Recent years have seen renewed scholarly interest in the relations between the Merovingian Kingdoms and the broader Mediterranean World. Notably, a joint German-Israeli project entitled East and West in the Early Middle Ages: The Merovingian Kingdoms in Mediterranean Perspective has produced, to date, two multiauthor volumes containing copious insights into the complex web of communications that connected Merovingian Francia with its neighbors. [1] A co-editor of one these volumes, Laury Sarti (Bonn), has now produced an important and innovative contribution to this burgeoning scholarly cottage industry, a monograph that looks specifically at the connections between the Merovingian regna and the Roman Empire. Mediterranean Connections is, in fact, one of two recently-published monographs to derive from Sarti’s habilitation thesis—the other being Orbis Romanus. Byzantium and the Legacy of Rome in the Carolingian World (2024)—although Sarti writes that she considers the two to be largely “independent works” (vii). [2]
Sarti predicates her analysis of Roman-Frankish relations in Chapter 1 with what may be her book’s most contentious argument: that there never was, in formal terms, a standalone “Western Roman Empire” that ostensibly came to a sudden end in AD 476 with the deposition of Romulus Augustulus. The Roman Empire, as both an administrative and ideological construct, persisted well beyond this date with the Eastern imperial court asserting its jurisdictional authority over the Western provinces. In Sarti’s words, “the deposition of one emperor [Romulus Augustulus] entailed that those regions, which until then had been administered by the court in the West, passed into the jurisdiction of the remaining ruler...The empire was understood by contemporaries to be impartible” (25). Sarti, in consequence, begins her study proper not with Gaul itself, but rather with Italy (Chapter 2), where she observes that neither Odovacer nor initially Theodoric the Great viewed themselves as completely independent of the imperial orbit. Indeed, for several decades following the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, Sarti argues, the absence of an emperor in the West was understood as an interregnum, not as the absence of empire. Eastern writers could point to the vacant western imperial throne as an argument for a single emperorship possessing “universal dominance” (or “universal rule”) a theme that took on particular importance in the context of Justinian’s sixth-century campaigns (38). In contrast, Sarti suggests, Westerners only truly came to view the events of the fourth quarter of the fifth century as transformative in the early ninth century, once they had abandoned fully the ideal of a shared empire.
Additionally, the events of AD 476, Sarti argues convincingly, did not immediately or dramatically change the Franks’ own relationship with the Roman Empire, within whose sphere of influence they already were well established. The narrative Sarti posits instead (Chapter 3) is one of gradual emancipation. Initially, “the emperor at least gave formal approval to Frankish rule in Gaul...the Frankish kingdom in the sixth century could still be understood as somewhat subordinate to the empire” (69). Emancipation, while gradual, was accelerated both during the reign of Theudebert I of Austrasia (r. 534-547/8) and later as a result of efforts by Frankish and imperial conspirators to install the Merovingian pretender Gundovald on the throne in the 580s. Theudebert’s early relations with Justinian’s court were characterized by both cooperation and distrust, and his subsequent boldness in minting coins with his own visage on them (in imperial fashion) in 544 did not go unnoticed in Constantinople. Interestingly, in light of Theudebert’s coinage, Sarti chooses to eschew the explanatory paradigm of imitatio imperii as anachronistic, although this would seem a relatively uncontroversial example of it.
The Gundovald conspiracy even more dramatically impacted Frankish-imperial relations. Once again Sarti cites numismatic materials in evidence of shifting relations, as the use of pseudo-imperial coinage ceased after the collapse of the conspiracy. She also notes a shift in royal titulature, as Merovingian kings began to utilize the title rex Francorum more regularly in the aftermath of the Gundovald Affair. Alongside the gradually deteriorating relations between the regnum Francorum and the Roman Empire, Sarti also perceives a shift in how “Romanness” itself was understood within the Frankish sphere: while once used to define “an individual’s participation in the Empire” it gradually assumed “a more ethnic interpretation that reflect[ed] the diverse identities within the post-imperial landscape” (61).
