From its Lombard origins, the Abbey of Nonantola was a political powerhouse in the Kingdom of Italy. Its foundation in 752 profoundly shaped that sector of eastern Emilia located between the Apennines and the River Po. King Aistulf granted Anselm extensive stretches of public land. Under Charlemagne, the abbey become the one place that best…
It’s no surprise that monks and nuns in the high middle ages used the Merovingian past when they were retelling their foundation legends. From the tenth century onwards, we see an increasing number of monasteries claiming that they had Merovingian founders, usually opting for big-name figures such as Clovis or Dagobert. This creation of a…
In the Carolingian period, many attempts were made to consolidate the practice of liturgy in order to prevent Mass and the offices from being celebrated incorrectly: the Admonitio Generalis and the bulk of liturgical commentaries testify to this. Nevertheless, variety and innovation remained the norm through the ninth and tenth centuries, and manuscript material from…
One of the prime objectives of the HERA project is to show that in the tenth century, the past and its uses gained importance in the absence of clear administrative or legal structures, as action in the present often drew authority and legitimacy from claims about the past. The ways that contemporaries chose to use…
Historians of early modern Europe have traced the emergence of a ‘republic of letters’ from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. Their studies have shown how letter writing, humanist friendship, travel, and the use of Latin as a common language fostered a group identity among European scholars that transcended borders and political allegiances. From the…
Traders, Raiders, Settlers and Conquerors: England 700-1066 This was the title of a highly successful continuing professional development workshop for around 30 secondary school teachers held at the King’s Manor, courtesy of the University of York, on Saturday 16th June 2018. Jointly organised with the Historical Association it was delivered by 4 members of the…
Carolingian Culture on the Peripheries and Bernhard Bischoff One of my unanswered questions about Carolingian Studies in the 20th century is the role that the peripheries of Charlemagne’s Empire played in terms of culture and religion and what position these so-called marcae could establish in the Europe-wide network of knowledge transfer. This point of view…
In the sunny and stimulating environment of the cities of Barcelona and Vic, the members of the ‘After Empire’ project, as well as Sumi Shimahara (Paris), Philippe Depreux (Hamburg) and Charles West (Sheffield) visited various archives and libraries studying early medieval Catalan manuscripts. This was done as part of the preparation of a bilingual (English…
Although this fourth-century saint had become popular very early among the eastern Christians, in Western Europe St Alexius was the recipient of a wave of devotion only in the ninth and tenth century. From the ninth century onwards, different versions of his life spread in diverse religious communities from Spain to England. Around 1040 his…
One of the genres of source that I’m closely working with as part of the After Empire project is genealogies. Genealogies are especially interesting texts both for the questions that this project is investigating and for my own research interests: how do people engage with the past? And how in particular do they engage with…
