Orbis Romanus: Byzantium and the Legacy of Rome in the Carolingian World

How did the medieval Frankish world relate to the orbis Romanus? Although this term is only sporadically attested in the early medieval evidence, Laury Sarti makes use of it to designate the sum of what may have been understood, from a western medieval perspective, as characteristic of or belonging to the Roman world. She argues that, although the Roman empire mainly persisted in the east beyond the fifth century, the orbis Romanus was not limited to Byzantium. The medieval west had emerged from that same Roman imperial tradition, and it retained some notable Roman characteristics and features even after it ceased to belong to the empire.

In this book, Sarti challenges the caesura between a Roman and a post-Roman west by arguing that the Carolingian world, ruled by the Franks, still belonged to the multi-ethnic

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