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Frechulf of Lisieux’s Histories are one of the richest but least studied works of Carolingian historiography. This introductory chapter accounts for this neglect while also setting out a new framework for understanding Frechulf’s text. After outlining what is known about Frechulf’s life and ecclesiastical career, it establishes the foundations upon which the book’s main arguments rest. The Histories ought not to be understood as an unusual work of Carolingian historiography, but rather should be situated within the wider of context of Carolingian intellectual culture.

This chapter examines the origins of European city-states. It has long been observed that within Europe, autonomous cities tended to emerge in a relatively narrow belt stretching from the Low Countries to northern Italy, and this empirical observation has generated a variety of explanations. Answering this question is critical to the conceptualization of the broad process of state formation in Europe. The chapter asks why city-states emerged in some European regions in the first place, whereas elsewhere territorial states became the dominant mode of state organization. It considers the principal existing explanation for the pattern of city-state development, the Rokkan/Tilly hypothesis, and compares it with the Carolingian partition hypothesis. Results of empirical tests show that city-states were able to emerge in Europe's central core because this was where central political control collapsed to the greatest extent after the partition of the Carolingian Empire.

To speak of ‘fortresses and society’ is, indeed, a truism. As soon as wealth for survival was accumulated, notably harvested grain and domesticated animals, demarcation and defence were required. For appreciating how natural fortresses were to normal ancient and medieval societies (and how various) a long perspective is essential. This chapter offers a revised perspective on castles during the medieval period by looking at the aesthetic, artistic, symbolic, and demonstrative elements in the design of fortresses rather than their presumed purpose as forms of local defence. It discusses fortresses in transition in medieval England and France; the response of the Carolingian Empire to the impact of internal disintegration and external attacks by the Norsemen penetrating far up the fine navigable river systems (particularly the Somme, Seine, and Loire); and the emergence of fortresses as a form of social reconstruction.

Gottschalk of Orbais was an exceptional religious dissenter and heretic in the Carolingian Empire, whose Christianity required cooperation with ecclesiastical superiors and willing participation in religious correction. The Introduction surveys the book’s approaches in relation to historiography on Gottschalk and on the Carolingian Empire, emphasizing how this study interprets his literary and spiritual self-representations, his Augustinian-based theology of predestination, his modes of argument, his prophetic claims to martyrdom and miraculous powers, and his shocking defiance to bishops as strategies for influencing contemporaries in changing political circumstances. In the larger history of medieval heresy and dissent, Gottschalk’s case reveals how the Carolingian Empire preserved order within the church through coercive reform. The hierarchy compelled Christians to accept correction of perceived sins and errors, while punishing as sources of spiritual corruption those rare dissenters who resisted its authority.

This chapter examines how the Latin Church was reformed in the tenth century following a series of attacks on the Carolingian Empire by non-Christian invaders. The epic Battle of Maldon, composed in eleventh-century English, is an account of how Ealdorman Byrhtnoth fought Viking invaders on a beach near Maldon in 991. Although he was killed, this invasion was followed by more offensives that culminated in the 1016 crowning of Cnut as king of England. This chapter first highlights the difficulties historians face when reading Battle of Maldon before discussing the attacks launched by the Vikings, Muslims, and Magyars against the Carolingian Empire. In particular, it considers the archival and cultural destruction carried out by barbarians, along with their attack on church leaders, destruction of churches, and looting of ecclesiastical furniture. It also assesses the impact of such barbarian invasions on Christian morale, what survived to be reformed, and what reconstruction was required.

This chapter provides an introduction to the problems of interpreting early medieval queenship, and explains the core arguments of the book. Existing historiography is summarized and the main sources are described. The chapter offers a survey of the key elements of Carolingian queenship in the mid and late ninth century, and explains how Ottonian queenship differed. The argument is that whereas Carolingian queenship was defined around fairly stable metaphors which emphasized the purity of the royal family and the royal palace, this stability was undermined by the much more fluid political situation of the tenth century. The implications of this contrast for the arguments of the book are then explained.

