The History Department
Subject: Between Lex and Mos: Libertas in Merovingian Gaul.
Advisor: Prof. Yitzhak Hen.
Abstract: The subject of my PhD study is the status of free people in Merovingian Gaul and its legal and social implications. By looking at the early Frankish legislation, formularies, hagiographic and homiletic sources, chronicles, and histories, my study seeks to offer a nuanced account of the mainstream notions of libertas in Merovingian Gaul. It will also contest the foregoing notions of libertas through various case-studies of a liminal or restricted libertas (as the result of legal procedure or otherwise); cases of punitive exile to monasteries, forced admission to nunneries, abduction, and the ransom of captives. The significance of my study is two-fold. First, it will offer the first full account of the status of free people in Merovingian Francia, and thus pave a way to a more comprehensive study of libertas in the post-Roman West. Second, this study will explore the ways in which the Merovingian notions of libertas manifested in practice, teasing out the tensions between the “theory of libertas” and the treatment of free people de facto.
Rotenschtreich Scholarship 2019/20