Papers by Thomas J MacMaster
Inclusion and Exclusion in Mediterranean Christianities, 400-800, 2019
: In the early 660’s, a Frankish chronicler wrote that the Byzantine Emperor, Heraclius, learned ... more : In the early 660’s, a Frankish chronicler wrote that the Byzantine Emperor, Heraclius, learned through astrology that his empire would be devastated by a circumcised nation. He decreed that all Jews be baptised and wrote to the Frankish king Dagobert urging him to do the same. Both were startled when a new circumcised nation, the Arab Muslims, emerged and swiftly conquered much of Heraclius’s empire. The story seems like something invented after the Muslim conquest though a strikingly similar account occurs in Islamic hadith literature. That two accounts agreeing on many things are found in widely separated traditions suggests a reality behind the story. Other texts point to a sudden, intense, and widespread persecution of the Jews before and independent of the appearance of the first Muslim invaders: Heraclius ordered all Jews throughout the Empire to be baptized on May 31, 632. Many fled rather than accept baptism. Some of the newly baptized would return to Judaism though others remained Christian.
Heraclius wrote to Visigothic Spain via the Pope (though the Spanish church rebuked him) as well as to the Franks, yet his religious policy was far from successful in his own realm. Within a decade, Egypt and the Levant had been lost to Muslim rule (and the Jews saved) while, in the regions over which imperial control remained, some Jewish communities survived the period of persecution and soon began to recover. It was beyond imperial frontiers that Heraclius’s campaign may have had its longest lasting impact. In Gaul, both the Frankish church and civil authorities had already been groping towards such policies and, under Heraclius’s prompting and Dagobert’s leadership, they may have succeeded in creating the first Christian state purged of Jews. For the next century, there is no evidence of Jews in Francia.
According to the Frankish Chronicle of Fredegar, Emperor Heraclius,
having learned his empire wou... more According to the Frankish Chronicle of Fredegar, Emperor Heraclius,
having learned his empire would be devastated by a circumcised nation, decreed all Byzantine Jews be baptised and urged Dagobert baptize all Jews in Gaul. Instead a new circumcised nation, the Arab Muslims, emerged and swiftly conquered much of Heraclius’s empire. While the story seems like something invented after the Muslim conquest, a strikingly similar account occurs in Islamic hadith literature while other texts point to a sudden, intense, and widespread persecution of the Jews before and
independent of the appearance of the first Muslim invaders when Heraclius ordered all Jews throughout the Empire to be baptized on May 31, 632. Many fled rather than accept baptism. Some of the newly baptized would return to Judaism though others remained Christian.
While the campaign collapsed within the Empire within a few years, Heraclius’s campaign may have had its longest lasting impact beyond imperial frontiers. In Gaul, both the Frankish church and civil authorities had already been groping towards such policies and, under Heraclius’s prompting and Dagobert’s leadership, they may have succeeded in creating the first Christian state purged of Jews. For the next century, there is no evidence of Jews in Francia.
“Not with a bang? The economics of trade and the end of Byzantine North Africa.” M. Lau, C. Fra... more “Not with a bang? The economics of trade and the end of Byzantine North Africa.” M. Lau, C. Franchi, & M. Di Rodi, (eds). Landscapes of Power (Peter Lang, Oxford: 2014), pp. 73-91.
North Africa had been among the wealthiest areas of the Late Roman Empire and appears to have been one of the first areas to be Christianised in the West. Neither the Vandal conquest nor the Justinianic reconquest appear to have affected this prosperity; at the beginning of the seventh century, Africa, along with Sicily, had been the base for Heraclius’s revolt and appears to have provided much of the economic strength needed for the defeat of the Persians. Carthage in the first half of the seventh century appears to have been among the larger cities in the western Mediterranean.
Within a few decades, Byzantine Africa had collapsed. In the Islamic sources, it almost appears as if the empire barely resisted the invaders, leaving most of the struggle for supremacy with the Arabs to independent Berber groups. Carthage itself fell at the end of the century and the site was all but abandoned. According to the standard histories, North African urban life and even agriculture dramatically receded.
Yet did Byzantine Africa really collapse so quickly and so completely? Or did some other force alter the situation there?
