The seminar explores the transition from the late ancient to the medieval world in the Merovingian kingdoms, the most successful successor state of the Western Roman empire. We study the various efforts to find order and orientation in a quickly and constantly changing world that was shaped by its continuing connections to the Mediterranean as well as by its interaction with the European North and Northwest. We particularly focus on how the intellectual, social, and spiritual resources and models of the late Roman world were adopted and adapted in an ongoing bricolage which some of the baselines of medieval Europe were created.