Liber historiae Francorum

Liber historiae Francorum (English: The book of the history of the Franks) is an anonymous 8th century chronicle. The first sections are a secondary source for early Franks in the time of Marcomer, giving a short breviarum of events until the time of the late Merovingians. The subsequent sections of the chronicle are an important primary source for the contemporaneous history and provide an account of the Pippinid family in Austrasia before they became the more famous "Carolingians".

The text's modern editor, Richard Gerberding, who vindicates the coherence and accuracy of its account, gives reasons for locating the anonymous author in Soissons, probably in the royal monastery of Saint-Médard and characterizes him as "Neustrian, a staunch Merovingian legitimist, secular as opposed to ecclesiastically minded, and an enthusiastic admirer and probably a member of that aristocratic class based on the Seine-Oise valley whose deeds, wars and kings he describes".Liber historiae Francorum is customarily dated to 727 because of a reference at the end to the sixth year of Theuderic IV. It offers a Neustrian perspective of the era of mayors of the palace, where the factions of the great territorial magnates could only be held in check and balanced by the consecrated legitimacy of the Merovingian king. Liber Historiae Francorum has been explored and interpreted by Richard Gerberding and more recently by Rosamond McKitterick in History and Memory in the Carolingian World. As a widely read narrative, it helped inculcate a sense of cultural solidarity among the readership for whom it was intended, and whose biases it caters to and whose political agenda it promotes.

As for that agenda, Fouracre and Gerberding (1996) show that the book supports the kings of the Merovingian dynasty only insofar as they rule with the consultation of the major nobles. The nobles, in turn, are supported only insofar as they do not aspire above their station.

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