The New Cambridge Medieval History. Vol. I: C. 500–c.700 (review)

With the publication of Volume I, the New Cambridge Medieval History is now complete (seven volumes in eight), a decade after publication began with Volume II in 1995. As the editor candidly points out in his preface, there were many delays along the way. Some chapters were submitted as early as 1990 (and had to be updated), while others, for various reasons, were produced more recently. The result is a volume that is a bit uneven, dated in some areas and up to the minute in others, but that overall can be judged a worthy beginning (and conclusion) for the series.

It is instructive to compare the organization of this volume with that of its nearest Cambridge counterparts: Volume XIV of the Cambridge Ancient History, which covers the imperial and post-imperial Mediterranean world between 425 and 600, and Volume II of the NCMH: C. 700–c. 900. The centrality of the Roman empire in CAH XIV and of "Carolingian Europe" in NCMH II gives those volumes a geographical and political unity that was not available to the planners of NCMH I. They instead organized their subject chronologically and regionally, with thematic chapters at the beginning and end. Following the editor's introduction and further introductory chapters on the later Roman empire, barbarian invasions, and sources for the period (chaps. 1–3), part I (chaps. 4–10) is devoted to the sixth century; it moves from the eastern empire to Italy, Spain, and Gaul, and from there to the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Part II (chaps. 11–19) goes over the same regions in the seventh century, with the addition of a chapter on Muhammad and Islam and without a chapter that had been planned on Lombard Italy (see pp. xiii–xiv); in its final two chapters, added later (p. xiii), Scandinavia and the Slavs are treated. Part III (chaps. 20–28) surveys Jews, kingship, the economies of the Mediterranean and northern seas, and money and coinage; it then closes, as do CAH XIV and NCMH II, with chapters on the church, education and learning, and art and architecture. (Unlike these volumes, however, NCMH I has no conclusion by the editor.) The book ends with a list of primary sources, extensive chapter bibliographies, and a thorough index.

Much of this book contains exactly what readers will expect: engaging and balanced surveys of events, institutions, problems, ideas, and themes written by experts and furnished with riveting details and ample citations of the textual and material evidence. Some chapters go even further. An excellent example is Michael Toch's chapter, "The Jews in Europe, 500–1050," which is intended to serve the needs of the first three volumes of the NCMH. By a skeptical review of the evidence, it questions "the significance out of proportion" that "historians have usually accorded" to the Jews of Gaul, Spain, and Italy (p. 547). If Toch is correct, many documents will have to be re-considered, for instance, the twelfth canon of the council of Vannes (ca. 465), which, in warning clerics to avoid Iudaeorum convivia, had seemed to provide early evidence for the presence of Jews in the furthest reaches of Gaul. It is the inclusion of chapters like this that makes Volume I of the NCMH not just a reliable but also a thought-provoking guide to the beginnings of the Middle Ages.

Production errors are few and far between. There are typos on pages 146 and 679, and Handley (2003), cited on page 88, is missing from the bibliography. One suspects it should have read: Handley, M.A. (2003), Death, Society, and Culture: Inscriptions and Epitaphs in Gaul and Spain, AD 300–750, Oxford. There is also an incorrect caption for plate 10, an illustrated page from the Vienna Dioscorides. The page shown is not fol. 20r, but rather fol. 268r, and does not depict, ἀρτεμɩσία μονόκλωνοϛ (Artemesia spicata) but rather πϵριστερεὼν ὀρϐόϛ (traditionally Verbena officinalis), a plant discussed in Dioscorides...