Prof. Yaniv Fox

Telephone
Fax
03-5318390
Email
yaniv.fox@biu.ac.il
Office
Building 410, Room 224
Reception Hours
Wednesdays, 12:00 -13:00
    CV

    Education

    2008-2012 Ph.D. in history, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

    2006-2008 M.A. in history, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

    2001-2004 B.A. in history and communications, Tel Aviv University

     

    Academic research and employment

    2023-present Associate Professor, Bar Ilan University, Department of general history

    2016-2023 Senior Lecturer, Bar Ilan University, Department of general history

    2015 Lecturer, Bar Ilan University, Department of general history

    2013-2015 Post-doctoral researcher, Open University of Israel

    2012-2013 Post-doctoral researcher, University of Cambridge

     

    Fellowships and awards  

    2008-2012 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Ph.D. scholarship, Ben-Gurion University 

    2008-2012 Negev Scholarship, Zin fellow, Kreitman Institute for Advanced Studies, Ben-Gurion University

    2012-2013 Rothschild Postdoctoral Fellowship for the Humanities, Yad Hanadiv 

    2012 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences MAHAR award for outstanding published article, Ben-Gurion University

    Life member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge (since 2013)

    2013-2015 Postdoctoral fellow, I-CORE Center for the Study of Inter-Religious Conversion

    2017 Member, Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities Young Scholars in Humanities and Social Sciences Forum

    2020 Fellow, ‘Migration and Mobility in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’, School of Advanced Studies, University of Tübingen

    2021-2022 Group Organizer and Fellow, ‘Purity and Pollution in Late Antique and Medieval Culture and Society, Israel Institute of Advanced Studies

    Research

    I am a historian of the late antique and early medieval West, focusing primarily on Gaul from the fifth to the eighth centuries. My research has considered questions of identity formation, and particularly religious and social identity in the Burgundian and Frankish kingdoms. My first book, Power and Religion in Merovingian Gaul: Columbanian Monasticism and the Frankish Elites, published with Cambridge University Press in 2014, examined the development of the ‘Columbanian’ monastic congregation. The Irish ascetic Columbanus came to Gaul ca. 591, where he founded three monasteries. Shortly before his death in 615, he founded a fourth in Lombard Italy. These houses grew to become highly influential centers, whose alumni spread Columbanus’s teachings and foundation model throughout Gaul and the neighboring regions. As I argued in the book, Columbanian monasteries were important not only for their new approach to monastic life, but also for the way in which they used elite patronage to build social and political networks. Frankish aristocratic families cooperated with the royal court in the foundation and development of Columbanian communities, which later played a critical role in the projection of Merovingian power and the integration of the Frankish periphery. They likewise served as an efficient lever of social mobility within Gallic society. At its height, this loose amalgamation of coenobitic communities numbered in the dozens, transforming Gaul’s monastic landscape entirely.

    As a member of the Center for the Study of Inter-Religious Conversion, I was interested in the religious policies of the royal courts of the Roman successor states. The religious landscape of the post-Roman West was dominated by the conflict between Nicenes and Homoians. While essentially a trinitarian controversy, the rift between the two Christian denominations informed the political and diplomatic constellations of the sixth-century Mediterranean. My work on this topic produced several published articles as well as a contribution to a volume I co-edited with Stefan Esders, Yitzhak Hen, and Laury Sarti, titled: East and West in the Early Middle Ages: The Merovingian Kingdoms in Mediterranean Perspective, published by Cambridge University Press in 2019.

    My next project looked at the portrayal of the Merovingian period (ca. 450—751) in the historiographical works of later generations. The deeds of Merovingian kings and queens naturally preoccupied their contemporaries. Authors like Bishop Gregory of Tours (d. 594) and the anonymous writers behind the seventh-century Chronicle of Fredegar and the eighth-century Liber historiae Francorum used the Merovingians to impart a range of moral lessons to their readership. During the Carolingian period, the Merovingians were scapegoated to justify the deposition of their last king by Pippin III in 751, most memorably by Einhard, Charlemagne’s biographer. After the Carolingian period, the Merovingians were rehabilitated and re-enlisted to prop up the dynastic designs of the Capetian kings of France. In early modernity, the Merovingians were employed in the histories of Humanist authors and even in the work of the Jewish historian, Yosef Ha-Kohen. I received an ISF Independent Researcher Grant in 2017 to study this topic and the ensuing monograph—The Merovingians in Historiographical Tradition: From the Sixth to the Sixteenth Century—is currently in production with Cambridge University Press and is expected to be published in the coming months.

    Presently, my research focuses on the rhetoric of purity and pollution in heresiological literature. Heresy featured prominently in the writings of ecclesiastical thinkers, even as its relevance as a political question waned in the West. It was nevertheless a useful category for articulating social boundaries, which might explain its enduring attraction. My first engagement with this topic produced a volume I co-edited with Erica Buchberger, titled: Inclusion and Exclusion in Mediterranean Christianities, 400 – 800, published by Brepols in 2019. I continued to focus on this topic as a visiting fellow of the University of Tübingen’s School of Advanced Studies project: Migration and Mobility in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. In September 2021, the research group I organized, Purity and Pollution in Late Antique and Medieval Culture and Society, received a fellowship at the Israel Institute of Advanced Studies in Jerusalem. The research group, which consisted of six scholars from various historical sub-disciplines, reconsidered purity and pollution as fundamental and ubiquitous concepts in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic societies from the sixth to the thirteenth centuries. My own contribution to the group examined heresy in early medieval Gaul and Spain as a ‘pollution of faith’ in heresiological, legal, and narrative sources. The work of the group culminated in an international conference, titled: ‘Sanitized Pasts: Purity, Pollution, and Historical Narrative’, which was held on 4-6 June 2023 and funded jointly by the IIAS and an ISF Research Workshop Grant, for which I am the PI.

