ages, not only did Rome not die, it never even grew old.  Indeed it became bigger and better than ever before.  The changes that took place in ‘conventional’ late antiquity have little or no place in this world.  Here, the Roman state was all-powerful; its army an efficient, well-oiled fighting machine; its towns mighty fortresses.  There is no sign of the corruption and inefficiency, of the negotiation and bargaining at all levels of government and administration, or of the economic contraction and urban decay revealed by four decades of sophisticated documentary and archaeological study of the western Roman Empire in the ‘other’ Late Antiquity.  In BachrachWorld, moreover, this maximal Roman state continued without a break into the post-Roman period, especially in the field of military affairs.  The western kingdoms of the period between c.500 and c.900 commanded well-equipped and numerically enormous standing armies.  In Bachrach’s latest book, the Carolingian regular army numbers tens of thousands of men drawn from a ‘manpower pool’ of two million, all rigorously trained and disciplined according to the best Roman theories and supplied by centralised state workshops.  They fight with throwing spear and stabbing sword, just like Caesar’s legions, and march across the countryside in step, to the tune of Venantius Fortunatus’ hymns.  If only Charlemagne himself could have seen them!

Were this a work of science fiction or part of the curiously booming ‘what if’ historical literature it might be very interesting.  Alas it is not.  It is presented, and pretty aggressively at that, as a serious work of historical scholarship.  In fact Bachrach repeatedly stresses that his is the correct view of the era, dismissing most other current practitioners of early medieval history, particularly Anglophones and especially the growing phalanx of those who have dared to criticise his imaginative reconstructions in the past, as doctrinaire slaves to a ‘primitivist’ agenda.  The book begins with an account of political history – or long-term strategy, as Bachrach calls it – between the supremacy of the mayor Pippin of Herestal and the coronation of his grandson Pippin the Short as King Pippin I in 751.  The argument is that there was a conscious and coherent long-term strategy, based upon a knowledge of which areas had once been governed by the early Merovingians, to reconquer and absorb peripheral areas into the regnum francorum.  Bachrach then moves on to look at military organisation; the Franks maintained a huge and highly organised regular army, as mentioned.  The book next considers training and equipment, morale, battlefield tactics, campaigning strategies and ‘naval assets’.

The problems with the book are many but most relate to Bachrach’s rather individual modus operandi, which have repeatedly been criticised in the past.  A few causes célèbres relating to the different chapters (none of which will surprise aficionados of Bachrach’s work) may suffice.  Bachrach reads very widely in the English and German secondary literature and his knowledge of the primary sources is extensive.  As often as not, a cited source, if taken absolutely literally and in isolation, does say what he claims it says.  The problem is that these sources are taken too literally and often out of context.  For example, a very brief passage (a handful of lines) from the epic Waltharius becomes the subject of an extensive exegesis on cavalry warfare (p.196 ff.).  Leaving aside the problems of the poem’s provenance and purpose, in Bachrach’s analysis Waltharius’ troop deploys and redeploys from line to column and back again, all whilst within spear-throwing distance of the enemy, who (apparently) kindly allow them to continue with this country dancing, never once attacking them whilst in the middle of their manoeuvres.  Nineteenth-century tactical theorists, who said that any unit that manoeuvred in the face of the enemy was disordered, would have been astonished.  But there would be no need for their astonishment.  Bachrach has simply translated literally the two synonyms for battle-line (acies and cuneus) used by the poet.  Neither word had such technically precise usage in the early Middle Ages, and nor did they in classical Latin (as even a brief perusal of Lewis and Short’s Latin dictionary will rapidly demonstrate).  This is indeed an interesting passage but Bachrach takes his analysis much too far, and the same is true of source after source.

Another problem concerns the Frankish political ‘master-plan’.  Bachrach’s reconstruction is based mainly upon the Annales Mettenses Priores, written well after the close of the period under discussion and, as has very widely been appreciated, recasting the history of the late seventh and eighth century as the inevitable and entirely justified, because divinely-ordained, rise of the Carolingians to control of the whole Frankish world.  Bachrach pays lip-service to this point but does not allow it to impinge in any way on his argument, which involves the early Carolingians closely scrutinising the works of Gregory of Tours and other sources in order to find out the original extent of Merovingian dominion and then planning a long-term strategy to reconstruct this polity.  Yet at the same time, in the period studied, they neither retook all of the areas where the Merovingians had had usually fairly ill-defined hegemony (sixth-century Frankish gains in northern Italy are the subject of no part of the plan, although admittedly that could be because these are only vaguely mentioned in less well-known sources possibly absent from the Carolingians’ Strategic Studies research library), nor stop at the limits of Merovingian power (thus Septimania wasconquered).  The fact of the matter, as has been clearly revealed in sensitive studies of the Frankish politics of the period (most recently and notably Paul Fouracre’s The Age of Charles Martel), is that the regional elites on the periphery of the Frankish world who broke free of direct Merovingian rule in the course of the seventh century, nevertheless at the same time became ever more assimilated with the aristocracy of the kingdom’s heartlands.  They neither achieved nor desired complete independence from Frankish politics but (and this has long been appreciated) retained close familial and other links with it, and intervened in Frankish high politics as and when they wished, or were able to.  This fact in itself meant that in the aristocratic faction politics of the day, Pippinid/Arnulfing political dominance could never be secure until the dynasty had ensured that its allies controlled all of the areas of this loosely nit polity.  Thus early Carolingian military activity tended to be drawn out from core to periphery in often piece-meal and usually contingent fashion.

The chapter on the organisation of the Frankish army suffers from being based upon almost no sources actually written in the period under review (c.687-751).  The main evidence used is ninth-century Carolingian capitularies.  Bachrach assumes that the legislation in these documents was generally closely adhered to in practice.  Leaving this questionable assumption to one side, students of the period (most significantly the late Timothy Reuter) have long underlined the fact that the absence of military legislation from the substantial corpus of Charlemagne’s capitularies before about 800 is unlikely, when compared with the heavy attention devoted to the subject after that date, to be fortuitous.  Times had changed and there was a greater need for legislation, even if the precise nature of that change is still a matter for debate.  This material cannot, as Reuter said, simply be projected back into earlier periods.  Other material is drawn from Hincmar of Rheims’ De Ordine Palatii.  Bachrach claims that this text was written by Adalhard of Corbie in the late eighth century (in which case it would still belong after the era covered by his book).  Hincmar does indeed say that he had copied Adalhard’s work, but the fact remains that Adalhard’s text is lost and it is quite clear that Hincmar interpolated his own views to a now unknowable extent.  Even recent optimistic interpretations, by Brigitte Kasten and Janet Nelson, which see this text as essentially Adalhard’s, push it only to the very end of Charlemagne’s reign, and Hincmar himself twice claims no greater antiquity for the information contained in it than the reign of Louis the Pious.  The use made of the text here, where it is claimed to represent an unproblematic reflection of how things actually were in the eighth century, is perilous to say the least.

The chapter on equipment and training takes a similar approach.  Here the source is Hrabanus Maurus’ reworking of Vegetius’ De Re Militari – once again a mid-ninth-century text which, even if one could accept its testimony as a faithful description of Carolingian actuality, would relate to the middle of the ninth century, not the beginning of the eighth.  Bachrach’s is in fact a useful survey of the ways in which Hrabanus modified his source, but the problems are (if you will excuse the pun) legion.  First of all, the purpose of the text is not closely analysed.  Secondly, Hrabanus’ was not the only reworking of Vegetius in the period; Freculf and Sedulius also produced versions, rather different from Hrabanus’.  As Paul Kershaw will argue in a forthcoming paper, whilst Freculf and Hrabanus seem genuinely to have felt their works might be useful for the kings to whom they addressed them, Sedulius’ is more like unashamedly gleeful antiquarianism.  Recent work has stressed the authority given by Carolingian writers to classical works, whether or not they bore any relationship to ninth-century reality.  Natalia Lozovsky’s work on geography is a case in point.  Thirdly, the information contrasts with what we know of Carolingian weaponry from archaeological sources.  Bachrach elides the gladius mentioned in Hrabanus’ version of Vegetius with the archaeologically attested scramasax, but the two are different.  The two-edged early Roman legionary short sword (it had largely gone out of use even by Vegetius’ day) was a stabbing weapon, a usage completely unsuited to the single-edged scramasax which, especially in its later forms, from the seventh century onwards, was a chopping weapon.  Bachrach dismisses such comparisons through a pseudo-statistical argument about the smallness of the archaeological sample (he threatens a whole monograph on archaeological and pictorial sources in the future), in apparent unawareness of the contradiction between this point and his own generalisations about actual practice from a single version (out of at least three different ones) of an ancient text of uncertain application.  Fourthly, Hrabanus’/Vegetius’ accounts of military practice are quite at variance with what we know of ninth-century campaigns and battles (see further below).  Finally, Vegetius’ was an antiquarian work even when he wrote it, full of criticisms of ‘modern’ practice and recommendations about going back to the Good Old Days.  There is little or no evidence that the De Re Militari either adequately described or had any effect on most late Roman military practice. This alone must have some implications for Bachrach’s arguments about direct Roman-post-Roman military continuity.

