Carolingians Archive
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Louis the Pious and the Conversion of the Danes
Posted on May 17, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper was part of a very interesting session on the Early Middle Ages. The papers covered Eastern European Infant Burial, the archaeology of medieval feasting and conversion. This paper contrasted the conversion policies of Charlemagne versus those of Louis the Pious. -
Diplomacy and the Carolingian Encounter with Byzantium down to the Accession of Charles the Bald
Posted on April 19, 2013 | No CommentsHow was it possible that an Irishman should discover in Frankland a talent for studying Byzantine thinkers like Ps.-Dionysius, Maximus Confessor, and Gregory of Nyssa? -
Barbarians to the Balkans
Posted on March 17, 2013 | No CommentsIn the High Middle Ages, in a now clearly articulated opposition between the West and the East, Europe and the Balkans began to emerge and be fixed as distinct and hostile entities. In Crusading chronicles, the Balkan lands lay on the way from Europe to the Holy Land. In the late twelfth and in the thirteenth centuries, the conventional separation line between the civilized and barbarian world, identical with the river Danube, began to break down and the barbarians came to be located in the Balkans. -
The Making of Men, not Masters: Right Order and Lay Masculinity According to Dhuoda and Nithard
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsSetting Nithard’s and Dhuoda’s works in dialogue with one another, this study seeks to explore how the conflicts of the early 840s may have triggered reevaluations of contemporary ideals regarding lay masculinty. At the core of both authors’ works is the understanding that the problems the realm was facing at that time were primarily due to no- blemen’s expression of unmanly modes of conduct. -
Questioning the Accepted Techniques for Sword-Forging in Anglo-Saxon England and in Frankish Europe
Posted on January 14, 2013 | No CommentsFrankish swords were absolutely crucial to the rise of the Carolingian empire and they played a major role in Afro-Eurasian commerce during this period. -
Edition, Translation, and Exegesis: The Carolingians and the Bible
Posted on December 23, 2012 | No CommentsIn their attention to philological procedures and details, to the work of editing, revising, and translating, ninth-century scholars made a lasting contribution to the ways in which Europeans would think about the Bible. -
Exegesis According to the Rules of Philosophy or the Rule of Faith?: Methodological Conflict in the Ninth-Century Predestination Controversy
Posted on December 16, 2012 | No CommentsThe development of biblical exegesis, as Contreni shows, was rapid, but not homogeneous. On the one hand, one of the main ways to acquire biblical wisdom was to rely on the interpretations and teaching of the Holy Fathers, whose texts were studied, assimilated, simplified, collected, and taught. On the other hand, Alcuin’s revival of the liberal arts6 paved the way for the rise of another method of biblical exegesis. -
Trickster, Convert, Martyr, Saint: Four Ways of Dying in Dudo of St. Quentin’s History of the Normans
Posted on December 16, 2012 | No CommentsI want to push this a bit further here and argue that Dudo was aiming to produce something that we might term sacramentary history, to show the three-fold interaction of the linear time experienced by fallen humanity, the cyclical time in which events are continually re-enacted and foreshadowed in the sacraments, and the unchanging eternity of time as experienced by God. -
Hincmar of Reims on King-making: The Evidence of the Annals of St. Bertin, 861–882
Posted on December 5, 2012 | No CommentsThe Histories and Chronicles Hincmar had in mind were presumably Frankish ones; and Lothar II, succeeding his father, thus clearly came into this section of Hincmar's third category. But of the timing or form of Lothar's becoming king, Hincmar said not a word, preferring, instead, to spell out the Biblical lesson that a bad king (and he hastily disclaimed any allegation that Lothar's father had been a bad king) would see the succession depart from his line. -
John Scotus Eriugena
Posted on December 2, 2012 | No CommentsEriugena, master of the liberal arts, translator, philologue, poet, philosopher, and theologian, ‘reinvented the greater part of the theses of Neoplatonism’, by his time largely forgotten in the Latin West. -
Powerful Women in a Patriarchal Society: Examining the Social Status and Roles of Aristocratic Carolingian Women
Posted on November 28, 2012 | No CommentsThe status of aristocratic women hinged on virtue, the ability to manipulate beauty, wealth, marriage status, and Carolingian laws and reforms throughout the ninth century. -
