La Civilisation Mérovingienne D'Après Les Sépultures, Les Textes et le Laboratoire by ÉdouardSalinReview by: Lynn White, Jr.The American Historical Review, Vol. 66, No. 1 (Oct., 1960), pp. 116-117Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1845721 .

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i i 6 Reviews of Books

these and many works of similar stature. It is all the more exasperating to find no mention at all of studies equally deserving of consideration.

But this is enough of carping. The book is well organized and clearly written. It is a pleasure to encounter a treatment which so well balances political, economic, and military affairs with matters of thought, letters, and religion. Some of the sections on the theological controversies are particularly well done, for instance, the dispute over the Council of Chalcedon and the Acacian Schism, though one is surprised to find no mention of Boethius' intervention in the politico-religious affairs of Theodoric's reign. It is difficult to believe, however, that even Dannen- bauer's former students would not have appreciated an old-fashioned bibliography and index.

Stanford University WILLIAM C. BARK

LA CIVILISATION MRROVINGIENNE D'APRftS LES S1PULTURES, LES TEXTES ET LE LABORATOIRE. Volume IV, LES CROYANCES; CONCLUSIONS, INDEX GENIERAL. By Jdouard Salin. (Paris: Iditions A. et J. Picard et Cie. 1959. Pp. 579. 3,900 fr.)

SCHOLARSHIP in the twentieth century has become so intricate that the com- pletion of a major historical work in four massive volumes is in itself occasion for applause. When that work comes from the pen of a mining engineer and metallurgist who has placed not only general medieval historians but also arch- aeologists, folklorists, art historians, historians of technology, and students of re- ligious history much in his debt, enthusiasm is supplemented by astonishment. And Salin is a man of sensibility. "Les tombes," he says, "savent se faire entendre a qui se penche sur elles." One must disagree with him in some details, for in- stance, the famous Hornhausen reliefs are not Merovingian but probably of the tenth century (cf. Antiquity, XVI [June I9421, I75-77). Yet surely the dead have murmured to him some of their inmost thoughts and emotions.

One is appalled at the picture that emerges of the problem faced by Christian evangelists in the north. The warrior's marvelously laminated sword was designed to deal with visible foes, but, whether among pagans or nominal converts, the patterns on his sword belt were equally directed toward fending off the invisible. Barbarian religion was intensely practical, a device for manipulating ambient powers to secure peace of mind and physical well-being.

Heavily underscored by these researches are the continuity and vividness of contact between Merovingian culture and that of the Asian steppes, and through it even with the Far East. The evidence is chiefly iconographic, but as the last pages of this volume were going to press, Salin added a Chinese belt-hook very recently found in a Merovingian grave.

From the standpoint of cultural history, one of the most curious of Salin's findings is the consistent allergy of the Franks to representational art. Even when

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Goubert: Byzance avant l'Islam I I 7

they used the form of an animal or divine personage, the natural aspect tended to fragment itself or to develop into an abstract pattern with only vestigial repre- sentative elements. That this should have occurred simultaneously with the rise of iconoclasm in the Christian Orient and with the banning of representational art in Islam raises questions of connections among group psychologies which Salin does not broach but which historians must eventually face.

One wishes that Salin had marshaled in detail the evidence for his belief that about A.D. 500 the chaos caused by invasion began to be replaced by a new sta- bility and termination of the decline of population in Gaul. In recent years arch- aeologists like Timm, Firbas, and Dannenbauer have been arriving at the con- clusion that, in southern Germany and the Rhineland at least, reconstruction and repopulation did not begin until nearly A.D. 6oo, a date more consonant with what little we know of the fearful plague of the middle sixth century. Perhaps the revival was not simultaneous in all parts of Europe. The exact definition of its geographic and temporal variations is a matter of great importance, since this low point and subsequent resurgence mark the rational boundary between antiq- uity and the Middle Ages.

University of California, Los Angeles LYNN WHITE, JR.

BYZANCE AVANT L'ISLAM. Volume I, BYZANCE ET L'ORIENT SOUS LES SUCCESSEURS DE JUSTINIEN, L'EMPEREUR MAURICE. By Paul Goubert. With an introduction by L. Brehier. (Paris: Editions A. et J. Picard et Cie. I95I. Pp. 332.)

AT the death of Justinian, wrote J. B. Bury, "the winds were loosed from prison; the disintegrating elements began to operate with full force; the artificial system collapsed; and the metamorphosis in the character of the Empire, which had been surely progressing for a long time past . . . now began to work rapidly and perceptibly."

This judgment of the British historian on the reign of the immediate succes- sor of Justinian has long prevailed; it has found its way into general histories; and one still encounters it. Scholars, such as the late E. Stein, have been trying, however, to point out that the disintegration of which Bury speaks was by no means general, that it cannot be said to characterize the reigns of Tiberius II (578-582) and Maurice (582-602), and that at the most, it can only be used to describe the reigns of Justin II (565-578) and Phocas I (602-6io). But the period as a whole was not examined in great detail until Father Goubert began his sys- tematic studies in order to cover the history of this period with all of its ramifi- cations.

Thus far Goubert has published two volumes: the one under consideration and another which appeared five years later. As its subtitle indicates, the present volume has as its subject the relations of the Byzantine Empire with the East,

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