Liber historiae Francorum ("The book of the history of the Franks") is a primary source for writing the history of the early Franks and the Merovingians, and a major example of Carolingian historiography, recently explored by Rosamond McKitterick (History and Memory in the Carolingian World). As a widely-read narrative, it helped inculcate a sense of cultural solidarity among the readership for whom it was intended, and whose biases it caters to and whose political agenda it promotes.

Liber historiae Francorum is customarily dated to 727 because of a reference at the end to the sixth year of Theuderic IV. It is one of a corpus of new books of history written in the 8th century, and copied and widely distributed in the 9th, that offered their readers (and listeners) a deep background that set the Franks in the context of the Roman Empire and Christian Gallo-Roman world. The Franks originated with a group of Trojan refugees who found themselves on the north coast of the Black Sea. From the outset it promises to present the origins and deeds of the Frankish kings and people, but the early chapters rely so heavily upon the 6th-century Gallo-Roman bishop and historian Gregory of Tours that they have been underestimated by historians. The last eleven chapters present a wholly original account of events in the Frankish lands in the 7th and early 8th centuries.

Further reading

• Bachrach, Bernard S., editor. 1973. Liber Historiae Francorum
• Gerberding, Richard Arthur. 1987 (1993). The Rise of the Carolingians and the Liber Historiae Francorum (Oxford: Clarendon Press)
• McKitterick, Rosamond. 2005. History and Memory in the Carolingian world (Cambridge University Press).

Liber Historiae Francorum | Liber Historiae Francorum