Prof. Yitzhak Hen
Research interests:
Early medieval social and religious history of the early medieval West.
Culture and tradition in the Barbarian kingdom.
Early medieval Christian Liturgy.
Education:
B.A. ( cum laude ) in History and Psychology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
M.A. ( cum laude ) in History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
PhD. in Medieval History, Cambridge University
Professional activity:
Member of the council of the Historical Society of Israel.
Member of the council of the Henry Bradshaw Society for the editing of rare liturgical texts.
General editor of the series Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
(Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, Belgium)
Member of the editorial board of the journal Historia (Journal of the Historical Society of
Israel)
Member of the advisory board of the series Cursor Mundi: Viator Studies of the Medieval
and Early Modern World (UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies)
Member of the advisory board of the on-line journal History Compass (Blackwell Publishers,
Oxford)
Publications: Books:
Culture and Religion in Merovingian Gaul, A.D. 481-751 (Leiden, New York and Köln,
1995)
The Sacramentary of Echternach , Henry Bradshaw Society 110 (London, 1997)
The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages , edited with Matthew Innes (Cambridge, 2000)
The End of the First Millennium. Religion, Society, and Culture in the Tenth Century (Tel-
Aviv, 2000) [in Hebrew]
The Royal Patronage of Liturgy in Frankish Gaul to the Death of Charles the Bald (877) ,
Henry Bradshaw Society, subsidia 3 (London, 2001)
De Sion Exibit Lex et Verbum Domini de Hierusalem. Studies on Medieval Law, Liturgy and
Literature in honour of Amnon Linder , Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the
Middle Ages 1 (Turnhout, 2001)
Women, Children and the Elderly. Studies in Honour of Shulamith Shahar , edited with Miri
Eliav-Feldon (Jerusalem, 2002) [in Hebrew]
The Beginning of Europe: Western Europe in the Early Middle Ages , written with Ora Limor,
4 vols. (Tel-Aviv, 2003) [in Hebrew]
The Bobbio Missal: Liturgy and Religious Culture in Merovingian Gaul , edited with Rob
Meens (Cambridge, 2004)
Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne: translation, introduction, commentary and appendices (Tel-
Aviv, 2005) [in Hebrew]
Roman Barbarians: The Royal Court and Culture in the Early Medieval West (London and
New York, 2007)
Early Medieval Priests , edited with Rob Meens (Hilversum, in press)
Recent papers: ‘A Merovingian commentary on the Four Gospels’, Revue des Études Augustinienne 49
(2003), pp. 167-187
‘Neither simple, nor obvious: power and the transformation of the Roman world’, Scripta
Classica Israelica 22 (2003), pp. 297-304
‘Gender and the patronage of culture in Merovingian Gaul’ in Gender in the Early Medieval
World: East and West, 300-900 , ed. L. Brubaker and J. Smith (Cambridge, 2004), pp.
217-233
‘The Christianisation of Kingship’, in Der Dynastiewechsel von 751. Vorgeschichte,
Legitimationsstrategien und Errinerung, ed. J. Jarnut and M. Becher (Münster, 2004), pp.
163-177
‘On kings and liturgy in Frankish Gaul’, Zmanim 89 (2005), pp. 68-71 [in Hebrew]
‘Wilhelm Levison’, The New Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2005)
[online publication]
‘Merovingian Liturgy’ and ‘Carolingian Liturgy’, International Encyclopaedia for the Middle
Ages. A Supplement to Lexikon des Mittelalters (Turnhout, 2005) [online publication]
‘Food and drink in Merovingian Gaul’, in Tätigkeitsfelder und Erfahrungshorizonte des
ländischen Menschen in der Frühmittelalterlichen Grundherrschaft (bis ca. 1000) , ed. B.
Kasten (Köln, 2006), pp. 99-110
‘Charlemagne’s Jihad’, Viator 37 (2006), pp. 33-51
‘Books and libraries in the Carolingian renaissance’, in Libraries and Book Collections , ed. :
Y. Kaplan and M. Sluhovsky (Jerusalem, 2006), pp. 65-77 [in Hebrew]
‘The recycling of liturgy under Pippin III and Charlemagne’, in Medieval Manuscripts in
Transition , ed. G.H.M. Classens and W. Verbeke, Mediaevalia Lovaniensia 36 (Leuven,
2006), pp. 149-160
‘Flirtant avec la liturgie: rois et liturgie en Gaule franque’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 50 (2007), pp. 33-42
Current research:
Western Arianism, its religious nature and cultural significance in the early medieval West.
Paganism and Christianity in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.