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3 - Ritual Communities and Social Cohesion in Merovingian Gaul

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2023

Dolores Castro
Affiliation:
Universidad de General Sarmiento, Argentina
Fernando Ruchesi
Affiliation:
Universitat de Lleida
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Summary

Abstract

This chapter traces the development of elite sponsorship of monastic communities in Merovingian Gaul with a particular focus on the seventh century. This period witnessed a revolution in social, religious, and political praxis whereby monastic culture became entangled with the expression and exercise of secular authority (and which would have long-lasting consequences for the Carolingian world and beyond). While this phenomenon has largely been approached from political and socioeconomic perspectives, this contribution explores the underlying religious foundations and dynamics of this movement and how this complimented broader sociological developments. It applies the work of the cultural anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse on ritual and social cohesion to explain some of the reasons why this transformation in ritual practice by the Frankish elites took place.

Keywords: Merovingian Gaul, Columbanus, monasticism, ritual, seventh century, Harvey Whitehouse

Sometime towards the end of the sixth century a wandering holy man and his small band of companions came to the court of a Frankish king. The holy man was going to continue on his journey, but the king begged him to stay – everything would be provided for if he remained within the bounds of the kingdom. At length, the holy man was persuaded by the king’s arguments – he would satisfy his desire to follow Christ by finding an ascetic retreat in the wilderness, while his presence would contribute to the salvation of the king and his people.

Whatever the truth of this story about the encounter between the Irish peregrinus Columbanus and King Sigibert I (d. 575) that led to the establishment of Annegray, Columbanus’s first monastic foundation on the Continent, its author, Jonas of Bobbio, used it to illustrate the reciprocal relationship that, by the mid-seventh century, had now become commonplace between monastic founders and the Frankish elite. Annegray was the first in a series of monastic foundations that continued well into the seventh century that would transform the inter-relationship between monastic groups and secular authorities in the early Middle Ages.

Within a century of Columbanus’s death in 615, more than a hundred new monasteries had been founded in the Merovingian kingdom.

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Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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