ABSTRACT
Gregory of Tour’s History of the Franks offers a two-part tale of the feud between Sichar and Chramnesind in books IX and X, which sheds remarkable light on the social dynamics at work in the early medieval period. Gregory’s account attests to groups of Germanic warriors who carried their swords in public, drank, brawled, and readily killed others and each other, escalated vengeance attacks, ignored civic and church authorities, took refuge with kings and queens, whose favor often forgave them their violence and protected them from institutional discipline. And even when, after much blood shed, mediators managed a peace, it could unravel at a wrong word, leaving stripped and dismembered bodies displayed on fences. This chapter analyzes the events in terms of honor–shame feuding and then considers the implications for the social dynamics between the (now former) organizers of civic space (Romans) who did not carry swords and these weapons-wielding German warriors who had twice their judicial worth (wergild) in a court of law.
