ABSTRACT
Although advances have been made in the study of Merovingian immunity in the last decade and a half, old misconceptions about the history and character of immunity still persist and new ones have been introduced. This article lays out in question form many of the principal issues raised by the new (and old) research and provides brief answers designed to help readers situate immunity within the fiscal history and modern historiography of Frankish Gaul in the Merovingian period. Among the issues considered are the concept and types of immunity, other kinds of Merovingian exemptions and privileges, immunity’s ideological underpinnings, the introitus prohibition and mechanisms of exemption, the chronology of judicial exemption, immunity and taxation, immunity and jurisdiction, lay immunities, and immunity and the dissolution of the state.
