“Round round get around, I get around”*…
Distribution of early Byzantine items and contemporary imitations found outside of the boundaries of the mid-sixth-century empire, along with a depiction of the empire during the reign of Justinian (c. 565 AD)
Dr Caitlin Green details the finds that demonstrate the extraordinary trading reach of the Byzantine Empire: “A very long way from home: early Byzantine finds at the far ends of the world.”
* The Beach Boys
###
As we remind ourselves that trade has been global for a long, long time, we might recall that it was on this date in 614 (though some sources suggest that it was yesterday’s date; and others, that it was in 615) that Chlothar II, the Merovingian king of the Franks, promulgated the last of the Merovingian capitularia, a series of legal ordinances governing church and realm– the Edict of Paris (Edictum Chlotacharii).
About 70 years earlier, Byzantine emperor Justinian had earned renown for his rewriting of Roman law, yielding the Corpus Juris Civilis (still the basis of civil law in many modern states). Chlothar II’s accomplishment was in that same spirit– a sort of Frankish Magna Carta that defended the rights of the Frankish nobles against the claims of the Crown (though less democratically, it also excluded Jews from civil employment throughout the Frankish kingdom).
Chlothar II’s official signature