When looking at battlefield tactics and campaigns Bachrach again often relies on unexpected sources.  Apart from the use of Waltharius mentioned above, he discusses Agathias’ account of a Frankish battle in Italy in the 550s.  The precise relevance of this to early Carolingian warfare is unclear.  Archaeological sources make clear a dramatic shift in the nature of weaponry around 600, which in turn points to a radical change in tactical practice away from more open and fluid battlefield usages, involving greater use of missile weapons, towards a heavier reliance upon what might be termed shieldwall combat.  One of the few even remotely detailed accounts of a battle from Bachrach’s chosen period, the Chronicle of 754’s description of the battle of Poitiers, is hugely over-interpreted, ignoring the biblical resonances in which it is steeped.  Otherwise, whenever a source runs contrary to the clinical Roman science that Bachrach believes Carolingian warfare to have been (and as soon as we get detailed accounts of warfare with anything like regularity, in the later ninth century, this is almost always the case), Bachrach dismisses them as representing the wilful, ideologically-driven misrepresentation of warfare by churchmen opposed to violence (evading the point that, as numerous scholars have shown, the church’s attitude to war in this period was far from being either so clear-cut or so uniformly negative).  A more disturbing aspect of Bachrach’s work is its sanitisation of warfare.  The huge Carolingian military machine moves through the landscape causing barely the slightest hardship or disruption to the locals, for this would run counter to the rational purposes of the war and defeat its aims.  Similarities with modern euphemisms such as ‘friendly fire’, ‘smart bombs’ and ‘collateral damage’ are doubtless not coincidental.  Indeed the book is fairly soaked in modern military jargon and seeks to demonstrate that the Carolingians, like ‘Stormin’ Norman’ Schwarzkopf, were adherents of the doctrine of overwhelming force.  What impact the ‘Rumsfeld doctrine’, of small, highly trained and rapid forces striking directly at the enemy heartland, will have on military history of the Bachrach type remains to be seen.  One might suggest that it will result in a picture more easily supported by actual early medieval evidence…

Bachrach’s attitude to archaeology resurfaces, not for the first time in his oeuvre, in his discussion of the economic background to early Carolingian warfare.  Decades of archaeological work on the settlement geography of the period, stressing late Roman decline before resurgence from the seventh century onwards is dismissed as ‘primitivist’ or statistically worthless, in favour of works by historians dating from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Indeed much of the bibliography of the book is very old, though claimed to retain its value (although given that Bachrach simply dismisses anything more recent it is difficult to know how he can ascertain this).  Bachrach’s methodology, as usual, is to start from questionable assumptions about Carolingian military capacities, based, as we have seen, on an idiosyncratic and problematic use of a small range of written sources, and then extrapolate from this to assert the existence of a socio-economic base capable of sustaining such military activity, with evidence hammered to fit.  Surely in early medieval studies one has no option but to work from the known to the unknown.  Although not without its problems, we have far more data on the social structures, settlement geography and economic organisation of the early Middle Ages (none of which supports the Bachrach thesis, which is why he dismisses it as unrepresentative) than on military actuality.  A more reasonable methodology is therefore to work from this base to reconstruct the levels of military activity it could support, not vice versa.

Oddly in view of his diatribes against other researchers, this is not a careful book.  Hrabanus is curiously spelt Rhabanus throughout; the Süntel are rendered ‘Süntal’ (which would imply that they were a valley rather than a mountain range); even Latin terms, upon which Bachrach places such heavy weight, are not given correctly – contubernium and castrumare given as contubernia and castra in the nominative singular.  The prose is leaden; readers might keep themselves amused by spotting the repetition of key phrases (almost refrains) like ‘massive army’ and ‘old Roman fortress city’.  More seriously, Bachrach repeatedly completely misrepresents the arguments of his opponents, cases in point being the supposed ‘primitivism’ of some modern researchers (mercifully, his rants on this subject here do not come as close to implicit racism as in some of his other writings), the arguments against the efficiency of Carolingian legislation, and those about warfare being driven by booty.  Even works claimed to support the Bachrach thesis are misrepresented.  The volume is dedicated to F.-L. Ganshof, whom Bachrach claims as a sort of intellectual father figure (what Ganshof would have made of this honour is sadly impossible to know), apparently in the belief that Ganshof (in my view rather harshly treated by recent scholarship) represents modern paradigms of early medieval history.  Yet Ganshof’s work on the Carolingian military was quite at odds with Bachrach’s arguments.  He thought armies were fairly small and was, as the discussione after K.-F. Werner’s famous paper on the subject makes clear, unconvinced by the notion of the 20,000 man army in practice.  Bachrach is tacit on this subject, yet takes historians to task, probably rightly, for misrepresenting Werner (although in my reading Werner was concerned with theoretical maxima and open to the objection, put forward by Ganshof, that forces in reality might be as low as 40% of the theoretical totals).  Bachrach’s bugbear, archaeological work on late Roman urban decline (curiously claimed to represent only a vestige of an outmoded idea), is inaccurately rendered, although it has almost no relevance to the period being studied.  In opposition to the alleged (but grossly misrepresented) argument (by this reviewer) that Metz had become a ‘ghost town’, Bachrach cites the construction of a ‘massive cathedral’ within the walls.  We know absolutely nothing about the size, plan or even the construction materials of the fifth-century cathedral in Metz, although admittedly it probably was inside the walls.  More to the point, the argument critiqued here, like most other work on the subject, argues for rapidly growing and indeed thriving urban centres by the period covered by Bachrach’s book.

This raises what is perhaps a more important issue.  Leaving aside the point that they largely cite Bachrach’s own earlier outpourings, the extensive notes (there are 257 pages of text in this volume and 134 pages of endnotes at, thus, a ratio of over a page of notes to every two pages of text) repeatedly descend into tirades against his critics.  Indeed this section is, to considerable degree, an extended diatribe against Ian Wood.  Much of the critique takes the form of unsubstantiated generalised claims about levels of scholarship, ideas about proof or evidence, and so on.  An historian of Bachrach’s age and experience should know that this runs contrary to academic rules of engagement.  If you are going to assert that a scholar has no idea how to use evidence, you are obliged to back up your claim.  As implied above, in order to attack his critics, Bachrach often deviates considerably from the point under discussion.  One really must ask why the publishers allowed this over-inflated and self-indulgent use of the endnote apparatus.

There is no doubting Bachrach’s intelligence and scholarship; what remains, at best, curious is its funnelling into an increasingly strident and wilful insistence upon a version of events which has little or no support in the evidence and which diverges increasingly from the readings of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages by almost every other scholar of the period.  All told, it is probably best to file this book under quaint historiographical dead-ends.

La Compétition dans les Sociétés du haut Moyen-Age: Aspects matériaux et idéologiques

[This is the paper I presented at a conference in Rome last week on La Compétition dans les Sociétés du haut Moyen-Age, held at the École Française de Rome and the Universtà di Rome Tre.  Many thanks to Régine Le Jan for the invitation.  I wrote it straight into 'French' (though I'm grateful to Giusto Traina and to my partner, to whom we'll just refer as Dr Bossy, for translating it from that into actual French) so I don't have an English text to post.  I will add an English précis later.]

