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The Jews in Europe 500–1050 563
little probability or evidence to support such claims. It is hard to see slave
traders, largely imagined as argued above, endangering their stock by circum-
cision. They also present us with a strange breed of dealers ready to abstain
from profit for religious merit: devout Jews would have to abide by the Tal-
mudic precept forbidding to sell a slave, once made Jewish, to a Gentile. What
evidence there is for proselytising makes sense solely in regard to house-slaves,
not at all to slaves as merchandise, nor to slaves of (again, imagined) latifundia
work gangs. Even if each and every Jewish family did take part in the drive for
converts, the limited Jewish population argued above could not but produce a
limited number of converts. The results are indeed not impressive. A very small
number of epitaphs from Rome do mention proselytes, and so does a single
one from outside the city, all pre-medieval.
86
From the period 500–1050 we
know of just six certain proselytes in all of Europe. They came from respected
families; and were mostly churchmen who arrived at their decision after much
soul-searching.
87
In the rich Hebrew material from Germany of the end of
the eleventh century there are three to four proselytes out of the over 1200
Jews and Jewesses known by name and murdered in 1096 in Mainz, Worms
and Cologne.
88
Thus throughout our period proselytism, while existing, can
hardly be called substantial and appears to have been mostly a preoccupa-
tion of panicky churchmen. Consequently, the topic of a ‘missionary contest’
between Judaism and Christianity must be relegated to the realm of literary
discourse.
89
On the other hand, there is a much better case for Jews turning to Chris-
tianity. Discounting miraculous conversions by holy bishops and some dubi-
ous indications of forced baptism,
90
there is enough evidence to conclude
that throughout our period individuals did indeed give in to religious doubt,
enticement or pressure.
91
In Byzantium periodically, and in Spain for almost a
century before the Arab conquest, the forced conversion of Jews as a collective
86
In Rome seven out of 595 identifiable persons: Noy (1995), nos. 62, 218, 224, 392(?), 489, 491, 57;
outside Rome one person out of 298:Noy(1993), no. 52.
87
Blumenkranz (1960), pp. 161–2, 166–7;Golb (1987), pp. 2–15, 21–31.AChristian lady, converted
and married to a Jew in Narbonne, probably belongs in the thirteenth rather than in the eleventh
century: Mann (1931), pp. 31–3.
88
Neubauer and Stern (1892), pp. 10/103 = pp. 56/184, 22/126;Salfeld (1898), p. 110.
89
Contra Blumenkranz (1961) and (1960), pp. 159–211.Onthe misuse of legislative and literary evidence
for late antique proselytising, cf. Rutgers (1995b); Goodman (1994).
90
Above, note 34;Stemberger (1993).
91
Sidonius Apollinaris, Epistolae viii.13, MGH AA viii,p.144;Gregory, Hist. vi.17, ed. Buchner, ii,
pp. 34–6;Gregory, Registrum Epistularum i.70,PL77, col. 526b;Gregory, Registrum Epistularum
i.45, i.69, ii.38, iv.31; v.7; viii.23, see Linder (1997), pp. 418, 420–1, 423, 427–9, 432; Doctrina Jacobi;
Starr (1939), p. 137; Amulo, PL 116, col. 170d; MGH Epp. v,p.239;Aronius, Regesten,p.51;Halphen
and Lot (1908), p. 82;Salzman (1924), p. 80;Baer (1929), p. 2; Cantera Burgos (1966), p. 361 and
note 11; Linder (1997), p. 438;DeLange (1996), p. 22/3;Habermann, Book of Persecutions,p.11.
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became government policy and must surely have had some results. In France
and Germany of the tenth and eleventh centuries, sources tell of instances of
baptism forced on whole communities.
92
Some of these are clearly made-up
literary exercises in Christian holiness. Others were contemplated and some
actually attempted, even though their impact was yet far removed from the
ferocity of compulsory conversion in 1096. Conversion was serious enough a
problem to trouble the most important sages of eleventh-century Ashkenaz.
Outofthis tension they eventually developed the religious-legal principle that
apostasy does not remove Jewishness: ‘Even Though He Sinned He Remains
an Israelite.’
93
In the period 500–700 Jews also had to cope with mob attacks
on their synagogues, usually fanned by zealous bishops.
94
This urban agita-
tion looks very much a continuation of the eastern Mediterranean pattern
of taking religious arguments to the street, and disappears in the following
period.
