Reddit reviews A History of the Franks (Penguin Classics)
We found 4 Reddit comments about A History of the Franks (Penguin Classics). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Penguin Classics
We found 4 Reddit comments about A History of the Franks (Penguin Classics). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
>I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that the Church denied the possibility of people harnessing magical powers. A History of the Franks by Bishop Gregory of Tours is infamous among Medieval Studies students as an enormous collection of anecdotes about saints and holy objects performing mystical acts through the power of God, with something approaching a narrative of the Merovingian dynasty interspersed throughout. Chroniclors like him often go to some length to establish that they're getting such stories from a source considered sufficiently reliable - they were at least as worried about peasantry and nobles refusing to believe in miracles even after evidence had been presented as they were about them just getting duped by anybody and everybody who said they had magic.
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Miracles are different from magical powers.
I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that the Church denied the possibility of people harnessing magical powers. A History of the Franks by Bishop Gregory of Tours is infamous among Medieval Studies students as an enormous collection of anecdotes about saints and holy objects performing mystical acts through the power of God, with something approaching a narrative of the Merovingian dynasty interspersed throughout. Chroniclors like him often go to some length to establish that they're getting such stories from a source considered sufficiently reliable - they were at least as worried about peasantry and nobles refusing to believe in miracles even after evidence had been presented as they were about them just getting duped by anybody and everybody who said they had magic.
As for the issue of witches, it was a bit of a split: the Church couldn't fully agree on whether witches were simply charlatans with no power at all, or that they did have power but it was coming from Satan and co. Remember that "the Church" was far from a united, rigid hierarchy with everybody looking towards Rome in the first half of the Medieval period, so of course such inconsistencies would occur.
I wish! After much hunting, all I could find was a pair of films about Dagobert. The first (1963) is an Italian/French comedy and the second (1984) seems little better for your interests.
The best list I could find of medieval movies is over at the Medieval Sourcebook. There are some Charlemagne movies in there, although I can't say I've seen any of them myself. A Taste of Cinema also has an interesting list worth looking through. For the older international films, I always recommend a Criterion edition, if you can find one.
For what it's worth, some of my favorite medieval or medieval-inspired movies include the following. Forgive me if some of these are a bit campy.
Of course there's lots of movies I haven't seen, and I know I'm missing some big names on this list (Name of the Rose, Lion in Winter, Flowers of St Francis, etc.). For Merovingian drama, I really think that Gregory of Tours is your guy. (Sorry that's an Amazon link, but it can be hard to find the right edition by Thorpe.) Gregory takes some getting used to, and the first few pages might be a bit slow for most modern tastes, but if you get to Book III it'll hard to put him down!
some suggestions:
http://www.amazon.com/A-History-Franks-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140442952/ref=pd_sim_b_4?ie=UTF8&refRID=1G7CKDG19J3T0QKVPJMB
-- this one covers the time period you want most.
http://www.amazon.com/Anglo-Saxon-Chronicle-History-Conquest/dp/1934941506/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396777092&sr=1-3&keywords=anglo+saxon+chronicle
http://www.amazon.com/History-English-Church-People-Classics/dp/0140440429