Dans l’antiquité tardive et au haut moyen-âge l’immatériel pouvait être estimé à un prix plus cher que le matériel.  Il suffit par exemple de rappeler la figure du sanctus, le saint homme, qui rejette absolument la richesse matérielle et qui le fait avec autant d’ostentation que le noble, somptueusement vêtu, manifestant son statut social devant ses rivaux à la cour du roi ou dans l’armée.  De ces deux hommes, il est difficile de dire lequel montre le plus grand pouvoir: l’aristocrate riche et puissant devant le roi, ou le saint homme, manifestement pauvre, devant Dieu.

Au haut moyen-âge on ne se limitait pas à se disputer des richesses matérielles, mais aussi de ressources immatérielles voire idéologiques.  Ceci est bien connu et pourtant je me vois obligé de rappeler quelques notions de base.  D ‘abord, l’économie du haut moyen-âge présente des différences significatives par rapport à l’économie moderne.  On ne peut parler d’économie monétaire, car les relations passaient régulièrement par des échanges de dons; les liens sociaux se fondaient fréquemment sur ces échanges et ainsi de suite.  Même si désormais ces constats sont acquis par les historiens il me semble que nous avons trop tendance à mettre l’accent sur l’aspect matériel des ressources.  Pour cette raison je voudrais développer les implications de ces idées : penser les aspects immatériels des ressources dans la politique altimédiévale pourrait avoir des implications plus profondes et de plus longue portée que nous avons peut-être imaginé.  Quand nous considérons la compétition dans les sociétés du haut Moyen-âge il convient de réévaluer les relations entre les ressources matérielles et les ressources idéologiques ou immatérielles.

Je voudrais commencer avec le fameux titre 36.11 de la Lex Ribvaria.  En précisant comment payer les amendes, les wergelds, ce titre présente une liste d’équivalences.  J’ai traduit le texte de l’édition MGH.

Un taureau cornu voyant, en bonne santé vaut 2 solidi

Une vache cornue, voyante en bonne santé - 3 solidi

Un étalon voyant, en bonne santé, vaut 12 solidi

Une jument voyante, en bonne santé - 3 solidi

Une épée avec son fourreau vaut 7 solidi

Une épée sans fourreau - 3 solidi

Un bon haubert vaut 12 solidi

Un casque – 6 solidi

De bons bagnbergas­ (ce terme fait référence à une sorte d’armure pour les jambes mais on ne dispose pas d’informations plus précises) - 6 solidi

Lance et bouclier – 2 solidi  ... etc.

À base de cette liste il est possible de constater certaines équivalences de valeur.  Renée Doehaerdt, par exemple, a proposé une telle interprétation de ce titre.  Une épée avec son fourreau valait trois taureaux et demi, ou deux taureaux et une vache.  Un étalon valait quatre vaches.  Un équipement complet de guerrier coûtait 45 solidi, c’est à dire 15 vaches, ou 22 taureaux, un petit troupeau de bétail.  On en a fréquemment déduit que l’équipement militaire était très coûteux à l’époque et donc devait être réservé aux riches, aux aristocrates.

Cette conclusion n’est pas fausse, mais à mon avis elle est fondée en partie sur une erreur.   C’est à dire que le solidus n’était pas une unité standardisée, comme l’euro ou le livre d’aujourd’hui.  Le solidus n’était pas un moyen neutre d’échange.  De nos jours, n’importe quel objet peut être évalué à un certain nombre d’euros; on peut comparer deux objets par rapport à leur prix.  Quelque chose qui coûte 10 euros est donc deux fois plus cher, ou plus valable, que quelque chose qui ne coûte que 5 euros, etc.  Si j’avais le temps je pourrais calculer mon salaire, payé en livres Sterling, en Mars-bars.  Avec une telle somme d’argent on peut acheter soit des milliers de Mars bars soit un professeur d’histoire médiévale.

Mais les choses étaient tout-à-fait différentes au haut moyen-âge.  Il y avait, évidemment très peu de solidien Gaule quand la Lex Ribvaria était rédigée: le solidus était alors une simple unité de compte.  Les évaluations de la Loi Ripuaire tenaient compte non seulement du prix des objets ou de leur valeur intrinsèque mais de leur valeur sociale.  L’importance de la valeur sociale de l’objet est illustré par le fait que les forgerons (et les fabricants de fourreaux) n’étaient pas les super-riches du haut-moyen-âge!  La différence entre le prix d’une épée avec fourreau et celui d’une épée sans fourreau en est un exemple; la présence du fourreau double le prix de l’épée. Les évaluations de la loi tiennent compte aussi de la valeur sociale des objets.  Par ‘valeur social’ je veux dire les choses, les actions, les activités qui sont mises à la disposition de celui qui possède l’objet.  Par exemple, la possession d’une douzaine de vaches ne permettait au propriétaire que la participation dans les activités des pâtres.  Par contre, la possession d’une épée ouvrait la voie à la participation dans l’armée, c’est-à-dire dans l’institution politique la plus importante de l’époque.  Si on possédait une épée on pouvait ainsi rencontrer des hommes puissants et établir des relations avec eux.  Dans la société occidentale moderne, on peut fonder sa fortune sur n’importe quel genre de biens – les vaches, le pain, les stylos – et on peut devenir ainsi millionnaire ou conseiller d’état.  Ce n’était pas (ou très rarement) le cas au haut moyen-âge quand on prêtait plus attention à quel type de richesse on possédait.

On pouvait, bien-sûr, utiliser les vaches, les taureaux etc., comme des dons pour établir des liens sociaux, pour créer un réseau d’alliés, ou pour s’assurer du soutien dans la communauté locale.  Il faut cependant souligner le fait que ce genre de don ne marchait qu’à un niveau social inférieur.  Par contre, le don d’une épée ou d’un harnachement étaient fort estimés à des niveaux sociaux plus élevés.

Il existe plusieurs chartes où un laïc donne une terre à un monastère et reçoit un cheval en retour.  On ne devrait pas pour autant conclure – comme je l’ai fait moi-même il y a dix ans! – qu’un cheval avait la même valeur qu’une parcelle de terre.  Cela ne veut pas dire que les chevaux ne coûtaient pas chers à l’époque. Il faut se souvenir du fait que les chevaux étaient très vulnérables pendant les campagnes militaires, vulnérables à des maladies, à des blessures, etc.   Pour cette raison, beaucoup de campagnes ont été coûteuses en chevaux.  Les guerriers riches avaient donc plusieurs chevaux.  Si un cheval avait coûté l’équivalent d’un terrain, d’une assiette foncière, il est difficile d’imaginer comment les armées auraient pu comprendre des centaines – ou des milliers – de guerriers montés, beaucoup d’entre eux avec deux chevaux ou plus.   Ce qui compte dans ces échanges est la création de liens sociaux et politiques entre le laïc et le monastère.  La charte conserve la mémoire de ce lien autant qu’elle confirme le transfert légal de propriété foncière.  La possession d’un cheval (ou probablement un cheval de plus) permettait, ou rendait plus pratique, la participation de l’individu dans l’armée, et c’était le symbole même de cette possibilité.  Donc on devrait voir ces échanges comme des actes d’importance socio-politique et non seulement comme de simples transactions matérielles ou économiques.  Je dirais même que pour les hommes du moyen âge c’était l’importance sociale qui pesait le plus lourd.

L’autre aspect de ces échanges est la cérémonie, le rituel.  Pour les raisons que je viens d’esquisser, le rôle de la cérémonie était parfois plus important que la valeur économique des objets échangées.  La cérémonie se déroule devant des témoins tirés des notables de la société locale.  On démontrait ainsi les relations établies par cet acte: l’association avec le monastère, la protection peut-être de ce dernier, la puissance du monastère, la portée de son patronat, etc. 