It will be argued that North Africa went from being a region which imported labour and exported agricultural and artisanal production at the beginning of the seventh century to one from which slaves were the primary export by the beginning of the eighth. This shift in economics was both cause and effect of the end of Byzantine Africa.
The Empire fascinated the Merovingian chronicler known to us as ‘Fredegar’ though he was often co... more The Empire fascinated the Merovingian chronicler known to us as ‘Fredegar’ though he was often confused by it. As a source for Byzantine history, his Chronicle might seem useless but, as a contemporary record of how the Empire portrayed itself and was perceived, it gives invaluable insight.
The gaps in Fredegar’s knowledge and his mistakes are as interesting as what he gets ‘right’. His lack of knowledge of the recovery and restoration of the True Cross suggests that it had been unnoticed in the West. Yet he also possessed information that could be quite detailed, such as his account of the single combat between Heraclius and the Persian champion. He reports the return of named Frankish ambassadors in 629, bringing an ‘eternal peace’ with the Empire; these would be the last named travellers to the West from Constantinople for decades and, perhaps, they brought the chronicler some of his tales. Certainly, his account of a common Trojan origin of Turks, Romans, and Franks is suggestive of diplomatic activity at the time yet Fredegar seems unaware of Turkish involvement in the Persian wars.
His reports of what appear to be the Battle of Yarmouk and the Battle of the Masts are intriguing. Fredegar refers to Heraclius bringing down hordes of allies from north of the Caspian Gates in language echoing that found in both Christian and Islamic apocalyptic yet thinks that the Saracens came from that direction. He knows of Heraclius’s consanguineous second marriage and his straying from orthodoxy but misidentifies the heresy. Though he knows nothing of the dynastic struggles after Heraclius’s death, he is aware of the defeats of the early years of Constans’s reign, seeing them as emblematic of the final destruction of the Empire, something that he believes has already occurred.
Résumé :
La première apparition postclassique de descendance des exilés troyens se trouve dans la... more Résumé :
La première apparition postclassique de descendance des exilés troyens se trouve dans la Chronique de Frédégaire (environs de 660), qui décrit les Francs avec les Turcs comme partageant une ascendance commune parmi les réfugiés de la prise de Troie. Bien que cette connexion semble absurde (et les revendications d’origines troyennes des Turcs ont été ridiculisées), elle pourrait être due à la diplomatie byzantine à la fin du 6e ou du début du VIIe siècle. Frédégaire rapporte le retour des ambassadeurs nommés de Constantinople en 629, qui pourrait être la source de beaucoup de ces histoires orientales dont certains détails correspondent à cette période précise. Alors que le séjour des ambassadeurs a coïncidé avec l’alliance de Héraclius avec les Göktürks, Frédégaire ignore l’implication turque dans les guerres Perses. Curieusement, un matériau similaire se retrouve plusieurs siècles plus tard dans la Edda de Snorri Sturluson, qui fournit une ascendance troyenne pour les dieux nordiques dans ce qu’il appelle « la ville turque de Troie ». Écrit bien avant que les Turcs aient conquis le site de Troie, il a parfois été avancé comme un écho des documents de Fredegaire mais semble plus susceptible d’être indépendant. Cet article suggère que le mythe des origines troyennes a fourni un moyen pour les peuples indigènes sans l’histoire de migration de se réinventer dans une histoire sacralisée.
Abstract :
The first post-classical appearance of descent from Trojan exiles is found in the Merovingian Chronicle of Fredegar (around 660), who describes the Franks as sharing a common ancestry with the Turks among refugees from the Fall of Troy. While this connection seems absurd (and claims of Trojan origins of the Turks were later ridiculed), it could have originated with Byzantine diplomacy in the late VIth or early VIIth century. Fredegar reports the return of named ambassadors from Constantinople in 629, who could be the source for many of his eastern stories as some details fit that specific time. While the ambassadors’ sojourn coincided with Heraclius’s alliance with the Göktürks, Fredegar seems unaware of Turkish involvement in the Persian wars. Oddly, similar material is reflected several centuries later in the Icelandic Prose Edda where, in a euhemeristic introduction, Snorri Sturluson finds a Trojan ancestry for the Norse Gods in what he calls « the Turkish city of Troy ». Writing well before the Turks had conquered the site of Troy, it has sometimes been argued as a reflection of the Fredegarian material but would appear more likely to be independent. This paper suggests that the myth of Trojan origins provided a means for peoples without native migration stories to re-imagine themselves in a sacralized history.