In contrast to such instances of confrontation, there is also evidence for
more relaxed relations. In sixth-century Naples and Arles as well as in tenth-
century Oria, three places with considerable Jewish populations, Jews defended
their town alongside Christians.
95
Throughout the entire period church synods
produced prohibitions against clerics and plain Christians marrying, drinking,
eating, bathing, celebrating, lodging and even praying with Jews.
96
Though
copied from one council to the other and thus possibly yet more rhetoric,
such exhortations may be an indication of a daily life different from the fury
of religious polemics. Even allowing for lots of hyperbole, a sense of close
cohabitation pervades Agobard of Lyons’ epistles of the earlier ninth century
against the Jews of his town.
97
An approximation of normality and tension
dwelling together can be gained from the letters of Pope Gregory I.
98
For
Gregory, Jews should be converted if possible, without however using force
and committing excessive church resources. Extreme and unlawful hostility
92
Linder (1997), pp. 622–33,Aronius, Regesten, nos. 123, 124, 125, 142, 144, 160;Habermann, Book of
Persecutions,pp.19–21.Cf.Dagron and D
´
eroche (1998), pp. 28–38, 43–5; Chazan (1970/1); Linder
(1997), pp. 414–20.
93
Grossman (1988a), pp. 122–7, 163–4, and (1995), pp. 152–5; Katz (1958).
94
Rome508–512,Milan 523–526: Linder (1997), pp. 203–5. Ravenna 509–526: Anonymus Valesianus,cap.
81. Clermont 576:Venantius Fortunatus, Carmina 5.5, MGH AA iv,pp.107–12,Gregory, Hist. v.11,
ed. Buchner, i,p.296,cf. Goffart (1985). Orl
´
eans before 585 (?): Gregory, Hist. viii.1, ed. Buchner,
ii,p.160.Terracina 591,Palermo 598, Cagliari 599,Naples 602:Gregory, Epistulae, Linder (1997),
pp. 417, 421–2, 433–5, 438–9, 442.For the Eastern Empire, cf. Dagron and D
´
eroche (1998), pp. 18–22.
95
Procopius, Gothic War i.10.90; Vita Caesarii, MGH SRM iii,pp.467–9;Italy, Roth (1966), p. 107.
96
Linder (1997), subject index, Prohibitions on Christians; Vita Beati Ferreoli,p.101.Cf. Blumenkranz
(1965).
97
Agobardi Opera,pp.115–17, 191–5, 199–221, and esp. 231–4;cf. Cohen (1999), pp. 123–45.
98
Linder (1997), pp. 417–43.Onthe theological aspects of Gregory’s writings see Cohen, J. (1999),
pp. 73–94.
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The Jews in Europe 500–1050 565
and mob violence towards them needed to be curbed. They should be defended
if need be, yet not beyond the clear limits set by (Christian) Roman law. Their
slaves should be encouraged to progress towards Christianity, but cautiously
so as not to appear to attack private property rights. Gregory’s is a single voice
of realism in a world of high-tempered literary shadowboxing, yet he too was
bound by the precepts laid down by the church Fathers and his own beliefs, as
well as by the tensions besetting majority and minority.
What can be found of legal principles or practice does not allow for consis-
tent Jewish status in the whole of Europe. Only in Byzantium did Jews con-
stitute a distinctive minority group, tolerated and at the same time despised
and discriminated against by Justinian law. Strongly coloured by the religious
convictions of the Byzantine state, such legal standing translated into inferior
social status, low-prestige occupations and residential segregation in a Jewish
quarter as documented for Constantinople.
99
For other Mediterranean regions
scholars have asserted undisturbed Roman citizenship and the high social sta-
tus of Jews, to continue unabated until the end of our period, or alternatively
to be eventually eroded by Byzantine and/or ecclesiastical influence. Roman
citizenship of Jews does indeed appear in the Breviarum, but so do other legal
principles of old. It is also mentioned as a matter of fact by Pope Gregory
I.
100
Even so, it was more breached than honoured. As noted above, Gregory
himself was frequently called upon to resolve clashes between legal princi-
ple and Christian zeal in regard to forced conversions and the destruction
of synagogues. Besides Roman citizenship, the possession of slaves and landed
property, the holding of governmental positions, and honorary titles on funeral
inscriptions are seen to prove elevated social status. As already argued, the mere
existence of slaves in Jewish hands does not necessarily translate into possession
of large estates and thus into high social status. Jews as judges, toll officials and
tax collectors are indeed mentioned in the complaints aired at ecclesiastical
councils.