Je voudrais poursuivre ces idées à travers une considération des chartes précoces Mérovingiennes.  J’ai choisi des chartes royales du septième siècle, éditées par Theo Kölzer, et des chartes de l’abbaye de Wissembourg en Alsace, éditées par Glöckner et Doll.  Il faudrait d’abord souligner le fait que je ne propose pas de conclusions valables pour toutes les chartes médiévales.  À mon avis, on ne devrait pas imaginer la charte comme un genre qui n’évolue pas dans le temps et dans l’espace, mais au contraire comme une production quasi-littéraire qui répondait à des changements sociaux et politiques.  Ce que je vais dire sur les chartes Mérovingiennes du septième et huitième siècle précoce n’est pas valable même pour celles du huitième siècle tardif, sans parler d’autres régions comme l’Angleterre anglo-saxonne ou d’autres périodes plus tardives. 

Il est intéressant de noter que ces chartes précoces précisent très rarement quels biens matériels ont été donnés ou échangés.  Il paraît que les relations créées par l’acte importaient beaucoup plus que les objets donnés.  Pendant la plupart du septième siècle, les chartes royales authentiques sont majoritairement des confirmations de dons aristocratiques. Les chartes de fondation pour Stavelot-Malmédy sont exceptionnelles par leur description de la forêt et de son étendue, et par la précision qu’on est allé autour de l’aire donnée de la forêt, en marquant ses bornes.  La majorité des chartes ne parlent que des choses en générale, comme dans la formule una cum mansis, domibus seu mancipiis vel accolis ibidem commanentibus seu campis pratis pascuis siluis et forastis. J’ai tiré cette phrase d’une charte de Wissembourg rédigé en 713, mais l’expression est assez typique.  Cette charte de Wissembourg précise que le terrain donné se situait entre deux ou trois petites rivières et une voie ou point de repère, et que la partie donnée des forastis comprenait la moitié de la forêt.  Elle précise également que le donateur transfert un quart de sa portion de ses terres dans les Vosges.  Pourtant, en générale, l’absence d’informations dans les chartes est typique. On n’y fait guère mention, par exemple, du nombre ou de l’étendue des mansi, campi et prati donnés, ni des bornes de ces territoires ; il est de même pour le nombre (et les noms) des mancipiiet accolae.  Les noms des mancipii apparaissent assez fréquemment dans ces chartes, mais les informations précises des propriétés foncières ne sont presque jamais mentionnées.

Ce silence est frappant.  On doit imaginer que d’autres documents ou du savoir local (la mémoire des boni homines) devait être invoqués pour que les chartes aient une valeur légale en cas de dispute.  Mais ces informations ou précisions n’ont laissé aucune trace dans la documentation qui nous reste.  Le document qu’on gardait le plus, avec l’intention évidente de le garder à jamais, était la charte confirmant la relation entre le donateur et le monastère.  Ce fait pourrait modifier, de manière subtile mais significative, comment nous interprétons ces documents.  Il donne à réfléchir aux historiens, comme moi par exemple, qui ont utilisé ces chartes pour étudier les détails de la propriété aristocratique (ou monastique), le pouvoir fondé sur la terre, les notions contemporaines de l’habitat, et les communautés rurales.  Je ne dis absolument pas qu’il n’y avait pas de don réel de terres etc. derrière ces chartes. Il est néanmoins possible que le contrôle des ressources foncières soit plus lâche à cette époque précoce qu’on n’a imaginé.  Quoi qu’il en soit, ce que je trouve assez surprenant, est le fait que les contemporains n’ont pas conservé les détails des terres données.  Si on compare ces chartes aux documents compris dans les formulaires, cette conclusion devient plus remarquable.  Les documents modèles des formulaires sont obsédés par les détails légaux des transactions.  Tout se passe comme si les auteurs des chartes avaient adopté ces formules et les avaient copiées directement, sans insérer les détails imaginés par les auteurs de ces derniers.  Les intentions des auteurs des formulaires semblent donc très différentes de celles des auteurs des chartes.  Les chartes conservent la mémoire de l’acte de donation, de la cérémonie et des relations socio-politiques ainsi créées.  Donc il parait que ce qui comptait le plus pour ceux qui participaient dans ces échanges était les relations socio-politiques, l’immatériel plutôt que le matériel.  Ceci changeait pendant le huitième siècle, sans doute.   On trouve des informations de plus en plus précises dans les chartes de cette époque.  La gestion des terres par les monastères devient plus serrée à la fin du huitième et au cours du neuvième siècle.

On peut tirer des conclusions semblables pour les soumissions aux rois francs des ducs ou des princes des pays limitrophes, comme l’ont souligné beaucoup d’historiens: chaque partie gagne.  Les rois ou les empereurs manifestent aux hommes importants du royaume (qui étaient peut-être leurs concurrents pour le pouvoir), la puissance royale, en faisant soumettre des princes à leur autorité; les princes, de leur côté, montrent à leurs propres aristocrates qu’ils ont le soutien du roi.

Je suis arrivé à ces observations après une étude de la guerre et de la prédation que j’ai entrepris pour un colloque qui a eu lieu à Francfort l’année dernière.  L’historiographie de la guerre au haut moyen-âge et celle de l’habitat et de l’économie ont suivi toutes les deux des trajets assez différents ; il est donc intéressant de les faire confronter.  Une telle confrontation découvre quelques problèmes de l’histoire traditionnelle de la guerre et de la politique.  On imagine souvent qu’on a fait la guerre pour prendre le butin de l’ennemi.  Ce butin fournit aux rois des dons pour des aristocrates puissants, ces aristocrates peuvent ainsi faire des dons à leur tour à leurs adhérents, etc.  Dans cette perspective, c’était le butin qui a huilé la machine politique du royaume haut-médiéval.  D’après la thèse célèbre de Timothy Reuter, l’absence de guerre a entrainé le déclin du royaume ouest-franc au neuvième siècle.  Par contre, le royaume est-franc pouvait mener des guerres contre les Slaves, par exemple, et donc est resté plus fort.  On pourrait proposer des hypothèses semblables pour d’autres royaumes du haut moyen-âge: l’Espagne Wisigothique, par exemple.  Ça va sans le dire qu’il s’agit ici d’une thèse et d’un historien exceptionnels, mais il y a quelques problèmes avec cet argument.  Quand on tient compte des données archéologiques on a raison de demander d’où venait ce butin.  Pendant beaucoup du haut moyen-âge, avant le neuvième siècle, les habitats ruraux étaient assez pauvres; il n’existait pas de grandes villes commerciales, même les habitats aristocratiques ne laissaient pas de traces matérielles riches; seules les monastères et les grandes églises contenaient des richesses, et les armées chrétiennes ne saccageaient pas ces bâtiments sacrés – ou au moins on ne les saccageait pas d’habitude!  Il y a environ treize ans, à un colloque à Birmingham, Chris Wickham a comparé la fréquence des invasions franques de l’Italie et la pauvreté matérielle des habitats de l’Italie du nord.  Dans sa communication, il s’est posé la question de ce que les Francs ont pillé dans ce paysage.  On pourrait plaisanter en disant que la pauvreté archéologique de la région manifeste le succès et la rigueur des pilleurs francs, mais l’absence de donnés archéologiques pose un problème historiographique réel. En plus, beaucoup, même la plupart, des campagnes militaires se conduisaient dans des paysages frontalières pauvres, comme les territoires Basques des Pyrénées, la marche Bretonne, la frontière slave, les marches anglo-galloises.

Donc il semble probable que les razzias ne pouvaient pas produire un riche butin.  Pour gagner ce genre de butin il fallait battre l’armée ennemie, ou la réduire à la soumission.  Les guerriers prenaient leurs richesses avec eux, en forme d’armes et d’harnachement somptueusement décorés, en forme de vêtements riches, et en forme de chevaux avec harnachement richement orné.  Également, les rois amenaient leurs trésors avec eux, comme beaucoup d’histoires le confirment.  Charles le Chauve – commandant fort et créateur mais peu heureux – a deux fois perdu son trésor après une défaite, une fois contre les Bretons, et une fois contre son neveu, Louis le Jeune.  Les annalesde Fulda décrivent cette dernière défaite en détail, mentionnant des vendeurs de boucliers et d’autres négociants qui suivaient l’armée de Charles.  De plus, une interprétation séduisante du Staffordshire Hoard est que les objets dans ce trésor faisaient partie d’un tribut payé aux vainqueurs après une bataille.  Beaucoup de ces objets sont des appliqués, brisés brusquement par une poignée d’épée.

