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The Age of the Merovingians - Europe Without
Borders The exhibition in the A.S. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts has been organized together with the State Hermitage, the State Historical Museum (Russia) and the Museum of Ancient and Early History (State Museums of Berlin), with participation of the ROSIZO State Museum and Exhibition Center. This is the first Russian-German project showing by means of archeological material the interconnection of very complex cultural and historical processes which occurred over a vast European space from the Urals to the Baltic in the period when Early Medieval civilization took shape. It is especially timely for the peoples of modern Europe to study and understand these processes. A significant part of the material displayed in the exhibition has been loaned by Russian museums. These constitute unique complexes of finds which were made on the territory of Eastern Europe and they reveal the general and special features of the historical development of various tribes during that epoch. There are also antiquities from Western Europe which were moved to the USSR from Germany in the context of compensatory restitution for the Second World War. They are shown in the exhibition together with materials from the Museum of Ancient and Early History (Berlin). For the first time these ancient complexes which were at some point separated, are being displayed together as a unified ensemble. The term Merovingian covers not only the ancient royal dynasty of the Franks, but an entire epoch from the end of the 5th to the middle of the 8th century - around 250 years, during which in Western Europe Late Antique civilization, which extended far beyond the boundaries of Italy and Greece, was replaced by the barbarian world. For many European peoples, this was the first page in their life. However, for several ancient civilizations, this was a tragic finale. The collapse of Western Roman Empire in 476 was a conventional boundary beyond which begin the chronicles of a new age. According to the Historia Frankorum of the late 6th century, the founder of the clan was Meroveus. His heir Chlodwig received a large part of the province of Belgica II from the Roman Emperor. On the basis of oral history traditions, we know about Childeric I and his residence in the city of Tournai on the territory of modern day Belgium. In the years 481-482, power was transferred to his son Chlodwig (482-511), who became the founder of the Frankish kingdom of the Merovingians which lasted until 751, when Childeric III was replaced on the throne by the Carolingians. |
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