The Long Seventh Century: Continuity and discontinuity in an age of transition, Jan 30, 2015
Conference report on sessions on slavery at the Leeds IMC 2016
Submitted to the University of Edinburgh, Mar 3, 2015
This dissertation argues that the slave trade can be seen as providing a critical framework for u... more This dissertation argues that the slave trade can be seen as providing a critical framework for understanding the economic and cultural developments of a time of rapid and dramatic changes within the cultures and economies of what had been the Roman Empire. To make this case, it will be demonstrated that neither the ascendance of Christianity nor the barbarian invasions nor even the collapse of the Western Roman Empire had changed the fundamental role of slavery in the centuries after Constantine. While slavery was vital to all the economies and societies of the period, it will be argued, a large-scale slave trade was necessary for the continued prosperity of the most developed economic regions as internal sources for slaves were insufficient to meet demand. By demonstrating the economic necessity, a crucial driving mechanism for long-distance systems of exchange within the Mediterranean world after the collapse of the western Roman fiscal system and its economy of bulk-exchange will be provided. Changes in the slave trade during the seventh century will be shown as being one of the key forces in the disintegration of Mediterranean cultural unity. New patterns would ultimately emerge that would lead to the beginning of the medieval trading cycle.
These ideas are demonstrated by re-reading Arabic, Greek, and Latin sources and searching for the connections between them, by re-examining archaeological, epigraphic, and numismatic data and placing them in context, and by using analogous evidence and arguments from other periods and using them to investigate possibilities. Together, these allow for an innovative and bold reappraisal of the slave-systems and trade in a critical period that has not been previously argued. Prior scholarship has not attempted to address either the ubiquity of slavery or the extent of the slave trade in the period nor has anyone examined the slave-trading systems of the long seventh century itself by bringing together materials from the whole of the post-Roman world into a single coherent account. By doing so, this dissertation breaks new ground while creating an original synthesis and reconciliation between the interpretations of the economics of the end of the Roman Empire and the formation of the medieval world.
In this paper, the writings related to four seventh century individuals will be examined with a h... more In this paper, the writings related to four seventh century individuals will be examined with a hope of better understanding what happened in that time period and how news of events in the eastern Mediterranean reached western Europe. While two of the four, Isidore of Seville and the Frankish ‘Fredegar’, repeated information they’d gathered at second hand, the other two, Bishop Arculf and Theodore of Tarsus, themselves traveled from the Levant to the British Isles. As witnesses to the world changing events of their century, all four are certainly important sources. This study, though, will not focus on reconstructing the truth of events but, instead, will attempt to discover what these four thought they knew, how they knew what they did, and how such information might have been carried from one end of the former Roman Empire to the other. The purpose will be to seek a better understanding of communications and connections in one of the murkiest and most important eras in history.
Doctoral thesis by Thomas J MacMaster
This dissertation argues that the slave trade can be seen as providing a critical framework for u... more This dissertation argues that the slave trade can be seen as providing a critical framework for understanding the economic and cultural developments of a time of rapid and dramatic changes within the cultures and economies of what had been the Roman Empire. To make this case, it will be demonstrated that neither the ascendance of Christianity nor the
barbarian invasions nor even the collapse of the Western Roman Empire had changed the fundamental role of slavery in the centuries after Constantine. While slavery was vital to all the economies and societies of the period, it will be argued, a large-scale slave trade was necessary for the continued prosperity of the most developed economic regions as internal
sources for slaves were insufficient to meet demand. By demonstrating the economic necessity, a crucial driving mechanism for long-distance systems of exchange within the Mediterranean world after the collapse of the western Roman fiscal system and its economy of bulk-exchange will be provided. Changes in the slave trade during the seventh century will be shown as being one of the key forces in the disintegration of Mediterranean
cultural unity. New patterns would ultimately emerge that would lead to the beginning of the medieval trading cycle.
These ideas are demonstrated by re-reading Arabic, Greek, and Latin sources and searching for the connections between them, by re-examining archaeological, epigraphic, and numismatic data and placing them in context, and by using analogous evidence and arguments from other periods and using them to investigate possibilities. Together, these allow for an innovative and bold reappraisal of the slave-systems and trade in a critical period that has not been previously argued. Prior scholarship has not attempted to address either the ubiquity of slavery or the extent of the slave trade in the period nor has anyone examined the slave-trading systems of the long seventh century itself by bringing together materials from the whole of the post-Roman world into a single coherent account.