101
Similar to the equally frequent complaints about Jewish ownership
of slaves, such texts suggest yet more of the well-known metaphor for a world in
disarray: Jews lording it over Christians. Independent evidence for such offices
and functions is nowhere available.
102
The epigraphic record belongs entirely
to late antiquity rather than to the Middle Ages and, though not unequivocal,
holds more evidence for the low social status of Jews, especially in the city
99
Jacoby (1993), pp. 129–32.See also Louth, chapter 4 above.
100
Breviarum ii.1.10;Gregory, Registrum Epistularum ii.6; see Linder (1997), pp. 218–19, 422.
101
Clermont 535,Macon 581/3,Paris 614, Clichy 626–627,Toledo iii 589,Toledo iv 633, lv xii.3.19;
Meaux-Paris 845/6,Pavia 850,Benevento (?) and Siponto c.900,Rome 1078: Linder (1997), pp. 320,
470, 474, 478, 479, 484, 490, 540, 541, 548, 549, 551, 559; Amulo, PL 116, col. 170d.
102
The Parisian toll official and minter Salomon, placed by the ninth-century Gesta Dagoberti in the
seventh century (MGH SRM ii,p.413), was certainly not a Jew, if he existed at all.
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of Rome, than for the opposite.
103
Given these imponderables, nothing more
than the obvious can be stated. In Mediterranean regions there were some Jews
of considerable social status, as indicated by landed possession, and others of
alow one, as indicated by occupation, with the greater numbers probably
in-between as befitting an urban population. Individual Jewish status might
mesh with general status: in the late fifth century there was the Jewish client
of a Christian magnate of Narbonne, one century later a Jew who had both
Christian and Jewish clients.
104
By the end of our period Hebrew sources of the
south of Italy and France envisage communities stratified according to intel-
lectual distinction, ancient family lineage, and a hierarchy in which uncouth
‘villagers’ are at the bottom of society.
105
In the north, Jewish status was determined by royal privilege. For over
two centuries all we know comes from a small number of charters. Of these,
emperor Louis the Pious granted three between 822 and 827, and Henry IV of
Germany one in 1090.
106
The recipients were: ‘David, grandfather of David,
and Joseph and . . . (lacuna) with their spouses, living in the city of Lyons;
Donatus rabbi and Samuel, his grandson’; ‘Abraham, inhabitant of the city
of Saragossa’. In Speyer they were ‘Iudas son of Kalonymus, David son of
Massulam, Moses son of Guthiel, with their associates . . . children and all
those who are seen by law to depend on them’. It is abundantly clear that
these privileges do not constitute a general ‘Jewry law’ of Carolingian to Salian
times. The three ninth-century charters were nevertheless considered typical
enough to be incorporated in a collection of imperial form letters. In phrases
reminiscent of the language of vassalage, the persons named were received
into the ruler’s defence: sub mundeburdo et defensione nostra. This extended
to freedom of property, movement and action. Specifically permitted were
the acquisition and sale within the empire of non-Christian slaves and the
employment of Christian servants. The beneficiaries were exempted from tolls,
road dues and proof by ordeal. Living by their own law,in cases of legal deadlock
in their places of residence they could appeal to the emperor. One charter
illustrates the system in action: Gaudiocus appeared in 839 with his two sons
before emperor Louis at Frankfurt, to have his property rights in the south of
France restored to him in the face of local ‘animosities, nay, depredations’.
107
Yet another Jew enjoying the status of royal fidelis noster served as messenger
between the inhabitants of Barcelona and Charles the Bald, conveying in 876
103
Solin (1983), p. 715;Rutgers (1995a), p. 186.
104
Sidonius Apollinaris, Epistolae iii.4, MGH AA viii,p.90;Gregory, Hist. vii.23, ed. Buchner, ii,
pp. 118–20.
105
Klar (1944/74) = Salzman (1924), cf. Bonfil (1983); Grabois (1997).
106
Linder (1997), pp. 333–8, 341–3, 391–6;cf. Patschovsky (1993), pp. 333–6.
107
Linder (1997), pp. 365–7.
