Merovingian and Carolingian Gift Giving

Name /thl_jms813_640005/jms813_01/Mp_671 05/05/2006 04:02PM Plate # 0 pg 671 # 1
Speculum 81 (2006) 671

Merovingian and Carolingian Gift Giving
By Fl or i n Cur t a
Near the Italian city of Como, in the village of Gravedona, there was a picture
painted in the apse of the church of St. John the Baptist of Holy Mary holding
the infant Jesus in her lap and the Magi offering presents that was dimmed and
almost wiped out with age. In 823 this picture shone for two days with such
clarity it seemed to viewers that its ancient beauty almost surpassed the splendor
of a new picture. But the same clarity did not brighten the images of the Magi
except for the presents (munera) which they offered.
1
This miracle recorded in
the Royal Frankish Annals may be viewed as a metaphor for the current state of
research in early-medieval gift giving. Much like the Gravedona fresco, gifts ap-
pear with great clarity in a large variety of scholarly works. By contrast, the image
and intentions of gift donors are mostly dimmed and almost wiped out with
age.
Gifts and gift-giving practices have been under the scrutiny of medievalists only
since the late 1950s. Inspired by the French sociologist Marcel Mauss, PhilipGrier-
son treated gift giving as a special form of transaction in which goods were trans-
ferred fromdonor to receiver with the consent of the former, but for social prestige
and not for material or tangible prot.
2
His was a distinction rooted in the debate
between formalists and substantivists that was taking place in the eld of economic
anthropology at the time.
3
For Grierson, early-medieval gift giving represented a
This paper was written with the support of a Mellon Visiting Fellowship at the Medieval Institute
of the University of Notre Dame in 20034. I am grateful to Gerd Althoff, Piotr Go recki, Richard
Hodges, and Chris Wickham, for their very helpful critique. Special thanks are owed to Thomas F. X.
Noble, for his good advice and encouragement.
1
Royal Frankish Annals, a. 823, ed. Friedrich Kurze, MGH SS rer. Germ. 6 (Hannover, 1895),
p. 163; trans. Bernhard Walter Scholz and Barbara Rogers (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1970), pp. 11415.
See also the Annals of Fulda, a. 823, ed. Friedrich Kurze, MGH SS rer. Germ. 7 (Hannover, 1891;
repr. 1993), p. 23.
2
Philip Grierson, Commerce in the Dark Ages: A Critique of the Evidence, Transactions of the
Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 5 (1959), 12940. See Marcel Mauss, Essai sur le don: Forme et
raison de lechange dans les societes archaques, Annee sociologique 1 (192324), 30186 (repr. in
Sociologie et anthropologie [Paris, 1980], pp. 145279; I cite the reprinted edition below). For Mausss
presentist approach and the political dimension of his theory of gift giving, see Marcel Fournier, Mar-
cel Mauss, lethnologie et la politique: Le don, Anthropologie et societe 19 (1995), 5769; Patrick
Geary, Gift Exchange and Social Science Modeling: The Limitations of a Construct, in Negotiating
the Gift: Pre-modern Figurations of Exchange, ed. Gazi Algazi, Valentin Groebner, and Bernhard
Jussen, Vero ffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts fu r Geschichte 188 (Go ttingen, 2003), pp. 139
40.
3
For an excellent survey of the debate and its ramications in the current preoccupation with gifts
and gift giving, see David Graeber, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of
Our Own Dreams (Basingstoke, Eng., 2001). For an example of a functionalist reading of Grierson,
see Barbara H. Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor of Saint Peter: The Social Meaning of Clunys Property,
9091049 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1989), p. 127, who sees motives of social prestige involved in generosity
as one particular aspect of Mausss original thesis that Grierson stressed above others in his paper.
Gift Giving 672
development in the direction of the modern custom of gift giving, where the gifts
are of the nature of tokens, a remark suggesting that, in his eyes, early-medieval
gift giving was a superuous practice, in that gifts were not goods one badly
needed or wanted.
4
Sociologists have long noticed that gifts typically bring no
substantial advantage to recipients and add nothing to their well-being. They have
stressed redundancy as a dening aspect separating gift giving from other eco-
nomic systems.
5
Mausss work was also the inspiration for Aaron Gurevichs paper on gift giving
in Scandinavian medieval societies, rightly so, since the French sociologist had
begun his Essai sur le don with a quotation from Ha vama l.
6
But unlike Grier-
son, Gurevich was interested in Mausss fundamental question: why is it that,
although not explicitly compelled to do so by any existing authority, the recipient
of a gift feels obligated to reciprocate? Gurevich found that gold and silver artifacts
accumulated in hoards were often said to have taken on the luck of the person
who owned them and to have retained an inherent part of that persons qualities.
As a consequence, obtaining gifts from a chieftain was for many of his retainers
a way to partake in that chieftains success and good luck.
7
By contrast, according to William Ian Miller, gift exchange in medieval Iceland
was always based on the idea that by presenting gifts a donor exacted deference
from the receiver and obliged him to reciprocate. Citing Mauss and Gurevich,
Miller distanced himself from both by pointing to the use of gift exchange in
dening, as opposed to maintaining, social relations: Social relations, their def-
inition, and the determination of status were much of what motivated gift ex-
change.
8
Unlike Gurevich, Miller thus focused on competitive gift exchange; as
a consequence, the emphasis of his analysis fell on debt-inicting strategies, not
on reciprocity. However, Miller still viewed gifts and sales as substantially differ-
ent, albeit alternative, modes of exchange. In Icelandic sagas, while gifts of mov-
ables could requite hospitality or other movables of similar value, a gift of land
indicates a long-term subordination of the recipient to the giver because nothing
but a return gift of land could extinguish the obligation. In reaction, recipients
of such gifts make every possible effort to redene the gift-giving sequence as a
commercial transaction.
9
4
Grierson, Commerce, p. 139.
5
David Cheal, The Gift Economy (London, 1988), p. 13; Mark Osteen, Introduction: Questions
of the Gift, in The Question of the Gift: Essays across Disciplines, ed. Mark Osteen, Routledge
Studies in Anthropology 2 (London, 2002), p. 26.
6
A. I. Gurevich, Wealth and Gift-Bestowal among the Ancient Scandinavians, Scandinavica 7
(1968), 12638. For Mauss, the key quotation from Ha vama l was line 145, A gift always looks for
repayment (ey ser til gildis gio f). For gift giving in medieval Scandinavia, see also Elisabeth Vester-
gaard, Gift Giving, Hoarding, and Outdoings, in Social Approaches to Viking Studies, ed. Ross
Samson (Glasgow, 1991), pp. 97104.
7
Mauss, Essai sur le don, pp. 15861; Gurevich, Wealth and Gift-Bestowal, pp. 131 and 136.
Gurevichs Marxist approach is evident from his interpretation of this phenomenon as a religious,
magical fetishization of social links.
8
William Ian Miller, Gift, Sale, Payment, Raid: Case Studies in the Negotiation and Classication
of Exchange in Medieval Iceland, Speculum 61 (1986), 1850, at p. 23.
9
Miller, Gift, p. 49. For the distinction between gifts and commodities, see C. A. Gregory, Gifts
and Commodities (London, 1982).
Gift Giving 673
A sharp distinction between gift giving and trade is also central to the most
cited text on (early) medieval gift exchange, the chapter entitled Taking, Giving,
and Consecrating in Georges Dubys Warriors and Peasants.
10
Dubys reading
of Mauss stressed the idea that although voluntary in theory, gifts were given and
reciprocated obligatorily.
11
According to Duby, a considerable proportion of what
was produced in the early Middle Ages was distributed by means of necessary
generosity (generosites necessaires).
12
Duby therefore subscribed to the idea
that gift exchange was fundamentally different from trade, but at the same time
he viewed the expansion of trade in the Middle Ages as the gradual and always
incomplete dovetailing of an economy of pillage, gift, and largesse into a frame-
work of monetary circulation.
13
Others have pushed the dichotomy even further
by dividing medieval history into an earlier period of a gift economy and a later
one of a prot economy. According to such views, in the gift economy of the early
Middle Ages goods and services were exchanged without a specic, calculated
value being assigned to them, as the expression of power, prestige, honor, and
wealth took the form of spontaneous gift giving.
14
To Duby, the society of the
early Middle Ages was founded on an innitely varied network for circulating
the wealth and services occasioned by necessary generosity: gifts of dependants to
their protectors, of kinfolk to brides, of friends to party-givers, of magnates to
kings, of kings to aristocrats, of all of the rich to all of the poor. At every gathering
around the ruler, a system of gift exchange was put in motion as kings competed
with their magnates on outdoing the others generosity.
15
Conversely, the gifts
magnates of the Frankish realm brought to the ruler on the occasion of such
gatherings were not just a public expression of their acceptance of the ruler and
10
Georges Duby, Guerriers et paysans, VIIeXIIe sie`cle: Premier essor de leconomie europeenne
(Paris, 1973), pp. 6263; trans. Howard B. Clarke, as The Early Growth of the European Economy:
Warriors and Peasants from the Seventh to the Twelfth Century (Ithaca, N.Y., 1974). Duby quoted an
entire passage fromMausss Essai sur le don but without proper citation in the footnotes. For Dubys
use of Mauss, see Arnoud-Jan A. Bijsterveld, The Medieval Gift as Agent of Social Bonding and
Political Power: A Comparative Approach, in Medieval Transformations: Texts, Power, and Gifts in
Context, ed. Esther Cohen and Mayke B. de Jong, Cultures, Beliefs, and Traditions 2 (Leiden, 2001),
p. 127.
11
The reference to gifts presented in obligatory fashion appears at the start of Mausss Essai sur
le don in relation to the quotation from Ha vama l mentioned above in n. 6. See Mauss, Essai sur le
don, p. 147.
12
Duby, Guerriers et paysans, pp. 63 and 6869; trans. Clarke, pp. 55 and 57. The argument may
be traced back to Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, trans. L. A. Manyon (Chicago, 1964), p. 206: . . . in
this society, which was essentially based on custom, every voluntary gift, if it became at all habitual,
was eventually transformed into an obligation.
13
Duby, Guerriers et paysans, p. 69; trans. Clarke, p. 57. For Dubys contrast between gift giving
and trade, see Ana Rodr guez Lo pez and Reyna Pastor, Reciprocidades, intercambio y jerarqu a en
las comunidades medievales, Hispania 60 (2000), 64.
14
Lester K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Prot Economy in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, N.Y.,
1978), pp. 38. To Matthew Innes, the Carolingian economy was an economy of gift in which
inheritance and alms-giving were two sides of a gift-exchange between living and dead. See Matthew
Innes, State and Society in the Early Middle Ages: The Middle Rhine Valley, 4001000, Cambridge
Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 4th ser., 47 (Cambridge, Eng., 2000), p. 39. For the concept of
gift economy in sociology, see Cheal, Gift Economy.
15
Duby, Guerriers et paysans, pp. 6869; trans. Clarke, p. 57.
Gift Giving 674
submission to him but also guaranteed prosperity for all and promised fertile
soils, abundant harvests and an end to plagues, for they were offered to the sov-
ereign, who was regarded by all as the natural mediator between the entire folk
and the powers above.
16
A combined interest in gift-giving practices and religious attitudes was also at
the heart of Philippe Joberts study of donations pro anima, in which he argued
that such gifts entailed a spiritual trade with God, since beginning in the mid-
seventh century, almsgiving was understood as a countergift for divine compen-
sation in the form of salvation.
17
By contrast, others maintained that since such
donations were made to God, no return was actually expected, for salvation did
not come as a consequence of the gift, even though the donor may have hoped to
receive it at some point in the future.
18
The contradiction was certainly not just a
matter of different sources but conceptual as well. Meanwhile, anthropologists
have become aware of the importance of medievalists studies of charity, and as
a consequence the Middle Ages have now turned into a stock of analogies for
what Mauss had called archaic societies, instead of being just another page of
European history to be interpreted by means of comparative studies inspired by
eldwork in anthropology.
19
By 1980 the study of gift giving linking lay elites to religious communities in
the light of Mausss work had become an almost exclusively American eld of
investigation. Stephen D. White and Barbara Rosenwein dealt explicitly with an-
thropological models of gift exchange, and both sawtransfers of land fromsecular
elites to religious institutions as the social glue of the central Middle Ages (tenth
to twelfth century).
20
Moreover, charity, the form of gift most studied by medie-
valists, is commonly interpreted as an illustration of reciprocity in Mausss sense,
with the difference that material goods were exchanged for spiritual ones, as most
land donations were to God or Christ, to patron saints, or to monks (as the
representatives on earth of the primary recipients).
21
16
Duby, Guerriers et paysans, p. 63; trans. Clarke, p. 51. See Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor of
Saint Peter, p. 128, who believes that Dubys concept of gift giving stressed the idea of a supernatural
consumer demanding gifts in the grave or at the altar.
17
Philippe Jobert, La notion de donation: Convergences, 630750 (Dijon, 1977), pp. 139 and 184
85. See also Martin Herz, Sacrum commercium: Eine begriffsgeschichtliche Studie zur Theologie der
ro mischen Liturgiesprache, Mu nchener theologische Studien 15 (Munich, 1958).
18
See Anita Guerreau-Jalabert, Caritas y don en la sociedad medieval occidental, Hispania 60
(2000), 5257.