By doing so, this dissertation breaks new ground while creating an original synthesis and reconciliation between the interpretations of the economics of the end of the Roman Empire and the formation of the medieval world.
The first section of "The Transformative Impact of the Slave Trade on the Roman World, 580 - 720"... more The first section of "The Transformative Impact of the Slave Trade on the Roman World, 580 - 720";
This dissertation argues that the slave trade can be seen as providing a critical framework for understanding the economic and cultural developments of a time of rapid and dramatic changes within the cultures and economies of what had been the Roman Empire. To make this case, it will be demonstrated that neither the ascendance of Christianity nor the barbarian invasions nor even the collapse of the Western Roman Empire had changed the fundamental role of slavery in the centuries after Constantine. While slavery was vital to all the economies and societies of the period, it will be argued, a large-scale slave trade was necessary for the continued prosperity of the most developed economic regions as internal sources for slaves were insufficient to meet demand. By demonstrating the economic necessity, a crucial driving mechanism for long-distance systems of exchange within the Mediterranean world after the collapse of the western Roman fiscal system and its economy of bulk-exchange will be provided. Changes in the slave trade during the seventh century will be shown as being one of the key forces in the disintegration of Mediterranean cultural unity. New patterns would ultimately emerge that would lead to the beginning of the medieval trading cycle.
These ideas are demonstrated by re-reading Arabic, Greek, and Latin sources and searching for the connections between them, by re-examining archaeological, epigraphic, and numismatic data and placing them in context, and by using analogous evidence and arguments from other periods and using them to investigate possibilities. Together, these allow for an innovative and bold reappraisal of the slave-systems and trade in a critical period that has not been previously argued. Prior scholarship has not attempted to address either the ubiquity of slavery or the extent of the slave trade in the period nor has anyone examined the slave-trading systems of the long seventh century itself by bringing together materials from the whole of the post-Roman world into a single coherent account. By doing so, this dissertation breaks new ground while creating an original synthesis and reconciliation between the interpretations of the economics of the end of the Roman Empire and the formation of the medieval world.
Books by Thomas J MacMaster
The Long Seventh Century: Continuity and Discontinuity in an Age of Transition
This volume represents a selection of papers presented at the 2013 Edinburgh Seventh Century Coll... more This volume represents a selection of papers presented at the 2013 Edinburgh Seventh Century Colloquium, showcasing the latest scholarship from a rising generation of academics. The volume traverses the globe from Iran to the Atlantic and from Sweden to the Sahara and ranges from the establishment of the early Islamic state to the beginnings of English Christianity. Topics include the transmission of high culture across time, settlement patterns in a rapidly changing world and the formation of new and emerging identities. The essays also bring into dialogue a wide range of disciplinary and methodological perspectives, including archaeology, literature, history, art, papyrology and economics. Together, they generate valuable new insights into the still unchartered territories of the long seventh century.