Ceci dit, les batailles étant assez rares, même si elles étaient plus fréquentes qu’à des époques plus récentes. Il est donc question de savoir pourquoi les rois sont allés en campagne si souvent.  Pourquoi les aristocrates ont-ils voulu aller en guerre?  Et ce qui est clair est qu’ils l’ont bien voulu; on pourrait citer des cas fameux d’aristocrates francs du sixième siècle qui menaçaient avec violence leurs rois afin qu’ils leur mènent en campagne - même des rois redoutables comme Thierry I et Chlothaire I !  Il me semble que l’explication de la fréquence de ces campagnes devrait reconnaître l’importance des ressources immatérielles qu’on pouvait gagner en faisant la guerre: à savoir, le patronat du roi ou des aristocrates les plus puissants ; l’opportunité de faire preuve de dextérité avec les armes, ou de son habilité stratégique ou tactique ; l’occasion de se montrer fort, hardi, courageux, fidèle.  On doit se souvenir de la base belliqueuse ou militaire sur laquelle se reposait tant d’identités du haut moyen-âge: l’ethnicité franque (ou gothe, ou lombarde), la masculinité, la noblesse.  Comment serait-il possible de démontrer qu’on occupait une telle position dans la société sans aller en campagne de temps en temps, sans faire preuve de ces bases fondamentales de l’identité?  Il faut également tenir en compte le fait que l’armée était la principale institution politique du royaume.  Faire partie de l’armée, c’est participer à la politique.  Dans l’armée on pouvait renouveler des liens avec ses alliés et ses subordonnés, on pouvait recevoir des titres, des honores et d’autres faveurs du roi.  On pouvait grimper l’échelle sociale.

L’affaire célèbre de Matfrid et Hugo en 827 trouble la thèse de Reuter mais soutient l’interprétation que je viens de proposer.  Louis le Pieux a dirigé Matfrid et Hugo à la marche hispanique pour combattre une invasion par les Musulmans de l’Espagne, mais ces deux hommes ont assemblé une armée et ils ont marché si lentement que l’affaire était terminé avant leur arrivée.  Si le butin était le sine qua non de la politique, pourquoi est-ce qu’ils auraient hésité?  L’Espagne était une région plus riche que les autre pays limitrophes de l’empire Carolingien.  Si on suit la thèse de Reuter, ceci aurait été une opportunité excellente de prendre du butin et de revenir à la cour avec des trésors que Matfrid et Hugo auraient pu utiliser ensuite pour assurer leur prééminence auprès du roi.  Mais faire la guerre en Espagne signifiait l’éloignement du centre politique du royaume ;  on courait ainsi le risque de perdre la faveur de l’empereur et d’abandonner le principal champ de lutte politique à ses rivaux. Accompagner l’empereur en campagne, c’est important pour toutes les raisons que je viens de décrire; pourtant, conduire une campagne loin de son empereur et de ses rivaux, c’est toute autre chose.

Revenons donc à la soumission des chefs, des princes ou même des rois gouvernant des territoires ou des peuples périphériques: des Basques, par exemple, des Bretons, des Saxons peut-être.  Les Saxons payaient un tribut de 500 vaches par an.  Il est difficile d’imaginer qu’un roi Mérovingien comme Chlothaire I ait beaucoup prisé un don de 500 vaches, étant donné ses vastes ressources.  Qu’est-ce que les chefs Basques ont donné aux rois Wisigothiques ou Francs quand les armées franques ou gothes ravageaient leurs territoires?  Des moutons peut-être?  Du fromage?  Quelles richesses ont les rois mineurs Gallois données au roi de Mercia?  Je voudrais suggérer que le contenu précis du tribut importait beaucoup moins que l’acterituel de donation, de soumission, observé par les grands des deux royaumes.  Il y a deux histoires qui suggèrent que les objets acquis en campagne pouvaient être restitués aux propriétaires.  La Vie du saint anglo-saxon Guthlac fait mention de son remboursement d’un tiers du butin qu’il avait pris dans ses campagnes.  La célèbre histoire du vase de Soissons fait également penser à la possibilité, au moins, du retour d’objets valables pillés par des bandes de guerriers.

Enfin, je reviens aux chartes Mérovingiennes.  Serait-il possible d’imaginer que les terres et d’autres ressources données aux monastères étaient moins importantes que l’acte de donation?  Et que cette importance relative se laisse apercevoir par l’absence de détail dans ces documents, une absence qui peut surprendre d’un point de vue légal? 

Je suggère que le capital le plus important qui circulait dans l’économie du haut moyen-âge jusqu’au neuvième siècle, qui circulait derrière la liste des prix ou des équivalences de la Loi Ripuaire, était le capital social et politique.  Bien entendu, ce type de capital prenait une forme matérielle, mais la relation entre le capital matériel et le capital social n’était pas toujours directe, comme c’est le cas aujourd’hui.  Le capital matériel et le capital social pouvaient être associés de façon purement symbolique ou métonymique.  Les objets pouvaient être, pour employer une expression anglaise philosophique, des ‘placeholders’ pour des relations sociales.  Évidemment l’importance des relations établies par un don, ou le statut des personnages ainsi liés, pouvaient se traduire par la valeur des objets échangés.  Faire ce lien entre la valeur matérielle et la valeur sociale du don serait même la norme.  Cependant, je voudrais briser la relation automatique ou nécessaire entre ces deux éléments.  Il est possible que des objets qui nous semblent assez banales, comme des boucles de ceinture (qui étaient très simples au sixième siècle), aient porté un symbolisme riche en signification sociale.  Si on peut se fier au témoignage de la Loi Ripuaire, le fourreau était aussi valable que l’épée.  Des objets pouvaient porter en eux des mémoires, des traditions, des histoires; ils pouvaient agir, pour parler ainsi, sur des acteurs humains de l’époque, sans que la valeur intrinsèque de ces objets soit évidente aux chercheurs modernes.  On pouvait naturellement rapprocher ces deux aspects du don, avec, par exemple, l’ornementation des reliques et de leurs châsses.  Mais pas toujours.  Prenons, par exemple, la sainte lance conservée à la Schatzkammer à Vienne, avec son étiquette amusante: “Heilige Lanze (Karolingische: 8. Jahrhundert)”.  Ce n’est qu’un fer de lance assez banale mais ... c’est la sainte lance.

Je suggère que les objets signifiaient none seulement les relations formelles, les rôles &c. mais aussi ce que ces relations, ces rôles devaient ou même pouvaient être.  C’est à dire, dans la vocabulaire de Jacques Lacan, qu’ils fonctionnaient non seulement dans le champ du symbolique mais aussi dans le champ de l’imaginaire.  Ceci ouvre un espace de signification qui ne pouvait être rempli par le simple valeur matérielle ou sociale ou la fonctionnalité.

En conclusion, je ne veux pas suggérer que les objets de valeur matérielle n’étaient pas estimés par les hommes du moyen âge.  Je ne pense pas qu’il n’y ait pas de rapport entre la valeur intrinsèque d’un objet et l’importance, soit des personnes qui les possèdent, soit des relations sociales établies ou manifestées par le don d’un tel objet.  Je ne soutiens pas l’hypothèse que la compétition sociale ne concernait pas les choses matérielles, ou les bases foncières de la production. 

Ce que je propose est simplement quelques modifications à l’interprétation de la compétition socio-politique du haut moyen-âge.  Je voudrais d’abord briser le lien souvent imaginé entre la valeur monétaire ou matérielle et la valeur sociale d’un objet ou d’une ressource.  Nous devrions mettre l’accent plus souvent sur les ressources sociales ou politiques – l’immatériel, l’idéologique.  Au haut moyen-âge on se rivalisait pour des choses intangibles: le patronat, le soutien, l’alliance.  Ces ressources étaient peut-être plus limitées que les ressources matérielles.  En fin de compte il existait un ‘zero-sum game’ concernant l’accès à ces ressources, bien que beaucoup d’historiens  aient justement mis en question l’existence d’un tel jeu en ce qui concerne les ressources matérielles.  A cette époque, on pouvait partager des biens matériels, des assiettes fiscales et foncières, des forêts, des revenus des terres, des services.  C’était beaucoup plus difficile de partager l’importance, l’influence, le privilège, la préséance – les choses qui dominaient la politique du haut moyen-âge et qui gouvernaient ses dynamiques.  Au point de vue des ressources immatérielles, la compétition dans les sociétés du haut moyen-âge était plus acharnée que nous l’avons imaginé.

