The Merovingian Kingdoms 450–751

The Merovingian Kingdoms 450–751 by Ian N. Wood
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is an essay.


If you are specialized in history and are familiar at least to the intermediate level, with the history of the 5th to 7th centuries, this is a good thing.

If you are someone who is interested in the subject (which would probably be the reason why you would buy it) but have not read much on the period, I would recommend keeping this shelved up for a later date.

The Merovingians were a complicated family, with lots of brothers who all are named Dagobert, Clovis, Childeric or Chilperic, have different mothers and ruling different parts of a kingdom that somehow evolved as a whole. It's difficult to keep up with all the splits in the kingdom, the brothers, their sons, their nephews and even the regions in themselves which are different from generation to generation. Add to that a very thorough analysis of the religion, culture and aristocracy of the time, and this book has made for a very slow read.

That being said, if you do have the ambition or the necessary knowledge to follow through, this is a rewarding experience. This is not a very mainstream side of history - we hardly know the names of the people involved, the writings of the time mainly focus on the church, so it doesn't have the appeal to turn the story into a movie and share it to the masses. As such, there is lots of information that is very difficult to gather from sources that are not written in an ancient language that only historians speak, so if you do have a genuine interest in this dynasty and this timeframe, I fully recommend this book.

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