Walter Goffart

Walter Andre Goffart (born February 22, 1934 in Berlin-) is a historian of the later Roman Empire and the early Middle Ages who specializes in research on the barbarian kingdoms of those periods. He is a senior research scholar and lecturer at Yale University.

He is a 1955 graduate of Harvard University, where he also received his doctorate in 1961. He was awarded the Haskins Medal in 1991. He taught history at the University of Toronto from 1960 to 1999. After retirement from Toronto, he joined the history faculty of Yale in 2000.

Alexander C. Murray edited a Festschrift for Goffart called After Rome's Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History (1999).

• "Byzantine Policy in the West under Tiberius II and Maurice: The Pretenders Hermenegild and Gundovald (579-585)", in: Traditio 13 (1957), pp. 73–118
• "The Fredegar Problem reconsidered", in: Speculum. A Journal of Medieval Studies 38:2 (1963), pp. 206-241.
• The Le Mans Forgeries (1966)
• Caput and Colonate (1974)
• Barbarians and Romans, A.D. 418-584: The Techniques of Accommodation (1980)
• "Hetware and Hugas: Datable Anachronisms in Beowulf" in: The Dating of Beowulf, ed. Colin Chase (1981), pp. 83-100.
• "Rome, Constantinople, and the Barbarian", in: American Historical Review 86:2 (1981), pp. 275–306.
• "Foreigners in the Histories of Gregory of Tour", in: Florilegium 4 (1982), pp. 80–99.
• The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550-800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (1988)
• Rome's Fall and After (1989)
• "The Historia Ecclesiastica: Bede's Agenda and Ours", in: Haskins Society Journal 2 (1990), pp. 29–45.
• "The Theme of 'The Barbarian Invasions' in Late Antique and Modern Historiography", in: W. Goffart (ed.), Rome's Fall and After, London 1989, pp. 111–132.
• "Conspicuous by absence: heroism in the early Frankish era (6th-7th cent.), in: Teresa Pàroli (ed.), La Funzione dell'eroe germanico: Storicità, metafora, paradigma. Atti del Convegno internazionale di studio Roma, 6-8 maggio 1993 (Philologia: Saggi - richerche - edizioni 2) (Rome, 1995), pp. 41–56.
• "Breaking the Ortelian Pattern: Historical Atlases with A New Program, 1747-1830," in Editing Early and Historical Atlases, ed. Joan Winearls (1995), 49-81.
• "The barbarians in late antiquity and how they were accommodated in the West", in: B. H. Rosenwein and L. K. Little (ed.), Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and readings, Malden, Mass. 1998, pp. 25-44.
• Historical Atlases: The First Three Hundred Years (2003).
• "Conspicuously absent: Martial Heroism in the Histories of Gregory of Tours and its likes", in: K. Mitchell and I. N. Wood (ed.), The World of Gregory of Tours, vol. 8 (Cultures, Beliefs, and Traditions 8), Leiden 2002, pp. 365-393.
• "The front matter of J. G. Hagelgans's 1718 Atlas historicus at Princeton University Library and the Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, Jerusalem," in Princeton University Library Chronicle LXIV, 1 (Autumn 2002), pp. 141-162.
• The narrators of barbarian history (A.D. 550-800). Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon, Notre Dame 2005.
• "Jordanes's Getica and the Disputed Authenticity of Gothic Origins from Scandinavia", in: Speculum 80 (2005), pp. 379–98.
• "Bede's uera lex historiae explained", in: Anglo-Saxon England 36 (2005), pp 111–116.
• Barbarian Tides: the Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire (2006)
• "The Name ‘Merovingian’ and the Dating of Beowulf", Anglo-Saxon England 36 (2007), pp 93-101
• "Frankish military duty and the fate of Roman taxation", in: Early Medieval Europe 16:2 (2008), pp. 166–190.
• "Rome's Final Conquest: The Barbarians", in: History Compass 6:3 (2008), pp. 855–883.
• Barbarians, Maps, and Historiography. Studies on the Early Medieval West (2009)
• "The Technique of Barbarian Settlement in the Fifth Century: A Personal, Streamlined Account with Ten Additional Comments", in: Journal of Late Antiquity 3:1 (2010), pp. 65-98.
• "The Frankish Pretender Gundovald, 582–585. A Crisis of Merovingian Blood", in: Francia: Forschungen zur westeuropäischen Geschichte 39 (2012), pp. 1–27.
• "Le début (et la fin) des sortes Vandalorum", in: Expropriations et confiscations dans les royaumes barbares. Une approche régionale, ed. Pierfrancesco Porena, Yann Rivière, Roma 2012, pp. 115-128.
• "Maps of French History before the Atlas of Auguste Longon", in: The Medieval Way of War: Studies in Medieval Military History in Honor of Bernard S. Bachrach, ed. Gregory I. Halfond, Franham-Burlington 2015, pp. 79-93.
• "»Defensio patriae« as a Carolingian Military Obligation" in: Francia: Forschungen zur westeuropäischen Geschichte 43 (2016) pp. 21-39.