Classical Gender in Deconstruction

[Next week I am off to Padova to the VI Congresso della Società Italiana delle Storiche, where I've been asked to speak about a n episode in Gregory of Tours Histories.  I think that what the organisers wanted was my paper on the implications of this for the gendering of grave-goods, as published in Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul (2010), ch.9.  What they're getting though is this doubtless cock-eyed cod-Derridean meditation...  Mwahahahahahaha.....]

Until quite recently, one of the stranger stories in Gregory of Tours’ Historieshad largely gone unremarked upon, in spite of its interesting possible implications, or its possibly implied possibilities.  When the Nuns’ Revolt at Holy Cross, Poitiers (590) was supressed, says Gregory, the nuns’ leaders, Chlothild and Basina, made a series of accusations against Leubovera, their abbess.  One of these was that the abbess kept about the nunnery a man dressed as a woman, so that she could have sex without arousing any sort of suspicion.  Chlothild pointed the man out.  And so a man stepped forward, dressed as a woman.  He said, though, that he was impotent and that that was why he dressed that way.  In any case, he claimed, he lived a long way off and, though of course he’d heard of the abbess, he’d never actually met her.  This testimony was enough for the bishops (including Gregory) sitting in judgement and the charge was dismissed.

Now, one might say that the bishops had been surprisingly easily duped by this implausible tale and assume that Leubovera had indeed been rather less than virginal in her abbacy.  The presiding bishops had a vested interest in suppressing the rebellion and so simply squashed the evidence that it had been justified.  That possibility should be no means be ruled out, although the story rather loses its potential interest in the process.  One might also wonder why we would want to dismiss the nameless Poitevin’s own account.  It seems to mark a double suspicion.  Firstly a suspicion of the Church – the Catholic Church, the medieval Church – and a suspicion of testimony that something as troubling and seemingly ‘modern’ as cross-dressing might have gone on in early medieval society.  This leads to the preference of one greater ‘conspiracy theory’ over a lesser, local one, of one story over another.  Nonetheless, as stated, that might have been what happened. 

Venantius Fortunatus riffs on the subject of plums
(Carmina 11.18, 11.20; cross-dressing Poitevin [probably]
not pictured)

Alternatively, one might take the Poitevin’s testimony at face value; the rebellious nuns’ were searching desperately to justify their actions and made up a story based around the presence at the tribunal of the man in women’s clothing.  The judgement was not entirely uncritical of Abbess Leubovera; though it made no condemnation of her lifestyle, there’s no reason to suppose it would not have done had the evidence been compelling.  The rebellious nuns were frequently of the same aristocratic senatorial origin as the presiding bishops and two of their leaders, Chlothild and Basina, were royal princesses; other reasons stated for the nuns’ actions included resentment of the abbess’ strictness.  Nonetheless, Venantius Fortunatus’ poems to the abbey’s founder, Saint Radegund, do not suggest that the abbess’ dinner table was as ascetic as one might have expected.  Accepting the Poitevin’s account might be somewhat naïve but, again, he might have been telling the truth.

Gregory’s narration provides little to help us decide between these alternatives.  He largely employs reported speech, about which he passes no comment.  There is no analytical resource in his silence.  For him the whole episode illustrated a key theme of the Histories: that transient worldly life and status cannot be translated into the eternal merit of the truly saintly.  The only thing that might help us evaluate the story is the fact that, if Gregory’s account is truthful, the Poitevin had come up with this explanation in the first place in the expectation that it would be believed, and that he had come to the tribunal dressed as a woman.  If Chlothild’s accusation were correct, it certainly seems odd that the abbess’ former lover should have attended to tribunal in his usual disguise.  This, however, is not something that the historian can second guess.

I am going to proceed on the basis that Chlothild’s was a groundless accusation and that a man from sixth-century Poitou did feel compelled to dress as a woman because of his impotence.  This allows us to think through some changes that had taken place in gender-construction since the late Roman period and perhaps others that were under way when Gregory was writing.  It is quite interesting that, within a house of female religious, the accusation of sexual transgression was entirely in terms of heterosexual activity.  The possibility of same-sex desire among the women of the abbey is simply concealed by silence.  This is hardly unusual.  What I want to concentrate upon is the relation between sexual activity, reproductive or otherwise, clothing and gender-construction.  In particular, I want to explore the origins of the social space within which the anonymous Poitevin acted.  This, as I have written before, enables us to read some aspects of post-imperial funerary archaeology in more nuanced and less essentialist fashion.  My starting point in understanding this story might be mistaken; it is certainly not the only one.  And I will not draw any definite conclusions but leave different possibilities open.  That is not simply out of methodological honesty, but also because I cannot myself decide which interpretive possibility I prefer!  Much thinking remains to be done on this subject and a theme of undecidability runs through this short communication.

Let me start by re-stating some fairly uncontroversial bases for the analysis.  The first concerns the nature of classical gender construction; the second involves the distribution of grave-goods within post-imperial cemeteries.  It seems to be well established that Roman gender was constructed around a central masculine ideal: the notion of civic Roman masculinity.  This was historicised; the Romans did not think their men had always possessed such advantages in spite of the biological reasons for it that they proposed.  Roman accounts of the remote past saw their ancestors as barbarous.  The moment when such barbarism was transcended came with the discovery of law and – entirely related to that – the restriction of the choice of sexual partners.  The very movement to civilisation had in their eyes, therefore, been gendered.  What defined the civic Roman male was moderation, reason, the control of passions and the ability to see both sides of things.  This enabled their employment and reception of the law, rendered their government something other than tyranny, and its performance justified a man’s involvement in such legitimate government.  This was not simply psychological.  As mentioned, in classical thinking it was entirely bodily, biological.  The female body’s different constitution, in terms of the humours, made women less capable of such ideal behaviour.  Yet, the non-possession of the characteristics of civic male virtue was not restricted to women.  A too emotional, irrational character – justified similarly by imbalance of the humours –separated barbarians (male or female) from the civic ideal, and the barbarian’s wild ferocity made him assimilable with the animal, a third axis along which one might move away from the masculine.  The animal, the barbarian, the feminine and the infantile could therefore be condemned by their distance from the civic masculine ideal or praised for their closeness to it.  Indeed, barbarian men could acquire the attributes of civilisation so completely that their origins were entirely effaced.  Male children, of course, could be educated, grow into and acquire these characteristics (through the processes of paideia).  A woman, though, no matter how virile could, because of her sex, never entirelyoccupy that ideal centre.  In sum, then, Roman gender was constructed around the masculine.  The feminine was envisaged in terms of a fundamental lack. 

Now, from around the end of the first quarter of the sixth century in various parts of what had been the western Roman world – particularly those where a social structure based around the villae had gone into crisis with the Empire’s political disintegration – it became common to inter artefacts with the dead.  What matters for the purposes of this discussion is the well-known distinction in grave-goods assemblages between men and women.  This, as has now been pretty well established in several different areas of the post-imperial West, was modified by social age and position in the life-cycle.  Feminine grave-goods centred upon clothing and the adornment of the body, although some symbols of female work are occasionally also found.  Masculine artefacts on the other hand focused on weaponry, although, again, in some areas other types of artefact were at least as significant.  In the area I know best, northern Gaul, the latter comprised items such as flints, strike-a-lights, awls, tweezers and so on, often originally placed in a pouch attached to the deceased’s belt. 

The archaeological evidence suggests two conclusions.  One – quite unsurprising – is that masculinity was increasingly coming to be defined by martial characteristics. The other is more controversial or problematic and that suggests that there were two opposing poles of attraction in the material construction of sixth-century gender: a masculine and a feminine.  In other words, the feminine was not a simple, relative absence of the masculine but was constructed around its own set of ideals.  The patterning in the funerary data suggests that these ideals were structured around sex, by which I mean the female role in reproduction.

