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De Laudibus Sanctae Crucis (DLSC) by Hrabanus Maurus is a seminal work in the medieval Christian literature that explores the Cross as the central structure of the universe through a unique amalgamation of poetry, prose, and visual art. The work employs a multi-layered narrative that enriches the reader’s understanding, encouraging a meditative interaction with the text that emphasizes the contemplative over the recitative. This paper analyzes Hrabanus’s intricate use of verbal and visual elements to guide his readers into a profound meditation on the universal significance of the Cross.

The article presents the key characteristics of the cultural policy of the king and emperor Charlemagne (768-814), focusing mainly on the ideational presuppositions of literary production in Latin during the Carolingian Renaissance from the end of the eighth century to the end of the ninth century. The essence of the cultural historical period called the Carolingian Renaissance can be described as a selective Christian-defined return to classical Roman sources representing an ideal of \"pure\" Latin found in ancient Roman literary (or \"humanistic\") works. Its primary goal was to lay the intellectual (i.e., linguistic, rhetorical, philosophical, and theological) foundations for enhancing the orthodoxy of the \"Roman\" (western) Church committed to an in-depth understanding of the Bible, the Church fathers, and consequently Christian doctrine as a whole. Copying ancient texts and composing new ones was part of a wider cultural political project of \"correction\" (correctio) of Carolingian society; namely, an aspiration towards an overwhelming presence of Christianity in the thoughts and behavior of the masses as well as individuals. The thriving of education, coherent Latin, and a unified liturgy was a result of the conscious efforts of Charlemagne, who-as a new (western) Roman emperor-took responsibility for the internal solidity of the state, making possible the reinforcement of the ethnically diverse empire on the basis of a common religious identity and the conviction that the Carolingian Roman Empire represented a continuation of the Roman statehood tradition. The internal connectedness of the empire was made possible through a common religion, common ruler or ruling dynasty, common language of politics and culture, and common \"Roman\" liturgy-and, finally, due to the political alliance between the Carolingian monarch and the Roman bishop (i.e., the pope). Following this concept, a special notion about the continuity of the Roman world was formed by the creators of the Latin literature of the time as a motivation to adjust the authority of the classical Latin style to the Christian worldview This notion of continuity can be captured by the concept of \"Roman-ness\" (Romanitas), on which the Charlemagne's overall aspirations towards a new (western) Roman Empire were built.

The many works written by Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims are inextricably intertwined with his own life history. Hincmar did not write in a vacuum but in response to events, attempting through these to re-order the world to suit his vision of a Christian society. This introductory chapter therefore focuses on his biography, from his days as a promising student at St-Denis through to his death while escaping from Viking raiders. It outlines the different networks within which Hincmar worked, discussing his interactions with the clerics of his own diocese, with kings and other laymen, and with popes, especially Nicholas I. It also demonstrates how long-standing and intractable many of his disputes were. The chapter also highlights recurring themes in the book, such as Hincmar’s working practices and the intensely personal nature of political culture. Hincmar appears within a wider context of scholarly men in the ninth century “fighting with words” and trying to establish social norms by appeals to varied authorities. Finally, Hincmar’s legacy is briefly considered, especially how he has shaped historians’ view of the early Middle Ages.

This historical survey of medieval European Christianity from the eighth through the fifteenth century gives particular attention to the multiple religious movements and their forms of spirituality which produced not one but three distinct syntheses of medieval religion, society, and culture. These syntheses were each in turn attempts at building a shared community of faith often called Christendom, which however proved elusively temporal in nature and thus repeatedly in need of reform and renewal as the historical context for Christendom changed over time.

This note presents a previously unedited ninth-century witness of a Carolingian rite of the cold-water ordeal from Septimania and provides an examination of its language and provenance.

The figure of Saint Gallus, ostensibly the eponymous founder of Saint-Gallen, was the subject of much hagiographical treatment in the late Merovingian and early Carolingian periods. No fewer than four hagiographical texts were produced by individuals ensconced in communities that commemorated him. This process, called recently réécriture, permitted authors in iteration to employ the same basic narrative to a variety of ends. The anonymous Vita vetustissima (before 771), Wetti’s Vita Galli (before 824), Wahalfrid’s Vita Galli (833/34), and the anonymous Vita metrica Galli (between 833/34 and 837) each preserved accounts of Gallus’ career and posthumous events attributed to his intercession. Reading in parallel four episodes shared between these four texts allows us to see the various ways authors chose to frame their subject and allows us to imagine the authorial ambition of their composers. This chain of custody for the Gallus materials responded to concerns about institutional integrity, facilities, and ecclesiology by occasioning new compositions at key moments, such as moments of investment, license, and donation. It also reveals the generic conventions used by its authors to achieve their authorial ambition. The Vita vetustissima treats Gallus as a conventional late antique holy man; Wetti’s text was intended for lectionary purposes; Walahfrid’s text was encyclopedic in nature; and the Vita metrica, an ‘institutional Aeneid,’ advances Gallus as a holy hero suited to secular letters. Principally, Abbot Gozbert (r. 816–37) stewarded this process as an exercise in community-building.

