"Using and Not Using the Past after the Carolingian Empire" offers a new take on European history from c.900 to c.1050, examining the 'post-Carolingian' period in its own right and presenting it as a time of creative experimentation with new forms of authority and legitimacy.
In the late eighth century, the Frankish king Charlemagne put together a new empire. Less than a century later, that empire had collapsed. The story of Europe following the end of the Carolingian empire has often been presented as a tragedy: a time of turbulence and disintegration, out of which the new, recognisably medieval kingdoms of Europe emerged. This collection offers a different perspective. Taking a transnational approach, the authors contemplate the new social and political order that emerged in tenth- and eleventh-century Europe and examine how those shaping this new order saw themselves in relation to the past. Each chapter explores how the past was used creatively by actors in the regions of the former Carolingian Empire to search for political, legal and social legitimacy in a turbulent new political order.
Advancing the debates on the uses of the past in the early Middle Ages and prompting reconsideration of the narratives that have traditionally dominated modern writing on this period, "Using and Not Using the Past after the Carolingian Empire" is ideal for students and scholars of tenth- and eleventh-century European history.
Author(s): Sarah Greer, Alice Hicklin, Stefan Esders (eds.)
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: XII+308
List of Illustrations vii
Notes on contributors ix
1. Introduction / Sarah Greer and Alice Hicklin 1
PART I. Past Narratives 13
2. The future of history after empire / Geoffrey Koziol 15
3. Remembering troubled pasts: episcopal deposition and succession in Flodoard's "History of the Church of Rheims" / Edward Roberts 36
4. In the shadow of Rome: after empire in the late-tenth-century chronicle of Benedict of Monte Soratte / Maya Maskarinec 56
5. Infiltrating the local past: supra-regional players in local hagiography from Trier in the ninth and tenth centuries / Lenneke van Raaij 77
6. After the fall: lives of texts and lives of modern scholars in the historiography of the post-Carolingian world / Stuart Airlie 94
PART II. Inscribing Memories 109
7. How Carolingian was early medieval Catalonia? / Matthias M. Tischler 111
8. Orchestrating harmony: litanies, queens, and discord in the Carolingian and Ottonian empires / Megan Welton 134
9. Models of marriage charters in a notebook of Ademar of Chabannes (ninth- to eleventh-century) / Philippe Depreux 154
10. All in the family: creating a Carolingian genealogy in the eleventh century / Sarah Greer 166
11. 'Charles's stirrups hang down from Conrad's saddle': reminiscences of Carolingian oath practice under Conrad II (1024–1039) / Stefan Esders 189
PART III. Recalling Communities 201
12. Notions of belonging. Some observations on solidarity in the late- and post-Carolingian world / Maximilian Diesenberger 203
13. Bishops, canon law, and the politics of belonging in post-Carolingian Italy, c. 930 – c. 960 / Jelle Wassenaar 221
14. Migrant masters and their books. Italian scholars and knowledge transfer in post-Carolingian Europe / Giorgia Vocino 241
15. The dignity of our bodies and the salvation of our souls. Scandal, purity, and the pursuit of unity in late tenth-century monasticism / Steven Vanderputten 262
16. Law and liturgy: excommunication records, 900–1050 / Sarah Hamilton 282
Index 303
