Fifth-Century Gaul

A unique collection of papers looking at how the Gallo-Romans reacted to barbarian invasion.

This unique collection of papers by international scholars deals with a highly important aspect of the 'decline and fall' of the Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe, namely the loss of Gaul to incoming barbarian kings during the fifth century AD.The papers presented in this book take as their subject the military, political and economic changes forced upon the inhabitants of Gaul during the fifth century AD. They seek to describe and explain how Gallo-Romans of all orders of society reacted to barbarian invasion and the growing debilitation of the western imperial government. The unusually wide range of topics dealt with allows the Gallic experience to be viewed and interpreted from many different directions. Much is made of the problematic, because highly subjective, nature of the literary sources; but close attention is also given to modern advances in our understanding of the archaeological and numismatic data. The whole presents a picture of a society under immense stress, as the people of the Gallic provinces abandoned, perforce, their allegiance to Roman emperors and yielded to the rule of Germanic kings, while yet preserving a significant element of their late antique culture.