States of Creditprovides the first comprehensive look at the joint development of representative assemblies and public borrowing in Europe during the medieval and early modern eras. In this pioneering book, David Stasavage argues that unique advances in political representation allowed certain European states to gain early and advantageous access to credit, but the emergence of an active form of political representation itself depended on two underlying factors: compact geography and a strong mercantile presence. Stasavage shows that active representative assemblies were more likely to be sustained in geographically small polities. These assemblies, dominated by mercantile groups that lent to governments, were in turn more likely to preserve access to credit. Given these conditions, smaller European city-states, such as Genoa and Cologne, had an advantage over larger territorial states, including France and Castile, because mercantile elites structured political institutions in order to effectively monitor public credit. While creditor oversight of public funds became an asset for city-states in need of finance, Stasavage suggests that the long-run implications were more ambiguous. City-states with the best access to credit often had the most closed and oligarchic systems of representation, hindering their ability to accept new economic innovations. This eventually transformed certain city-states from economic dynamos into rentier republics. Exploring the links between representation and debt in medieval and early modern Europe,States of Creditcontributes to broad debates about state formation and Europe's economic rise.

This essay offers a new examination of medical knowledge in Merovingian Gaul (c. 500–c.750), the ways that it became part of non-specialized learning, and its continuities with Carolingian medicine. In most histories of medicine, the Merovingian world is portrayed as providing a hostile environment for medicine due to the Christianization of knowledge. A significant problem, however, is that there has been no study of what medicine was known or how it was treated since 1937, and even that study can now be seen to be built on false premises. The first part of the present paper offers a new conspectus of Merovingian medical knowledge based on the earliest manuscripts and argues that this new overview changes where we can see continuities in content and practice with Carolingian medicine. The second part builds on this to explore the intersections between religious and secular study, and how medicine fitted within a generalist rather than specialist education. The final section looks at how this learning complemented understandings of the miraculous and nature and in the process helped to deal with challenges from folk practice and the failures of medicine to offer effective aid during pandemics. It is concluded that medicine was in good health in the Merovingian period as it contributed useful ways to see natural order in Creation.

This essay analyzes the mechanics of temporary journeys to the afterlife in Latin texts from the ninth century, the period typically associated with the birth of a medieval visionary genre. Sometimes framed as near-death experiences, sometimes as simple dreams, journeys to an otherworldly landscape were primarily intended as admonitions to the living, but in crossing the boundary between living and dead, the visionary's own soul and body experienced a problematic disjuncture. In contrast to previous scholarship, which has analyzed early medieval visions primarily as political texts, as contributions to a Christian belief in purgatory, or as forerunners to later medieval classics like Dante's Divine Comedy, this study uses visions as windows onto the theology of the soul-body union. The first part surveys important discussions that preceded and informed Carolingian visions of the afterlife (including Augustine's dialogues on the soul, the famous Merovingian Vision of Barontus, and various Insular texts with otherworldly encounters). The second part shows how, against these earlier models, Carolingian visionary authors broke with conventions in order to safeguard the stability of the soul's containment within its earthly body — the very same doctrinal issue that appears with mounting urgency in treatises on the soul produced in the middle decades of the ninth century. A key intervention of the essay is to argue for greater attention to the connections between Carolingian visionary texts and theological tracts, a point often overlooked in a field that has emphasized the imaginative narratives of visionary literature as fundamentally distinct from the ostensible conservativism of early medieval theology.

In the year 726 C.E., the Byzantine emperor Leo III issued an edict declaring images to be idols, forbidden by Exodus, and ordering all such images in churches to be destroyed. Thus commenced the first wave of Byzantine iconoclasm, which ran its violent course until 787, when the underlying issues were temporarily resolved at the Second Council of Nicaea. In 815, a second great wave of iconoclasm was set off, only to end in 842 when the icons were restored to the churches of the East and the iconoclasts excommunicated. The iconoclast controversies have long been understood as marking major fissures between the Western and Eastern churches. Thomas F. X. Noble reveals that the lines of division were not so clear. It is traditionally maintained that the Carolingians in the 790s did not understand the basic issues involved in the Byzantine dispute. Noble contends that there was, in fact, a significant Carolingian controversy about visual art and, if its ties to Byzantine iconoclasm were tenuous, they were also complex and deeply rooted in central concerns of the Carolingian court. Furthermore, he asserts that the Carolingians made distinctive and original contributions to the whole debate over religious art.Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingiansis the first book to provide a comprehensive study of the Western response to Byzantine iconoclasm. By comparing art-texts with laws, letters, poems, and other sources, Noble reveals the power and magnitude of the key discourses of the Carolingian world during its most dynamic and creative decades.