The characterisation of the tenth century as a dark age for historical written sources has deep roots. But the liturgy constitutes one area where manuscripts survive in increasing quantities from the years 900 to 1050 compared to those copied in the previous century and a half. Moreover, such records exist for communities for which we…
The central aim of our Barcelona research project “From Carolingian Periphery to European Central Region: The Written Genesis of Catalonia” in the framework of the HERA-project “After Empire: Using and Not Using the Past in the Crisis of the Carolingian World, c.900‒c.1050 (UNUP)” is to show that it is indispensable for 21st-century Europe and its…
A thousand years ago, the inhabitants of Trier were confronted with their past in different ways. Not only through architecture and oral culture, but also through liturgy. During the services and offices of the church, one would not only hear about the life and sacrifice of Christ and about the mercifulness of God, but also…
Any casual reader of the relevant modern historiography would rightly come away with the impression that the legacy of the Carolingian Empire was pervasive across centuries of European history. The figure of Charlemagne was particularly attractive to posterity: idolised by French rulers from the Capetians to Napoleon, and canonised by Frederick Barbarossa in 1165. How,…
Historians have often framed tenth-century England in far more positive terms than scholars examining contemporary continental Europe. Often characterised in terms of cultural renewal, this was also the century in which ‘England’ emerged as a political entity for the first time; combined, the two offer a heady mix for those seeking a nation-focussed narrative. Within…
Hello, I am Ekaterina Novokhatko, the PhD fellow for the ‘After Empire’ project based in Barcelona. Our project here deals with the Written Genesis of Catalonia during the long tenth century. Nowadays, nearly everyone seems to be talking about identity: religious, national, cultural, social or ethnic. Comparison and opposition between personalities, social groups or even…
One of the most interesting things about studying the tenth century is the great variety and originality of its written sources. While the period’s image problem has long roots in the perceived dearth of available evidence, surviving tenth-century texts often seem to defy typologies and literary models, which are often drawn from other, better-studied eras.…
The Primordia de coenobiis Gandesheimensis of Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, likely composed in the 970s, is often used by historians as an excellent example of female commemoration – that is, how early medieval women, especially in tenth-century Saxony, preserved the memory of their family’s history. In this case, the commemoration came from a convent of canonesses founded…
Hi! I’m Alice Hicklin, the second postdoctoral researcher working on ‘After Empire’. I’m based in Berlin, where the title of our project is ‘Legal Pasts and Normative Orders’. For our contribution, we seek to assess the role of law in the tenth and early eleventh centuries. This is an important objective and area of research,…
Hello! I’m Sarah Greer, one of the postdoctoral research fellows working on After Empire: Using and Not Using the Past in the Tenth Century. One strand of my research interests is in how burial sites were used in the tenth century. More specifically, I’m interested in royal mausolea – that is, the monasteries and cathedrals…