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The Jews in Europe 500–1050 567
news of their fealty and, in return, a pious donation of ten pounds of silver
to be handed over to the bishop of the city.
108
The privileged position thus
created is appropriate to the type of merchant active in the later Carolingian
period. Indeed, the Carolingian charters are formally and in content very
similar to privileges granted to Christian merchants. In exchange, both were
expected to deliver: ‘to serve our palace faithfully’. By the eleventh century
rulers had no more need for merchants directly accredited to the palace, a
telling indication for the growth of a market economy. However, they reserved
the right to regulate and tax such merchants, Jewish and non-Jewish. This
source of income comes into view when given as gift to deserving trustees,
for instance the churches of Treviso, Magdeburg and Merseburg in the tenth
century, those of Rimini or Gerona in the eleventh.
109
The founding fathers’ migration, settlement and dependence on rulers later
found their way into legend, embellished so as to serve as emblems of social
status. An anonymous Hebrew tale set in 1007 portrays Jacob ben Yekutiel,
a rich and pious Jew of Rouen, who saved the Jews of the kingdom from
forced conversion by personally intervening with the pope in Rome. After this
accomplishment he was solemnly invited by Count Baldwin of Flanders to
make his home, along with thirty fellow-Jews, in Arras.
110
In the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries German Jews held that an emperor Charles had invited
the ancestor of the eminent Kalonymus clan to move his residence from Lucca
to Mainz.
111
In Narbonne Jews rendered the ancestor of the leading family
as descendant of the Davidic dynasty from Babylonia, who had been bidden
by King Pippin or Charlemagne to rule the Jews and a third of the town.
112
This tale even found its way into early French romance and was recently
expanded to prove the existence of a ‘Jewish princedom in feudal France’.
113
Fantasy this may be, but high social prestige was no mere wishful thinking. It is
indeed indicated by the lifestyle of the Jewish upper class in eleventh-century
Germany: Jewish and non-Jewish household servants and slaves, expensive
garments, remarkable figures given for dowries and bequests, the expensive
ornaments of women made of gold and silver. But this elite had little of the
status symbol of the Mediterranean south: landed property.
114
Highstatus is still
108
Linder (1997), p. 367.
109
Linder (1997), pp. 375–80, 382, 384–5; Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, MGH SRG iii,p.758;
Colorni (1980), p. 257;Baer (1929), p. 2.
110
Habermann, Book of Persecutions,pp.20–1,cf. Chazan (1970/1); Stow (1984).
111
Grossman (1975).
112
R
´
egn
´
e(1912/81), pp. 13–30,cf. Grabois (1997). For further aspects of such legends see Bonfil (1983);
Marcus (1993).
113
Zuckerman (1972).
114
Agus (1965), index: clothing, dowry, wedding gift, employee, inheritance, jewellery, wills and tes-
taments. Cf. Grossman (1988b).
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568 michael toch
evident under the terribly strained circumstances of the First Crusade, when
Hebrew sources speak in terms of social equality between prominent Jews (and
Jewesses) and their peers amongst the Christian town burghers and episcopal
ministeriales.
115
That all Jews could not equally acquire social prominence or
riches is clearly indicated by the early emergence of organised charity, indeed
at the very moment that communal institutions come into view.
116
In conclusion, the high social rank of some Jews does not derive from
ancient lineage as claimed by medieval Jewish legend, or from late antique
landed property as asserted by some modern scholars.
117
Rather, it was a new
phenomenon clearly dependent on and at the same time illustrative of a new
set of circumstances: the immigration and settlement of family groups of mer-
chants, their integration (along with other groups) into late Carolingian and
post-Carolingian economies, the ensuing close relationship with the powers
that be, and the existence of a lower layer of Jewish population dependent for
their livelihood on serving an elite of merchants and notables.
conclusions
By the end of our period, the different Jewries of Europe exhibited a new
face, first of all in their cultural profile. In a long process they had become
acculturated to the rabbinical Judaism radiating from early medieval Babylonia
by means of emissaries, the circulation of manuscripts, and the exchange of
questions and Responsa. Channelled through Muslim Spain, Byzantium and
Italy, procedures and institutions of Talmudic learning as well as liturgy were
diffused.
118
This process also implied the adoption of a social profile that put a
primary value on intellectual and religious distinction.
