‘The Bloodfeud of the Franks’: a historiographical legend

The intellectual encounter of Michael Wallace-Hadrill and Max Gluckman, when they both held Chairs at the University of Manchester, is often seen as seminal in the modern development of English historiography of the early Middle Ages. 1 The publication of ‘The Bloodfeud of the Franks’ in 1959, with its reference to the first chapter of Gluckman’s Custom and Conflict in Africa , ‘The Peace in the Feud’, 2 is thought to mark a significant moment in the application of functionalist anthropology to the understanding of early medieval society. It is true that Wallace-Hadrill did learn something from Gluckman: but there were other and earlier influences which modern historians have tended to forget. Indeed, the dramatic increase in publications on the early Middle Ages has led to a near-constant undervaluing of pre-1945 scholarship, almost amounting to collective amnesia. Wallace-Hadrill certainly cites Gluckman, both in the text of his article and in a footnote. 3 He also cites two other works of anthropology – and one might wonder whether the bibliography came from Gluckman: there is Hasluck’s 1954 book, The Unwritten Law of Albania , and Shapiro’s 1955 article, ‘The Sin of Cain’. 4 Wallace-Hadrill’s analysis of feud, like Gluckman’s, is essentially an attempt at seeing how society held together. Gluckman commented, ‘I have always felt that research into the causes of peace would be more profitable than research into the causes of war.’ 5 It is not impossible that Wallace-Hadrill had this in mind in the final sentence of ‘The Bloodfeud of the Franks’: ‘The marvel of