Paul Freedman, professor of history at Yale, examines the Merovingian dynasty as a model of barbarian kingship in the post-Roman world. With no strong central government, Freedman argues, Frankish society held together through kinship networks, private vengeance, and religious sanction, and kings earned legitimacy chiefly by leading successful wars. He draws heavily on Gregory of Tours, who saw Frankish violence as functional insofar as kings used it to enforce threats of divine punishment for wrongdoing. The lecture traces the relationship between bishops and kings, the material and military basis of Merovingian power, and the church's growing role in Frankish political life, before closing with an account of the dynasty's decline. Part of Yale's Open Course HIST 210, The Early Middle Ages, 284-1000, recorded in Fall 2011.