CANR
WORK TITLE: Oathbreakers
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://profgabriele.com/
CITY: Blacksburg
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: LRC Nov 2021
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in the United States.
EDUCATION:University of Delaware, Honors B.A., 1997; University of California, Berkeley. M.A., 1998, PhD., 2005.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author, educator. University of California, Berkeley, Lecturer, Department of History; Virginia Tech, Assistant Professor Department of Religion & Culture, 2006-12; Associate Professor, 2012-18; Professor of Medieval Studies and Chair of the Department of Religion & Culture, 2018—; University of St. Andrews, Donald J. Bullough Fellow in Mediaeval History, 2023.
MEMBER:American Historical Association; Medieval Academy of America; American Academy of Religion; Southeastern Medieval Association; Royal Historical Society.
AWARDS:Distinguished Lecturer in Medieval Studies, University of Virginia, 2009; Best First Book, Southeastern Medieval Association, 2013, for An Empire of Memory.
WRITINGS
Author’s public writings have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines, including Washington Post, Time, Guardian, Daily Beast, Slate, and CNN. Scholarly writings have appeared in scholarly journals, including the Journal of Medieval History and Medieval Journal. Also author of essays for numerous scholarly books and editor of scholarly books on the Middle Ages.
SIDELIGHTS
Matthew Gabriele is a professor of medieval studies and the chair of the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech. His research examines religion, violence, nostalgia, and apocalypse in both the Middle Ages and the modern world. His 2021 work, The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe, was written with former professor of medieval history at Dominican University and current freelance journalist and author, David M. Perry.
The Bright Ages is meant as a counter to the usual vision of the European Middle Ages, often referred to as the Dark Ages. While this thousand-year period between about the fifth and the fourteenth centuries is too often looked at as a barbarous time of superstition, terrible hygiene, and general ignorance, The Bright Ages looks at this period as a remarkable time in human history. The book takes readers geographically from Europe and the Mediterranean to Asia and Africa. The authors look at events such as the Fall of Rome, Charlemagne, the Vikings, the Crusades, and even the Black Death with a new perspective. Other major events include the varied religious experience of Iberia, the rise of Byzantium, and the new power of queen regents. This was also the age of Dante, as the authors further point out.
A Kirkus Reviews critic termed The Bright Ages an “appealing account of a millennium packed with culture, beauty, science, learning, and the rise and fall of empires.” The critic added: “A fine single-volume overview of an age that was definitely not dark.” Similarly, a Publishers Weekly reviewer found it to be a “worthy introduction to an oft-misunderstood period in world history.”
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Gabriele and Perry teamed up again in Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Shaped Medieval Europe. This book chronicles the Carolingian civil war in the mid-ninth century in western and central Europe. The war pitted family members against each other: brother against brother and father against sons. Gabriele and Perry detail not just the conflict that lasted three years but how that upended European society.
A reviewer in Publishers Weekly called the book “an enlightening portrait of the medieval mindset.” They praised Gabriele and Perry for their “subtle readings of biased chronicles and documents,” as well as how they “dispel the romantic aura of the Carolingian era.” A writer in Kirkus Reviews described the book as both “scholarly” and “entertaining.” They particularly appreciated how the book reveals the ways historians “try to determine what actually happened from fragmentary and wildly biased accounts.”
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BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2021, review of The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe; November 15, 2024, review of Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Shaped Medieval Europe.
Publishers Weekly, September 27, 2021, review of The Bright Ages, p. 61; October 21, 2024, review of Oathbreakers.
ONLINE
College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University website, https://liberalarts.vt.edu/(March 22, 2025), author profile.
Matthew Gabriele website, https://profgabriele.com (March 22, 2025).
Matthew Gabriele is a professor of Medieval Studies.
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His research and teaching focus on ideas of religion and violence, as well as nostalgia and apocalypse, focused on the European Middle Ages and how that period has been remembered by subsequent generations. He currently teaches at Virginia Tech.
He has published several scholarly books and numerous peer-reviewed articles, which have led to invited talks given to universities across the United States, and he has also presented his research at universities in England, Scotland, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. In 2010, he was a visiting researcher at Westfälische Wilhelms Üniversität-Münster, and in 2023, he was the Donald J. Bullough Fellow in Mediaeval History at the University of St. Andrews, UK. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (UK) in 2025.
His public writing has appeared in such places as The Washington Post, Time, CNN, Slate, and MSNBC. He was between 2018-19 a columnist for Forbes, and was a columnist for Smithsonian Magazine between 2020-21. He has appeared as an expert on the History Channel and NPR, and other interviews with him on radio, podcasts, and TV have aired locally, nationally, and internationally.
With David M. Perry, he co-authored: The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe (Harper Books, 2021). He and David have teamed up again on their latest book: Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers that Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe (Harper Books, 2024).
His research and teaching focus on religion, violence, nostalgia, and apocalypse (in various combinations), whether manifested in the Middle Ages or modern world. This includes events and ideas such as the Crusades, the so-called “Terrors of the Year 1000,” and medieval religious and political life more generally. He also has presented and published on modern medievalism, such as recent white supremacist appropriations of the Middle Ages and pop culture phenomena like Game of Thrones or video games.
He has published several books and numerous articles. He also has presented at dozens of national and international conferences and has given talks at Harvard, Princeton, Georgetown, the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Virginia, the University of Minnesota, the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, the University of Kent, and Nottingham Trent University. In 2010, he was a visiting researcher at Westfälische Wilhelms Üniversität-Münster, and in 2023-24, he’ll be the Donald J. Bullough Fellow in Mediaeval History at the University of St. Andrews, UK.
