Medieval Studies Seminar Series – “Rapine, the Carolingians, and the Transformation of Frankish Society”

Please RSVP HERE. Lunch will be provided.

Recent reevaluations of the Carolingian Europe in the ninth century overlook a momentous development in Frankish society: kings’ mounting difficulties in supplying their armies and maintaining discipline among their soldiers. Owing to dynastic conflicts and Viking invasions, later Carolingian warfare shifted from short summer campaigns on distant frontiers to year-round mobilizations in the empire’s heartlands. This transformation strained Frankish military organization and resulted in soldiers seizing supplies from the common people and abusing them. Such brutal behavior alarmed kings, churchmen, and chroniclers, who described it in the legal and moral language of rapina or “rapine” (violent theft). This research project investigates this growing problem of rapine, the efforts of Charlemagne’s descendants to curb it, and how their failure to do so helps explain the transformation of Frankish society and collapse of the Carolingian empire in the late ninth and tenth centuries.

This event is co-sponsored by the Committee for the Study of Late Antiquity. 

Eric J. Goldberg received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1998 and his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. He specializes in the history of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, and his research focuses on the politics and culture of the Merovingian, Carolingian, and Anglo-Saxon worlds. His first book, Struggle for Empire: Kingship and Conflict under Louis the German, 817-876, offers the first study in English of the reign of Charlemagne’s grandson, Louis the German (840-876). His second book, In the Manner of the Franks: Hunting, Kingship, and Masculinity in Early Medieval Europe explores the fascinating and little-understood history of hunting from the late Roman empire to the turn of the first millennium. Professor Goldberg has been awarded fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study, the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Counsel for Learned Societies, the Medieval Academy of America, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst. He was a tenured professor at Williams College before coming to M.I.T. in 2009. He was born and raised in San Francisco.

This talk is part of our Fall 2025 Medieval Studies Seminar Series. Additional talks in this series will be held on November 6 with Ophelia Hostetter (Rutgers University-Camden) and December 4 with Antony Eastmond (the Courtauld).