Walter Goffart

Walter Andre Goffart (born February 22, 1934), born a Belgian, came to America in 1941, is a historian of the later Roman Empire and the early Middle Ages who specializes in research on the barbarian kingdoms of those periods. He taught for many years in the History Department and Centre for Medieval Studies of the University of Toronto (1960-1999), and is currently a senior research scholar at Yale University.

A 1955 graduate of Harvard University, Goffart received his doctorate there in 1961. He is the recipient of numerous distinguished awards and fellowships and was awarded the Haskins Medal of the Medieval Academy of America in 1991 for his book "The Narrators of Barbarian History."

Alexander C. Murray edited a Festschrift for Goffart called After Rome's Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History (1999).

Selected bibliography

• "Byzantine Policy in the West under Tiberius II and Maurice: The Pretenders Hermenegild and Gundovald (579-585)", in: Traditio 13 (1957), pp. 73–118
• "The Fredegar Problem reconsidered", in: Speculum. A Journal of Medieval Studies 38:2 (1963), pp. 206-241.
• The Le Mans Forgeries (1966)
• "Le Mans, St. Scholastica, and the Literary Tradition of the Translation of St. Benedict," Revue Benedictine 77 (1967), pp. 107–41.
• Caput and Colonate (1974)
• Barbarians and Romans, A.D. 418-584: The Techniques of Accommodation (1980)
• "Hetware and Hugas: Datable Anachronisms in Beowulf" in: The Dating of Beowulf, ed. Colin Chase (1981), pp. 83–100.
• "Rome, Constantinople, and the Barbarian", in: American Historical Review 86:2 (1981), pp. 275–306.
• The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550-800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (1988)
• Rome's Fall and After (1989) (collected studies)
• "The Historia Ecclesiastica: Bede's Agenda and Ours", in: Haskins Society Journal 2 (1990), pp. 29–45.
• "The Theme of 'The Barbarian Invasions' in Late Antique and Modern Historiography", in: W. Goffart (ed.), Rome's Fall and After, London 1989, pp. 111–132.
• "Breaking the Ortelian Pattern: Historical Atlases with A New Program, 1747-1830," in Editing Early and Historical Atlases, ed. Joan Winearls (1995), 49-81.
• "The barbarians in late antiquity and how they were accommodated in the West", in: B. H. Rosenwein and L. K. Little (ed.), Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and readings, Malden, Mass. 1998, pp. 25–44.
• Historical Atlases: The First Three Hundred Years (2003).
• "Conspicuously absent: Martial Heroism in the Histories of Gregory of Tours and its likes", in: K. Mitchell and I. N. Wood (ed.), The World of Gregory of Tours, vol. 8 (Cultures, Beliefs, and Traditions 8), Leiden 2002, pp. 365–393.
• "The front matter of J. G. Hagelgans's 1718 Atlas historicus at Princeton University Library and the Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, Jerusalem," in Princeton University Library Chronicle LXIV, 1 (Autumn 2002), pp. 141–162.
• The narrators of barbarian history (A.D. 550-800). Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon, Notre Dame 2005.
• "Jordanes's Getica and the Disputed Authenticity of Gothic Origins from Scandinavia", in: Speculum 80 (2005), pp. 379–98.
• "Bede's uera lex historiae explained", in: Anglo-Saxon England 36 (2005), pp 111–116.
• Barbarian Tides: the Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire (2006)
• "The Name 'Merovingian' and the Dating of Beowulf", Anglo-Saxon England 36 (2007), pp 93–101
• "Frankish military duty and the fate of Roman taxation", in: Early Medieval Europe 16:2 (2008), pp. 166–190.
• Barbarians, Maps, and Historiography. Studies on the Early Medieval West (2009) (Collected Studies)
• "The Technique of Barbarian Settlement in the Fifth Century: A Personal, Streamlined Account with Ten Additional Comments", in: Journal of Late Antiquity 3:1 (2010), pp. 65–98.
• "The Frankish Pretender Gundovald, 582–585. A Crisis of Merovingian Blood", in: Francia: Forschungen zur westeuropäischen Geschichte 39 (2012), pp. 1–27.
• "Le début (et la fin) des sortes Vandalorum", in: Expropriations et confiscations dans les royaumes barbares. Une approche régionale, ed. Pierfrancesco Porena, Yann Rivière, Roma 2012, pp. 115–128.
• "»Defensio patriae« as a Carolingian Military Obligation" in: Francia: Forschungen zur westeuropäischen Geschichte 43 (2016) pp. 21–39.

External links

• Canadian Who's Who 2001, Volume 36 by Elizabeth Lumley: p. 500
• Walter Goffart at Yale University