The episcopal biographies, saints' lives, charters, and poems knowncollectively as the "Le Mans forgeries" are an intricate puzzle that has occupied critics of medieval sources ever since the seventeenth century without yielding a generally acceptable solution. The persistent mystery has lain in the fact that, though the contents are obviously tendentious, the date of composition has seemed to be virtually contemporary with the events described.

By solving the mystery of the date of composition, Walter Goffart unmasks the full extent of the forger's deception and goes on to present...

Despite intermittent turbulence and destruction, much of the Roman West came under barbarian control in an orderly fashion. Goths, Burgundians, and other aliens were accommodated within the provinces without disrupting the settled population or overturning the patterns of landownership. Walter Goffart examines these arrangements and shows that they were based on the procedures of Roman taxation, rather than on those of military billeting (the so-called hospitalitas system), as has long been thought. Resident proprietors could be left in undisturbed possession of their lands because...