19
For example, Annette Weiner, Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving
(Berkeley, Calif., 1992), p. 34, points to landed property in the Middle Ages as another example of
inalienable wealth enhancing the political authority of the donor and of the donors successors.
20
Stephen D. White, Custom, Kinship, and Gifts to Saints: The Laudatio parentum in Western
France, 10501150 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1988); Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor of Saint Peter, esp.
p. 138: . . . like the Kula exchange, in which necklaces always moved in a clockwise direction, so too
donations to Cluny formed a circle: from God to men and back to God again. For a critique of
Whites and Rosenweins use of anthropological parallels, see Ilana F. Silber, Gift-Giving in the Great
Traditions: The Case of Donations to Monasteries in the Medieval West, Archives europeennes de
sociologie 36 (1995), 20943, at p. 211.
21
Thomas Sternberg, Orientaliummore secutus: Ra ume und Institutionen der Caritas des 5. bis 7.
Jahrhunderts in Gallien, Jahrbuch fu r Antike und Christentum, Erga nzungsband 16 (Mu nster, 1991),
pp. 3132; Arnold Angenendt, Thomas Braucks, Rolf Busch, and Hubertus Lutterbach, Counting
Gift Giving 675
Gift giving in medieval society now appears as the main form of expression of
relations between peers based on mutual trust, to the point that even vassalage is
viewed as a specic form of gift giving, in which prestations (obligations to
provide a service) are exchanged for gifts of movable or immovable property.
22
The stronger the idea of an early-medieval gift economy, the greater the em-
phasis on mutuality.
23
On the other hand, gift giving is typically interpreted as a
form of creating and maintaining, by means of reciprocity, bonds of friendship,
which lay at the heart of aristocratic society.
24
Late-antique consular games and
other kinds of outdoings are classied as potlatch, under the assumption that
they were thus different from regular gift-giving practices reecting reciprocity.
25
The distinction goes back to Mauss, who differentiated between non-agonistic
and agonistic gift-giving practices, called the latter potlatch, and suggested that
they were in fact a transformation of non-agonistic gifts. The main purpose of the
gift in a potlatch is to atten the other, to the extent that one gives more than
Piety in the Early and High Middle Ages, in Ordering Medieval Society: Perspectives on Intellectual
and Practical Modes of Shaping Social Relations, ed. Bernhard Jussen (Philadelphia, 2001), pp. 18
20; Arnold Angenendt, Grundformen der Fro mmigkeit im Mittelalter, Enzyklopa die deutscher Ge-
schichte 68 (Munich, 2003), pp. 85 and 9799 (with reference to Marcel Mauss).
22
Ju rgen Hannig, Ars donandi: Zur O
konomie des Schenkens imfru heren Mittelalter, Geschichte

in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 37 (1986), 14962, at p. 153. The term prestation was rst coined
by Rudolf von Jhering, a representative of the German Historical School, which in the late nineteenth
century engaged in a famous Methodenstreit with the adherents of neoliberal economic theories in-
spired by Adam Smith on the topic of Schenkung (gift), viewed as a counterpart of prot making. See
Beate Wagner-Hasel, Egoistic Exchange and Altruistic Gift: On the Roots of Marcel Mausss Theory
of the Gift, in Negotiating the Gift (above, n. 2), pp. 14445.
23
Anthony Cutler, Gifts and Gift-Exchange as Aspects of the Byzantine, Arab, and Related Econ-
omies, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 55 (2001), 248: gifts are a part of what J. M. Keynes described as
a whole Copernican system by which all elements of the economic universe are kept in their places
by mutual counterpoise and interaction. Against Grierson and Duby, Cutler argues that in Byzan-
tium, as well as in the Abbasid world, the perceived effectiveness of a gift was evaluated against its
monetary value.
24
Ian Wood, The Exchange of Gifts among the Late Antique Aristocracy, in El disco de Teodosio,
ed. Mart n Almagro-Gorbea, Jose Maria A
lvarez Mart nez, Jose Maria Blazquez Mart nez, and Sal-
vador Rovira, Publicaciones del Gabinete de Antigu edades 5 (Madrid, 2000), pp. 30114, at pp. 303
4; Patrick Geary, Sacred Commodities: The Circulation of Medieval Relics, in The Social Life of
Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge, Eng., 1986), pp. 174
75. In a functionalist vein, Wood sees the exchange of gifts among members of the aristocracy as the
economic alternative to trade. See also Gerd Althoff, Amicitiae as Relationships between States and
People, in Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings, ed. Lester K. Little and Barbara H. Ro-
senwein (Malden, Mass., 1998), p. 206; and Janet Nelson, Peers in the Early Middle Ages, in Law,
Laity and Solidarities: Essays in Honour of Susan Reynolds, ed. Pauline Stafford, Janet L. Nelson, and
Jane Martindale (Manchester, Eng., 2001), pp. 3233.
25
Wood, Exchange of Gifts, p. 307; Benjamin Scheller, Rituelles Schenken an Ho fen der Otto-
nenzeit zwischen Ein- und Mehrdeutigkeit: Formen und Funktionen des Austausches im fru heren
Mittelalter, in Ordnungsformen des Hofes: Ergebnisse eines Forschungskolloquiums der Studienstif-
tung des deutschen Volkes, ed. Ulf Christian Ewert and Stephen Selzer, Mitteilungen der Residenzen-
Kommission der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Go ttingen 2 (Kiel, 1997), p. 61. Contra: Jacques Le
Goff, Un autre moyen a ge (Paris, 1999), p. 354. Mauss, Essai sur le don, pp. 153 and 205, has
called potlatches total prestations of agonistic type and compared them with (medieval) tournaments,
a comparison that inspired Arjun Appadurais tournaments of value. See Arjun Appadurai, Intro-
duction: Commodities and the Politics of Value, in Social Life of Things, p. 21.
Gift Giving 676
one thinks the other can ever give in return. The goal of this strategy is to put the
other lastingly in debt, to make him lose face in public, while at the same time
proclaiming ones own superiority.
26
The potlatch, though assimilating debt with
equality, ultimately creates a nonextinguishable debt. Although based on the logic
of equality, the potlatch never aims to achieve the ideal of balanced reciprocity.
27
On the contrary, while stressing the signicance of reciprocity, the potlatch also
denies it systematically. Were strict or completely balanced reciprocity possible,
there would be no need for gifts.
28
The potlatch thus shows that the logic of the
gift [only] plays a role in situations where strict reciprocity is impossible or in-
appropriate.
29
As a consequence, to the extent that gift-giving transactions are
never equivalent, even when apparently balanced, gift-giving practices cannot be
reduced to reciprocal exchanges, at least not as Mauss understood that concept.
To be sure, Mauss discussed reciprocity only in relation to the potlatch. To him,
[t]he obligation to reciprocate constitutes the essence of the potlatch in so far as
it does not consist of pure destruction. . . . [T]he potlatch must be reciprocated
with interest, as must indeed every gift.
30
Mausss obligation to reciprocate has been the target of much criticism in
the last few decades. Gifts and gift giving remain hotly debated topics in the
anthropology and sociology of the gift, with undeniable relevance to the under-
standing of early-medieval gift-giving practices. The purpose of this study is to
revisit early-medieval gift giving because the lesson to be drawn from the analysis
of the evidence pertaining to the Merovingian and Carolingian periods can en-
26
Maurice Godelier, The Enigma of the Gift (Chicago, 1999), pp. 56 and 160. According to Hannig,
Ars donandi, p. 156, the stress most early-medieval authors lay on largitas translates into ein
Versuch der verchristlichenden Domestizierung eines urspru nglich durchaus auch aggressivenagonalen
Systems.
27
Jacques T. Godbout, Homo donator versus Homo oeconomicus, in Gifts and Interests, ed.
Antoon Vandevelde, Morality and the Meaning of Life 9 (Leuven, 2000), p. 42. See Mauss, Essai sur
le don, p. 205: in a potlatch, on fraternise et cependant on reste etranger; on communique et on
soppose dans un gigantesque commerce et un constant tournoi.
28
According to Augustine, true Christians do not need material gifts or services: But there is a
certain friendship of benevolence, so that we sometimes render service to those we love. What if there
is not any service we may render? Benevolence alone is sufcient for the one who loves. See Tractate
on the First Epistle of John 8.5, ed. Paul Agaesse (Paris, 1994), p. 348; trans. John W. Rettig (Wash-
ington, D.C., 1995), p. 234.
29
Antoon Vandevelde, Towards a Conceptual Map of Gift Practices, in Gifts and Interests, p. 9.
30
Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. W. D.
Halls (London, 2001), p. 53. The inspiration for Mausss obligation to reciprocate was Bronislaw
Malinowskis principle of reciprocity, underpinning his explanation of conformity with norms in
archaic societies. In an anti-Durkheimian stance, Malinowski had rejected any such explanation of
conformity as either psychological forces or collective conscience. Instead, he argued for a purely
sociological explanation. His principle of reciprocity was therefore an exchange of equivalent ser-
vices: Most if not all economic acts are found to belong to some chain of reciprocal gifts and coun-
tergifts, which in the long run balance, beneting both sides equally. See Bronislaw Malinowski,
Crime and Custom in Savage Society (London, 1926), p. 40; see also his Argonauts of the Western
Pacic (London, 1922; repr. New York, 1950), pp. 17694. For reciprocity and the relation between
Malinowski and Mauss, see Alvin W. Gouldner, A Norm of Reciprocity: A Preliminary Statement,
American Sociological Review 25 (1960), 1678; and Claude Levi-Strauss, The Principle of Reci-
procity, in Sociological Theory: A Book of Readings, ed. L. A. Coser and B. Rosenberg (New York,
1957), pp. 8494.
Gift Giving 677
hance the understanding of medieval gift giving in general. Earlier studies have
typically approached gift giving from the viewpoint of reciprocity and have in-
sisted upon the central role of gift giving in the gift economy of the early Middle
Ages. The practical and ideological implications of gifts, especially of land, to
which Marc Bloch had pointed for understanding relations between lords and
their men, have not yet been reassessed in the light of Susan Reynoldss critique
of feudalism.
31
Meanwhile, gift giving has moved gradually into the focus of
interest of those studying medieval politics in terms of, and with the conceptual
tools provided by, political anthropology. Public authority in the early Middle
Ages is now viewed as a constellation of personal alliances established by rulers
primarily through gift giving.
32
The apparent contradiction between the lack of
interest in feudal gifts and the use of gift giving as a black box for medieval
politics can only be explained in terms of the uneasiness most historians still feel
when applying anthropological theory to their own material, an uneasiness high-
lighted by Philippe Bucs recent critique of the inadequate application of the an-
thropological category of ritual to early-medieval polities.
33
In the case of the
category of gift, the root of the problemseems to be that no satisfactory answers
have yet been given to at least two fundamental questions: Can early-medieval
gift giving be understood in terms of reciprocity? Did it form a constellation of
practices with sufcient societal impact to justify the phrase gift economy?
The ultimate goal of this study is to circumscribe the area of social action in
which gift-giving practices were recurrent and to shift the emphasis fromwhat has
too often been viewed as their exclusively social use to the use various actors
made of gifts in specic situations, and thus to reevaluate gift giving as a political
phenomenon, instead of an economic strategy or a mere mechanism for main-
taining social stability. The gift imposes an identity upon the giver as well as the
receiver.
34
As such, it should be treated as a category of power and as a political
strategy. Because of the enormous complexity of this issue, my analysis is limited
31
Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reconsidered (Oxford, 1994), pp. 76,
8384, 9293, and 98; Bloch, Feudal Society, p. 164. For a critique of the idea that Frankish kings
granted land in exchange for loyalty, see also Franz Dorn, Die Landschenkungen der fra nkischen
Ko nige: Rechtsinhalt und Geltungsdauer, Rechts- und staatswissenschaftliche Vero ffentlichungen der
Go rres-Gesellschaft 60 (Paderborn, 1991), p. 312. However, see Jean-Pierre Poly and Eric Bournazel,
La mutation feodale, XeXIIe sie`cles (Paris, 1980), pp. 12123; and Stephen D. White, The Politics
of Exchange: Gifts, Fiefs, and Feudalism, in Medieval Transformations (above, n. 10), p. 171.
32
E.g., Barbara H. Rosenwein, The Family Politics of Berengar I, King of Italy (888924), Spe-
culum 71 (1996), 24789; Innes, State and Society (above, n. 14). The role that gift giving in the form
of feasting played in medieval politics has already been revealed by Gerd Althoff, Der frieden-, bu nd-
nis- und gemeinschaftstiftende Charakter des Mahles im fru heren Mittelalter, in Essen und Trinken
in Mittelalter und Neuzeit: Vortra ge eines interdisziplina ren Symposions vom 10.13. Juni 1987 an
der Justus-Liebig-Universita t Gieen, ed. Irmgard Bitsch, Trude Ehlert, and Xenja von Ertzdorff (Sig-
maringen, 1987), pp. 1325, esp. p. 19.
33
Philippe Buc, The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientic Theory
(Princeton, N.J., 2001). Buc had already warned against the inadequate use of the anthropological
concept of gift giving in his Conversion of Objects, Viator 28 (1997), 99100.
34
Barry Schwartz, The Social Psychology of the Gift, American Journal of Sociology 73 (1967),
111, at p. 2. Schwartz emphasizes the role gift exchange can play in social control, as gifts reect
and maintain social rankings.
