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- Title
Merovingian partitions: a ‘genealogical charter’?
- Authors
Widdowson, Marc
- Abstract
This paper considers the classic accounts of Frankish partitions in 511 and 561 in light of the agenda of Gregory of Tours in the later 580s. While the partitions’ political origins have long been emphasized, the concern here is with the political motivations of the source on which we depend, almost exclusively, for our knowledge. This discussion questions whether there were ever actually definite agreements to divide the kingdom, and suggests claims about shared inheritance supplied a ‘genealogical charter’ that justified and deflected attention from the interests of people like Gregory, in what was a continuously contested, evolutionary process.
- Subjects
FRANCE; FRANKISH law; POLITICAL science; INHERITANCE &; succession; MEROVINGIANS; FRENCH history to 987
- Publication
Early Medieval Europe, 2009, Vol 17, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
0963-9462
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.1468-0254.2009.00242.x