Syllabi & evaluations by Thomas J MacMaster
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course covers a great deal of material. In it, we will examine human his... more COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course covers a great deal of material. In it, we will examine human history from the earliest times until the end of the fifteenth century. This is a very broad sweep of human life, covering an immense range of subjects and a variety of times and places. In some ways, the course is intended as a sample of the vast range of possibilities found in history. We will also examine ways of perceiving the human past. Where possible, we will attempt to perceive the past from the perspective of participants by using primary sources. The course is designed to develop large-scale perspectives as well as critical thinking regarding past human societies. As it would be impossible to adequately cover the whole period, the course will focus on five themes and explore them throughout the semester. These are:
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course covers a great deal of material. In it, we will examine human his... more COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course covers a great deal of material. In it, we will examine human history from the end of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century with the goal of understanding the origins of the present-day world. This is a very broad sweep of human life, covering an immense range of subjects and a variety of times and places. In some ways, the course is intended as a sample of the vast range of possibilities found in history. We will also examine ways of perceiving the human past. Where possible, we will attempt to perceive the past from the perspective of participants by using primary sources. The
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course covers a great deal of material. In it, we will examine human his... more COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course covers a great deal of material. In it, we will examine human history from the earliest times until the end of the fifteenth century. This is a very broad sweep of human life, covering an immense range of subjects and a variety of times and places. In some ways, the course is intended as a sample of the vast range of possibilities found in history. We will also examine ways of perceiving the human past. Where possible, we will attempt to perceive the past from the perspective of participants by using primary sources. The course is designed to develop large-scale perspectives as well as critical thinking regarding past human societies. As it would be impossible to adequately cover the whole period, the course will focus on five themes and explore them throughout the semester. These are:
DESCRIPTION: Students will study the significant changes in European art, thought and institution... more DESCRIPTION: Students will study the significant changes in European art, thought and institutions during the period from 1300 to 1550. The course will focus on critical readings of primary sources from this era. Whether we consider the period between 1300 and 1550 as the last phase of the Medieval or the first of the Modern, it can be argued that the European movements of the period – the
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course covers a great deal of material. In it, we will examine human his... more COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course covers a great deal of material. In it, we will examine human history from the earliest times until the end of the fifteenth century. This is a very broad sweep of human life, covering an immense range of subjects and a variety of times and places. In some ways, the course is intended as a sample of the vast range of possibilities found in history. We will also examine ways of perceiving the human past. Where possible, we will attempt to perceive the past from the perspective of participants by using primary sources. The course is designed to develop large-scale perspectives as well as critical thinking regarding past human societies.
In this course, we will examine human history from the earliest times until the end of the fiftee... more In this course, we will examine human history from the earliest times until the end of the fifteenth century. It is a very broad sweep of an immense range of subjects and a variety of times and places. In some ways, the course is intended as a sample of the vast range of possibilities found in history. We will also examine ways of perceiving the human past. Where possible, we will attempt to perceive the past from the perspective of participants by using primary sources. The course is designed to develop large-scale perspectives as well as critical thinking regarding past human societies.
This is a teaching document and is the syllabus for HHIS 111, World History, topical approach, to... more This is a teaching document and is the syllabus for HHIS 111, World History, topical approach, to be offered at Morehouse College in the Spring of 2016
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Papers by Thomas J MacMaster
Heraclius wrote to Visigothic Spain via the Pope (though the Spanish church rebuked him) as well as to the Franks, yet his religious policy was far from successful in his own realm. Within a decade, Egypt and the Levant had been lost to Muslim rule (and the Jews saved) while, in the regions over which imperial control remained, some Jewish communities survived the period of persecution and soon began to recover. It was beyond imperial frontiers that Heraclius’s campaign may have had its longest lasting impact. In Gaul, both the Frankish church and civil authorities had already been groping towards such policies and, under Heraclius’s prompting and Dagobert’s leadership, they may have succeeded in creating the first Christian state purged of Jews. For the next century, there is no evidence of Jews in Francia.
having learned his empire would be devastated by a circumcised nation, decreed all Byzantine Jews be baptised and urged Dagobert baptize all Jews in Gaul. Instead a new circumcised nation, the Arab Muslims, emerged and swiftly conquered much of Heraclius’s empire. While the story seems like something invented after the Muslim conquest, a strikingly similar account occurs in Islamic hadith literature while other texts point to a sudden, intense, and widespread persecution of the Jews before and
independent of the appearance of the first Muslim invaders when Heraclius ordered all Jews throughout the Empire to be baptized on May 31, 632. Many fled rather than accept baptism. Some of the newly baptized would return to Judaism though others remained Christian.
While the campaign collapsed within the Empire within a few years, Heraclius’s campaign may have had its longest lasting impact beyond imperial frontiers. In Gaul, both the Frankish church and civil authorities had already been groping towards such policies and, under Heraclius’s prompting and Dagobert’s leadership, they may have succeeded in creating the first Christian state purged of Jews. For the next century, there is no evidence of Jews in Francia.
North Africa had been among the wealthiest areas of the Late Roman Empire and appears to have been one of the first areas to be Christianised in the West. Neither the Vandal conquest nor the Justinianic reconquest appear to have affected this prosperity; at the beginning of the seventh century, Africa, along with Sicily, had been the base for Heraclius’s revolt and appears to have provided much of the economic strength needed for the defeat of the Persians. Carthage in the first half of the seventh century appears to have been among the larger cities in the western Mediterranean.