    Courses

    An introduction to the early middle ages

    The Merovingians and their world

    Society and Culture in the Carolingian world

    The holy man and his world: readings in hagiographical texts

    Intercultural encounters: the Mediterranean basin between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

    Religion, gender, and ethnos: identities in the late antique and early medieval world

    Diplomacy and the Mediterranean: between the Roman and the Carolingian empires

    Publications

    Publications

    Books:

    Power and Religion in Merovingian Gaul: Columbanian Monasticism and the Frankish Elites (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).  

    The Merovingians in Historiographical Tradition: From the Sixth to the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press).

    Edited volumes:

    East and West in the Early Middle Ages: the Merovingian Kingdoms in Mediterranean Perspective, co-edited with Y. Hen, S. Esders, and L. Sarti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

    Inclusion and Exclusion in Mediterranean Christianities, 400-800, co-edited with E. Buchberger (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019).

    The Family in Late Antiquity: Challenges and Changes [in Hebrew], co-edited with U. Simonsohn (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 2019).

    Contesting Inter-Religious Conversion in the Medieval World, co-edited with Y. Yisraeli (London and New York: Routledge, 2017).

    Journal Articles: 

    ‘The Clergy between Town and Country in Late Merovingian Hagiography’, Journal of Medieval History 49,2 (2023), pp. 135-158.

    ‘From Pornography to Diplomacy: A New Context for the Ring of Queen Balthild’, Zmanim (2022), pp. 84-93 [in Hebrew].

    ‘Chronicling the Merovingians in Hebrew: The Early Medieval Chapters of Yosef Ha-Kohen’s Divrei Hayamim’, Traditio 74 (2019), pp. 423–447.

    ‘Coming to Terms with the Past in Merovingian Saints’ Lives: The maior domus Ebroin as a Hagiographical Prop’, Historia 42 (2019), pp. 63-79 [in Hebrew].

    ‘Sent from the Confines of Hell: The Bonosiacs in Early Medieval Gaul’, Studies in Late Antiquity 2,3 (2018), pp. 316-341.

    ‘A Swarm from the Blessed Hive: The Social Networks of the Jura Monasteries’, Revue Bénédictine 128,1 (2018), pp. 252-280.                                                   

    ‘Image of Kings Past: the Gibichung Legacy in Post-Conquest Burgundy’, Francia: Forschungen zur westeuropäischen Geschichte 42 (2015) (in press).                                       

    ‘New honores for a Region Transformed: the Burgundian Patriciate in the First Merovingian Century’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 90,2 (2015) (in press).                                           

    ‘The Bishop and the Monk: Desiderius of Vienne and Columbanian Monasticism’, Early Medieval Europe 20.2 (2012), pp. 176-194.

    ‘Religion, royalty and politics in Merovingian Gaul: the case of Desiderius of Vienne’, Historia 24 (2010), pp. 5-22 [in Hebrew]. 

    Chapters in edited volumes:

    ‘Anxiously Looking East: Burgundian Foreign Policy on the Eve of Reconquest’, in East and West in the Early Middle Ages: The Merovingian Kingdoms in Mediterranean Perspective, ed. Y. Hen, S. Esders, Y. Fox, and L. Sarti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 32-44.

    ‘Inclusion and Exclusion in Mediterranean Christianities, 400-800: Introduction’, in Inclusion and Exclusion in Late Antique and Early Medieval Christianities, 400-800, ed. Y. Fox and E. Buchberger (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), pp. 1-14.

    Religious Patronage as a Means of Constructing Identity in Elite Frankish Families in the Merovingian Period, in The Family in Late Antiquity: Challenges and Changes [in Hebrew], ed. U. Simonsohn and Y. Fox (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 2019), pp. 207-220.        

    ‘Revisiting Gregory of Tours’ Burgundian Narrative’, in Les royaumes de Bourgogne jusque 1032 à travers la culture et la religion, ed. A. Wagner and N. Brocard, Culture et sociétésmédiévales 30 (Brepols: Turnhout, 2018), pp. 227-238.

    ‘The Language of Sixth-Century Frankish Diplomacy’, in The Merovingian Kingdoms and the Mediterranean World: Revisiting the Sources, ed. T. Rotman and P. Bockius (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2019), pp. 63-75.

    With U. Simonsohn, ‘Introduction’, in The Family in Late Antiquity: Challenges and Changes [in Hebrew], ed. U. Simonsohn and Y. Fox (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 2019), pp. 9-24.

    Ego, Bar-Iona: Jews and the Language of Forced Conversion in Columbanian Circles’, in Barbarians and Jews: Jews and Judaism in the Early Medieval West, ed. Y. Hen and T.F.X. Noble (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 155-181.

    From Metz to Überlingen: Columbanus and Gallus in Alamannia’, in Meeting the Gentes - Crossing Boundaries: Columbanus and the Peoples of Post-Roman Europe, ed. A. O’Hara (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 205-223.

    With Y. Yisraeli, ‘Introduction’, in Contesting Inter-Religious Conversion in the Medieval World, ed. Y. Fox and Y. Yisraeli (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 1-23.

    ‘The Political Context of Irish Monasticism in Seventh-Century Francia: Another Look at the Sources’, in The Irish in Early Medieval Europe: Identity, Culture and Religion, ed. R. Flechner and S. Meeder (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 53-67.

    ‘Columbanians across the Channel’, in Treasures of Irish Christianity, vol. iii, ed. S. Ryan and B. Leahy (Veritas Publications: Dublin, 2015), pp. 25-27.

    Last Updated Date : 11/07/2023