Description: This volume analyses the importance of history, the textual resources of the past and the integration of Christian and imperial Rome into the cultural memory of early medieval Europe within the wider question of identity formation. The case studies in this book shed new light on the process of codification and modification of cultural heritage in the light of the transmission of texts and the extant manuscript evidence from the early Middle Ages. The authors demonstrate how particular texts and their early medieval manuscript representatives in Italy, Francia, Saxony and Bavaria not only reflect ethnic, social and cultural identities but themselves contributed to the creation of identities, gave meaning to social practice, and were often intended to inspire, guide, change, or prevent action, directly or indirectly. These texts are shown to be part of a cultural effort to shape the present by restructuring the past.
Brief description: Rosamond McKitterick holds the Chair in Medieval History in the University of Cambridge and is Vice-Master of Sidney Sussex College. Her books include The Carolingians and the Written Word (1989), History and Memory in the Carolingian World (2004), Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (2006), Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (2008) and Old Saint Peter's, Rome (edited with J. Osborne, C. Richardson and J. Story, 2013), and she has lectured and given seminars in many universities in Britain, Continental Europe, North America and Australia. She is a Corresponding Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, the Monumenta Germaniae Historica and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and in 2010 she was awarded the Dr A. H. Heineken International Prize for History. Her current work within the field of the early medieval history of Europe focuses on a people's (re)construction, knowledge and use of the past, especially the Roman past. Latterly this has also taken her into study of the historical and cultural context and implications of early medieval glossaries.
Review Quotes: 'This innovative and stimulating volume offers a remarkable synthesis of the research directions pursued by its senior contributors over the last two decades. Yet most importantly, this volume demonstrates how a careful study of minor texts and their manuscript transmission can contribute to the social and political history of the early medieval west by diving deeper into Carolingian cultural practices.' Warren Pezé, Early Medieval Europe