Ildar H. Garipzanov

The Symbolic Language of Authority in the Carolingian World (c.751-877)

Drawing on numismatic, diplomatic, liturgical, and iconographic evidence, this book offers a comprehensive view of political signs, images, and fixed formulas in the Carolingian period and of their use in the indirect communication of royal/imperial authority.

The image of authority in Carolingian coinage: the image of a ruler and Roman imperial tradition

This article examines the influence of Roman imperial symbols of authority on Carolingian coinage. During the brief period of a specific &1squo;renewal’ in Carolingian coinage in the 810s, there was an evident turn to the Roman tradition of demonstrating authority. As a result, the image of a peace-making emperor on Roman coins during the late third to early fourth century was employed on Carolingian coins for the purpose of legitimizing the new imperial authority of the Carolingians. This image, however, was not long-lived and gradually disappeared in the 820s to 830s.

Communication of Authority in Carolingian Titles

This article presents a departure from traditional diplomatics with its concentration on rulers’ perceptions of, as well as statements about, their authority. The author states that early medieval intitulature also described the relationships involved in the creation of authority and was visibly affected by the subjects’ visions of their ruler’s authority. He argues that the reception of official Carolingian titles was not a passive unilateral process: some elements were accepted by local audiences; some were omitted as insignificant; and some were consciously rejected. Consequently, Carolingian aristocrats, especially clerics, frequently gave different names to authority in their correspondence with the ruler and the court, because they saw the mutual bonds of power and submission from a different perspective. To study the development of these views in the eighth and ninth centuries, the paper focuses on the addressing line in the letters sent from and to Carolingian rulers and the title legend on Caroli...

Historical Re-Collections: Rewriting the World Chronicle in Bede's De temporum ratione

Found in 245 manuscripts, Bede’s De temporum ratione (725 A.D.) was the most widely circulated of his scientific texts. In this article, the author considers this text in order to understand its popularity among Bede’s contemporaries and their continental successors. Bede locates the experience of his fellow Northumbrians at the center of the Christian historical narrative and, in so doing, provides other marginal peoples with a model for understanding their own place in Western Christianity. In particular, Bede introduces a new vocabulary of computus based on the language theory articulated by Augustine in De doctrina Christiana. Reading De temporum ratione in this way helps to explain its wide popularity, while providing further insight into Bede’s notions of English and Christian history. Ultimately, the text functions less as an exercise in objective or scientific history than as an attempt to introduce uniquely English concerns into the previously closed narrative of Western Christian history.

The Rise of Graphicacy in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Diagrams, maps, and other forms of graphic visualization are nowadays discussed as a specific mode of communication, graphicacy, typical of the modern age with its ever-increasing role of visual media in social life. This essay questions this tendency to see graphicacy as a by-product of modernity by surveying various forms of representational graphic signs and systems that were placed on various media in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, and it suggests that this graphic material should be seen as expressions of the very same mode of communication rising at the time of the sociocultural-and more specifically, religious-transformation of the late Roman and post-Roman worlds. With reference to this graphic evidence, early graphicacy is defined as a mode of visual communication of conceptual information and abstract ideas by means of non-figural graphic devices, which may comprise inscribed letters, words, and isolated decorative symbols.

Religious Symbols on Early Christian Scandinavian Coins (ca. 995–1050): From Imitation to Adaptation

This article discusses the adaptation of Christian symbols derived from Anglo-Saxon, German, and Byzantine numismatic traditions in early Scandinavian coins produced in the first half of the eleventh century. It analyzes a few particular cases of such borrowings (the Agnus Dei, triquetra, and enthroned Christ) by placing them in specific political, religious, and cultural contexts that made foreign symbols both expected and meaningful in early Christian Scandinavian society. These case studies of numismatic imitations demonstrate that the people involved in the production of such coins were able not only to appropriate numismatic prototypes coming from abroad but also to adapt them to specific local contexts. Such thoughtful adaptation allowed Christian numismatic imagery to communicate effectively political and religious messages significant for Scandinavian kings and their bishops.