Within a few decades, Byzantine Africa had collapsed. In the Islamic sources, it almost appears as if the empire barely resisted the invaders, leaving most of the struggle for supremacy with the Arabs to independent Berber groups. Carthage itself fell at the end of the century and the site was all but abandoned. According to the standard histories, North African urban life and even agriculture dramatically receded.
Yet did Byzantine Africa really collapse so quickly and so completely? Or did some other force alter the situation there?
It will be argued that North Africa went from being a region which imported labour and exported agricultural and artisanal production at the beginning of the seventh century to one from which slaves were the primary export by the beginning of the eighth. This shift in economics was both cause and effect of the end of Byzantine Africa.
The gaps in Fredegar’s knowledge and his mistakes are as interesting as what he gets ‘right’. His lack of knowledge of the recovery and restoration of the True Cross suggests that it had been unnoticed in the West. Yet he also possessed information that could be quite detailed, such as his account of the single combat between Heraclius and the Persian champion. He reports the return of named Frankish ambassadors in 629, bringing an ‘eternal peace’ with the Empire; these would be the last named travellers to the West from Constantinople for decades and, perhaps, they brought the chronicler some of his tales. Certainly, his account of a common Trojan origin of Turks, Romans, and Franks is suggestive of diplomatic activity at the time yet Fredegar seems unaware of Turkish involvement in the Persian wars.
His reports of what appear to be the Battle of Yarmouk and the Battle of the Masts are intriguing. Fredegar refers to Heraclius bringing down hordes of allies from north of the Caspian Gates in language echoing that found in both Christian and Islamic apocalyptic yet thinks that the Saracens came from that direction. He knows of Heraclius’s consanguineous second marriage and his straying from orthodoxy but misidentifies the heresy. Though he knows nothing of the dynastic struggles after Heraclius’s death, he is aware of the defeats of the early years of Constans’s reign, seeing them as emblematic of the final destruction of the Empire, something that he believes has already occurred.
La première apparition postclassique de descendance des exilés troyens se trouve dans la Chronique de Frédégaire (environs de 660), qui décrit les Francs avec les Turcs comme partageant une ascendance commune parmi les réfugiés de la prise de Troie. Bien que cette connexion semble absurde (et les revendications d’origines troyennes des Turcs ont été ridiculisées), elle pourrait être due à la diplomatie byzantine à la fin du 6e ou du début du VIIe siècle. Frédégaire rapporte le retour des ambassadeurs nommés de Constantinople en 629, qui pourrait être la source de beaucoup de ces histoires orientales dont certains détails correspondent à cette période précise. Alors que le séjour des ambassadeurs a coïncidé avec l’alliance de Héraclius avec les Göktürks, Frédégaire ignore l’implication turque dans les guerres Perses. Curieusement, un matériau similaire se retrouve plusieurs siècles plus tard dans la Edda de Snorri Sturluson, qui fournit une ascendance troyenne pour les dieux nordiques dans ce qu’il appelle « la ville turque de Troie ». Écrit bien avant que les Turcs aient conquis le site de Troie, il a parfois été avancé comme un écho des documents de Fredegaire mais semble plus susceptible d’être indépendant. Cet article suggère que le mythe des origines troyennes a fourni un moyen pour les peuples indigènes sans l’histoire de migration de se réinventer dans une histoire sacralisée.
Abstract :
The first post-classical appearance of descent from Trojan exiles is found in the Merovingian Chronicle of Fredegar (around 660), who describes the Franks as sharing a common ancestry with the Turks among refugees from the Fall of Troy. While this connection seems absurd (and claims of Trojan origins of the Turks were later ridiculed), it could have originated with Byzantine diplomacy in the late VIth or early VIIth century. Fredegar reports the return of named ambassadors from Constantinople in 629, who could be the source for many of his eastern stories as some details fit that specific time. While the ambassadors’ sojourn coincided with Heraclius’s alliance with the Göktürks, Fredegar seems unaware of Turkish involvement in the Persian wars. Oddly, similar material is reflected several centuries later in the Icelandic Prose Edda where, in a euhemeristic introduction, Snorri Sturluson finds a Trojan ancestry for the Norse Gods in what he calls « the Turkish city of Troy ». Writing well before the Turks had conquered the site of Troy, it has sometimes been argued as a reflection of the Fredegarian material but would appear more likely to be independent. This paper suggests that the myth of Trojan origins provided a means for peoples without native migration stories to re-imagine themselves in a sacralized history.
