Creating Communities and Others in Early Medieval Europe

Throughout human history, the cultural processes of fostering senses of community and otherness have always been closely linked. Creating Communities and Others in Early Medieval Europe gathers six case studies that examine some of the ways in which authors could create ideas about communities and ‘Others’ in the early Middle Ages. From law codes to saints’ Lives and from Mediterranean contacts to dream sequences, the volume highlights the variety that existed in the ways authors approached these processes. The contributions focus on either ‘community’, ‘otherness’, or the overlap between the two, and without claiming to be comprehensive, aim to make significant contributions to ongoing debates.

Richard Broome is an independent researcher who was awarded his doctorate from the University of Leeds in 2014 for a thesis on the politics of communal identity and “otherness” in the Frankish world under the late Merovingians and early Carolingians. He is still based in Leeds where he is currently researching the conversion of early medieval Frisia to Christianity and its integration into the wider Frankish realm during the eighth and ninth centuries.

1. Gibichung Subjects and homines extraneae nationis – Ian Wood
2. An Outsider in Gaul: Mediterranean Currents in the Histories of Gregory of Tours – Sihong Lin
3. Cultures of Kingship: The Oneiric Otherness of Guntramn in the Historia Langobardorum of Paul the Deacon – Christopher Heath
4. Monstrous Otherness and Biblical Mission in the Vita altera Bonifatii – Richard Broome
5. Würzburg, Magdeburg and a Cleric Named Poppo: Re-writing Missions for the Tenth Century – Joanna Thornborough
6. Scribal Communities and Lombard Law-Books: Charlemagne’s Herstal Capitulary with the Eleventh-Century Liber Papiensis – Thom Gobbitt