How might this shift from the classical situation have come about?  I suspect that the gradual demise of the model of civic masculinity lies at the core of the situation.  One of the main problems of the factional civil wars that ended the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century was that – especially after Valentinian III’s murder in 455 – no clear winner managed to establish a claim to legitimacy that was accepted by all other factions outside Italy.  This meant that, particularly in the provinces, any claim to traditional civic masculine virtue stood on very uncertain, shifting grounds.  A different model of Roman masculinity had emerged during the course of the fourth century, following the separation of the military and civil branches of imperial service under the Tetrarchy.  This ‘martial model’ more consciously incorporated elements of the animal and the barbarous, antithetical to the classical ideas of the virtuous civilised man.  As time passed, this model became dominant across the West, with eventually only the model of Christian religious masculinity existing as an alternative.  As a model constructed (at least in part) in opposition to the civic male, the martial model was less affected by removal from the legitimisation of the central government.  Thus I propose that what we are faced with during the course of the fifth and especially the middle quarters of the sixth century is two gendered ideals, both to some extent constructed in opposition to civic masculinity, a central definitive norm fast disappearing from actual practice.  This is what gives us, in the sixth-century cemetery data, the appearance of two opposed poles.  Both gendered ideals here are based around concepts that had hitherto been subordinated to the ideals of the Roman male.  The raising of these to the surface, as positive bases of identity, seems to me to be a kind of analogue, in social practice, to the processes of Derridean deconstruction.

All signs are, of course, inhabited, or haunted, by their opposites.  The Roman civic male was haunted by the irrational, the emotional, the feminine, the infantile, the barbarous and the animal.  For the Romans the civilised man acted as a sort of quilting point for the signifying system.  I have argued before that in the fifth century this point-de-capiton became unfixed.  Yet it had never represented an absolute point of origin because it had always contained – even in Roman terms – the image of its pre-civilised Roman precursor.  That historical dimension made the central image occupied as much by what it was not as by what it was.  What is different, I think, about the sixth-century situation is that while, of course, male and female are defined by what they are not, the ‘supplements’ which round out their meaning come not primarily from what we might think of as their structural opposites – man:woman – but from an ideal that was fast disappearing from social reality leaving only its spectre.  This ghost of the civic Roman male, haunts the gendered identities of sixth-century men and women but these relate more to that than to each other.

Statue of Dionysius from the National
Museum of Roman Archaeology in Rome

I would like to suggest that this process opened up the signifying space within which the Poitevin mentioned by Gregory of Tours was acting.  The classical world, of course, had concepts of mixed gender or sexuality: the hermaphrodite and the figure of Dionysius come to mind.  And yet I think that the classical notions are somewhat different from what is signified by the man at the Nuns’ tribunal, not least in their removal from the field of the mortal.  Here, again, we must take Gregory’s account at face value.  As Nancy Partner said, it is worth noting that the account describes the Poitevin as a man in women’s clothes, not as a woman, or a woman who turned out under closer inspection to be a man.  The implication of the story is that the man was not considered female by his contemporaries, and the extent to which he lived his life as a woman cannot be guessed at.  He claimed that his decision to dress in women’s clothing was motivated by the fact that he was impotent – or, as he put it, that he could do nothing of manly work.  It is interesting to wonder what exactly his costume comprised.  Here an archaeological example might help.  Grave 32 at the cemetery of Ennery (Moselle) contained a skeleton sexed as male but the deceased had been buried wearing a necklace and with an item of pottery normally only found in female graves.    The assemblage would on that cemetery have been appropriate for a woman of his age, above forty, as it did not stress the sexuality of the deceased in the way that was common with younger women still involved in the processes of reproduction, especially teenagers. 

What is at stake in this relationship between gendered costume and sexual reproduction?  Masculine objects in Frankish burials probably refer – at least obliquely – to the ability to start a family and govern a household.  The distribution of goods does not seem to relate directly to sexual potency, at least in purely ‘biological’ terms – Frankish adolescents are rarely buried with masculine items, in spite of being of an age-group whose sexual proclivities could worry Christian moralists and which was linked in the law-codes to the kidnapping of young women.  One penitential text suggests, however, that before the age of about twenty (the age, interestingly, when Frankish males start to be buried with weapons) male sexual practice, same-sex or otherwise, was more a matter of experimentation, of ‘games’. 

What interests me is that the construction of identity revolves not simply around the absence, or lack, of masculine items but the active employment of feminine ones.  This is underlined in the archaeological example, where the dead man’s family displayed this feature in his grave, in public ritual.  One might wonder whether this suggests something more positive about the reception of identity, whether this was not simply negative, a distance from the masculine ideal, but also perhaps something positive, a movement towards valued feminine ideals.  If so, and this can only be a suggestion, this underlines the ‘bipolarity’ of sixth-century concepts of gender. 

How one reads opposite instances, where biologically female skeletons are associated with masculine grave-goods, like weaponry, is something I cannot address.  I suspect, however, that this is a rather different circumstance, perhaps more akin to the classical situation and thus, I suspect, not to be read crudely as ‘transgression’ – perhaps quite the opposite.

The subsequent history of gender-construction in Francia perhaps supports the tentative reading I have made.  In seventh-century cemeteries, in a change beginning at about the time of the nuns’ revolt, cemeteries show important changes.  One of these is the reduction of feminine gendered grave-goods and a greater stress on the masculine.  This seems to me to represent a final triumph of the martial model of masculinity, which has now entirely supplanted the civic.  This situation seems more akin to the Roman, with a central masculine ideal and the feminine judged by proximity to or distance from this.  What has changed is simply the nature of that ideal, which is now based upon the martial model and a different, more warlike, set of virtues.  How male sexual impotence was judged, and whether it was marked at all, within that system is not something the evidence I have allows me to discuss.  I suspect, however, in a society more defined by masculine heads of lineages, that it was rather different though, not symbolised in clothing and certainly not valorised by a family.  The case of Gregory’s Poitevin suggests a glimpse of a historical moment when, however briefly, something different was possible.  The importance of that is that it cautions us not only against seeing modern categories as ‘natural’ but against positing an essential, unchanging ‘medieval’ set of categories with which to compare them.

Professor Grumpy's Historical Manifesto

[This is an edited bit of my introductory 'briefing' lecture to my new second-years yesterday.  I didn't get the feeling it went very well - I think they were expecting a 15 mins 'here's the course book and my office hours are...' rather than a full-on manifesto.  But still, I got some decent feedback later on...  A Facebook friend asked how we justify medieval history not long ago, so here's my answer.  This section came after a section about why late antiquity had attracted my interest, personally, about all the big changes that took place around 600, and about why they might be important.  That concluded, though, by asking why it mattered to know any of that.  Now read on...]

 

Why does any History matter?

Think of the ways in which people – maybe you – justify the study of history. I expect two themes come up: relevance and ‘how we got where we are’. I’d say, though, that no history is relevant … or alternatively that all history is equally relevant.

What do people mean when they say that history is relevant?

It’s, let’s face it, usually a justification for modern history. To understand the modern world, the argument runs, we have to understand its history. So, to understand the problems, say, of Iraq, Afghanistan, or Ireland, or the Balkans, we need to know the history of those regions. Sounds reasonable, but actually we don’t. It’s no more use to study the modern history of those regions than it is to study the end of the Roman world.

