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The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550–800)

Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon

Walter Goffart

Publications in Medieval Studies

“This is a very good book . . . full of freshness, imagination, and learning. . . . [Goffart has produced] a wealth of original arguments and insights that will succeed in permanently disturbing the old complacency.” — American Historical Review

“[O]ne of the principal virtues of the book is the way it draws attention to [the narrators’] processes of literary creation and to the concrete historical contexts in which they worked.” — English Historical Review

”. . . a work which will both provoke much discussion of its central ideas and be widely consulted as a standard source of reference for the writers with whom it deals.” — Church History

“The text flows along . . . so as to be a joy to the knowledgeable general reader, while the notes . . . will be a solid aid to the serious specialist.” — Speculum

“The Narrators of Barbarian History should become essential reading for all early medievalists.” — History

Winner of the Medieval Academy of America’s Haskins Medal for 1991, The Narrators of Barbarian History treats the four writers who are the main early sources for our knowledge of the Ostrogoths, Franks, Anglo-Saxons, and Lombards. In his preface to this paperback edition, Goffart examines the questions his work has evoked since its original publication in 1988 and enlarges the bibliography to account for recent scholarship.

WALTER GOFFART is professor emeritus of history at the University of Toronto and Senior Research Scholar and Lecturer in History at Yale University.