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Abstract
My dissertation, entitled "The Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils," examines the institutional history of ecclesiastical synods held in the Frankish Kingdoms between Clovis' convocation of the First Council of Orléans in 511 and Charlemagne's ascension to the throne in 768. My overriding thesis is that there was an indelible bond that existed between the Frankish councils and the realities of everyday life, and that we cannot hope to understand canonical pronouncements apart from the immediate historical contexts that necessitated their enactment. The sources for this study consist of not only of the canons themselves, but also contemporary or near-contemporary narrative histories, hagiographies, epistles, royal capitularies and edicts, and charters—all of which have been under-utilized in accounts of Frankish conciliar history. In my dissertation, I reconstruct the physical world of the Frankish councils. I discuss such topics as convocation, travel arrangements, meeting protocol, and excuses for absences, and try to recreate the experiences of a conciliar attendee who might spend weeks in transit to and from a council. Additionally, I offer evidence that the repetition of similar concerns by Frankish councils over the period in question was not indicative of a detachment from contemporary realities. On the contrary, the very opposite was the case, and the issues discussed and debated in the synodal context were of genuine concern to the episcopal attendees, and warranted in their minds earnest and considered response. I also argue that conciliar canons were recognized as enforceable prescriptive declarations during the Merovingian period, although they were not considered identical to secular leges. This status quo changed in the mid-eighth century, when the introduction of royal capitularies as the primary method of disseminating canons rendered previous distinctions between ecclesiastical and secular law obsolete. This study is necessitated by the fact that conciliar evidence has been, and continues to be, heavily mined for evidence by scholars of the Frankish Kingdoms.