An Anglo-Saxon fragment of Justinus's Epitome

Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987In 1910, Samuel Brandt published a description and photograph of a fragment of Justinus's Epitome of the Historiae Philippicae of Pompeius Trogus. The leaf, whose present location is unknown, belonged at that time to the collection of Ernst Fischer at Weinheim. Fischer dated its script, an Anglo-Saxon minuscule, to about AD 800, which, as Brandt observed, would mean that it antedated the earliest known manuscripts of the text, which are ninth-century. Although E. A. Lowe indicated in his Codices Latini Antiquiores that the fragment was lost, it has continued to attract scholarly attention. Professor Bernhard Bischoff suggested that the fragment could be identified with a copy of Justinus listed among the books of Gerward, palace librarian of Louis the Pious. This implied connection with the Carolingian court, taken together with Alcuin's naming of Justinus's work among the books described in the poem on York and his later association with the Carolingian court, has raised the possibility of an English origin for the Weinheim manuscript and therefore also for the earliest known branch of the text. As L.D. Reynolds remarked, ‘This fragment has a significance quite out of keeping with its size.

Writing in Britain and Ireland, c. 400 to c. 800

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Quasi una gens: Saxony and the Frankish world, c. 772–888

The Saxons were conquered by Charlemagne in 804, after 33 years of intermittent campaigning; they were converted to Christianity and incorporated into the Carolingian political order. Yet despite this history of conquest and incorporation, historians have largely viewed Carolingian Saxony as distinct from the Frankish world. To a large extent, this may be seen as a result of the politicization of Saxon history in the early 20th century. Early Nazi propaganda drew upon the Saxon wars as an example of German heroism and resistance, with particular attention paid to the history of conflict and warfare; unsurprisingly, there was little interest in such circles in delineating subsequent cooperation and coexistence. The postwar period, by contrast, saw a resurgence of local history, which, while serving as a corrective to earlier nationalistic approaches, did not seek to situate the history of individual Saxon Christian centres, whether monasteries or bishoprics, in their wider context. Only recently has an interest in Saxon regional history resurfaced, but even still, the connection of the region to the Frankish world remains relatively unexplored with a few notable exceptions. Recent work on the Carolingian empire has stressed its regionalism and variety, arguing for less top‐down control and more “grassroots” politics. In such a context, Carolingian Saxony need not stand as an outlier: rather, it should be analyzed both alongside, and as part of, the wider Carolingian world