Wednesday, 17th December
14:15‒15.30: Opening Session
Stefan ESDERS (Berlin): Welcome and introduction.
Bonnie EFFROS (Gainesville): Merovingians and the Mediterranean – The enduring attraction of the Pirenne thesis
15:45‒18:30: Session I – Shared Traditions and Forms of Exchange
Andreas FISCHER (Vienna): Money for nothing – Franks, Byzantines and Lombards in the sixth and seventh century
Jörg DRAUSCHKE (Mainz): Communication and trade between the Merovingians and the eastern Mediterranean – Archaeological perspectives
Jamie KREINER (Athens/Ga.): A generic Mediterranean – Hagiography in the early Middle Ages
Yitzhak HEN (Beer Sheva): Defensor of Ligugé’s Liber scintillarum and the migration of knowledge
Thursday, 18th December
09:15‒10:30: Session II – Expanding Horizons: The Formation of the Merovingian Kingdoms
Christian STADERMANN (Tübingen): Passio sancti Vincentii Aginnensis – A different interpretation of the Franco-Visigothic war 507/508
Yaniv FOX (Ra’anana): Anxiously looking east – Burgundian foreign policy on the eve of the reconquest
11:00‒15:45: Session III – The Pope as a Mediterranean Player
Sebastian SCHOLZ (Zürich): The papacy and the Frankish bishops in the 6th century
Rosamond MCKITTERICK (Cambridge): Perceptions of Rome and the papacy in late Merovingian Francia – The Cononian recension of the Liber pontificalis
12:15‒14:30 Lunch
Charles MÉRIAUX (Lille): From east to west – Constantinople, Rome and northern Gaul in the seventh century
Laury SARTI (Berlin): Knowledge exchange and perception of the Eastern Empire in the late Merovingian west
16:15‒17:30: Session IV – Pippin the Younger looking East
Erik GOOSMANN (Utrecht): New dynasty, new frontiers? Pippin’s politics and the wider Mediterranean world
Wolfram BRANDES (Frankfurt/M): The Byzantine background to the so-called “Donation of Pepin”
Friday, 19th December
09:15‒12:15: Session V – Patterns of Intensification: The 580ies
Phillip WYNN (Beer Sheva): Cultural transmission caught in the act – Gregory of Tours and the relics of St Sergius.
Wolfram DREWS (Münster): Hermenegild’s rebellion and conversion – Merovingian and Byzantine connections
Benjamin FOURLAS (Mainz): Early byzantine church silver offered for the eternal rest of Framarich and Karilos – Evidence of “the army of heroic men” raised by Tiberius II. Constantine?
Helmut REIMITZ (Princeton): Pax inter utramque gentem – The re-evaluation of Frankish identity in Merovingian encounters with the Empire during the last decades of the sixth century
12:15‒14:00 Lunch
14:00‒17:00: Session VI – Religious Landscapes and Spiritual Connections
Galit NOGA-BANAI (Jerusalem): Relocation to the west – The relic of the True Cross in Poitiers
Maximilian DIESENBERGER (Vienna): Martyrs and apostles from the Mediterranean in early medieval France
Ora LIMOR (Ra’anana): Willibald in the holy places
Ann CHRISTYS (Leeds): ‘Sons of Ishmael, turn back!’
Saturday, 20th December
09:15‒12:15: Session VII – Rethinking the late Merovingians
David GANZ (Notre Dame): Getting to know the late Merovingians – What Bern 611 reveals
Ian WOOD (Leeds): Contact with the eastern Mediterranean in the late Merovingian period
Lawrence NEES (Newark): ‘Merovingian’ illuminated manuscripts and their links with the eastern Mediterranean world
Stefan ESDERS (Berlin): Unplugging the Merovingians from the Mediterranean – The case of Ebroin
12:15‒12:45: Closing words
Mayke DE JONG (Utrecht): Comment.
Philipp VON RUMMEL (Berlin): Comment.
Yitzhak HEN (Beer Sheva): Closing remarks.