Gift Giving 678
in space to the part of western Europe under the direct rule of Merovingian and,
later, Carolingian kings. Consequently, the chronological framework of the study
is no earlier than ca. 500 and no later than ca. 900. Moreover, given the direction
recently taken by studies of gift giving in the Middle Ages, emphasis in this paper
will be placed only on gift-giving sequences that cannot be described as charity.
Equally excluded are diplomatic gifts to or from the Frankish kings. The focus is
instead primarily on internal gift-giving practices within Merovingian and Car-
olingian societies.
A recent attempt to map the lexical ground of two key terms, munus and
donum, which early-medieval authors employed to refer to a gift, resulted in a
conclusion that is of great signicance for this study: in the religious discourse of
the early Middle Ages, munus has nothing to do with reciprocity.
35
Building upon
Augustines idea that the presence of the Holy Spirit in ones heart is the result of
a gift from God,
36
early-medieval authors insisted upon the fact that gifts to God
were in fact offerings or tribute and had to be understood as a duty. God
regarded or accepted (but never received) the giver, not the given object, which is
why the word munus was often accompanied by a word for heart (cor, anima,
mens, or animus). If munus, therefore, expressed an extremely unequal power
relationship, this also inuenced gift-giving practices that did not involve God.
When Empress Galla Placidia sent to St. Germanus of Auxerre a huge dish of
silver laden with many kinds of delicious food, he accepted the gift but distrib-
uted the food to those serving him and kept only the silver, which he probably
planned to convert for liturgical use. Germanus appears to have understood the
gift of the empress as an offering, not as a present for himself.
37
As a conse-
quence, his presumed countergift in the form of a little wooden platter with a
barley loaf on it was in fact a sign for Galla Placidia that her offering had been
accepted, a point Constantius of Lyons, the author of the late-fth-century Life
of St. Germanus of Auxerre, was quick to explain: The empress treasured both
[the platter and the barley loaf], immensely delighted, both because her silver had
passed through his hands to the poor and because she had received for herself the
holy mans food on so humble a dish. Indeed, she afterwards had the wood set in
35
Bernhard Jussen, Religious Discourses of the Gift in the Middle Ages: Semantic Evidence (Second
to Twelfth Centuries), in Negotiating the Gift (above, n. 2), pp. 17392, esp. pp. 177 and 18687.
36
Augustine, Tractate on the First Epistle of John 6.9, ed. Agaesse, p. 296. See Guerreau-Jalabert,
Caritas y don (above, n. 18), p. 49.
37
Similarly, when offered gifts by Duke Gunzo, after he had healed his daughter Fridiburga at some
point in the early seventh century, St. Gall accepted the gifts, only to distribute them to the poor and
needy of Arbona. In a story twist remarkably similar to the Life of St. Germanus of Auxerre, a disciple
of St. Gall wanted to retain one costly silver vessel, richly chased for liturgical service (Walahfrid
Strabo, Life of St. Gall 1.19, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH SS rer. Merov. 4 [Hannover, 1902], p. 299;
trans. Maud Joynt [Felinfach, 1992], p. 90). Under normal circumstances, or when the intention of
the donor was perceived as problematic, the correct attitude of a saint was to despise gifts, much like
St. Martin when offered gifts by Emperor Valentinian I (Venantius Fortunatus, Life of St. Martin 3,
line 241, ed. Solange Quesnel [Paris, 1996], pp. 6061). Similarly, while accepting the gifts offered by
Duke Theodo of Bavaria, St. Corbinian rejected the honores offered by his son Grimoald (Arbeo of
Freising, Vita Corbiniani, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH SS rer. Germ. 13 [Hannover, 1920], pp. 2034;
and Lothar Vogel, Vom Werden eines Heiligen: Eine Untersuchung der Vita Corbiniani des Bischofs
Arbeo von Freising, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 77 [Berlin, 2000], pp. 34344).
Gift Giving 679
gold and kept the bread to work many miracles of healing.
38
Much like Ger-
manus, the empress deected the countergift fromherself, for we can imagine
that the miracles of healing that the bread performed were not for her exclusive
use, despite her delight at having received for herself Germanuss food. In ex-
change for a dish of silver laden with food, she got a relic. The unequal value of
the goods exchanged (a priceless relic in exchange for silver and food) excludes
any concept of reciprocity, and Germanuss actions are meant to dene the mean-
ing of the gift accordingly: the Lord had looked, not at the munus that Galla
Placidia had sent to him, but at the giver and her quality of heart. Germanuss
countergift may appear as not equivalent to the richness of the initial gift; to
the truly Christian audience of Constantiuss work, it was in fact innitely supe-
rior, precisely because it came from God.
Such attitudes may also explain the way in which some of the gifts offered to
acquaintances or friends in sixth-century Gaul were presented. In a poem for
Placidina, the wife of Bishop Leontius of Bordeaux, that accompanied a gift of
shells, Venantius Fortunatus asks her to accept these simple gifts (munera parva),
39
although she is a much greater gift to the world, a compliment pointing to her
signicant contribution to the Christian building program of her husband.
40
Were
the shells in any way a symbolic gift? As Andre Petitat noted, a gift exchange of
objects is rarely about the objects themselves; in any exchange of gifts, the object
is in fact a sign that combines tangible and invisible substance.
41
A sixth-century
bishop, Ruricius of Limoges, would have completely agreed with such remarks.
38
Life of St. Germanus of Auxerre, ed. Rene Borius (Paris, 1965), p. 188: ligneum postea auro
ambit et panem multis remediis et virtutibus reservavit; trans. from Soldiers of Christ: Saints and
Saints Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Thomas F. X. Noble and Thomas
Head (University Park, Pa., 1995), p. 101. For similar gifts to God accepted on his behalf by holy
men, see Alcuin, The Life of St. Willibrord 12, ed. Christiane Veyrard-Cosme (Florence, 2003), p. 54;
and Ardo, The Life of Saint Benedict, Abbot of Aniane and of Inde 19, ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS
15/1 (Hannover, 1887), p. 208. A similar logic must have been at work in the episode of Thiota, a
false prophetess from the diocese of Constance, who drew large numbers of followers coming to her
with gifts and commending themselves to her prayers (Annals of St. Bertin, a. 847, ed. Georg Waitz,
MGH SS rer. Germ. 5 [Hannover, 1883], p. 37).
39
Munus (or munusculum) parvum was certainly a literary topos, one that was still popular in the
early eighth century. In a letter of ca. 720 to Boniface, Bugga called munuscula her gift of fty gold
coins and an altar cloth (Boniface, Letters, ep. 15, ed. Michael Tangl, MGH Epp. sel. 1 [Berlin, 1916],
p. 28). Eighteen years later, Boniface referred to some other gifts from her simply as munera (ep. 27,
p. 48). Both Abbess Lioba and a certain Cena sent Boniface little gifts (parva munuscula), the former
as a reminder of her insignicance (epp. 29 and 97, pp. 53 and 217; trans. Ephraim Emerton [New
York, 1940], pp. 60 and 173). The same phrase is employed by Ingalice in a letter to Lullus, dated
between 740 and 746 (ep. 70, p. 143).
40
Venantius Fortunatus, Poems 1.17, line 1, ed. and trans. Marc Reydellet, 3 vols. (Paris, 1994
2004), 1:42 (see also p. 178 for the identication of the munera parva as shells). Placidina was a
relative of Sidonius Apollinaris and of Emperor Avitus. See Judith W. George, Portraits of Two
Merovingian Bishops in the Poetry of Venantius Fortunatus, Journal of Medieval History 13 (1987),
191; and her Venantius Fortunatus: A Latin Poet in Merovingian Gaul (Oxford, 1992), pp. 70, with
n. 31, and 109.
41
Andre Petitat, Le don: Espace imaginaire normatif et secret des acteurs, Anthropologie et societe
19 (1995), 1718: Lobjet offert oscille entre lobjet doue dune valeur dusage et dechange et lobjet
signe de sentiment et de pouvoir/hierarchie.
Gift Giving 680
To him, gifts had to be interpreted symbolically.
42
This is also true for some of the
gifts Venantius Fortunatus sent to the famous holy women of Merovingian Gaul,
Radegund and Agnes. Twice he sent gifts of owers (munera orum) accompanied
by poems modeled after classical examples of gift givers, who sent only what they
had picked themselves.
43
In one case, the owers clearly symbolize through their
lack of material value the earthly riches that Radegund had rejected and the true
riches she was to win in heaven. In another poem Venantius acknowledged the
receipt of a gift of food from Agnes. In the late sixth century such a token of
friendship and honor was called eulogia, a word of Greek origin otherwise used
for the Eucharist.
44
A poem accompanying a gift of three apples for Radegund
and Agnes was written on the very charta in which the apples were wrapped, a
clear sign of intended symbolism.
45
Gifts of sh may be at the origin of a peculiar
epistolographic genrethe comico-satirical note accompanying edible giftsthat
is replete with allusions, double-talk, and symbolism, as best illustrated by the
letters of Avitus, bishop of Vienne.
46
Over a century and a half later, gifts of spices
from one man of the church to another could still be interpreted symbolically. In
748 Theophylact, the archdeacon of the Roman church, sent a letter to St. Boni-
face accompanying a little gift of blessing as a souvenir of our friendship in the
42
Ruricius of Limoges, ep. 1.2, trans. Ralph W. Mathisen, Translated Texts for Historians 30 (Liver-
pool, 1999), p. 100.
43
Venantius Fortunatus, Poems 8.6, line 1, and 8.8, line 7, 2:149 and 151. See also George, Venan-
tius Fortunatus, p. 172. For the classical tradition of thank-you letters for gifts of food, see Danuta
Shanzer, Bishops, Letters, Fast, Food, and Feast in Later Roman Gaul, in Society and Culture in
Late Antique Gaul: Revisiting the Sources, ed. Ralph W. Mathisen and Danuta Shanzer (Aldershot,
Eng., 2001), pp. 21736, at p. 229.
44
Venantius Fortunatus, Poems 11.10, 3:120. For eulogia as a gift of food and drink, see George,
Venantius Fortunatus, p. 172. By the time Fortunatus wrote his poem, the meaning of the term had
begun shifting to a gift presented in token of friendship or honor, as attested, inter alia, by a letter
of Pope Gregory the Great, ep. 45, ed. Paul Ewald and Ludo M. Hartmann, MGH Epp. 2 (Berlin,
1899), p. 409. See s.v. eulogia, in J. F. Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis lexicon minus (Leiden, 1997),
p. 382.
45
Venantius Fortunatus, Poems, appendix, no. 26, line 6, 3:160: munera quae portet, charta ca-
nister erit. Venantius had also sent apples to an unknown person, perhaps a newly appointed bishop
(Poems, appendix, no. 9, 3:14950). To Bishop Avitus of Vienne, the apple from the forbidden Tree
of Life was a donum, albeit a wretched one (Avitus of Vienne, Poems 2, lines 204, 212, and 242, ed.
Rudolf Peiper, MGH Auct. ant. 6/2 [Berlin, 1883], p. 218). Venantius received at various times gifts
of food from Radegund and Agnes, mostly in the form of milk and cheese (Poems 11.14 and 19, 3:123
and 126). For other gifts of food, see Poems 5.13, 2:38 (fruit); and 11.12, 3:111 (unspecied goods).
Venantius also thanked Count Gogo for the multitude of presents he had received in 566 at a dinner
to which the count had invited him (Poems 7.2, line 1, 2:87). For gifts of food in Merovingian Gaul,
see Wood, Exchange of Gifts (above, n. 24), p. 302; Shanzer, Bishops, Letters, Fast, esp. p. 235
with n. 143. See also Anne Rollet, LArcadie chretienne de Venance Fortunat: Un projet culturel,
spirituel et social dans la Gaule merovingienne, Medievales 31 (1996), 112.
46
Avitus of Vienne, Letters and Selected Prose, trans. Danuta Shanzer and Ian Wood, Translated
Texts for Historians 38 (Liverpool, 2002). See also Shanzer, Bishops, Letters, Fast. Food alsofeatures
as a gift in the fourth-century collection of letters of Ausonius. For other examples of gifts exchanged
between bishops, see Gregory of Tours, Histories 9.24, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison, MGH
SS rer. Merov. 1/1 (Hannover, 1951), p. 444.
Gift Giving 681
form of cinnamon, spice, pepper, and frankincense in a sealed packet.
47
Theo-
phylact explained the meaning of his gift: And we beg you earnestly to accept
the little for the great. For it is written: The Kings daughter within the palace is
all glorious [Ps. 44.14]. And also: To him that hath shall be given [Matt. 25.29].
For who so hath perfect love is worthy to receive all gifts by the ministration of
the Holy Spirit. Much like St. Germanus in the late fth century, Boniface was
advised to take the munus as coming from God, a reward for the perfect love
in his heart. Boniface, too, sent symbolic, if triing, gifts, to fellow bishops in
Scotland and England. A letter to Bishop Pehthelm of Whithorn accompanied a
coarse towel to dry the feet of the servants of God, while Bishop Daniel of
Winchester received from Boniface a bath towel, not of pure silk, but mixed with
rough goats hair, to dry his feet.
48
In the light of such considerations, we may
wonder whether the triing gifts Boniface sent in 745 or 746 to King Ethelbald
of Mercia were ultimately not to be interpreted symbolically: a hawk and two
falcons, two shields, and two lances (emphasis added).
