Matthew Innes

The uses of the past in the early Middle Ages

1. Introduction: using the past, interpreting the present, influencing the future Matthew Innes 2. Memory, identity and power in Lombard Italy Walter Pohl 3. Memory and narrative in the cult of the early Anglo-Saxon saints Catherine Cubitt 4. The uses of the Old Testament in early medieval canon law: the Collectio vetus gallica and the Collectio hiberniensis Rob Meens 5. The transmission of tradition: Gregorian influence and innovation in eighth-century Italian monasticism Marios Costambeys 6. The world and its past as Christian allegory in the early middle ages Dominic Janes 7. The Franks as the new Israel? Education for an identity from Pippin to Charlemagne Mary Garrison 8. Political ideology in Carolingian historiography Rosamond McKitterick 9. The annals of Metz and the Merovingian past Yitzhak Hen 10. The empire as ecclesia: Hrabanus Maurus and Biblical historia for rulers Mayke de Jong 11. Teutons or Trojans? The Carolingians and the Germanic past Matthew Innes 12. A man for all seasons: Pacifus of Verona and the creation of a local Carolingian past Cristina La Rocca.

The Classical Tradition in the Carolingian Renaissance: Ninth-Century Encounters with Suetonius

This essay looks at the use made of Suetonius’Lives of the Caesars by Einhard in his biography of Charlemagne, written in the early ninth century. Einhard leans upon Suetonius in devising a biographical structure and in the moral qualities which inform his characterisation. He also makes direct citations from Suetonius in describing Charlemagne’s physical appearance. Scholars have previously believed that Einhard’s relationship to Suetonius escaped the notice of contemporaries, and was first appreciated in the Renaissance. But the evidence for Carolingian interest in Suetonius’ work, thoroughly reassessed here, shows that a small circle of Einhard’s peers were moved by their interest in theLife of Charles to read Suetonius. Moreover, a study of reactions to Einhard’s work demonstrates that Carolingian intellectuals were aware of Einhard’s debt to the classics in developing a ‘new biography’. This adds to our understanding of Carolingian classicism, suggesting that the Carolingian renaissance saw an active involvement with, and debate upon, the classical tradition.

Documentary culture and the laity in the early Middle Ages

Book synopsis: Many more documents survive from the early Middle Ages than from the Roman Empire. Although ecclesiastical archives may account for the dramatic increase in the number of surviving documents, this new investigation reveals the scale and spread of documentary culture beyond the Church. The contributors explore the nature of the surviving documentation without preconceptions to show that we cannot infer changing documentary practices from patterns of survival. Throughout Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages – from North Africa, Egypt, Italy, Francia and Spain to Anglo-Saxon England – people at all social levels, whether laity or clergy, landowners or tenants, farmers or royal functionaries, needed, used and kept documents. The story of documentary culture in the early medieval world emerges not as one of its capture by the Church, but rather of a response adopted by those who needed documents, as they reacted to a changing legal, social and institutional landscape.

Historical Writing, Ethnicity, and National Identity: Medieval Europe and Byzantium in Comparison

Book synopsis: Includes new essays by an international team of leading scholars Adopts a non-Eurocentric perspective Includes timetables and select bibliographies of key primary and secondary sources which help to orientate non-specialist readers How was history written in Europe and Asia between 400-1400? How was the past understood in religious, social and political terms? And in what ways does the diversity of historical writing in this period mask underlying commonalities in narrating the past? The volume, which assembles 28 contributions from leading historians, tackles these and other questions. Part I provides comprehensive overviews of the development of historical writing in societies that range from the Korean Peninsula to north-west Europe, which together highlight regional and cultural distinctiveness. Part II complements the first part by taking a thematic and comparative approach; it includes essays on genre, warfare, and religion (amongst others) which address common concerns of historians working in this liminal period before the globalizing forces of the early modern world.

