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…
The importance of Christmas in both Anglo-Saxon England and West Francia is clear from the fact that many events were anchored to Christmas: acts in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are described as happening ‘forty days before Christmas’ or on ‘the Easter after Christmas’, for instance, while the annalist Flodoard of Rheims strove to begin each year’s…
Shortly after the turn of the first millennium CE, a new history of the Ottonian empire was written. The Quedlinburg Annals, a chronicle of world history created at the imperial Saxon convent of Quedlinburg, is one of the most important contemporary historiographical works we have for Ottonian Empire. The Annals track the history of the…
