Lost cities

When the Merovingian kings Guntram and Childebert II met at Andelot late in November 587, they were looking to draw a line under the internecine struggles that had bedevilled the regnum Francorum since Charibert's untimely death some twenty years before, and to achieve a settlement both in the present, and for the future. In doing so, they and the proceres and sacerdotes who formed their negotiating teams dealt primarily in two currencies of power: civitates and leudes. The majority of the clauses of the treaty that emerged from this summit, as quoted verbatim shortly afterwards by Gregory of Tours, were concerned with the attribution either of cities -sometimes subdivided into fractions -or of warrior aristocrats. The two kings agreed to restrain this burgeoning 'transfer market' by binding aristocrats to the oaths of loyalty to one kingdom or another that they had originally taken after the death of Lothar I, and by agreeing that they themselves would no longer tap up, receive, or offer refuge to any of the other's leudes. As far as the allocation of cities was concerned, meanwhile, the fundamental element of the pact was Guntram's waiving of his prior claim, as the only surviving son of Lothar I, to the entire kingdom in favour of Childebert's right, and that of his heirs, to his father Sigibert's share of it, albeit alongside a number of interesting but essentially minor adjustments which cannot concern us here. A similar but subsidiary compromise saw Guntram accept that after his death the five cities which his brother Chilperic had formerly bestowed upon his Visigothic wife Galswinth as her morgengabe should be inherited by Galswinth's sister and Childebert's mother Brunhild, who was herself party to the negotiations at Andelot

Geography · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History

• Letter-writing and literary culture in Merovingian Gaul

  Hope Williard, Hope Deejune Williard•European Review of History Revue…•2014

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• Cities in the ‘long’ Late Antiquity, 2000–2012 – a survey essay

  Open Access•Lucy Grig•Urban History•2013

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• Decline and Fall of the Roman City

  J H W G Liebeschuetz•The decline and fall of the Roman…•2001

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• Early European towns. The development of the economy in the Frankish realm between dynamism and deceleration AD 500-1100

  Open Access•Joachim Henning•Heirs of the Roman West•2007

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• Monuments and memory

  Bonnie Effros•Topographies of Power in the…•2001

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• A Companion to Late Antiquity

  Open Access•Philip Rousseau•Companion to Late Antiquity•2009

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• Frankish military duty and the fate of Roman taxation

  Open Access•Walter Goffart•Early Medieval Europe•2008

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• The Merovingian nobleman's home

  Ross Samson•Journal of Medieval History•1987

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• Late Roman Town Walls in Gaul

  R M Butler•Archaeological Journal•1959

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• The Cult of the Saints

  Bernhard W Scholz, Patricia R Brown et al.•The American Historical Review•1981

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• The Position of the Grafio in the Constitutional History of Merovingian Gaul

  Alexander Callander Murray•Speculum•1986

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• Merovingian History and Merovingian Hagiography

  Paul Fouracre•Past & Present•1990

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• Old and New in Merovingian Taxation

  Walter Goffart•Past & Present•1982

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• Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul

  Raymond Van Dam, Ralph Whitney Mathisen•The Journal of Interdisciplinary…•1995

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