119
It was a strained one,
involving first the replacement of adherence to Palestinian cultural modes by
Babylonian ones, and then, towards the end of our period, the emancipation
from the authority of Babylonian religious leadership. Such tension can be
gauged in the myths of origins and legends of descent created in eleventh- and
twelfth-century Italy and Spain.
120
One consequence of these cultural changes
needs to be especially noted. Jews in the Muslim world, including Spain,
remained linguistically open to their surroundings. Jews in southern Italy and
elsewhere in the Mediterranean, however, stopped using Greek and Latin as a
means of articulating their identity. Instead of an idiom that had become the
115
Agus (1965), no. lxxvi;Neubauer and Stern (1892), pp. 86, 101, 116ff, 126, 128, 143, 160, 164, 171,
176.
116
Agus (1965), index: charity, social stratification.
117
Agus (1969), esp. p. 168;Golb (1998), pp. 33–135.
118
Simonsohn (1974); Bonfil (1983), pp. 152–5;Gil(1993); Brody (1998), pp. 100–34.
119
Grossman (1980).
120
Bonfil (1983) and (1994a); Cohen (1960/61).
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The Jews in Europe 500–1050 569
domain of Christian clerics, they readopted their own priestly Hebrew, thus
erecting a linguistic barrier towards their neighbouring world.
121
Jews did so at a time when they had become more urbanized, populous and
prosperous, and thus decidedly more visible. Even though still resident in only
afew towns, in some places they came to constitute a considerable part of the
urban population, for example up to one tenth or more in eleventh-century
Mainz and comparable numbers in some other German or Iberian towns.
This was to have important implications in the following period, as Jewish
social structure expanded to include a sizeable middle class. Internally, this led
to changes in a bifurcated community structure hitherto dominated by the
economic and cultural elite. The rapid growth of community institutions and
legislation during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is a clear indication of
this development. As sedentary merchants and by the twelfth century also as
moneylenders, they came in contact with growing numbers of members of the
host society. This also holds true for the south, where the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries saw the final dismantling of significant landed property held by
Jews.
122
There, as in the north, the main thrust of economic development was
to be towards credit and money lending.
Thus, from the eleventh century onwards, Jews left the shelter characteristic
of their existence both in the south and in the north of Europe during the early
Middle Ages: small numbers, close ties of an even smaller elite to the powers
that be, and, in the south, occupations and cultural modes little different from
those of the host society. The eleventh century also marked the beginning
of a long process that eventually marginalised Jews in Europe. Under the
new circumstances and tensions of a changing society, Jews were less and
less perceived as the biblical counterfoil, for good or bad, to Christian belief.
Adding to earlier polemical anti-Judaism a perception, albeit twisted, of real
Jews, the style and content of this discourse began to enter both government
policies and popular attitude. From this period onwards Jews were assigned
the images and functions characteristic of an exposed minority group, with all
the accompanying dangers inherent in such a role.
These processes paralleled and depended on developments in larger society:
urbanisation and economic growth; religious elaboration, centralisation and
unification; and the growth of an increasingly monolithic society. Thus the
Jewish case appears, chronologically and substantially, as a variation on an
all-European experience: a long drawn-out late antique phase centred in
Byzantium and southern Europe in the period 400–800, followed by a period
121
Bonfil (1996), pp. 3–63, esp. pp. 24–5; personal communication by I. Yuval. On other contrasts
between Jews under Muslim and Christian rule see Cohen (1994).
122
R
´
egn
´
e(1912/81), pp. 164–84, for Narbonne.
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of incipient growth from the late eighth to the eleventh centuries, especially
to the north of the Alps and in Iberia. This in turn led to the full bloom of
Jewish life in Europe of the central Middle Ages and, for reasons implicit in this
very growth, to marginalisation. In both the internal and external senses, the
eleventh century was to be the beginning of an entirely new era for European
Jews.
123
123
I thank my friends Israel Yuval, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Alexander Patschovsky,
of the University of Constance, who consented, at impossibly short notice, to cast a critical eye on
this chapter.
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chapter 21
KINGS AND KINGSHIP
Patrick Wormald
introductory: a world of kings
Throughout the first millennium ad, much of the known world was ruled by
monarchies. A good part of it has been for most of the second. In the first
millennium bc,anumber of the most self-confident societies were not. The
records of the Jewish, Greek and Roman cultures that underpin European
civilisation are laden with suspicion of individualistic authority. Nothing can
be less readily assumed than that kings or emperors are the natural order of
things.