Sarti turns next to the intersection between political and religious ties that defined Frankish relations with the Roman Empire (Chapter 4). The patriarchate of Rome was still firmly within the imperial orbit through the early seventh century, and even after Petrine Primacy was firmly established emperors continued to pressure individual bishops of Rome to support the imperial agenda through the eighth century. Gallic-Papal communications initially focused on Provence, which was home both to estates that made up part of the widespread Patrimonium Sancti Petri, as well as the see of Arles, whose bishops regularly sought from Rome the pallium that symbolized their status as papal vicars. Sarti suggests that at least in the mid-sixth century it was considered necessary to secure imperial approval too before the pallium could be conferred. However, her argument that “the pope exercised significant influence over the decisions made by the clergy in Gaul, particularly in the context of the election and deposition of bishops and the resolutions made during the synods held in southern Gaul” seems to me somewhat of an overstatement (109). Indicators of papal influence can be found primarily in those councils convoked in Ostrogothic Provence by Bishop Caesarius of Arles, the papal vicar. While Caesarius solicited papal input in reference to several of these councils, notably the Council of Orange (529), the agendas of these provincial meetings generally seem more reflective of regional rather than papal concerns and priorities. [3] For example, when Caesarius petitioned Pope Felix IV for support following the Council of Carpentras (527), it was in order to seek papal endorsement of the council’s condemnation of improper clerical ordinations performed by Caesarius’s provincial suffragan, Agroecius of Antibes.
While not detached from those theological controversies that disturbed papal-imperial relations, Sarti observes that the Frankish episcopate did not always offer a unified or consistent position on these debates, hampered in part by confusion regarding theological particulars. In regards to the Three Chapters controversy, for example, Sarti suggests that “The Merovingian Church’s connection to the broader ecumenical Christianity led by the emperor was constrained by limited access to accurate and detailed information, which hindered their ability to engage fully with contemporary eastern theological disputes” (117). Nor were the Frankish bishops necessarily consistent in siding with the papacy or with imperial authorities when the two came into conflict. So, while the Council of Orléans (549) seems to side with the papacy vis-à-vis the Three Chapters controversy, the later Council of Chalon-sur-Saône (ca. 647-653) favors the imperial position, a discrepancy that Sarti interprets as indicative partly of weakening links between the Gallo-Frankish Church and the papacy from the mid-seventh century onwards.
The final chapter of the Sarti’s study (Chapter 5) surveys different forms of East-West communications in the later Merovingian period, wisely eschewing a “minimalist” perspective in favor of a recognition that “evidence of conditions that allowed people, objects, or information to travel across space serves as proof of the means for exchange” (133). In general, she argues that this period did witness a decline, but by no means a complete cessation, in connectivity between the Frankish realms and the Roman East. The aforementioned decline in communications with papal Rome, Sarti argues, contributed to this decline. Other factors she identifies include more profound linguistic differences, as well as increased attention to regional priorities and local disputes. As for indirect indicators of continued communications, Sarti makes a persuasive argument that formal diplomatic missions did continue, positing the regular occurrence of diplomatic embassies on a thirty-year cycle between the Empire and Austrasia (four in all for the seventh century). These renewed “eternal peace” treaties, in turn, “redefined a new status quo and the diplomatic relation between a more notably autonomous and self-conscious Frankish kingdom and the empire” (183).
Sarti’s study packs an impressive number of significant observations and original arguments in its comparatively brief narrative. At the same time, its attention remains focused on the relationship—not simply the diplomatic relations—between the Roman Empire and the regnum Francorum. The latter, she concludes persuasively, ought not to be understood as a “post-Roman” polity so much as a constituent part of an expansive Roman world.
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Notes:
1. Stefan Esders, Yaniv Fox, Yitzhak Hen, and Laury Sarti, eds., East and West in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019);Stefan Esders, Yitzhak Hen, Pia Lucas, and Tamar Rotman, eds., The Merovingian Kingdoms and the Mediterranean World: Revisiting the Sources (London: Bloomsbury, 2019).
2. Laury Sarti, Orbis Romanus. Byzantium and the Legacy of Rome in the Carolingian World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024); Mediterranean Connections itself is available open-access via Brill's website.
3. On the Council of Orange as a response to immediate and local concerns, see especially the appraisal of Ralph Mathisen, “Caesarius of Arles, Prevenient Grace, and the Second Council of Orange,” in Grace for Grace. The Debates after Augustine and Pelagius, ed. Alexander Y. Hwang, Brian J. Matz, and Augustine Casiday (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), 208-234.