Fatherhood in Gaul between Lae Antiquiry and the Early Middle Ages

This thesis explores the idea and experience of fatherhood between the fifth and eighth centuries in Gaul. Fatherhood in this period, both as a concept and as a family identity, has been largely unexplored by historians despite the perceived shift from the Roman household dominated by the paterfamilias to the apparently more egalitarian kinship structures of the Early Middle Ages. This thesis has thus examined the different kinds of fatherhood that a person might hold and how that fatherhood, and the relationships it defined, changed across a lifetime and across the period.

The powerful concept of the paterfamilias declined by the eighth century and instead fatherhood was recognized in two forms; the ‘fictive’ fatherhood held by men of religious status and biological fatherhood within the family where authority was increasingly defined by their fatherhood of young children. These two central forms of fatherhood were interlinked and shared an increasing emphasis on representing the affectionate bonds between fathers and their children. This thesis thus contributes a new understanding of the development of fatherhood and the family which moves beyond a simple division between the ‘Roman’ family of Late Antiquity and the ‘Germanic’ Sippe of the Early Middle Ages towards a more nuanced understanding of the changing relationships between the fifth and eighth centuries.

As fatherhood was a relationship that impacted individuals at every level of society and at all stages of their life this study surveys the variety of sources that are available for Gaul in this period including hagiography, legal texts and archaeology. This work does not conceive fatherhood as an unchanging state but as a series of relationships that could vary based on age, gender, status and location. It therefore explores the dynamic nature of fatherhood between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.