49
It is most difcult, if
not impossible, to decipher the exact meaning of these pairs of items, since much
must have depended upon the context in which communication between Boniface
and the Mercian king took place. However, the choice of weapons to accompany
the birds of prey sent to a king was as deliberate as the towels sent to bishops.
Bonifaces gifts must have spoken volumes to their receivers, but the accompa-
nying letters provide few, if any, clues to help us understand their meaning.
Most symbolic gifts known from our sources were offered or received by
people of the church. Did gift giving outside this circle carry any comparable
symbolism? An interesting example in that respect is Gregory of Tourss story of
the trick that King Clovis played on the leudes of Ragnachar, to whom he had
given golden armbands and sword belts in order to induce them to betray their
king. The ornaments looked like gold, but were really of bronze very cleverly
gilded. When the receivers of Cloviss gifts eventually discovered that the gold
was counterfeit and complained to the king, he answered, This is the sort of gold
that a man can expect when he deliberately lures his lord to death.
50
Given
Gregorys use of what Walter Goffart has called the contrasting ironic mode, it
is difcult to take this story at face value and treat it as a stratagem to put to work
47
Boniface, ep. 84, p. 189: Benedictionis etenim munusculum ob recordationis nostri memoriam;
trans. Emerton, pp. 15556. Some of the frankincense, pepper, and cinnamon that may have been sent
on a different occasion to Boniface and his mission in Germany by his Roman friends was then resent
by Denehard, Lullus, and Burchard to Abbess Cuniburg (see ep. 49, p. 80).
48
Boniface, epp. 32 and 63, pp. 56 (villosam ad tergendos pedes servorum Dei) and 131 (ca-
sulam, non olosiricam, sed caprina lanugine mixtam et villosam ad tergendos pedes dilectionis ves-
trae); trans. Emerton, pp. 61 and 116 (letters of ca. 735 and 74246, respectively). At some point
between 740 and 746, a priest named Ingalice sent to Lullus a towel (mappa), together with four knives
and a bundle of reed pens, and requested prayers for help in exchange (ep. 72, p. 145). In 751 Boniface
received towels (sabanum et facitergium) together with a little frankincense from the cardinal-bishop
Benedict (ep. 90, p. 206).
49
Boniface, ep. 69, p. 142; trans. Emerton, p. 123. A few years later, Boniface received a silver,
gold-lined drinking cup weighing three pounds and a half and two woolen cloaks from King Ethel-
bert II of Kent, with a request for a pair of falcons to be found only in Germany (ep. 105, p. 230;
trans. Emerton, p. 179).
50
Gregory of Tours, Histories 2.42, pp. 9293.
Gift Giving 682
the political dynamics of kingly retinues.
51
Nevertheless, the point of the story,
which Gregorys audience could hardly have missed, was that the king had the
right not only to alter the value of his gifts as he wished, according to the quality
and position of the recipient, but also to give meaning to the objects presented as
gifts. Ragnachars leudes may have thought of their relation to Clovis as recip-
rocal; the kings trick reminded them in the most dramatic way of the fundamen-
tally unequal nature of that relationship. Cloviss reason for not entering a true
gift-giving relationship with the leudes was the fear that sooner or later he would
have lled Ragnachars shoes. His wish not to incur a debt from those who had
betrayed Ragnachar was a wish to dominate them, an attack on their identity as
his potentially loyal retainers.
52
Far from being a form of necessary generosity,
the episode points to the use of gift symbolism for the expression of power rela-
tionships (gold for truly loyal retainers, gilded bronze for the traitors).
Sooner or later, the hidden meaning surfaces and forces the unaware recipient
to conform to the wish of the donor. Another episode involving King Clovis high-
lights the power of gift symbolism. According to the Liber historiae Francorum,
the Burgundians, fearing retaliation fromClovis, who was asking for his betrothed
Chlothild, demanded that their king Gundobad order a search through the royal
treasury to nd out whether or not there were some gifts (munera) brought at
some time in an ingenious manner by a legate of King Clovis. Questioned about
the issue, Chlothild revealed that indeed in previous years small gifts of gold
(aurea munuscula) had been brought to Gundobad by Cloviss messenger, Au-
relian. The messenger had been forced to mingle with beggars in order to come
closer to Chlothild. As soon as he had been able to approach her, she had given
him a solidus, and he had kissed her hand. Soon after that, he had given to her a
little ring and a bag of other gifts. Chlothild had accepted the gifts but had
hidden the ring in Gundobads treasury.
53
Nevertheless, since the ring had not
been returned to him, Clovis felt entitled to assume that it had been accepted as
a betrothal gift and was now demanding Chlothild from Gundobad. This story
also appears in Gregory of Tours and Fredegar, and in all three variants it is an
excellently narrated story, with many things left to the reader to interpret and a
paratactic style indicating that the authors relied on their audiences to read be-
51
So Hannig, Ars donandi, p. 159. For the contrasting ironic mode and Gregorys Histories as
satire, see Walter Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550800): Jordanes, Gregory of
Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (Princeton, N.J., 1988), pp. 177, 179, and 199. In a parallel story,
a Jew named Armentarius is invited to the house of the former vicar of Tours, Iniuriosus, with the
promise that he would be offered gifts, only to be murdered together with his Christian companions
(Gregory of Tours, Histories 7.23, p. 343).
52
For good reasons (in the sociological sense of Raymond Boudons postulate of rationality) for
not entering a gift-giving relation, see Jacques T. Godbout, Les bonnes raisons de donner, Anthro-
pologie et socie te 19 (1995), 51; and Homo donator (above, n. 27), pp. 3940 and 44.
53
Liber historiae Francorum 12, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH SS rer. Merov. 2 (Hannover, 1888),
pp. 25657; trans. Bernard S. Bachrach (Lawrence, Kans., 1973), pp. 3839. For another case of
courting gifts, see Gregory of Tours, Histories 9.25, p. 444. For Chlothild, see Ian Wood, The Mero-
vingian Kingdoms, 450751 (London, 1994), pp. 4345.
Gift Giving 683
tween the lines.
54
Fredegars version has Chlothild taking the ring that Clovis
had sent through Aurelian and giving the latter one hundred solidi and a ring of
her own as a gift for his efforts on behalf of the king.
55
The gift of a ring accom-
panying a monetary compensation is certainly not to be interpreted in reciprocal
terms as a countergift, for the ring Chlothild had accepted in the rst place was
from Clovis, not from Aurelian. But as Jos Bazelmans has noted, gifts of small
gold rings appear with some frequency in early-medieval epics, in which all other
categories of gifts and ultimately the worth associated with any specic person
may be converted into such objects.
56
This suggests that Chlothilds story was
meant to appeal to a certain audience accustomed to interpret gifts in a symbolic
key. Just who that audience might have been can be determined from the sources
for the stories told by Fredegar and the author of the Liber historiae Francorum.
Richard Gerberding has demonstrated that the Oise valley, particularly the region
of Soissons, was the place of origin for the Liber, for it is here that the tales of
the glory of the Franci and their Merovingian kings would have been the source
of daily entertainment during the period in which the author lived.
57
It is from
this area that the author of the Liber collected some of the most colorful stories
with which he enlivened the narrative,
58
including that of Clovis courting Chlo-
thild through his envoy Aurelian. Similarly, it has long been recognized that Fre-
degar was the mouthpiece of a certain section of the Austrasian aristocracy,
equally interested in stories of intense loyalty, heroism, and accumulation of
booty.
59
As a consequence, the gift symbolism on which the Chlothild story is
54
Gregory of Tours, Histories 2.28, pp. 7374; Fredegar 3.18, in Quellen zur Geschichte des 7. und
8. Jahrhunderts, ed. Andreas Kusternig and Herbert Haupt, Ausgewa hlte Quellen zur deutschen Ge-
schichte des Mittelalters 4A (Darmstadt, 1982), p. 103. The story enjoyed some popularity and was
recycled for accounts of other monarchs marriages. See Pascale Bourgain, Clovis et Chlothilde chez
les historien medievaux, des temps merovingiens au premier sie`cle capetien, Bibliothe`que de lE
cole
des chartes 154 (1996), 5864.
55
Fredegar 3.18, p. 103: centum soledus pro laboris tui munere et anolum hoc meum. See Bour-
gain, Clovis et Chlothilde, p. 64. That Aurelian was entitled to gifts because of his efforts on behalf
of King Clovis is a point the author of the Liber historiae Francorum drove a little closer to home.
According to him, Gundobad, disgruntled with Cloviss successful stratagem to obtain Chlothild, told
Aurelian to return to his lord, since you [now] have that which you may bring to him, the many gifts
that you have not worked for (munera multa, quod non laborastis). See Liber historiae Francorum
13, p. 259; trans. Bachrach, p. 42. Blinded by rage, Gundobad totally missed the point that the gifts
were for Clovis, not for Aurelian, but coming from a kings mouth his bitter remark must have been
meant for any retainer hoping to get royal gifts as a warning that work and loyalty were involved in
such transactions.
56
Jos Bazelmans, Beyond Power: Ceremonial Exchanges in Beowulf, in Rituals of Power: From
Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, ed. Frans Theuws and Janet L. Nelson, The Transformation
of the Roman World 8 (Leiden, 2000), p. 371. See also Richard A. Gerberding, The Rise of the
Carolingians and the Liber historiae Francorum (Oxford, 1987), p. 76.
57
Gerberding, Rise of the Carolingians, pp. 150 and 153. The author of the Liber historiae Fran-
corum reserved the term Franci for the leading warrior nobility of Neustria.
58
E.g., the story of the horse Clovis gave as a gift to the Basilica of St. Martin of Tours (Liber
historiae Francorum17, p. 268), the rst joke recorded in Frankish history, according toGerberding,
Rise of the Carolingians, p. 45.
59
Ian N. Wood, Fredegars Fables, in Historiographie im fru hen Mittelalter, ed. Anton Scharer
and Georg Scheibelreiter, Vero ffentlichungen des Instituts fu r O
sterreichische Geschichtsforschung 32
(Vienna, 1994), pp. 364 and 366.
Gift Giving 684
based must have been particularly appealing to the audience of Fredegar and the
Liber, namely, the aristocracy of mid- to late-seventh-century Austrasia and that
of early-eighth-century Neustria, respectively. Gerberding has noted that although
historians may have expected the Neustrians to be primarily interested in land
acquisition, the author of the Liber nevertheless mentions several times the ac-
quisition of booty or treasure as the main political goal of Neustrian elites.
60
This
insistence on treasure and booty may be a sign that in the early 700s, gift giving
was still a major concern for the Neustrian aristocracy.
61
If so, then it was still a
paramount concern in the mid-eighth century, as Frankish leaders mentioned in
the Continuations of the Chronicle of Fredegar were often described as returning
home with gifts and much treasure.
62
The preoccupation with gift giving and its association with personal loyalty that
may have been on the minds of late-seventh- and early-eighth-century aristocrats
in Francia is best illustrated by Fredegars story of an Avar named Xerxer, who
had been taken captive by King Theoderich. The king had noticed the extraor-
dinary bravery of the Avar and had tried many times to turn him into his retainer,
by means of either persuasion or promises of future gifts. However, Xerxer ob-
stinately refused to take an oath of fealty, and Theoderich eventually had to give
up and release his prisoner. Once the Avar crossed the Danube on his horse and
found himself on the other side, he turned around and declared to Theoderich,
who was watching from the opposite bank, that he was now completely free and
therefore ready to take an oath of fealty and to serve Theoderich like all his other
retainers. Pleasantly surprised, the king showered Xerxer with gifts and began to
favor the Avar over his other men.
63
The message of this story, which the Austra-
sian aristocracy could hardly have missed, was that in asymmetrical relations of
power, the gift signaling emotional attachment had no authenticity if the recipient
did not enjoy a certain degree of freedom. The relation between Xerxer and Theo-
derich can hardly be described in reciprocal terms, for Xerxer did not offer his
service to the king in order to receive the gifts he had rejected in the rst place.
60
Gerberding, Rise of the Carolingians, p. 165. On many occasions, the author of the Liber added
booty and treasure to accounts of Gregory of Tours that had none. This is certainly true for Chlothilds
story, which in Gregorys version has no ring(s). See Bourgain, Clovis et Chlothilde, p. 64.
61
Gerberding, Rise of the Carolingians, p. 76. By contrast, Gregory of Tours has a generally negative
attitude toward the Frankish nobility, and the few notable exceptions conrm the idea that to him
noble character was founded on Christian virtue. See Martin Heinzelmann, Adel und Societas
sanctorum: Soziale Ordnungen und christliches Weltbild von Augustinus bis zu Gregor von Tours,
in Nobilitas: Funktion und Repra sentation des Adels in Alteuropa, ed. Otto Gerhard Oexle and
Werner Paravicini, Vero ffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts fu r Geschichte 133 (Go ttingen,
1997), pp. 24748.
62
E.g., Charles Martel in 736, cum magnis thesauris et muneribus: Continuations of Fredegar 18,
ed. and trans. J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, in Fredegarii Chronicorum liber quartus cum continuationibus
(The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar and Its Continuations) (London, 1960), p. 93. For the
Continuations as written up probably in 751, with the rst section commissioned by Charles Martels
brother, Childebrand, see Paul Fouracre, Writing about Charles Martel, in Law, Laity (above, n.
24), p. 14.