These ideas are demonstrated by re-reading Arabic, Greek, and Latin sources and searching for the connections between them, by re-examining archaeological, epigraphic, and numismatic data and placing them in context, and by using analogous evidence and arguments from other periods and using them to investigate possibilities. Together, these allow for an innovative and bold reappraisal of the slave-systems and trade in a critical period that has not been previously argued. Prior scholarship has not attempted to address either the ubiquity of slavery or the extent of the slave trade in the period nor has anyone examined the slave-trading systems of the long seventh century itself by bringing together materials from the whole of the post-Roman world into a single coherent account. By doing so, this dissertation breaks new ground while creating an original synthesis and reconciliation between the interpretations of the economics of the end of the Roman Empire and the formation of the medieval world.
Doctoral thesis by Thomas J MacMaster
barbarian invasions nor even the collapse of the Western Roman Empire had changed the fundamental role of slavery in the centuries after Constantine. While slavery was vital to all the economies and societies of the period, it will be argued, a large-scale slave trade was necessary for the continued prosperity of the most developed economic regions as internal
sources for slaves were insufficient to meet demand. By demonstrating the economic necessity, a crucial driving mechanism for long-distance systems of exchange within the Mediterranean world after the collapse of the western Roman fiscal system and its economy of bulk-exchange will be provided. Changes in the slave trade during the seventh century will be shown as being one of the key forces in the disintegration of Mediterranean
cultural unity. New patterns would ultimately emerge that would lead to the beginning of the medieval trading cycle.
These ideas are demonstrated by re-reading Arabic, Greek, and Latin sources and searching for the connections between them, by re-examining archaeological, epigraphic, and numismatic data and placing them in context, and by using analogous evidence and arguments from other periods and using them to investigate possibilities. Together, these allow for an innovative and bold reappraisal of the slave-systems and trade in a critical period that has not been previously argued. Prior scholarship has not attempted to address either the ubiquity of slavery or the extent of the slave trade in the period nor has anyone examined the slave-trading systems of the long seventh century itself by bringing together materials from the whole of the post-Roman world into a single coherent account.
By doing so, this dissertation breaks new ground while creating an original synthesis and reconciliation between the interpretations of the economics of the end of the Roman Empire and the formation of the medieval world.
This dissertation argues that the slave trade can be seen as providing a critical framework for understanding the economic and cultural developments of a time of rapid and dramatic changes within the cultures and economies of what had been the Roman Empire. To make this case, it will be demonstrated that neither the ascendance of Christianity nor the barbarian invasions nor even the collapse of the Western Roman Empire had changed the fundamental role of slavery in the centuries after Constantine. While slavery was vital to all the economies and societies of the period, it will be argued, a large-scale slave trade was necessary for the continued prosperity of the most developed economic regions as internal sources for slaves were insufficient to meet demand. By demonstrating the economic necessity, a crucial driving mechanism for long-distance systems of exchange within the Mediterranean world after the collapse of the western Roman fiscal system and its economy of bulk-exchange will be provided. Changes in the slave trade during the seventh century will be shown as being one of the key forces in the disintegration of Mediterranean cultural unity. New patterns would ultimately emerge that would lead to the beginning of the medieval trading cycle.
These ideas are demonstrated by re-reading Arabic, Greek, and Latin sources and searching for the connections between them, by re-examining archaeological, epigraphic, and numismatic data and placing them in context, and by using analogous evidence and arguments from other periods and using them to investigate possibilities. Together, these allow for an innovative and bold reappraisal of the slave-systems and trade in a critical period that has not been previously argued. Prior scholarship has not attempted to address either the ubiquity of slavery or the extent of the slave trade in the period nor has anyone examined the slave-trading systems of the long seventh century itself by bringing together materials from the whole of the post-Roman world into a single coherent account. By doing so, this dissertation breaks new ground while creating an original synthesis and reconciliation between the interpretations of the economics of the end of the Roman Empire and the formation of the medieval world.
Books by Thomas J MacMaster
Syllabi & evaluations by Thomas J MacMaster