The Good, the Bad or the Unworthy? Accusations, Defense and Representation in the Case of Ebbo of Reims, 835-882
Posted on November 25, 2012 | No CommentsIn 877, a man fell ill. His name was Bernold, and he was a parishioner in the see of Reims. Bernold received the rites of the dying, did not eat for four days and he was so weak that when he wanted to drink, he could not ask for water. -
Non similitudinem monachi, sed monachum ipsum! An Investigation into the Monastic Category of the Person – the Case of St Gall
Posted on November 23, 2012 | No CommentsOne day, most likely in the early 880s, the noblest monks of the St Gall monastery assembled to deliberate over an outrageous incident that had occurred the previous night -
“At the Tip of a Sword”: A Study of the Introduction of the Knight into Anglo-Saxon England
Posted on November 21, 2012 | No CommentsNevertheless the introduction of the knight into England still remains a controversial topic of discussion among military historians, since the people who inhabited England prior to 1066 were part of warrior culture as well: the Anglo-Saxons. -
Civilization versus Barbarians? Fortification Techniques and Politics in Carolingian and Ottonian Borderlands
Posted on November 19, 2012 | No CommentsIn many ways the situation on the north-eastern and eastern frontier of the Carolingian and Ottonian empires is an early medieval replica of phenomena associated with the frontiers of the Later Roman Empire. -
Christian Living Explained: Alcuin’s De virtutibus et vitiis liber in a Carolingian Instructional Manual
Posted on November 3, 2012 | No CommentsAnother paper from the yesterday's SESSION I: Lived Religion in the Middle Ages. This paper focused on Alcuin of York's contribution to the standardisation of Carolingian Christian texts for pastoral instruction. -
The ruling as a clue to the make-up of a medieval manuscript
Posted on October 22, 2012 | No CommentsThe purpose of this inquiry is to try to reconstruct the original state of the manuscript using ruling as a clue. -
Organa doctorum: Gerbert of Aurillac, organbuilder?
Posted on October 11, 2012 | No CommentsHe was born a peasant. Yet, through intelligence, political skill and uncommon good luck he came to be one of the most influential people in the Europe of his time...Pope Sylvester II. -
Scissors or Sword? The Symbolism of a Medieval Haircut
Posted on October 6, 2012 | No CommentsSimon Coates explores the symbolic meanings attached to hair in the early medieval West, and how it served to denote differences in age, sex, ethnicity and status. -
Knowledge of Ephraim’s Writings in the Merovingian and Carolingian Age
Posted on October 4, 2012 | No CommentsThe florilegium entitled Liber Scintillarum, the book of sparks from the words of God and of his saints, was composed by the monk Defensor of Ligugé. Our evidence for the life and date of Defensor derives entirely from his preface. -
A Distant World: Russian Relations with Europe Before Peter the Great
Posted on October 4, 2012 | No CommentsDespite their isolation and poverty, the Slavic plowmen succeeded in settling this unforgiving region, expanding their numbers, and, most importantly, creating the beginnings of a trading network along the many rivers of the region—the western Dvina, the Volkhov, the northern Dvina, and the Dniepr and its tributaries. -
Re-writing discourse features: speech acts in Heliand
Posted on September 30, 2012 | No CommentsThough extremely fascinating and very appealing, the theory of the saxonization and northernization of the Gospel has ended up permeating every single level upon which an analysis of the poem can be carried out, becoming a sort of a priori starting point that may lead scholars to over-interpretation and, therefore, hinder them from developing a perhaps deeper insight into the poem. -
Fossa Carolina: The First Attempt to Bridge the Central European Watershed
Posted on September 16, 2012 | No CommentsBeside the intention of Charlemagne to build a continuous waterway network for his extensive travels, there are two more possible reasons for connecting the river systems of Main and Danube. -
Dreaming and the Symbiotic Relationship Between Christianity and the Carolingian Dynasty
Posted on September 5, 2012 | No CommentsSetting out to understand the role of dreams during the Carolingian period it is important to note that the dreams to which we have access are those that have been recorded and survived as physical documents for approximately twelve centuries. -
Eriugena: The Medieval Irish Genius Between Augustine and Aquinas
Posted on August 17, 2012 | No CommentsCarolingian thinker Johannes Scottus Eriugena (810-877 CE) is the author of numerous philosophical and theological works.