63
Fredegar 2.57, p. 57. In a parallel story taken from Gregory of Tours, Guntram offered numerous
gifts to Dracolenus, who rejected them arrogantly (3.80, p. 147).
Gift Giving 685
Nonetheless, Fredegars story makes it clear that the way one could obtain gifts
from the powerful was to become a retainer.
Furthermore, this is clearly the strategy the powerful employed to recruit re-
tainers. When Chilperic seized the royal hoard his father had left in the villa at
Berny, he gathered all the most useful Franks and placated them with presents,
thus gaining them on his side.
64
When in 576 Godin defected from Sigibert and
joined Chilperic, the latter showered him with presents.
65
Similarly, when Remis-
tarius came to Pepin and swore to him many oaths always to be faithful to the
king and his sons, the king gave him rich presents of gold and silver and costly
clothes and horses and arms.
66
After entering Angouleme, Gundovald gained on
his side the priores of the city by means of gifts.
67
When Guntram was busy ad-
vising Childebert, his newly appointed heir, on how to conduct himself as a king,
one of the things Childebert learned was to whom to give gifts. As if to prove his
point, Guntram organized a three-day feast for the entire army, summoned on the
occasion of Childeberts accession, and distributed many gifts to his soldiers.
68
What Childebert might not have known, but Gregory promptly reported, was that
King Guntram employed gifts not only to recruit loyal retainers but also to obtain
information about the whereabouts of Cloviss grave and to hire men capable of
exacting revenge on his behalf.
69
Queens, too, recruited retainers by means of gifts.
70
In an epitaph for Queen
Theodechildis, Venantius Fortunatus praises the discretion with which she used
to pass gifts to members of her retinue, thus making sure that they would not
refuse to accept her generous presents.
71
Waddo, Rigunths chamberlain, went over
to Brunhild, from whom he received many gifts, while Fredegund showered Clau-
64
Gregory of Tours, Histories 4.22, p. 154: muneribus mollitus sibi subdidit. The phrase most
useful Franks is that of the Liber historiae Francorum 29, p. 289; trans. Bachrach, p. 73.
65
Gregory of Tours, Histories 5.3, p. 196: et multis ab eo muneribus locopletatus est. See Martin
Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours: History and Society in the Sixth Century, trans. Christopher Carroll
(Cambridge, Eng., 2001), p. 114. Similarly, King Guntram showered gifts on Bishop Aetherius of
Lisieux, who had taken refuge with him (Gregory of Tours, Histories 6.36, p. 308).
66
Continuations of Fredegar 45, p. 114: multa munera auri et argenti et preciosa uestimenta,
equites et arma eum ditauit. Similarly, after Theudebert took an oath that he would never betray
him, King Sigibert showered Theudebert with presents and allowed him to return to his father, Chil-
peric (Gregory of Tours, Histories 4.23, p. 155). By contrast, the gift Mummolus received from King
Guntram was a villa in the region of Avignon (Histories 4.44, p. 178). For Mummolus, see Bernard
S. Bachrach, Gregory of Tours as a Military Historian, in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed.
Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood, Cultures, Beliefs, and Traditions 8 (Leiden, 2002), p. 357. For other
gifts of villae, see the Life of Lady Balthild, Queen of the Franks 8, ed. Krusch, in MGHSS rer. Merov.
2, p. 492; and Liber historiae Francorum 34, p. 301.
67
Gregory of Tours, Histories 7.26, p. 345: susceptaque sacramenta muneratisque prioribus.
68
Gregory of Tours, Histories 7.33, pp. 35354. Similarly, at the coronation of 813, Charlemagne
advised his son to surround himself with trustworthy and God-fearing servants, to whom undeserved
gifts were hateful (Thegan, Gesta Hludowici imperatoris 6, ed. Ernst Tremp, in MGH SS rer. Germ.
64 [Hannover, 1995], pp. 183 and 185: quia munera iniusta odio habent).
69
Gregory of Tours, Histories 7.29 and 8.10, pp. 346 and 377.
70
For women as gift givers, see Aafke E. Komter, Women, Gifts and Power, in The Gift: An
Interdisciplinary Perspective, ed. Aafke E. Komter (Amsterdam, 1996), pp. 11931.
71
Venantius Fortunatus, Poems 4.25, line 15, 1:155: occultans sua dona suis neu forte uetarent.
Gift Giving 686
dius with gifts, for she was an enemy of Eberulf.
72
At some point between 715
and 718, Chilperic and Ragamfred received many gifts and much treasure from
Plectrude.
73
Queens could also employ gifts to pay assassins. Much like Guntram,
Fredegund did not hesitate to hire a hit man to rid her of Merovech.
74
Nor did
she hesitate, enraged as she was at the news about her daughters misfortunes, to
order that the mayor of the palace who had accompanied Rigunth to Toulouse be
stripped of his clothes and of the balteus that he had received as a gift from King
Chilperic.
75
Fredegund had collected an enormous dowry for her daughters mar-
riage to the king of the Visigoths. When confronted, she argued that nothing had
been taken from the public treasury and that the dowry was the result of accu-
mulation fromrevenues and taxes (apparently public!) granted to her by Chilperic,
as well as fromgifts she had received fromthe Frankish nobles. As Pauline Stafford
has shown, this episode betrays Gregory of Tourss almost Roman ideology of
the public and the private, which he projects on to the Frankish world.
76
Fre-
degund, a womanthe Roman symbol of the privateis satirized for having
misused the public treasure, while at the same time she justies herself in terms of
a private sphere of action. Since the story of Rigunths misfortunes is followed by
the tale of Chilperics assassination, it is possible that Gregory wanted to make
the point that familial usepossibly (ab)useof arguably public treasure pre-
cedes the nemesis of a man who had lled that public treasure at the expense of
churches.
77
If so, it is interesting to note that no objections seem to have been
raised to Fredegunds alienation of the gifts she had received fromothers, possibly
from her own retinue.
Conversely, retainers or average people could employ gifts to obtain favors from
the powerful. Munderic was accused of having given food and gifts to King Sigi-
bert, perhaps in an attempt to gain his protection after falling foul of Guntram.
78
After the death of Marcovefa, Leudastus tried to gain King Chariberts favor by
means of gifts.
79
As late as 895, Odo, king of Gaul, came to the kings [that is,
Emperor Arnulfs] delity with gifts.
80
When summoned before the king to de-
72
Gregory of Tours, Histories 7.43 and 29, pp. 364 and 347. Claudius had already been promised
gifts by Guntram, provided that he could nd the means to rid him of Eberulf, who had taken refuge
in the Basilica of St. Martin in Tours (Histories 7.29, p. 346). Eberulf had been Chilperics chamberlain
before killing his lord, and Guntram wanted to avenge Chilperics assassination. For Eberulfs story,
see Walter Goffart, Conspicuously Absent: Martial Heroism in the Histories of Gregory of Tours and
Its Likes, in World of Gregory of Tours, p. 372 with n. 20.
73
Continuations of Fredegar 9, p. 88.
74
Gregory of Tours, Histories 5.14, p. 211.
75
Gregory of Tours, Histories 7.15, p. 336: quod ex munere Chilperici regis habebat. The gift is
to be understood symbolically, as the balteus most certainly signies the ofce the mayor of the palace
received from Chilperic.
76
Pauline Stafford, Queens and Treasure in the Early Middle Ages, in Treasure in the Medieval
West, ed. Elizabeth M. Tyler (York, 2000), pp. 6182, at p. 69.
77
Stafford, Queens and Treasure, p. 71.
78
Gregory of Tours, Histories 5.5, p. 201: alimenta et munera. See Ian Wood, The Individuality
of Gregory of Tours, in World of Gregory of Tours, p. 41.
79
Gregory of Tours, Histories 5.48, p. 258: oblatis muneribus.
80
Annals of Fulda, a. 895 (above, n. 1), p. 13; trans. Timothy Reuter (Manchester, Eng., 1992),
p. 130.
Gift Giving 687
fend himself against grave charges brought by his own sons, Severus did not go
empty-handed.
81
In a letter of 833 addressed jointly to his deputy and to a certain
priest, Einhard asked them to have ready the gifts, which he called eulogiae, to be
presented on his behalf to Emperor Lothar and his wife, Queen Ermengard. He
also wanted to learn from the addressees of his letter how his gifts were received
by the imperial couple.
82
Kings commonly received gifts fromFranks and nobles
while traveling to various parts of the kingdom or when holding court at March-
eld or Mayeld,
83
but by the mid-eighth century the practice had turned into
what Timothy Reuter has called a form of internal tribute, which seems to have
begun and ended with the Carolingians.
84
To be sure, it was not unusual for the
Carolingians to receive on one and the same occasion their annual gifts and also
tribute from subject rulers, often at some general assembly.
85
According to Hinc-
mar of Reims, at one of the two annual placita, attending magnates, abbots, and
bishops were expected to bring their annual gifts to the king.
86
But it would be a
mistake to collapse categories(annual) gifts and tributethat contemporaries
certainly viewed as separate.
87
Offered to the king either before or after military
campaigns,
88
dona annua primarily consisted of horses, a socially elevated form
of gift associated with free birth, the right to bear arms, and honor. In Carolingian
81
Gregory of Tours, Histories 5.25, p. 232. Following the assassination of Ebroin in 680, Ermenfred
made his way, laden with presents, to Duke Pepin in Austrasia (Continuations of Fredegar 4, p. 83).
In order to recover the assets wrongfully seized by a man of the king, a citizen of Clermont (Auvergne)
had to make gifts to the king (Gregory of Tours, Histories 4.46, p. 183). Similarly, in order to escape
accusations that he had assisted Chuppa in plundering Tours, the vicar Animodius, although innocent,
had to make gifts to the domesticus Flavianus, who had been appointed to direct the investigation of
that affair (Histories 10.5, p. 488). One can hardly miss Gregorys critical views of judges and con-
temporary judicial procedures.
82
Einhard, ep. 54, ed. Karl Hampe, MGH Epp. 5 (Berlin, 1899; repr. 1995), p. 123.
83
E.g., Charles Martel in 764 (Continuations of Fredegar 48, p. 116).
84
Timothy Reuter, Plunder and Tribute in the Carolingian Europe, Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society, 5th ser., 35 (1985), 85. The earliest reference to dona annua is from 755, the latest
from 877.
85
E.g., in 864, when Charles held a general assembly in Ptres and received the tribute fromBrittany
(censum de Brittania), together with the annual gifts. See the Annals of St. Bertin (above, n. 38), p. 72.
86
Hincmar of Reims, De ordine palatii 29, ed. Thomas Gross and Rudolf Schieffer, MGH Fontes
iuris 3 (Hannover, 1980), pp. 8285: autem, propter dona generaliter danda. Gross and Schieffer
translated generaliter as um allgemein ihre Geschenke darzubringen (emphasis added). By contrast
Maurice Prou, in Annales de lEurope carolingienne, 840903 (Clermont-Ferrand, 2002), p. 255,
preferred to read the word as lensemble des dons annuels (emphasis added).
87
E.g., Waiofar, asking Pepin in 763 for Bourges and other Aquitanian cities, in exchange for his
submission and the promise to send annually whatever tribute and gifts (tributa uel munera) earlier
Frankish kings had been accustomed to receive from the province of Aquitaine (Continuations of
Fredegar 47, p. 116).
88
In 827 Louis the Pious received his annual gifts in Compie`gne, where he gave instructions to
those who had to be sent to the Spanish March on howthey were to proceed (Royal Frankish Annals,
ed. Kurze [above, n. 1], p. 173; trans. Scholz and Rogers, p. 122). In 834 the emperor received the
annual gifts and then set off on a campaign through the regions of Troyes, Chartres, and the Dunois
to liberate the people from those who had wrongfully seized the realm (Annals of St. Bertin, p. 9;
trans. Janet L. Nelson, Ninth-Century Histories, 1 [Manchester, Eng., 1991], p. 31). For the nature of
the annual gifts, see Georg Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte: Die Verfassung des Fra nkischen
Reiches, 3rd ed., 4 (Graz, 1955), pp. 10910.
Gift Giving 688
seigneurial records, the verb donare occurs in relation to dues or loans of horses
(parafreda), a usage that seems to have marked concessions based on free status,
military service, or both.
89
Similarly, when defeated, but not truly deprived of their
freedom, the Saxons promised in 758 to obey King Pepins orders and to present
as gifts at his assembly up to three hundred horses every year.
90
At a quick
glimpse, the customary gift to the king may have lost much of its performative
aspect during the 800s, and formalism may have indeed replaced spontaneity. But
at a closer examination, instead of a Carolingian innovation, the annual gifts
appear as a way to optimize Merovingian gift-giving practices. More important,
in dona annua one can still recognize, if only in a symbolic way, the early-medieval
gifts essential spirit of freedom that had made so much more problematic the
recruitment of an Avar captive for Theoderichs retinue.
91
One may wonder, though, what exactly Carolingian kings were doing with so
many horses and why, after all, it was necessary for them to have an annual
collection of gifts. To be sure, unlike Fredegund, Carolingian kings were often
praised for their correct understanding of the meaning of redistribution. Notker
the Stammerer notes that at Easter, Louis the Pious used to make presents (dona-
tiva) to each and every one of those who served in the palace or did duty in the
royal court. He would order belts, leg coverings, and precious garments brought
from all parts of his vast empire to be given to some of his nobles; the lower orders
would get Frisian cloaks of various colors; his grooms, cooks, and kitchen-
attendants got clothes of linen and wool and knives according to their needs.
