Writing the Early Medieval West

Far from the oral society it was once assumed to have been, early medieval Europe was fundamentally shaped by the written word. This book offers a pioneering collection of fresh and innovative studies on a wide range of topics, each one representing cutting-edge scholarship, and collectively setting the field on a new footing. Concentrating on the role of writing in mediating early medieval knowledge of the past, on the importance of surviving manuscripts as clues to the circulation of ideas and political and cultural creativity, and on the role that texts of different kinds played both in supporting and in subverting established power relations, these essays represent a milestone in studies of the early medieval written word.

List of figures; List of tables; List of contributors; Preface; List of abbreviations; 1. Introduction: a study in the education of a society? Marios Costambeys and Matthew Innes; Part I. Knowledge of the Past: 2. Flavius Josephus: the most influential classical historian of the early Middle Ages Richard Matthew Pollard; 3. Bede and the changing image of Rome and the Romans Paul Hilliard; 4. Paul the Deacon and Rome Marios Costambeys; 5. History and (selective) memory: articulating community and division in Folcuin's Gesta abbatum Lobiensium Ingrid Rembold; 6. 'Appropriate to the religion of their time': Walahfrid's historicisation of the liturgy Christina Pössel; 7. The order of history: liturgical time and the rhythms of the past in Amalarius of Metz's De ordine Antiphonarii Graeme Ward; Part II. The Written Word in Early Medieval Europe: The View from the Manuscripts: 8. The manuscript evidence for pharmacy in the early Middle Ages Nicholas Everett; 9. Monte Cassino's network of knowledge: the earliest manuscript evidence Sven Meeder; 10. Strategies of knowledge organisation in early medieval Latin glossary miscellanies: the example of Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14388 Anna Dorofeeva; 11. 'Dissonance of speech, consonance of meaning': the 862 Council of Aachen and the transmission of Carolingian conciliar records Charles West; Part III. Texts and Early Medieval Rulers: 12. The Moorish kingdoms and the written word: three 'textual communities' in fifth- and sixth-century Mauretania Andy Merrills; 13. When liturgy gets out of hand Yitzhak Hen; 14. The formation of a European identity: revisiting Charlemagne's coinage Simon Coupland; 15. Queenship in dispute: Fastrada, history and law Matthew Innes; 16. Remembering and forgetting Lothar I Elina Screen; Bibliography; List of manuscripts; General index.

Elina Screen is an established historian of early medieval Europe, with particular specialisms in the Carolingian world. Screen is currently preparing a monograph on Emperor Lothar I (d. 855), on whom she is the leading authority. She is also General Editor of the Medieval European Coinage project and publishes on medieval numismatics.
Charles West is a former Humboldt Fellow and AHRC Leadership Fellow. West has published extensively on early medieval topics including historical writing. His monograph, Reframing the Feudal Revolution (Cambridge) was published in 2013, and he has co-edited two books on Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims (d. 882) with Rachel Stone.