Early Medieval World (Chapter 2 of World History, A Short, Visual Introduction)

The fifth through the tenth centuries was a period of significant transformation for Europe. As a result of the Germanic invasions and the collapse of the economy, the last Roman Emperor in the West, Romulus Augustulus (475-76), was deposed in 476. The Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire would continue in a much-truncated form until the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453. Not only did the Germanic tribes continue their expansion into the Roman territories in the fourth and fifth centuries, the Arabs conquered substantial territory in the seventh and eighth, and Viking, Magyar, and Arab attacks tore apart Europe in the ninth and tenth. All these groups added to the mix of cultures that created the medieval world

"After his death great tribulation came to Italy…" Dynastic politics and aristocratic factions after the death of Louis II, c.870-c.890

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Imperial Electioneering: The Evolution of the Election in the Holy Roman Empire from the Collapse of the Carolingians to the Rise of the Ottonians

The Holy Roman Empire had an electoral process for choosing the Holy Roman Emperor. The heritage of this unique medieval institution can be traced through from Charlemagne empire to the Ottonians. The Empire of Charlemagne had several serious problems that led to its collapse. In the wake of this collapse, the lords of Germany asserted their power and chose leaders for themselves. Between the fall of the Carolingians and the rise of the Ottonians, Germany moved toward an elected kingship with a ducal power base. Only when Otto I became emperor was there a marriage between the German electoral system and the title of Holy Roman Emperor, resulting in the Holy Roman Empire of the late medieval period

Unauthorised miracles in mid-ninth-century Dijon and the Carolingian church reforms

In the early 840s, Archbishop Amolo of Lyons wrote to one of his suffragan bishops about extraordinary miracles reportedly taking place at Dijon in the wake of the arrival of mysterious new relics. Re-examining the complex interaction of these relics with preexisting social and political processes in the region and locally, this article also explores other aspects of Amolo's letter which have been less discussed, notably its manuscript transmission and the insights it offers into structures of religious organisation. Finally, it argues that the way issues treated together in the letter tend to be separated or even opposed in the historiography points to the need for renewed, critically reflexive attention to the specificities of the Carolingian church reforms. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Christian hermeneutics and narratives of war in the Carolingian empire

This is the author accepted manuscript. It is currently under an indefinite embargo pending publication by Sage.The Carolingian empire in western Europe (c.700-900 AD) has long been defined by its military expansion and Christian renewal. Carolingian historical narratives portrayed their victories as divine gifts and so encouraged soldiers and commanders to interpret their actions within a theological hermeneutic. Previous scholars have seen this hermeneutic as justifying war. This paper shall argue instead that these narratives reflected and reinforced the hermeneutic with which soldiers interpreted their campaigns and the military spirituality practised as a result. It shall examine how various histories interpreted military events and how these interpretations related to their audiences’ spirituality and military experience.This research was undertaken as part of a doctorate funded by an AHRC-Gledhill Studentship hosted by the Faculty of History and Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge as part of the Cambridge AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership

The significance of the Carolingian advocate

This article argues that ninth-century advocates in the Frankish world deserve more attention than they have received. Exploring some of the wealth of relevant evidence, it reviews and critiques both current historiographical approaches to the issue. Instead of considering Carolingian advocates as largely a by-product of the ecclesiastical immunity, or viewing advocacy as a Trojan horse for a subsequent establishment of lordship over monasteries, the article proposes a reading of ninth-century advocacy as intimately linked with wider Carolingian reform, particularly an interest in promoting formal judicial procedure

Frankish rivalries and Norse warriors

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Pagans, Rebels and Merovingians: otherness in the early Carolingian world

Early Carolingian authors appear to have been acutely aware of ethnic and regional identities, and the sources of the late-eighth and early-ninth centuries contain many references to non-Franks. These ethnic terms alone, however, do not imply a sense of ‘otherness’. The incorporation of these non-Frankish peripheral peoples into a consolidated Frankish empire was one of the key political policies of Charles Martel and his descendants. We do get a sense of ‘otherness’, though, from the ways in which these peoples were portrayed as being opposed in some way to the concepts which Frankish society was thought to stand for. In contrast to Frankish loyalty, unity and Christian orthodoxy, we find peripheral groups labeled or described as ‘rebellious’ or ‘pagan’. While peripheral groups could be incorporated into the Frankish empire, there was no place for rebels or pagans in the society that was being created by the Carolingians, and so such concepts were ‘other’ in a way that ethnic labels were not. Likewise, the later members of the Merovingian dynasty were ‘other’ because they were presented as useless kings, and such kings had no place in the Frankish community. We can see that in the eighth and early-ninth centuries authors had a common pool of language, signs and symbols upon which to draw when depicting ‘others’, but this does not mean all did so in the same way, and so we must consider how and why each author presented his vision of ‘otherness’. At the same time, we can see that it was only those closest in time or space to the contemporary Frankish community who were targeted by this discourse, with more distant peoples being depicted more ambivalently by our authors. These trends show there was a clear gap between the ideal presented by the authors and the reality of the eighth century. But authors were determined to create a sense of dichotomy in their texts which allowed them to understand the past in a way that allowed for continuity at a time of change

Approaches to Community in the Frankish Kingdoms c.650-800: Continuity and Change

This paper considers how the narratives composed by seventh- and eighth-century authors reflect conceptions of one of the communities of which the authors were a part; the community of the regnum Francorum. I will focus on five historical authors who particularly embody the developments which took place in these centuries: the compiler of the so-called Chronicle of Fredegar, who worked around the year 660; the author of Liber Historiae Francorum, composed in 727; the continuator of Fredegar’s Chronicle, writing around 768; and the first contributors to Annales Regni Francorum and Annales Mettenses Priores, who wrote in the two decades either side of 800. The community these authors envisioned was Frankish and was composed of Franks, but while this represents an important point of continuity, what it actually meant changed over time. In order to assess this change I shall attempt to answer three questions: what were the most important features of the community of the regnum Francorum?; what was the role of the rulers of this community?; and what was the nature of the relationship between Franks and non-Franks

Symbolic implications of the events of 985-988

La traducció d'aquest article al català es troba al volum 24