The Long Rediscovery of a New Old Text The so-called Homiliary of Luculentius is an early medieval text with an unfortunate fate. Already known in fragments since the seventeenth century, it became part of the history of Latin medieval literature only at a very late stage of research due to incorrectly attributed dates and…
From the 30th of May to the 1st of June, 2019, the Austrian Academy of Sciences hosted the final conference of the After Empire project in Vienna. The conference brought together scholars working on post-Carolingian Europe with those working on other regions experiencing their own ‘times of transition’. Like many of the speakers, several of the moderators…
The legend of the Passion of the Crucifix arrived in Western Europe with the Second Council of Nicaea (787). This text recounts a Jewish blasphemy concerning the image of Christ on the Cross, which had occurred in Beirut. The story goes that at a dinner at someone’s house in Beirut, a group of Jews noticed…
Through the hard work of our Barcelona project members Matthias Tischler and Ekaterina Novokhatko, we now have an updated interactive map illustrating the origin and provenance of the 9th- to 11th-century manuscripts that they have examined over the 3 years of their strand of the ‘After Empire’ project, “From Carolingian Periphery to European Central Region:…
The centrepiece of the Chronicle of Alfonso III, written in the late 9th or early 10th centuries, is the description of a certain Pelayo and his rebellion against the Saracen foreign rulers of the Iberian Peninsula. Pelayo, as the chronicle describes it, led a small group of Asturians in the pathless mountains in the North…
When it formed the heart of the Carolingian marca Hispania just after 800, Catalonia had spent over 200 years under Visigothic rule, followed by 80 years under Arab dominion. With Catalonia’s new position as a frontier region, the counts of Barcelona attained a higher degree of political independence from France in the process of the Carolingian…
As part of the 1000th anniversary celebrations of the accession of Oliba to the Bishopric of Osona (Vic), our Barcelona PI, Matthias M. Tischler has organised an international congress to reflect on Oliba’s life, his historical context and his impact on the Catalan church. Papers will be delivered from a range of international scholars, including our…
The Carolingian period generated two new different orientations of lay spirituality: (1) radical conversion that imitated the monastic spirituality while remaining in the world; and (2) the valorisation of some aspects of the laity (marriage, juridic and military functions, use of the power to serve the Church and the poor etc.). These phenomena were developed…
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…
Participants: Stefan Esders (Berlin), Sarah Greer (St Andrews), Sarah Hamilton (Exeter), Alice Hicklin (Berlin), Simon MacLean (St Andrews), Ekaterina Novokhatko (Barcelona), Lenneke van Raaij (Exeter), Matthias M. Tischler (Barcelona), Jelle Wassenaar (Vienna) Philippe Depreux (Hamburg), Sumi Shimahara (Paris), Charles West (Sheffield) This synergy event allowed scholars to investigate several important manuscripts located in Catalan archives…
