Allen Jones' new book sets out to provide a new analysis of the society of Merovingian Gaul, albeit building on the work of Ralph Mathisen (his doctoral supervisor) and Raymond Van Dam. In this study J. is determined to get beyond a blunt two-tier model of society (the élite and the ‘rest’) and provide a more nuanced analysis. In particular he is interested in the strategies used by people of all classes to advance their social position, and one of the book's key arguments is that by viewing these strategies we can see people of apparently very different social status acting in actually very similar ways. The introduction lays out the aims of the book, and discusses its affinity with prosopography, i.e. ‘collective biography’.

J. lays out his sources in ch. 2, and is upfront about the fact that he is dealing with the literary products of (largely clerical) aristocrats. Letters, law-codes, poetry and sermons all play their part, but the key figure is that of Gregory of Tours, whose works dominate the book. It is here that readers are most likely to take issue with J., who is more optimistic regarding the possibility of accessing historical veracity from the pen of Gregory (and his peers) than many (including this reviewer) would be. The attendant possible distortions, from allowing an ecclesiastical viewpoint to dominate the book's model of society quite so strongly, could also have received more attention.

The two chapters that follow have the ambitious task of describing the social structure of late antique Gaul, or, as J. puts it, ‘construct[ing] a model for that society’. Ch. 3 looks at aristocrats and ch. 4 looks at the lower, ‘free and servile ranks’. It could be objected that J. never really does provide an explicit model of society and in fact a certain vagueness regarding terminology is pervasive. In part this is intentional: J.'s argument that ‘[t]here was no Gallic aristocracy; rather, there were aristocracies’, for instance, is persuasive. Moreover, attempts to formulate definitions using the late antique sources are problematic: the term pauper is particularly tricky, as its usage is so often rhetorical. Having made his analysis, J. concludes, for the time-being, that the most significant divide was to be found not between aristocrats and ingenui but between ingenui and pauperes: while wealthy free people could act of their own accord, pauperes remained reliant on the support of patrons.

This analytical section over, the book moves to look in more detail at ‘social constraints and opportunities’, focusing on two particular groups of lower status people: prisoners (ch. 5) and the ‘poor’ at church (ch. 6), and physicians (ch. 7) and ‘enchanters’ (ch. 8). While the rationale for focusing on these particular groups is perhaps not entirely persuasive there is much interesting material in these chapters. J.'s reliance on the hagiographical accounts of Gregory of Tours is particularly apparent here, as J. works to make sense out of the accounts of miraculous release of prisoners, much less prevalent in the source material than discussion of the ubiquitous presence of the poor at church. Here J. builds on the analysis of Peter Brown's Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire to demonstrate the ‘mutual exploitation’ between clerical patrons and their poor clients in late antique Gaul. The discussion of doctors situates them as a ‘middling’ group, though seemingly with more opportunities for social advancement and prestige than their predecessors in Classical Antiquity. Enchanters (from incantatores) meanwhile is a catchall grouping for wonderworkers described by a bewildering range of names (pejorative in various degrees) by our ecclesiastical sources, though, unsurprisingly, they were generally of lower social status.

In ch. 9 J. brings his material together in a conclusion, reiterating his argument that we cannot understand late antique Gallic society according to a two-tier model and that a certain degree of social mobility was possible through certain key channels, such as patrocinium, advantageous marriage and the exploitation of literacy. J. wants us to envisage a late antique world where people of diverse social levels were able to lead ‘meaningful lives’. His emphasis on the similarities between the lives and strategies of élites and non-élites might not find favour with those preferring a more Marxist-tinged analysis of society. That is, there is surely some danger of blurring the importance of the very real economic and social inequalities of (late antique) society. Finally, readers of this journal might be particularly disappointed by the more or less exclusive concentration on written evidence. An attempt to explore just a few ways in which people sought to construct and negotiate their social status through material culture would have added greatly to the richness of the analysis. Nonetheless this is a thoughtful and thought-provoking book that will be welcomed by historians of Late Antiquity.