Description
Based principally on the canons of councils, the work of Gregory of Tours and about eighty Lives of saints, this study is devoted to the figure of the priest in the Merovingian Gaul, which is much less well known than that of the bishop. The figure of the priest or rather the figures of the priests: the title indeed suggests the plurality of situations and cases. Childhood and studies, conditions and rites of ordination, civil status, way of living, activities and authority, material resources and relations with the bishop: no aspect has been neglected. A thorough study of terminology also provides new insights. The work also contains a prosopography of priests of the 6th and 7th centuries with over 380 entries.