92
In a similar vein, Hincmar of Reims noted that many who served at the palace
without any precisely dened ofce relied on the generosity of their superiors,
who often bestowed upon them gifts of food, clothes, silver, gold, horses, and
other ornamenta.
93
However, in most other cases when Carolingian kings were
generous, the palpable expression of their municence was not movable. To the
89
E.g., in the register of Lorsch, dated between 830 and 850. See Codex Laureshamensis, ed. Karl
Glo ckner, 3 (Darmstadt, 1936), pp. 17376. See also Ludolf Kuchenbuch, Porcus donativus: Lan-
guage Use and Gifting in Seigniorial Records between the Eighth and the Twelfth Centuries, in Ne-
gotiating the Gift (above, n. 2), p. 209. Kuchenbuch notes that since the compensation for military
service, implying free birth, was understood as a gift of honor, the disappearance of this usage after
ca. 900 may well reect a diminishing need to mark status-specic concessions. On the other hand,
the gift of a mule (mulum meum dare precepi) for Einhard from Bernharius, bishop of Worms, may
have carried a symbolic value subtly veiled under the humility topos (Einhard, ep. 32, p. 111). In
Einhards account of the translation of the relics of SS. Marcellinus and Peter, the Roman deacon
Deusdona promises to deliver relics in his possession in exchange for a mule (Einhard, Translation and
Miracles of the Blessed Martyrs Marcellinus and Peter 1.1, ed. Georg Waitz, in MGH SS 15/1 [Han-
nover, 1887], p. 240).
90
Royal Frankish Annals, a. 758, ed. Kurze, p. 17; trans. Scholz and Rogers, p. 42. These are clearly
understood by both sides as gifts, not tribute stricto sensu.
91
In an Anglo-Saxon context, the gift of weapons from retainer to lord similarly became formalized
as heriot during the ninth century and was subsequently enshrined in the Laws of King Cnut. See
Heinrich Ha rke, The Circulation of Weapons in Anglo-Saxon Society, in Rituals of Power (above,
n. 56), p. 382.
92
Notker Balbulus, Gesta Karoli Magni 2.21, ed. Hans F. Haefele (Berlin, 1959), p. 92; trans. A. J.
Grant (New York, 1966), pp. 15657.
93
Hincmar of Reims, De ordine palatii 27, ed. Gross and Schieffer, pp. 8081: absque ministeriis
expediti milites. Pepins gifts to Remistarius also included horses (Continuations of Fredegar 45, p. 114).
Gift Giving 689
former marquio of Anjou, Robert, Charles the Bald gave the counties of Auxerre
and Nevers, in addition to the other honores he held already.
94
Hugh, the son of
Charless uncle Conrad, received in 866 the counties of Tours and Anjou, along
with the Abbey of St. Martin and other abbeys. Following his gift to Hugh, Charles
divided all the rest amongst some of his men.
95
When Lothars men came over
to him, Charles gave them abbeys and beneces from the abbey-lands of Mar-
chiennes which he had divided up.
96
When Charles tried to gain on his side the
men of Louis the Younger, he promised those who would come to him many
beneces and gifts (benecia ac dona).
97
Ever since the mid-eighth century, the
term benecium had described a semantic constellation centered upon the concept
of a good deed, a key concept for a society geared toward giving and receiving
favors and gifts. Despite the fact that gifts of land from the king to loyal subjects
are sometimes presented as a Carolingian innovation, Merovingian rulers had also
granted land for life or for the duration of service.
98
More often than not, the
Carolingian grant was out of land that had already been given previously as a
benece to gain political support.
99
The recipients of Carolingian royal gifts of movables, on the other hand, were
mostly foreigners. When the Basque leader Adeleric came to the emperor to ex-
plain himself for having attacked the duke of Toulouse, he was offered many gifts,
which he was able to take with him when returning home.
100
In 851 Erispoe, the
duke of Brittany, presented himself to Charles the Bald and was endowed with
royal vestments as well as with the authority of the command his father had
held.
101
In 823 Louis bestowed unspecied gifts upon Milegast and Cealadrag,
both princes of the Wilzi, after extracting oaths fromthemthat they would respect
their agreement with him.
102
They, too, took their gifts with them. In 825 Emperor
Louis bestowed gifts of movables upon Wihomarc of Brittany,
103
shortly followed,
94
Annals of St. Bertin, a. 865, p. 79; trans. Nelson, p. 128.
95
Annals of St. Bertin, a. 866, p. 84; trans. Nelson, p. 136. To be sure, the envoy of Salomon, duke
of Brittany, received from Charles in 867 the county of Coutances with all the scal lands, royal villae
and abbeys therein and properties and wheresoever pertaining to it, except for the bishopric (Annals
of St. Bertin, a. 866, p. 87; trans. Nelson, p. 140).
96
97
Annals of Fulda, a. 876 (above, n. 1), p. 87; trans. Reuter (above, n. 80), p. 80.
98
Thegan, Gesta Hludowici imperatoris 19, ed. Tremp (above, n. 68), p. 202. See also F. L. Ganshof,
Note sur la concession dalleux a` des vassaux sous le re`gne de Louis le Pieux, in Storiograa e storia:
Studi in onore di Eugenio Dupre Theseider, 2 (Rome, 1974), pp. 58999. For a detailed discussion of
the evidence pertaining to Merovingian kings, see Dorn, Landschenkungen (above, n. 31), pp. 73
101.
99
Innes, State and Society (above, n. 14), p. 204. A conrmation of previous grants and properties
is called munus in Louis the Germans charters. See Ludovici II diplomata, ed. Konrad Wanner (Rome,
1994), pp. 89, 103, and 111. However, the word was not used when Louis made a gift of a corticella
in Inverno near Corteolona to his wife, Queen Angilberga (Ludovici II diplomata, no. 45).
100
Astronomus, Vita Hludowici imperatoris 5, ed. Ernst Tremp, in MGH SS rer. Germ. 64 (Han-
nover, 1995), p. 299.
101
102
Royal Frankish Annals, a. 823, ed. Kurze, pp. 160 and 162; Astronomus, Vita Hludowici im-
peratoris 36, pp. 413 and 415.
103
Royal Frankish Annals, a. 823, p. 167; Astronomus, Vita Hludowici imperatoris 39, p. 427.
Gift Giving 690
in 826, by gifts to the Danish prince Harald Klak.
104
In all such cases, these were
not potential enemies whom the emperor wished to placate with gifts but half-
independent leaders seeking an imperial alliance or offering their services in ex-
change for imperial favors. However, in some cases, the gifts were so visibly de-
signed to recruit useful allies for the Frankish king that modern translators feel
entitled to turn the veiled hostility of the annalists into direct accusations of bribes.
When Louis the German rebelled against his father, he ed across the Rhine into
Germany and sought in person the support of the pagans and of the peoples
beyond the frontiers, giving them large bribes (compluribus datis muneribus).
105
Lured, so it is said, by bribes (munera) from Charles the Bald, the Bulgars
attacked Louis the German in 853.
106
Closer to home, when two legates of the
pope attended the Synod of Metz in June 863 to discuss Lothars demand of a
divorce from Theutberga and her substitution with his concubine Waldrada, the
emperor bribed them into concealing the letters of the pope and abstaining from
any criticism of his position.
107
That bribes were very much on the mind of many
of Lothars contemporaries is also demonstrated by no fewer than three capitu-
laries in Ansegiss collection demanding that judges, counts, and vicars reject gifts
that could pervert the process of justice.
108
It is thus worth exploring briey the
exact social and political context in which bribes needed to be separated concep-
tually from gifts.
In order to obtain the ofce of duke of Clermont (Auvergne), Rodez, and Uze`s,
Nicetius had to pay enormous gifts to King Childebert.
109
In the light of his
preoccupation with bad gifts used to obtain church ofces, Gregory of Tourss
insistence on the enormity of Nicetiuss gifts may well be a veiled accusation of
bribery, but at a closer look this particular gift-giving instance does not differ much
from other cases of instrumental gifts reported by Gregory.
110
With just one
104
Royal Frankish Annals, a. 823, p. 169; Astronomus, Vita Hludowici imperatoris 40, p. 433;
Thegan, Gesta Hludowici imperatoris 33, ed. Tremp (above, n. 68), p. 221. To be sure, Louis also
gave to Harald a good part of Frisia, in addition to honorable gifts (donis honoricis ornavit
eum). For the gifts of movables to Harald Klak as the equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon feoh-gyfte, see
Poly and Bournazel, La mutation feodale (above, n. 31), p. 120.
105
106
107
Annals of St. Bertin, a. 853, p. 62: corrupti muneribus.
108
Die Kapitulariensammlung des Ansegis 1.60, 2.6, and 4.62, ed. Gerhard Schmitz, MGH Capit.
n.s. 1 (Hannover, 1996), pp. 461, 527, and 665: ut propter iustitiam pervertendam munera non
accipiant. The passage quoted in the text repeats, almost verbatim, an injunction of Lex Ribuaria
91, ed. Franz Beyerle and Rudolf Buchner, MGH LL nat. Germ. 3/2 (Hannover, 1954; repr. 1965),
p. 133.
109
Gregory of Tours, Histories 8.18, p. 385: datis pro eo inmensis muneribus.
110
Simoniac bribes: Gregory of Tours, Histories 4.35, 6.7, 8.22 and 43, and 10.26, pp. 168, 277,
388, 410, and 519; Liber in gloriam martyrum 77, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH SS rer. Merov. 1/2 (Han-
nover, 1885; repr. 1969), p. 90; Vitae Patrum 6, ed. Krusch, ibid., p. 232: At that time, like a per-
nicious weed, that custom by which sacred ofces were sold by kings and bought by clerics had already
started to grow (trans. Edward James, Translated Texts for Historians, Latin Series, 1 [Liverpool,
1985], p. 55). Equally despicable, though for a different reason, was King Chilperics acceptance of
bribes from Priscus, a Jew desperately trying to obtain a delay from forced conversion (Histories 6.17,
p. 286). This reminds one of what the annalists had to say about the conversion in 839 of a certain
deacon to Judaism: Rumor spread the news and the Emperor found out that the deacon Bodo, an
Gift Giving 691
exception, Gregory never mentions the nature of such gifts,
111
and there is a good
chance he did not know much about it, since such gifts were not public. To Greg-
ory, at least, in order to make a gift look like a bribe, one needed a clear conceptual
separation between public and private. In his eyes, with no rules of social behavior
at hand, the church and its hierarchy of services provided the only context that
allowed a distinction between good and bad gifts.
112
It has long been recognized that in Gregorys work, true gifts are almost always
public in nature, while bribes involve a certain degree of secrecy.
113
But secrecy is
an important dimension in certain gift-giving sequences as well. For example,
Bishop Praetextatus of Rouen, the godfather of Merovech and one of the main
political supporters of the rebellious prince, is said to have secretly distributed
gifts to people in order to gain their support against King Chilperic.
114
Those who
accepted the bribes certainly did not see themselves as the bishops retainers, al-
though he must have thought of them as military supporters. Moreover, when
accused by Chilperic of plotting against him, Praetextatus tried to defend himself
by arguing that his supposed bribes were in fact countergifts for horses and other
things he had received from the people he was accused of bribing. Praetextatus
apparently tried to oppose the logic of (reciprocal) exchange to an accusation built
on the idea of a fundamentally unequal relationship established by means of gifts,
a dichotomy one would perhaps express today in terms of a sharp difference
between gifts and bribes. In other words, given that he had been engaged in
a gift-giving sequence by accepting gifts of horses and other things in the rst
place, he had no other choice than to reciprocate. According to him, therefore,
this was nothing else but a perfectly balanced relation, and, as a consequence, his
were gifts, not bribes. The bishops summoned by Chilperic to try Praetextatus
were quick to pick on this particular point: If you gave those men gifts in ex-
change for their gifts (munera pro muneribus his hominibus es largitus), why did
you ask them to take an oath of allegiance to Merovech?
115
To them, at least (if
not to Gregory as well), the argument of reciprocity seems to have excluded the
Alaman by birth and deeply imbued from his earliest childhood in the Christian religion with the
scholarship of the court clergy and with sacred and secular learning, a man who only the previous
year had requested permission from the Emperor and the Empress to go on pilgrimage to Rome and
had been granted this permission and had been loaded with many gifts: this man seduced by the enemy
of the human race had abandoned Christianity and converted to Judaism (Annals of St. Bertin, a.
839, p. 17; trans. Nelson, p. 42, emphasis added). However, the gifts mentioned in this context are
certainly of the kind that important people took with them when embarking on a pilgrimage, e.g.,
Carloman in 745 (Royal Frankish Annals, a. 745, ed. Kurze, p. 4).
111
The exception is the bribe in the amount of a thousand solidi that friends of the count of Clermont
offered to the king in an attempt to stop the proclamation of Avitus as bishop (Histories 4.35, p. 170).
112
Hannig, Ars donandi (above, n. 22), p. 160.
113
Hannig, Ars donandi, pp. 15455.
114
Gregory of Tours, Histories 5.18, p. 216: contra utilitatem suam populis munera daret. See
Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours (above, n. 65), p. 45. In doing so, Praetextatus was no different from
Queen Brunhild, who sent gifts to the sons of Gundovald, apparently in an attempt to incite them
against Guntram, or from Queen Fredegund, who distributed gifts to the Franks in an attempt to
mobilize themagainst her enemies (Gregory of Tours, Histories 9.28, p. 446; Liber historiae Francorum
36, p. 304).
