Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World

by Edited by Patrick Wormald , Janet L. Nelson

• ISBN13: 9780521834537
• ISBN10: 0521834538
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-01-07
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Did the laity have a part in the Carolingian Renaissance? If so, how were lay elites, and through them the laity at large affected? This fascinating and wide-ranging volume examines these questions through a study of lay involvement in literary and artistic activity in early medieval Europe. Leading historians explore a diverse range of Latin and vernacular texts written by secular authors and use richly-drawn case studies to illuminate such key issues as the extent of lay literacy, the contexts in which learned laity could flourish, the transformative impact of the Carolingian Renaissance, and the interaction of 'lay' and 'clerical' values on both sides of the Channel. This volume demonstrates that the learned laity, both women as well as men, contributed much more as writers and patrons to early medieval culture than was previously thought and it will be essential reading for scholars of Carolingian and Anglo-Saxon history.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. vii
List of contributors	p. viii
Preface	p. ix
List of abbreviations	p. x
In place of an introduction	p. 1
Secular sanctity: forging an ethos for the Carolingian nobility	p. 8
Einhardus peccator	p. 37
The world, the text and the Carolingian: royal, aristocratic and masculine identities in Nithard's Histories	p. 51
Eberhard of Friuli, a Carolingian lay intellectual	p. 77
Dhuoda	p. 106
Learned women? Liutberga and the instruction of Carolingian women	p. 121
Charles the Bald, Hincmar of Rheims and the ivory of the Pericopes of Henry II	p. 139
Problems of authorship and audience in the writings of King Alfred the Great	p. 162
'Stand strong against the monsters': kingship and learning in the empire of King AEthelstan	p. 192
The lay intellectual in Anglo-Saxon England: Ealdorman AEthelweard and the politics of history	p. 218
Concluding	p. 246
Index	p. 255
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