The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages

This book investigates the ways in which people in the early middle ages used the past.

Yitzhak Hen (Edited by), Matthew Innes (Edited by)

9780521630016, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 June 2000

294 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.6 kg

"The volume cannot be recommended highly enough. Specialists will find careful and thought-provoking scholarship, and amateurs will discover a quick fix into the newest ways of thinking about Carolingian society, history, and historiography...the volume is like having an expert guide to some labyrinthine old city who can point out the secret gardens hidden in alleyways and tell the dramatic story behind an overlooked facade." The Historian

This volume investigates the ways in which people in western Europe between the fall of Rome and the twelfth century used the past: to legitimate the present, to understand current events, and as a source of identity. Each essay examines the mechanisms by which ideas about the past were subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) reshaped for present purposes. As well as written histories, also discussed are saints' lives, law codes, buildings, Biblical commentary, monastic foundations, canon law and oral traditions. The book thus has important implications for how historians use these sources as evidence: they emerge as representations of the past made for very special reasons, often by interested parties. This was the first volume to be devoted fully to these themes, and as such it makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the role of the past within early medieval societies.

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.

Subject Areas: Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], European history [HBJD]