Documentary Culture and the Laity in the Early Middle Ages: Figures and tables

Book synopsis: Many more documents survive from the early Middle Ages than from the Roman Empire. Although ecclesiastical archives may account for the dramatic increase in the number of surviving documents, this new investigation reveals the scale and spread of documentary culture beyond the Church. The contributors explore the nature of the surviving documentation without preconceptions to show that we cannot infer changing documentary practices from patterns of survival. Throughout Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages – from North Africa, Egypt, Italy, Francia and Spain to Anglo-Saxon England – people at all social levels, whether laity or clergy, landowners or tenants, farmers or royal functionaries, needed, used and kept documents. The story of documentary culture in the early medieval world emerges not as one of its capture by the Church, but rather of a response adopted by those who needed documents, as they reacted to a changing legal, social and institutional landscape.

Documentary Culture and the Laity in the Early Middle Ages: Index

Book synopsis: Many more documents survive from the early Middle Ages than from the Roman Empire. Although ecclesiastical archives may account for the dramatic increase in the number of surviving documents, this new investigation reveals the scale and spread of documentary culture beyond the Church. The contributors explore the nature of the surviving documentation without preconceptions to show that we cannot infer changing documentary practices from patterns of survival. Throughout Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages – from North Africa, Egypt, Italy, Francia and Spain to Anglo-Saxon England – people at all social levels, whether laity or clergy, landowners or tenants, farmers or royal functionaries, needed, used and kept documents. The story of documentary culture in the early medieval world emerges not as one of its capture by the Church, but rather of a response adopted by those who needed documents, as they reacted to a changing legal, social and institutional landscape.

Documentary Culture and the Laity in the Early Middle Ages: Abbreviations

Book synopsis: Many more documents survive from the early Middle Ages than from the Roman Empire. Although ecclesiastical archives may account for the dramatic increase in the number of surviving documents, this new investigation reveals the scale and spread of documentary culture beyond the Church. The contributors explore the nature of the surviving documentation without preconceptions to show that we cannot infer changing documentary practices from patterns of survival. Throughout Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages – from North Africa, Egypt, Italy, Francia and Spain to Anglo-Saxon England – people at all social levels, whether laity or clergy, landowners or tenants, farmers or royal functionaries, needed, used and kept documents. The story of documentary culture in the early medieval world emerges not as one of its capture by the Church, but rather of a response adopted by those who needed documents, as they reacted to a changing legal, social and institutional landscape.

Documentary Culture and the Laity in the Early Middle Ages: Contributors

Book synopsis: Many more documents survive from the early Middle Ages than from the Roman Empire. Although ecclesiastical archives may account for the dramatic increase in the number of surviving documents, this new investigation reveals the scale and spread of documentary culture beyond the Church. The contributors explore the nature of the surviving documentation without preconceptions to show that we cannot infer changing documentary practices from patterns of survival. Throughout Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages – from North Africa, Egypt, Italy, Francia and Spain to Anglo-Saxon England – people at all social levels, whether laity or clergy, landowners or tenants, farmers or royal functionaries, needed, used and kept documents. The story of documentary culture in the early medieval world emerges not as one of its capture by the Church, but rather of a response adopted by those who needed documents, as they reacted to a changing legal, social and institutional landscape.

Documentary Culture and the Laity in the Early Middle Ages: Frontmatter

Book synopsis: Many more documents survive from the early Middle Ages than from the Roman Empire. Although ecclesiastical archives may account for the dramatic increase in the number of surviving documents, this new investigation reveals the scale and spread of documentary culture beyond the Church. The contributors explore the nature of the surviving documentation without preconceptions to show that we cannot infer changing documentary practices from patterns of survival. Throughout Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages – from North Africa, Egypt, Italy, Francia and Spain to Anglo-Saxon England – people at all social levels, whether laity or clergy, landowners or tenants, farmers or royal functionaries, needed, used and kept documents. The story of documentary culture in the early medieval world emerges not as one of its capture by the Church, but rather of a response adopted by those who needed documents, as they reacted to a changing legal, social and institutional landscape.