115
Gift Giving 692
idea of allegiance. The bishops attacked Praetextatuss defense by bringing up the
issue of redundancy as a dening characteristic of true gifts:
116
had the relation
been one of symmetrical reciprocity, the gifts Praetextatus received fromthe people
he was accused of bribing could not have brought him any net benet. As a con-
sequence, he would not have been in a position to extract an oath of allegiance
from the recipients of his countergifts. That these people must have been of a
status equal or, at least, comparable to that of Praetextatus, not his inferiors, is
shown by another example fromGregory of Tourss Histories in which Gundovald
remembers how in exchange for numerous gifts, King Guntramhad taken an oath
that he would not harmGundovald upon his return. Much as with King Guntram,
the gifts Praetextatus distributed to the people whom he was accused of having
bribed put the recipients in a position of debt, but that particular debt was assim-
ilated with what was owed, namely, loyalty. Such gifts operated according to what
Jacques Godbout has called the solidarity model, and their goal was precisely
to produce some form of warranty, given that the debt created by such means was
in fact canceled, not by a countergift, but by an oath.
117
The bishops summoned
to try Praetextatus clearly saw through his plan: far fromcreating bonds of friend-
ship, Bishop Praetextatuss intention had been to create some modicumof security
for his political aspirations.
Whether this impeccable logic was a matter of actual social practice or just a
skillful application of the Augustinian concept of gift, Gregorys own attitude
toward the political use of gifts is consistent. Perceiving that he could not prevail
against Theudebert, Childebert enriched him with so many gifts that it was a
marvel to all.
118
In doing so, Childebert was just a royal version of the deacon
Marcellus, the newly elected bishop of Uze`s, who had been forced to abdicate by
Iovinus, the former governor of Provence. Marcellus, trying to put up some resis-
tance, locked himself up in Uze`s, but he eventually won by means of gifts, not
valor.
119
When Childebert and Lothar rose up against Theudebert, he sought con-
ciliation by gifts.
120
Incapable of defeating the Avars, King Sigibert gave rich pres-
ents to their qagan and entered into a treaty with him, which thing, according
116
See Cheal, Gift Economy (above, n. 5), p. 13.
117
Godbout, Homo donator (above, n. 27), p. 43. For the relation between trust and gifts, see
Fredegar 4.90, ed. and trans. Wallace-Hadrill (above, n. 62), p. 77.
118
The gifts that Theudebert received from Childebert bet a king: clothes, weapons, horses, and
silver plate (Gregory of Tours, Histories 3.24, pp. 13132). Such dealings are to be distinguished
from the exchange of gifts between equals entering alliances, such as those Guntram sealed with
Chilperic, Childebert, and Lothar (Histories 4.50, 5.17, 9.11, and 10.28, pp. 187, 216, 426, and 522)
or Charles the Bald with his brother Lothar (Annals of St. Bertin, a. 852, p. 41). Similarly, King
Leuvigild and King Miro of Galicia sealed a peace by exchanging gifts (Gregory of Tours, Histories
6.43, p. 315). In at least two cases, the exchange took place at a feast. During his 585 visit to Orleans,
Guntram was invited by important people in that city to several feasts in their houses, and they
exchanged gifts (Histories 8.1, p. 370). For feasts as a particular form of gift giving, see Massimo
Montanari, Convivi e banchetti, in Strumenti, tempi e luoghi di communicazione nel Mezzogiorno
normanno-svevo: Atti delle undecime giornate normanne-sveve, Bari, 2629 ottobre 1993, ed. Giosue`
Musca and Vito Sivo (Bari, 1995), p. 325.
119
Gregory of Tours, Histories 6.7, p. 277: sed cum non valeret, muneribus vincit.
120
Gift Giving 693
to Gregory, is justly counted to his credit, and not held as any disgrace.
121
The
reason, Gregory sarcastically explains, is that Sigibert obtained in return gifts from
the qagan, thus wiping out the bare facts of his defeat at the hands of the Avars.
122
Beyond Gregorys sarcastic remark and analogies, this example shows how in his
eyes, if not in those of his audience as well, a blatant imbalance of power called
for a gift-giving sequence. Under such circumstances, gift giving worksto para-
phrase Clausewitzvery much like a continuation of warfare by different means.
Childebert tried to overcome Theudebert by means of gifts after failing to over-
come him by military means. Apparently he did so without any coercion from
Theudebert, and thus his gifts must be distinguished from both Sigiberts gifts to
the qagan and the gifts various Frankish war leaders received from their defeated
enemies, all of which may be translated as tribute.
123
Despite the use of the same
word, munus, the difference is one of quality: every time the enemy surrendered,
gifts were accompanied by formal submission to Frankish overlordship and some-
times by oaths of loyalty (dressed up ironically as foedera in the episode of Sigi-
berts defeat by the Avars). The gifts that Saxons, Lombards, Alamans, or Ba-
varians paid to the Franks were very similar, if not identical, to more individual
121
Gregory of Tours, Histories 4.29, p. 162. For Sigibert and the Avars, see also Walter Pohl, Die
Awaren: Ein Steppenvolk im Mitteleuropa, 567822 n. Chr. (Munich, 1988), p. 48. Similarly, Charles
the Bald, realizing that his men could not win against the Northmen, made a deal with them, by
handing over to them 7,000 lb [of silver] as a bribe (munere); he thereby restrained them from
advancing further and persuaded them to go (Annals of St. Bertin, a. 845, p. 32; trans. Nelson, p. 60).
Hannig, Ars donandi, p. 150, completely missed the irony of the passage from Gregorys Histories.
Instead, he thought that, much like Marcelluss skill in obtaining through gifts what he could not get
by military means, the ars donandi Gregory attributed to King Sigibert was a virtue belonging to an
arsenal of social strategies most typical for the civilized senatorial aristocracy of Merovingian Gaul.
In fact, Sigibert was in no better position of power than Charles the Bald in 845 or, for instance, the
Lombard king Aistulf, who was forced to make rich presents to Pepin and to all the Frankish magnates
(multa munera . . . donat; nam et obtimates Francorum multa munera largitus est) in exchange for
his life (Continuations of Fredegar 37, p. 106).
122
Gregorys sarcastic remark does not exclude the possibility that when the donor found himself
in an inferior position, he could have expected something in exchange for his forced gift. In 887
Charles the Fat, recognizing that he was deserted by all his men, did not know what could be done
for his cause, but at length sent gifts to the king [Arnulf] asking that in his mercy he would grant him
a few places in Alemannia for his use until the end of his life (Annals of Fulda [above, n. 1], a. 887,
p. 115; trans. Nelson, p. 114). One can easily imagine Sigibert demanding peace from the Avars in
exchange for tangible proofs of his ars donandi.
123
When attacked by Mummolus, the Saxons made gifts to him (datisque muneribus Mummolo)
and declared themselves subjects of King Sigibert (Gregory of Tours, Histories 4.42, p. 176). When
faced with the invasion of Italy by King Childebert, the Lombards paid him presents (multa ei dantes
munera) and promised to be his loyal subjects (Gregory of Tours, Histories 6.42, p. 314; see also
9.29, p. 447). For Gregorys coverage of this event, in sharp contrast to that of Paul the Deacon, see
Walter Pohl, Gregory of Tours and Contemporary Perceptions of Lombard Italy, in World of Greg-
ory of Tours (above, n. 66), p. 139. Weroc gave hostages and presents to Duke Ebracharius, asking
for peace and promising that he would never again attack King Guntrams interests (Gregory of Tours,
Histories 10.9, p. 492). Similarly, in 742 the Alamans gave hostages and presented gifts to Carloman
and Pepin, while promising to observe the conquerors laws and submit to Frankish overlordship
(Continuations of Fredegar 25, p. 98). When Pepin attacked the Gascons, they submitted in every
particular to his orders and beseeched him with gifts (Continuations of Fredegar 28, p. 100). Later,
the Bavarians dispatched a mission to Pepin carrying many gifts and hostages, ready to submit to his
overlordship (Continuations of Fredegar 32, p. 102).
Gift Giving 694
expressions of submission, such as the tribute that the governor of Provence
offered to pay King Childebert, in addition to taking an oath of fealty, after being
kept prisoner by Duke Gondulf inside the Basilica of Saint Stephen.
124
Far from
being just a matter of spoils, the tribute was an indication that the defeated party
had recognized the asymmetrical power relation imposed by the victor. By con-
trast, the gifts that Childebert offered to Theudebert were an attempt to tilt the
unbalanced relation in his favor.
125
A similar interpretation could be advanced for one of the most bizarre instances
of gift giving in Gregory of Tourss narrative of Merovingian affairs:
Theuderic plotted to kill his brother Lothar. He prepared an ambush of armed assassins
and then summoned Lothar to his presence, saying that he had something which he
wished to talk over in secret. In a courtyard of his house he stretched a piece of canvas
across from one wall to another, and he told the armed men to stand behind it. The
canvas was not long enough to reach the ground, and the mens feet were plainly visible
beneath it. Lothar observed this and marched into the house still protected by his own
bodyguard. In his turn Theuderic realized that Lothar had seen through his plot, so he
had to think up a pretext while he chatted on about one thing after another. Not quite
knowing how to cover up his treachery, he nally handed Lothar a great silver salver as
a present. Lothar thanked Theuderic for the gift, said good-bye and went back to his
lodging (pro munere gratias agens, ad metatum regressus est). Theuderic then com-
plained to his family that he had handed over the silver salver without any valid reason
for doing so. Run after your uncle, said he to his son Theudebert, and ask him to
be so good as to hand back to you the present (munus) which I have just given to him.
The young man set off and was given what he asked for. Theuderic was very good at
this sort of trick (In talibus enim dolis Theudericus multum callidus erat).
126
The silver salver may not have been very different from the silver plate found
in fourth- and fth-century burial assemblages such as at Hassleben, Gross Bo-
dungen, and Erfurt-Gispersleben.
127
To judge fromGregorys story, the great silver
salver that Theuderic handed to Lothar must have been in view inside the court-
yard, perhaps on the table at which the two were sitting for their conversation.
Given Theuderics qualms in front of his family, there is a good chance the salver
was an heirloom, more valuable because of its own biography
128
than because
of its intrinsic value. It would be difcult to explain otherwise the problems raised
by its transfer into Lothars possession, which led to the return of the gift to
Theuderic. Whatever the case, the expeditious selection of the salver for that gift-
giving sequence seems to have led to what Philippe Buc has called a conversion
124
125
For spoils and tribute, see Reuter, Plunder and Tribute (above, n. 84), pp. 7594.
126
Gregory of Tours, Histories 3.7, p. 105; trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth, Eng., 1974), p. 169.
127
Robert Zahn, Die Silberteller von Hassleben und Augst, in Das Fu rstengrab von Hassleben,
ed. Walther Schulz and Robert Zahn, Ro misch-germanische Forschungen 7 (Berlin, 1933), pp. 5996;
Wilhelm Gru nhagen, Der Schatzfund von Gro Bodungen, Ro misch-germanische Forschungen 21
(Berlin, 1954); Wolfgang Timpel, Das altthu ringische Wagengrab von Erfurt-Gispersleben, Alt-
Thu ringen 17 (1980), 181238. See Matthias Hardt, Gold und Herrschaft: Die Scha tze europa ischer
Ko nige und Fu rsten im ersten Jahrtausend, Europa im Mittelalter 6 (Berlin, 2004), pp. 10616. Ac-
cording to Hardt, giving silver was an important demonstration of rulership and power.
128
Graeber, Theory of Value (above, n. 3), p. 211.
Gift Giving 695
of meaning. Although it was not melted down, the very act of the salvers alien-
ation threatened to turn it from a possible heirloom into something else, and with
that possibility came an attempt to establish and to memorialize a specic hier-
archy between donor and recipient.
129
Theuderic was embarrassed in front of his
own family because he had transferred something of greater value than the debt
presumably inicted upon Lothar. Moreover, he had done so in public, that is, in
the presence of the armed men who had accompanied Lothar, for reasons of se-
curity, inside Theuderics house. Theuderics compensatory gift thus appears
less an exchange transaction than a public event, with everything that meant for
his reputation.
130
His faux pas was thus more than an inappropriate gift at an
inappropriate time. But what was in fact the meaning of the gift, and why did
Theuderic feel embarrassed for having handed the salver to his brother? At rst
glance, the episode could easily be read as a case of mutual positive debt,
131
in
which the donor gives because of what the recipient is to him, in this case because
of the kin relationship. On the other hand, the salver seems to have been not just
in Theuderics possession but also in that of his immediate kin group, and the
source of his embarrassment must have had something to do with the kin distance
between that group and his own brother. The odd thing about this gift-giving
sequence is that Theuderics intention cannot have been to inict a debt, as he
was preoccupied with covering his treachery. No social relation was produced
or consolidated through this gift, which is why Theuderic was eventually able to
recover it so easily. The salver had in fact not been alienated, in either his or
Lothars eyes, and the transfer of usage did not truly take place. Theuderics mach-
inations did not ultimately threaten the recipient, to whom his criminal intentions
had become all too clear. This had placed Theuderic in a very unfavorable position
at the beginning of the gift-giving sequence. In such an asymmetrical relation of
power, the gift of the salver that was supposed to signal emotional attachment
while inicting mutual positive debt had no authenticity for the recipient, as the
donor did not enjoy any degree of freedom, cornered as he was in an impossibly
embarrassing situation.