His public writing has appeared in such places as The Washington Post, Time, Forbes, and The Daily Beast. Interviews with him have aired locally, nationally, and internationally. He was a columnist for Forbes (until 2019), and also was a columnist for Smithsonian Magazine (until 2021).
His book, co-authored with David M. Perry, is out now: The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe (Harper Books, 2021).
His new book will also be with David M. Perry and is entitled Oathbreakers: The Carolingian Civil War and the Collapse of an Empire in the Middle Ages (Harper Books, 2024).
ACADEMIC POSITIONS
Professor
Virginia Tech, Religion & Culture, United States1 Aug 2018
DEGREES
PhD
University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, United States2005
Honors BA
University of Delaware, Newark, United States1997
LANGUAGES
English
Can read, write, speak, understand and peer review
Latin
Can read
French
Can read, write, speak and understand
German
Can read, write, speak and understand
Spanish; Castilian
Can read
Italian
Can read
French, Old (842-ca.1400)
Can read
gabriele@vt.edu
Matthew Gabriele
Professor
Department of Religion and Culture
Matthew Gabriele
115A Major Williams
220 Stanger Street
Blacksburg, VA 24061
gabriele@vt.edu
540-231-1618
Matthew Gabriele is a professor of medieval studies in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech.
His research and teaching generally explore religion, violence, nostalgia, and apocalypse, whether manifested in the Middle Ages or the modern world. This includes events and ideas such as the Crusades, the so-called “Terrors of the Year 1000,” and medieval religious and political life. He has also presented and published on modern medievalism, such as recent white supremacist appropriations of the Middle Ages and pop culture phenomena like Game of Thrones and the video game Dragon Age.
Gabriele has published numerous academic articles and several books, including An Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne, the Franks, and Jerusalem before the First Crusade, which received the Southeastern Medieval Association’s Best First Book in 2013. He has also presented at dozens of national and international conferences and has given invited talks at Harvard, Princeton, Georgetown, the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Virginia, the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and Westfälische Wilhelms Üniversität-Münster.
Gabriele is a regular contributor to Forbes.com; his public writing has appeared in such places as The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, Slate, and The Roanoke Times; and interviews with him have aired locally, nationally, and internationally. He completed a bachelor’s degree in history at the University of Delaware and a master’s degree and a doctorate in medieval history at the University of California, Berkeley.
Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry. Harper, $32 (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-333667-4
Vicious family feuds, destabilizing coups, and brutal violence were the reigning values of the ninth-century Frankish Empire, according to this intricate account. Historians Gabriele and Perry, coauthors of The Bright Ages, begin with Pepin the Short, who seized power in what they suggest, contrary to anodyne royal annals, was a bloody coup. They move on to Pepin's storied son Charlemagne, who snuffed out another coup plot led by his son Pepin the Hunchback. Charlemagne's son Louis the Pious ruled next, and the bulk of the narrative deals with rebellions that his sons Lothar, Pepin of Aquitaine, and Louis the German launched over their status as subordinate kings and their antagonism toward their stepmother, Judith. Lothar inherited the throne after his father's death but faced yet more family-backed rebellions (Louis the German again, plus a son of Judith's), which eventually led to the breaking up of the empire. Through subtle readings of biased chronicles and documents, Gabriele and Perry dispel the romantic aura of the Carolingian era, depicting it as an entertaining but gruesome medieval picaresque of power-hungry plots, murders, and--stomach-churningly--blindings. The authors also shrewdly explore the Franks' genuine belief in the sacredness of kingship--and especially of royal oaths--that kept such a violent system in motion. It's an enlightening portrait of the medieval mindset. (Dec.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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"Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Shaped Medieval Europe." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 40, 21 Oct. 2024, p. 46. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A814019954/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=d0327def. Accessed 2 Mar. 2025.
Gabriele, Matthew OATHBREAKERS Harper/HarperCollins (NonFiction None) $32.00 12, 10 ISBN: 9780063336674
When brothers got medieval on each other.
Historians Gabriele and Perry did so well withThe Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe that they have followed it with a narrower focus on the ninth century. Perhaps the best-known figure of that era is Charlemagne (reigned 768-814), who assembled much of Europe into the largest empire since Rome's and had himself crowned by the pope in 800. Charlemagne ruled alone, mostly, because his brother died three years after the pair took the throne. This followed family tradition that gave every ruler's son power even while he reigned and divided the kingdom after his death. Charlemagne's successor, Louis the Pious (ruled 1814-1840), took the throne as the only surviving son, but he already had three adult sons, and a fourth was soon born. This guaranteed trouble. Louis gave his three sons kingly authority over three parts of the empire, but they complained, quarreled, and occasionally took up arms. Matters did not improve when his fourth son reached maturity and received a share of the empire deducted from the others. During much of Louis' reign, the empire verged on civil war; at one point, he was deposed. Months after his death, the brothers fought the bloody battle of Fontenoy, which solved nothing, soon followed by the 843 Treaty of Verdun, laying out the bounds of each brother's kingdom. A dead letter from the start, it led to more quarrels and treaties that carried on into following centuries, gradually resolving into what later historians maintain was France and Germany. Lively writers, the authors cast a critical eye on the surviving sources, delivering a painless education on how historians try to determine what actually happened from fragmentary and wildly biased accounts.
A scholarly and entertaining history of warring brothers.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Gabriele, Matthew: OATHBREAKERS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2024. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A815560375/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5e103172. Accessed 2 Mar. 2025.