The Carolingian World: The creation of Carolingian kingship to 800

Replacing the ruling dynasty We began Chapter 1 with the elevation of the Carolingian Pippin, generally known as Pippin III, or Pippin ‘the Short’, to the kingship of the Franks. Almost everything about this event is uncertain. The best evidence for Pippins accession comes from his charters – the single-sheet documents through which legal business like property transactions were habitually enacted. A charter of 20 June 751 was issued in the name of ‘the illustrious man Pippin, mayor of the palace’. By the time of another court case on 1 March 752, Pippin was styled ‘king of the Franks’ ( rex francorum ). At some point between these dates, therefore, Pippin had replaced Childeric III, last king of the Merovingian family that had ruled the Franks for over 250 years. That Pippin and his brother Carloman, jointly mayors of the palace (the most senior non-royal office in the Frankish kingdom) had themselves established Childeric as king just four years earlier gives some indication of the strong position from which Pippin could launch this bid for the throne. But the precise mechanics of the takeover are entirely unknown. Although our texts are often difficult to date precisely, the strongest likelihood is that, the charters apart, all our Frankish sources for the events of 751 were written after 768, when Pippin died and his sons succeeded to the kingship. In other words, these texts probably formed part of a deliberate and retrospective attempt to establish the ease and propriety of Pippins succession in order to make that of his sons (who were, after all, not Merovingians but children of a usurper) seem routine. A cluster of texts containing one or other version of a narrative about Pippins acquisition of the kingship were written in a context in which the Carolingians were already dominant. The most famous rendition of the story is that of Einhard in his Vita Karoli (Life of Charlemagne), probably written around 817, who claims that by 751 the Merovingian family ‘had in fact been without any vitality for a long time and had demonstrated that there was not any worth in it except the empty name of king’. But Einhard was simply echoing the various sets of annals compiled in the last years of the eighth, and first decades of the ninth, century. The most influential, and probably the earliest, of these are the so-called Annales regni francorum (Royal Frankish Annals), according to which legates (they are named as Bishop Burchard of Wurzburg and Fulrad the chaplain) were sent to Rome to gain Pope Zachariass sanction for the replacement of Childeric III with Pippin. This the pope duly gave, commenting, in the words of the annalist, that ‘it was better to call him king who actually possessed royal power’. Pippin was therefore anointed king (the annalist says that this was performed by the renowned English missionary Boniface) and Childeric III was tonsured and sent to a monastery. Reports along these lines also appear, with less detail, in the Continuations to the Chronicle of Fredegar, and in a text known as the Clausula de unctione Pippini regis (the clause on the anointing of King Pippin). Each of these has periodically been dated as roughly contemporary with the events of 751, but the argument for a later date is stronger in both cases: the Continuations were most likely added to the Chronicle of Fredegar in the period 768–86, while the Clausula looks certain to have been written in the ninth century. Their composition after the kingship had been passed successfully to a second generation of Carolingians makes it highly unlikely that they could have presented an objective record of 751, even if one could be recalled. Moreover, their partisanship looks all the more striking if we compare them to texts written in Rome, which are the only ones, apart from the charters, that may be roughly contemporary. Despite the growing general interest of papal biographers in the papacys contacts with Francia, the Life of Pope Zacharias, part of the collection of papal biographies known as the Liber pontificalis , breaks off its narrative in 749, while the collection of letters between the popes and the Carolingians, the Codex Carolinus , includes no letter between 747 and 753. It may be that the Roman authors placed no great importance on Pippins elevation; alternatively, these apparent oversights may point to a deliberate attempt to restrict or manipulate the memory of 751. Either way, the silence from Rome casts doubt on the later version of events contained in Frankish sources, and in particular on the notion that Pippins seizure of the kingship was sanctioned beforehand by the pope.