Why? Well, let’s look at the problem more closely. Let’s take, for example, a modern Ulster Unionist or Irish Republican, or a Serbian nationalist (or a nationalist from any other area – including Scotland). Does a knowledge of the history of Serbia or Ireland help us understand his actions (let’s assume it’s a he)? No it doesn’t. For one thing, we’ll soon discover that the ‘history’ that he uses to justify his case or actions is cock-eyed and wrong. Does it help just to know the events he makes reference to, that he keeps harping on about – the Battle of Kosovo Pole or the Battle of Boyne, say? Does it help to know that in reality King Billy’s army was paid for by the Pope, or alternatively that Cromwell’s troops killed rather more English soldiers than Irish civilians at the sacks of Drogheda and Wexford? Does it help to know that for most of their history Serbs and Croats and Bosnians rubbed along together in their communities just fine (think about it; if they hadn’t, ‘ethnic cleansing’ wouldn’t have been ‘necessary’)? Does it help, when confronted by Greek nationalism (such as there’s a lot of at the moment), to know that in the 1830s 80% of Athens spoke Albanian? That the only reason that (allegedly) Socrates could still read a Greek newspaper if he came back to life is that Greek was reinvented on more classical lines, and purged of Slavic and Turkish words in the late 19th century (as was Romanian, which is the only reason why it’s as close as Italian is to Latin)? No. It might get you punched in the face but it won’t help you understand why.

Knowing 'what really happened in history' is Chronicling not history.  And it isn't much practical use outside pub quizzes*. 1: It reduces history to simple fact-finding; and simple factual recounting isn’t history. 2: It assumes that the simple course of events explains them, and thus that the course of events naturally, inevitably, led to particular outcomes (where we are today). 3: Our modern nationalists aren’t operating under compulsion from the Past. The past has no power; it’s dead and gone. It can’t make you do anything. These people are choosing events from their understanding of the past to justify what they are doing or what they want to do in the present. 
*Though it does provide a useful basis for undermining the claims of Nationalists and others, and that is important, it's not (and this is really my point) really history.

There’s another justification. If we’d only known more about Iraqi or Afghan history in the 20th century – so runs the argument in e.g. John Tosh’s Why History Matters – we’d have thought twice about invading because we’d have seen what would happen. What – because these people always act the same way in response to certain stimuli, according to some kind of timeless national characteristics? Isn’t that just a mite – well – racist? There are some general similarities for sure between Iraq in the 1920s and in the first decade of the 21st century but to assume that the latter state of affairs was predictable from the former is essentialist at best.

These arguments are usually deployed to bolster a claim that modern history is somehow more useful or relevant but, as I’ve just shown, they’re all a bit weak theoretically, relying on a pretty poor conception of history: history as only a collection of fact. Further they provide no justification for any sort of cut-off point in how far back we go. By their own logic, there’s no reason why, to ‘understand’ Afghanistan today you shouldn’t go all the way back to Mahmud of Ghazni in the tenth century, or to Sikhander himself, Alexander the Great, or further. For if the events of say the 1990s can only be understood by studying the events of 1900-1990, then the explanation is incomplete, because surely the events of 1900 can only be understood in terms of those of 1800-99, and the events of 1800 by those of 1700-99, and so on back to the earth cooling. A modern ‘relevance’ cut-off point is purely arbitrary and contingent and doesn’t at all follow from the logic of the argument.

So: let’s unpack the historical project and see what the really important – and relevant – elements of the analysis are. In looking at our modern nationalist and his/her relationship with the past, what are we, essentially, doing? First of all we’re showing an interest in understanding the world view of another human being – I’ll come back to that. Second, though, we’re adopting a critical stance to his or her thought or world view. Thus we’re recognising similarity in the sense of a shared humanity, but simultaneously acknowledging difference. We’re not taking the nationalist’s account as gospel truth; we’re questioning it, examining it critically. And that goes for all the voices from or about the past, or from the past about the past. History is about never believing what you’re told – taking a stance of radical scepticism. Put another way, slightly flippantly, the question we are always asking is not ‘is this bastard lying to me, but why is this lying bastard lying to me?’ (an adapted quote from a famous journalist.)

And that’s exactly it, because what we’re doing after that analysis of the evidence is trying to understand why people are acting like that. Why are they making that cock-eyed use of the past? These are questions that require not data but theoretical models, an analytical tool-kit if you like – and you can get that tool-kit from the study of any history. Thus all history is equally valid, equally relevant – or equally invalid and irrelevant if you prefer!

The true point of history, as I see it is as a basis for engaging with, and action in, the world, not a simple exercise of sitting in a library finding out stuff about the Emperor Maurice or Stalin or Philip V. That exercise of critical engagement with what you’re told is a key to that. But there are other key elements at stake.

Another key point concerns the idea that history had to be like that, that it had to have particular outcomes, that the world we know was the natural outcome of all that. But nothing is ‘just like that’. It doesn’t have to be that way. To understand change you have to see all the other possibilities that were open and that could have come about. It’s about ‘keeping faith with the impossible’. Many of the things we think of as natural ways of classifying the world aren’t natural at all: like race and sexuality. If studying late antiquity does have an advantage it is in making that very clear. Late antique people didn’t see colour as the basis for their way of organising the peoples of the world; they didn’t have concepts of homosexuality or heterosexuality. Their ideas of sexuality were quite different.

Which brings us back to understanding the other: seeing these people as humans, like us, and yet somehow different; listening carefully to their stories but critically examining them. Paying attention to alternatives and different ways of doing things isn’t about wishy-washy relativism; it’s not saying that all things are equally valid – it is about trying to understand them.

All that gives us enormously important skills in dealing with, and acting within, our world in the present. When the papers tell us that this or that category of people are doing this, or are like that, or are to blame for something else, historical analysis gives us the skills of source criticism; it also accustoms us to think twice before accepting a judgement; it allows us to try and see other possibilities, the other side of the story. If we make a judgement it will almost certainly be a more sophisticated and less extreme one, but wherever we end up it will be a more responsible and informed choice of opinion and action, and if we spread that, we do good.

There’s a humanity that permeates the entire process of historical enquiry; the critical questions we ask, the desire to understand, which we must bring from history to our everyday lives. They make it impossible in my view to cast human lives off to the demands of the market, or the nation, or the class struggle. That’s why I always say there’s a huge ethical demand involved in history. Huge. Unbearable in fact. But a good historian doesn’t switch off her critical faculties when moving from the seventh century to the twenty-first. There is a demand for commitment there. So I hope you see why I think my politics are the politics of history; they’ve after all grown out of twenty-odd years of being an historian, and I think being a pretty good one at that.

Now – all this, I am sure is making some of you a bit uncomfortable. Good. History is meant to make you uncomfortable. Clio, the muse of history, is like Jesus: she brings not peace but a sword. She will make you rethink everything you think you know; everything you think you hold dear; she will make you question everything. Everything you were brought up with; everything you thought natural. She’s not here to wrap you in cotton wool and say ‘there, there’ everything is just how it’s supposed to be. She’s not there to bring succour to your view of your country, or smooth over the bad stuff that it did, or to soothe your conscience about the massacres perpetuated in the name of your religion, or the slaughter committed by people who at least claimed to share your political beliefs. She’s there to make you uneasy. She’s there to stop you from falling victim to her evil twin, Myth. In a sense I want to free you from feeling like the past controls us; that we have to base our identities in the present upon myths. That means we don’t have to feel guilty or apologise, either – just to be aware; to understand.

Put another way, the historian is the ‘Internal Affairs guy’. This is a well-known figure in popular TV ‘cop shows’ and rarely a ‘good guy’. He or she is there to suppose that the hero has lied or done something wrong and that the villains might have been wronged or be telling the truth. The character rarely turns out to be as unsettling as that but it works as an analogy. For me, the historian is not there to provide comforting truths but to question them. The historian must always be prepared to wonder whether the ‘heroes’ of history are not, in fact, the villains,

If you believe anything at all, if you want your belief to be solid, in other words, it has to be on the basis of taking it apart and putting it back together on the basis of radical scepticism.

Politicians of all sorts – left and right - always want to control the teaching of history. History is a real political football, and in the light of what I’ve just been saying you can see why. It’s about not believing what you’re told without close scrutiny; it’s about trying to understand the other; it’s about trying to see and evaluate another point of view. That makes history potentially VERY dangerous. What a history degree should be is three years of thinking dangerously. And the sixth and seventh centuries are as good a thing to think dangerously with as any other era.

So, voilà. That’s my historical manifesto. You can read my views on this sort of thing at various stages of development on my blog. The main thing is that that’s what I want this course to do – to bring out this sort of critical ethical tool-kit through the study of an interesting, and important period of change.