Book Review: Oathbreakers by Matthew Gabriele & David M. Perry
The historical power of words versus steel
I’ve been trying to read Oathbreakers for an age now—or so it felt. I got it when it came out in the US last December, but I hadn’t had a chance to sit down with it until I went on vacation the last few weeks. Generally, I try to turn my brain off on vacation, which is why I read all 8 Bridgerton books in 9 days (enjoyable, by the way), but this one had been calling my name so long that I had to pick it up.
The first book I read by the author duo Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry was The Bright Ages, which basically argues that “the world can be beautiful without centralized and brutal imperial power,” as Eleanor Janega wrote in the Los Angeles Review of Books. It is a refutation, clearly, of the disparaging “dark ages” label for the millennium between 500 CE (fall of Rome, roughly) and 1500 CE (Enlightenment, roughly). Overall, I liked The Bright Ages, though it has flaws—there was little discussion of North Africa, namely, and the prose was somewhat disjointed. Not so much that it was unreadable, but enough that I found myself wishing they’d spent more time with a figure or transitioned more smoothly somewhere else.
In any case. If The Bright Ages is a refutation of the necessity of brutality in power, Oathbreakers brings the point home by focusing on a single family. It covers the Carolingian Civil War, a brutal conflict that lasted years and pitted sons against father, brother against brother. The book revolves around and leads up to the unprecedented violence of the Battle of Fontenoy (841 CE), which shook Frankish society to its foundations. It’s a story of oaths, those sworn and broken, and how cheap words can be when greed and hurt come to roost.
The more I write and read popular history, the more I believe it’s a tricky genre. Unlike fiction, where you can make up your world, in pop history you’re contending with people who know something about your world already. Your audience is informed (perhaps misinformed) and so that knowledge butts up against whatever you’re writing. Sometimes people don’t like the idea that history can change, can be reinterpreted or produce new information—just check the Goodreads reviews for The Bright Ages. Half of the bad reviews are by armchair historians (who haven’t taken a class on Medieval history since 2000) complaining that Perry and Gabriele are wrong.
Oathbreakers is an example of pop history done well. The prose is engaging and light enough to be accessible while also being detailed enough to satisfy readers who might want to use it as a jumping-off point for further research.
(author of ) noted in her review that there’s a Rage Against the Machine reference in the text (I missed it!), which feels relatable without slipping into a “look how hip and with it we are” cringe moment. As always, I wish there were more citations, but they do a good job of acknowledging sources in the prose. In a period when sons are often named after fathers, meaning names repeat through generations, they do a good job of differentiating their characters. I also appreciate that they do some refresh and summaries throughout—a “this is what we’ve learned so far” moment. If you’ve skimmed or forgotten a detail, which happened to me, these are lovely moments where they prevent any readers from falling too far behind. It makes me think the authors are probably good lecturers, too.Notably, this book also has a sly humor to it that I really respect. I listened to SPQR on audiobook right before reading Oathbreakers, and the differences between the two were so clear. While Mary Beard’s book also has a sense of fun to it, taking us through brothels and back alleys of Ancient Rome, I was extremely disappointed by the “funny” moments because they rely on punching down. She calls ancient rituals “silly” and sort of teases long-dead people about their beliefs. (I wish I’d written down more concrete examples with page numbers, but I was usually driving while listening, so.) Maybe it’s just because everything I know about being funny I learned from watching folks with a moral compass (like comedian
), but I detest when someone tries to be funny by mocking people who can’t stand up for themselves. Even if they have been dead for 1500 years. Gabriele and Perry do not punch down. Oathbreakers isn’t laugh-out-loud funny, but it has its moments of irony and humor.Refreshingly, in a tale that is often defined by the men and soldiers who killed each other, the authors bring women into focus here. People like Dhuoda the Duchess of Septimania, the Frankish Empress Judith, and the Byzantine Empress Irene all have agency in this tale. We see not only who they married and gave birth to, but their motivations and actions. They take a long look at Dhuoda’s letter/manual to her son, the only known and surviving Carolingian text written by a woman. It’s centered not just because it survived, but for what it tells us about Frankish society at that time. They show us why it matters: It helps “us see that women participated in the very same literary and intellectual culture that pervaded the Frankish world.” (Page 227) Similar to their refutations of a brutish world in The Bright Ages, they show us how women existed within the patriarchal framework of the Frankish Empire.
This book benefits from having a narrower geographic scope. My main issue with The Bright Ages—little mention of North Africa or the Muslim world—isn’t as big a problem here because this is about an internal war in the region we know as France/Germany/Italy/Switzerland, etc. Perry and Gabriele do make a point of mentioning how war was based less on religion in this period. They show us how Christian leaders allied with Muslim leaders in Iberia to fight other Christian leaders at different points in the tale. The caliphate in Iberia isn’t addressed heavily, but again, this book is about a civil war in Francia. To be sure, there is a single reference to piratical attacks from both Vikings and corsairs (again, North Africa and the Muslim world) that could have been expanded, but their absence isn’t as harmful here.
Overall, I think Oathbreakers is a great addition to your bookshelf if you’re interested in early Medieval history of Western Europe in particular.