Inventing Tradition: Carolingian Christianity and the Construction of Textual Authority, c. 900 - c. 1100

• Applicant: Dr. Graeme Ward
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 537219423

This project explores the transmission and reception of Carolingian intellectual culture between c. 900 and c. 1100, a period often regarded as transformative within western European history. These centuries have often been viewed in relation a series of overlapping grand narratives: the Feudal Revolution, Gregorian Reform, the Twelfth-Century Renaissance. My project advocates a new approach to these centuries by analyzing a rich body of sources that have rarely been examined 0together. This evidence comprises forms of knowledge - such as liturgical commentaries, exegesis of monastic rules, treatises on the eucharist, episcopal statutes and forged papal decretals - which were produced in the ninth century and which students and scholars in the centuries that followed frequently copied, adapted, and utilized to debate and define orthodox belief and practice. Along with Scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers, these texts became integral to canons of authoritative knowledge within religious communities throughout the regions that once comprised the Carolingian empire, and even penetrated areas that lay beyond its frontiers. The wide diffusion of this material encourages comparative study, which will illuminate trans-regional networks of knowledge and continuities in intellectual practice. Yet how, why and by whom did Carolingian texts come to be regarded as authoritative? When later readers examined the works of Carolingian intellectuals, what did they know about the authors and original contexts of these sources? Besides surveying the spread of Carolingian learning, this project seeks to recapture the perspectives of those who read and worked with earlier material. To achieve this, it will be organized around a series of manuscript-based case studies, which bring to light local, often strikingly unique instances of reception. These case studies reveal that, in the eyes of contemporary readers, Carolingian writers could be given quasi-patristic status, but they could also be re-cast as late antique authorities or even forgotten altogether. By highlighting the diverse ways that Carolingian texts were perceived, this project will develop a model of textual authority that accounts both for its ubiquity and its malleability. Further, it will provide an account of the impact of Carolingian learning that problematizes ‘Carolingian’ as modern category of analysis and periodization.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Netherlands
• Cooperation Partners: Professorin Dr. Irene van Renswoude; Dr. Carine van Rhijn