Introduction : cultural memory and the resources of the past / Walter Pohl and Ian Wood -- PART I. LEARNING EMPIRE -- Creating cultural resources for Carolingian rule : historians of the Christian empire / Walter Pohl -- Cassiodorus's Historia Tripartita before the earliest extant manuscript / Desirée Scholten -- Politics and penance : transformations in the Carolingian perception of the conversion of Carloman (747) / Erik Goosman -- Lessons in leadership : Constantine and Theodosius I in Frechulf of Lisieux's Histories / Graeme Ward -- PART II. THE BIBLICAL PAST -- Carolingian political discourse and the Biblical past : Hraban, Dhuoda, Radbert / Mayke de Jong -- Biblical past and canonical present : the case of the Collectio 400 Capitulorum / Sven Meeder -- Divine law and imperial rule : the Carolingian reception of Junilius Africanus / Marianne Pollheimer -- Framing Ambrose in the resources of the past : the late antique sources of the Carolingian life of St Ambrose / Giorgia Vicino -- PART III. CHANGING SENSES OF THE OTHER FROM THE FOURTH TO THE ELEVENTH CENTURIES -- Pagans, rebels and Merovingians : otherness in the early Carolingian world / Richard Broome -- Who are the Philistines? / Ian Wood -- From exclusion to inclusion : the Saxons in the ninth-century textual record / Robert Flierman -- Fragmented identities : otherness and authority in Adam of Bremen's History of the Archbishops of Bremen / Timothy Barnwell -- PART IV. THE MIGRATION OF CULTURAL TRADITIONS IN EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE -- Transformations of the Roman past : cultural memory and Roman identity in the early Middle Ages / Rosamond McKitterick -- The eighth-century papacy as cultural broker between East and West / Clemens Gantner -- Transformations of late antiquity : the writing and re-writing of church history at the monastery of Lorsch, c. 800 / Helmut Reimitz -- Conclusion / Mayke de Jong and Rosamond McKitterick.
Summary:
"This volume analyses the importance of history, the textual resources of the past and the integration of Christian and imperial Rome into the cultural memory of early medieval Europe within the wider question of identity formation. The case studies in this book shed new light on the process of codification and modification of cultural heritage in the light of the transmission of texts and the extant manuscript evidence from the early middle ages. The authors demonstrate how particular texts and their early medieval manuscript representatives in Italy, Francia, Saxony and Bavaria not only reflect ethnic, social and cultural identities but themselves contributed to the creation of identities, gave meaning to social practice, and were often intended to inspire, guide, change, or prevent action, directly or indirectly. These texts are shown to be part of a cultural effort to shape the present by restructuring the past"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.