Interdynastic Marriage, Religious Conversion, and the Expansion of Diplomatic Society
Interdynastic Marriage, Religious Conversion, and the Expansion of Diplomatic Society
This chapter focuses on interdynastic marriage in Roman successor states beyond the Alps, the kingdoms of the Merovingian Franks and the Anglo-Saxons during the northern European conversions to Christianity. It considers religious conversion stories that document the expansion of a Latin-based, premodern diplomatic society, beginning with a discussion of Historiae, Gregory of Tours's account of the Burgundian princess Clothilde's conversion of her Frankish husband, Clovis, and its place in the history of marriage diplomacy. The chapter proceeds by analyzing Bede's Historia ecclesiastica, which suggests that clerics may have supplanted royal women as actors in the expansion of diplomatic society after the great conversions. Gregory of Tours and Bede both advocated interdynastic marriage as a vehicle for the Christianization of Europe. Clerical marriage was a regular feature of diocesan life in sixth-century Francia, and Gregory frequently refers to the wives of priests and of his brother bishops.
Keywords: interdynastic marriage, Christianity, religious conversion, diplomatic society, Historiae, Gregory of Tours, marriage diplomacy, Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, Christianization
Cornell Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