132
Authenticity would have been possible only if Theuderic
had apologized for his criminal intentions, as Lothar would do after confronting
Bishop Iniuriosus. According to Gregory of Tours, Lothar, fearing the wrath of
St. Martin, hurried servants with presents after the bishop, asking forgiveness and
apologizing for his decision to tax a third of all church revenues.
133
Theuderics
129
Buc, Conversion of Objects (above, n. 33), p. 99.
130
For the public character of gift-giving transactions, see Hannig, Ars donandi, pp. 15455;
Silber, Gift Giving (above, n. 20), p. 218; Andrew Cowell, The Pleasures and Pains of the Gift,
in Question of the Gift (above, n. 5), p. 281.
131
Godbout, Homo donator, p. 43.
132
Petitat, Le don (above, n. 41), p. 32: Dans les rapports asymetriques de pouvoir, le don
signiant un engagement reciproque ne peut se jouer sans un parfum de liberte, meme si chaque partie
sait, sans le dire, quil sagit dun parfum plus ou moins frelate. For gifts, status anxiety, and guilt,
see Schwartz, Social Psychology (above, n. 34), pp. 811.
133
Gregory of Tours, Histories 4.2, p. 136. In an attempt to appease Bishop Agericus of Verdun, in
whose church the kings men had killed Godegisel, Childebert sent presents to the bishop (Histories
9.12, p. 427). The duke of Bavaria sent gifts to St. Corbinian in an attempt to appease the angry bishop
(motum muneribus mitigavit episcopum) after having disregarded his crossing of the food at a meal
they had shared (Arbeo of Freising, Vita Corbiniani, ed. Krusch [above, n. 37], p. 218).
Gift Giving 696
almost symmetrical counterpart is St. Martius, whom Gregory praised for having
understood that one should pardon freely the one who had offended him. Not
only did he pardon the fault, but he also accompanied the pardon with some
present, so as never to cheapen the person of the offender.
134
What happens when the recipient refuses the gift? When Childebert and Theu-
deric reached an agreement, they sealed it by means of an exchange of hostages.
When the conict between them broke out again, some of the sons of senators
who were kept as hostages became servants to those in charge of them. One of
them was Attalus, a nepos of Bishop Gregory of Langres, who had been brought
together with other sons of senators to the Trier region, where he had become a
state-owned slave by the time hostilities were renewed. Bishop Gregory sent gifts
to the Frank who kept Attalus under guard, but the man rejected them, asking
instead for ten pounds of gold as ransom.
135
The reason for this rejection was not
that the man wanted more for a captive of great value but that he did not want
to accept either the moral debt that the bishops gift would have inicted upon
him or the social relation that would have derived from it. Instead of a gift-giving
sequence, the Frank shifted the emphasis to a quasi-commercial transaction, and
the ironic spin Gregory put on this story concerns precisely this poor choice of
exchange strategies. The bishop refused to pay the ransom. His cook Leo, dis-
guised as a slave, was eventually bought by the same Frank for twenty solidi, but
managed to escape back home with Attalus. The irony of the story is that while
refusing the initial gifts, the Frank not only did not get the ten pounds of gold he
had demanded for ransom but had to pay out of his own pocket twenty solidi
before losing two of his most valuable slaves.
136
The initial refusal to enter a gift-
giving sequence led to an economic disaster. But a rejection of a gift could also
trigger violence, as clearly illustrated by the Old High German fragment of the
Hildebrandslied copied in the 830s at Fulda: And with that he [Hildebrand]
slipped from his arm the twisted rings wrought of imperial gold, which the king,
even the lord of the Huns, had bestowed upon him. This will I give to thee in
earnest good faith. Neither good faith nor the gift was apparently sufcient for
Hildebrands son, Hadubrand, who eventually pulled the sword to kill his own
father.
137
It should be apparent by now that although the idea that every gift prompts a
countergift certainly underpinned many gift-giving practices in Merovingian and
Carolingian Francia, very rarely is the countergift mentioned in the same breath
134
Gregory of Tours, Vitae Patrum 14, p. 268; trans. James, p. 99.
135
Gregory of Tours, Histories 3.15, p. 112. Attalus was Bishop Gregorys grandson, not nephew,
most likely the same Attalus who subscribed a document of 539 for Abbot Silvester of Reome. See
Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours, pp. 1516.
136
Hannig, Ars donandi, p. 157: Diese Ablehnung der angebotenen Geschenke ermo glicht dann
die (rechtma ige) listige Entfu hrung mit der ko stlichen U
berto lpelung des fra nkischen Barbaren, die

dann den Stoff zu Grillparzers Komo die Weh dem der lu gt abgegeben hat.
137
Hildebrandslied, lines 3335, ed. Bruce Dickins (Cambridge, Mass., 1915; repr. New York,
1968), pp. 8081. For the relation between rejected gifts and violence, see Godbout, Les bonnes
raisons de donner (above, n. 52), p. 52.
Gift Giving 697
as the gift.
138
Some time must have elapsed between gift and countergift in order
to mask the donors calculations of self-interest, or, in Pierre Bourdieus terms,
the objective truth of the gift.
139
Consequently, there is little, if any, evidence of
balanced reciprocity in Merovingian and Carolingian gift giving. In fact, the only
gift-giving sequences that early-medieval authors thought of as worth recording
are typically unbalanced and asymmetrical. These were indeed the instances in
which gift giving provided a language in which to express power relations.
140
Only rarely do altruistic gifts appear, gifts that were offered in pure affection,
141
and the archaeological evidence pertaining to personal (as opposed to ceremonial)
gifts is relatively slim. Old Roman coins or brooches deposited in sixth-century
graves of the so-called Reihengra berkreis cemeteries and usually found in purses
attached at the waist may have been small presents of apotropaic value, much like
the contorniates late Roman aristocrats were exchanging in Rome and Ravenna
on various ceremonial occasions such as the New Year, birthdays, or weddings.
142
But none of the comparable gifts mentioned in written sources was that small or
that triing.
143
When specically mentioned, these were gifts of horses, weapons,
138
The only exceptions are meetings at which kings sealed alliances, which were always accompanied
by a gift exchange. Otherwise, instances of gift giving between peers involving immediate countergifts
are very rare in the literature of the early Middle Ages. See Ha rke, Circulation of Weapons (above,
n. 91), pp. 38081.
139
Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, Eng., 1991), pp. 104
5 and 108. Because of the delayed countergift, the donor can pretend that he was simply generous and
deny any element of self-interested calculation. To Bourdieu, gift giving is the paradigm of all the
operations through which symbolic alchemy produces the reality-denying reality that the collective
consciousness aims at as a collectively produced, sustained and maintained misrecognition of the
objective truth.
140
Reuter, Plunder and Tribute, p. 85.
141
Gregory of Tours, Histories 9.20, p. 441 (the gifts offered by King Guntram to Gregory, dulci
nos affectu fovens); Liobas letter of 732 to Boniface (ep. 29, ed. Tangl [above, n. 39], p. 53; trans.
Emerton, p. 60: May the bond of our true affection be knit ever more closely for all time). The duke
of Champagne, Waimer, offered gifts of silver to Leudegar in affection (devotus) (Passio Leudegarii
27, ed. Bruno Krusch, in MGH SS rer. Merov. 5 [Hannover, 1910], p. 308).
142
Peter Franz Mittag, Alte Ko pfe in neuen Ha nden: Urheber und Funktionen der Kontorniaten,
Abhandlungen zur Vor- und Fru hgeschichte, zur klassischen und provinzial-ro mischen Archa ologie
und zur Geschichte des Altertums 38 (Bonn, 1999), pp. 207, 210, and 214. For Roman coins in
Reihengra berkreis burial assemblages, see Germaine Faider-Feytmans, Objets depoque romaine de-
couverts dans des tombes merovingiennes du bassin de la Haine (Belgique), in Melanges darcheologie
et dhistoire offerts a` Andre Piganiol, ed. Raymond Chevalier, 2 (Paris, 1966), pp. 101314 and 1018;
Bailey Young, Paganisme, christianisation et rites funeraires merovingiens, Archeologie medievale
7 (1977), 41; Quatre cimetie`res merovingiens de lEst de la France: Lavoye, Dieue-sur-Meuse, Mezie`-
res-Manchester et Mazerny. E
tude quantitative et qualitative des pratiques funeraires, BAR Interna-

tional Series 208 (Oxford, 1984), pp. 3638, 73, and 156; and Guido Krause, Zur Mu nzbeigaben
in merowingerzeitlichen Reihengra bern, in Regio archaeologica: Archa ologie und Geschichte an
Ober- und Hochrhein. Festschrift fu r Gerhard Fingerlin zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Christel Bu cker,
Michael Hoeper, Niklot Krohn, and Ju rgen Trumm, Studia Honoraria 18 (Rahden, 2002), pp. 290
91.
143
The gift of a simple piece of bread that the wife of Namatius, bishop of Arvernes, accepted from
a poor man who had mistaken her for a beggar, though called munus, is in fact a particular, reversed
case of charity (Gregory of Tours, Histories 2.17, p. 65).
Gift Giving 698
jewels, silver plate, or precious books.
144
These were gifts of power, for they were
exchanged between members of the aristocracy, including kings, who understood
their symbolism and dened their status by participation in gift-giving sequences.
These were also powerful gifts, in that most were expressions of a desire to put
the recipient lastingly in debt, to overwhelm and thus to dominate. Even in in-
stances of complete gift-giving sequences, in which kings meeting to seal an
alliance exchanged gifts on the spot, there must have been countless nuances per-
taining to the number and nature of the gifts, the quality of the workmanship,
and the many details of the ceremonial framework of the transaction that allowed
one side or the other to make statements about relative status or position of power.
There can be little surprise therefore that, when the only way to escape domination
was to refuse the gift, the outcome was violence. Gift giving was not about social
bonds or glue; it was a form of surrogate warfare in which assertive aristocrats
engaged when competing with each other for power. As a consequence, gifts cir-
culated within a restricted circle of individuals in Merovingian and Carolingian
societies; gift giving was not part of a general production and distribution net-
work. The horses and weapons that Carolingian kings received as annual gifts
and later redistributed to their loyal men were apparently neither sufcient nor,
indeed, as lucrative as beneces, ofces, or outright grants of land. Nor were the
movable gifts that Frankish aristocrats exchanged among themselves or offered
to their kings anything else than of the nature of tokens of friendship and honor.
The regularization of gift giving under the Carolingians and their efforts to im-
plement an annual, large-scale gift-giving sequence for the exclusive benet of
the king was an indication of a royal power in need of continuous, if symbolic,
manifestation of loyalty from supporters, not an expression of supply-and-demand
mechanisms.
145
Thus, the Royal Frankish Annals and the Annals of St. Bertin,
respectively, mention that Louis the Pious received annual gifts shortly before (in
827 and 829) and especially after the rebellion of 830 (every year between 832
and 837).
146
Annual gifts of horses to the king must have put a high premiumon such objects,
but gift giving itself was not for the procurement of horses to meet (military) royal
needs, a demand that could certainly be satised by other, more economic
means.
147
We would search sources in vain for anything similar to Bronislaw Ma-
linowskis kula circuit: Merovingian and Carolingian gift giving was primarily
144
For gifts of books, see epp. 30, 75, and 91 of Boniface to Abbess Eadburga and Archbishop
Egbert of York, ed. Tangl (above, n. 39), pp. 54 and 157.
145
Similarly, Carolingian donations to monasteries have been viewed as helping lords reafrm their
sphere of political ascendancy vis-a`-vis other powerful lords, princes, or the king himself, at a time of
weakened royal power. See Silber, Gift Giving, p. 218.
146
Royal Frankish Annals, pp. 173 and 177; Annals of St. Bertin, pp. 5, 7, 9, and 1113. See also
Astronomus, Vita Hludowici imperatoris, pp. 441 and 453. By contrast, the Annals of St. Bertin has
Charles the Bald receiving his annual gifts only episodically, in 864, 868, and 874 (pp. 72, 96, and
125). No mention is made of annual gifts in the Annals of Fulda, despite the considerable overlap with
other sources, in its coverage of the reigns of Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald. The differences in
attitudes toward Carolingian annual gifts espoused by various annalists would certainly be worth a
much closer examination than can be done in this study.
147
Adriaan E. Verhulst, The Carolingian Economy (Cambridge, Eng., 2002), pp. 107 and 112.
Gift Giving 699
Florin Curta is Associate Professor of History at the University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
32611-7320 (e-mail: fcurta@history.u.edu).
about politics, not economics, although the two spheres of social activity were
certainly not completely separate. Merovingian and Carolingian Francia had no
gift economy, but Merovingian and Carolingian political economy can only be
understood in terms of gift-giving practices that often took a public, almost cer-
emonial form. In the world of Gregory of Tours, Fredegar, and Hincmar of Reims,
the images of both munera and donors shone with equal clarity in the splendor
of an ever-changing picture.

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konomie des Schenkens imfru heren Mittelalter, Geschichte

berto lpelung des fra nkischen Barbaren, die

tude quantitative et qualitative des pratiques funeraires, BAR Interna-

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