Discussion of early medieval monarchy ought therefore to begin with a
glance at the anti-monarchical traditions of the cultures most admired in the
early Middle Ages. The Old Testament provided early medieval rulers with one
of their main role models, and the Books of Kings would have been familiar
for anyone exposed to basic Judaeo-Christian teaching. This was not a good
advertisement for royal rule. Samuel prophesied that a king would make God’s
people his slaves, when the Israelites insisted that he provide them with one.
1
What followed was a catalogue of deviants and backsliders. Sixth- and seventh-
century Europeans with only marginal education could also have known of
the fall of the kings of Rome. Isidore of Seville, in the period’s most influential
epitome of kingship, derived rex from regere,inthe sense not only of ‘ruling’
but also of ‘doing right’ (recte facere) and ‘putting right’ (corrigere). ‘Hence the
ancient proverb’, he wrote, ‘you will be king if you do right; if you do not,
you will not.’ For when the Romans could not tolerate the proud domination
of kings, they organised annual governments and a pair of consuls; for the
marks of kingship were not benevolence in counsel but pride in dominance.
2
1
i Samuel 8:4–17.
2
Isidoreof Seville, Etymologiae ix.iii.4–6;Isidore was probably drawing upon Orosius, Historia adversus
Paganos ii.iv.13–15, the early medieval West’s equivalent to J. R. Green’s Short History of the English
People.
571
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572 patrick wormald
The lesson of ancient wisdom was that kingship was an admirable method of
rule in ideal circumstances. Howeve
r
, it was subject to the most absolute of
corruptions and especially if exercised absolutely.
These paradigms are a reminder that some societies at the same sort of stage
of development as the early medieval West have opted against monarchy. Yet
in 700 ad agovernmental gazetteer of what had once been the Roman Empire
would consist almost wholly of monarchs. Moving from south-east to north-
west, it would begin with beyond doubt the mightiest, ‘Abd al-Malik, caliph of
Islam, based at Damascus.
3
He was the only ruler west of China whose power
approximated in scope and intensity to what Roman emperors had enjoyed.
By then, the Roman Empire itself, that is the throne of Constantinople, was in
dispute (as was not infrequently the case). The legitimate emperor, Justinian II,
was the last of the dynasty of Heraclius, which takes the credit for saving the
Eastern Roman Empire from complete extinction. Butthe territory it nowruled
was an impoverished fragment of what it had inherited.
4
Only Asia Minor was
in any way secure. The Balkans were largely in the hands of rulers whose names
are seldom known, and the extent of whose authority is often debatable. We
know that the Avars, whose great days were long past by 700,were subject
to a khagan, because a Frankish source was under the impression that such
was the ruler’s name. Asparuch, ruler of the Bulgars, another Turkic people
that had established itself south of the Danube by 700, must also have been a
‘khan’, to judge by inscriptions of his successors.
5
Avars and Bulgars claimed,
and up to a point exercised, lordship over various Slav groups. However, much
of the Balkans was peopled by Slavs owing merely nominal allegiance, or none,
to other powers.
6
So far as the Byzantines were concerned, they were indeed
devoid of monarchy. Like most imperialists, Constantinople liked to deal with
single rulers, and was hard put to find Slavs who fitted this bill.
In Italy in 700,the Byzantine outpost at Ravenna had fifty years of con-
stricted life left, though in the south, especially Sicily, emperors were able to
exert more authority.
7
The main ruler in northern Italy had some pretensions
to be an heir of Rome. King Cunipert of the Lombards had a title that included
the Constantinian praenomen Flavius, and was the first Lombard ruler to issue
a gold coinage in the Byzantine idiom.
8
But his kingship also shared the insta-
bility besetting the imperial throne. Like his father, he was under pressure
from the normally semi-detached Duke of Benevento. Liutpert, his young
heir, would meet the very Roman fate of murder in his bath. Meanwhile, the
last Byzantine outpost in Spain had been overrun at the same time as the Near
3
SeeHillenbrand, chapter 12 above.
4
See Louth, chapter 11 above.
5
On the Avars, Fredegar, Chronicon iv.48.Onthe origin of the titles of early Bulgars, Stepanov (2001).
6
See Kobyli
´
nski, chapter 19 above.
7
Brown (1984).
8
Grierson and Blackburn (1986), pp. 56–66.