Chapter 1 examines Gottschalk’s legal case against Abbot Hrabanus Maurus of Fulda, at the Synod of Mainz, 829, where he alleged that Hrabanus had illegally forced him to become a monk while still a child. In order to understand why the bishops at the synod freed Gottschalk from his monastic oath and restored his liberty, this chapter contextualizes his court case in the history of the Saxon conquests and conversion, Frankish monasticism at Fulda, Carolingian monastic reform, the publication of the Old Saxon epic the Hêliand, and legal issues related to his case. The chapter finds that Gottschalk won influential allies, who supported him as a Carolingian nobleman while condemning Hrabanus’s actions in a moment of religious crisis and reform in the empire. Hrabanus, however, recast Gottschalk’s arguments as an anti-monastic heresy condemning child oblation in order to silence any opposition to his rule among the Fulda monks.

Gottschalk of Orbais was an exceptional ninth-century religious dissenter and heretic in the Carolingian Empire, whose literary and spiritual self-representations, his Augustinian-based theology of predestination, his modes of argument, his prophetic claims to martyrdom and miraculous powers, and his shocking defiance to bishops were strategies for influencing contemporaries in changing political circumstances. In the larger history of medieval heresy and dissent, Gottschalk’s case reveals how the Carolingian Empire preserved order within the church through coercive reform. The hierarchy compelled Christians to accept correction of perceived sins and errors, while punishing as sources of spiritual corruption those rare dissenters who resisted its authority. Yet the important role of patrons and supporters throughout Gottschalk’s career also shows how individuals within the Carolingian Empire sought to protect their allies from the severe aspects of the empire’s system whenever possible.

This chapter reconstructs Gottschalk’s priestly career, when he preached a controversial, Augustinian-based theology of predestination in Italy and as a missionary in southeastern Europe in the late 830s and 840s. Deciphering the limited and often obscure evidence (including Gottschalk’s own later writings), the investigation here seeks to uncover his theology of twin predestination at this time and his frequently aggressive and subversive strategies for propagating it among Christians—including bishops—and non-Christians alike. This was an era of political conflict and spiritual uncertainty in the Carolingian Empire, and Gottschalk’s goal was to separate the elect from the reprobate at this critical moment. The chapter also examines Hrabanus Maurus’s writings on predestination and his denunciations of Gottschalk as a heretic. The chapter concludes with an analysis of Gottschalk’s condemnation for heresy at the Synod of Mainz (848), where Hrabanus—then Archbishop of Mainz—oversaw his conviction and punishment.

The establishment of the convent of Gandersheim c.852 is often seen as an origin point for its founding family as well, denoting the Liudolfings’ first use of a memorial centre to build up their power and political influence en route to securing the royal title. Consequently, studies of the origins of Gandersheim are often coloured by the later success of the Ottonian dynasty and the monastery’s role as a royal foundation. This chapter instead sets the early history of Gandersheim and its external relationships firmly in its late-Carolingian context. It uses the contemporary works written for the community of Gandersheim by Agius of Corvey to argue that there was considerable ambiguity around the monastery’s relationship to the Liudolfings after the death of the first abbess, Hathumoda.

Tuscan bishops of the eighth and ninth centuries reshaped the sacred topographies of their cities by translating (or transferring) saints’ relics from suburban or rural shrines to urban basilicas. As enshrined in the legendary histories recited on the saints’ feasts, these translations signalled the authority of the prelates over such holy treasure and occasioned their construction of new, magnificent tombs for it. In Lucca, the local bishop, Giovanni I, navigated his city’s delicate entrance into the Carolingian Empire by embracing the example of papal builders from late Antiquity. In Fiesole and Florence, local bishops distinguished themselves less as builders and more as protectors of holy relics in the face of the political instability produced by the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire.

The suggestion that early medieval Saxon female monasticism is unique or exceptional for its intensity and prestige dominates current scholarship. Explanations for this exceptionality have focused on an apparent preponderance of widows in Saxony and a regional association of commemoration with women rather than reformed monks or clerics. Instead, this chapter argues that Saxony’s later conversion to Christianity, compared to the rest of the Carolingian Empire, is a more crucial factor in the spread of female monasteries throughout this region. It traces the timeline of the known convents in Saxony to highlight that the foundation of new female monasteries was not steadily increasing across the ninth and tenth centuries, but rather experienced ebbs and flows of popularity in response to other social and political factors.

Gottschalk’s attempts to develop his clerical career in the early 830s were linked to the support of a powerful patron: Archbishop Ebbo of Rheims. Gottschalk, however, was quickly embroiled in the so-called Loyal Rebellion against Emperor Louis the Pious in 831, for which Archbishop Ebbo had Gottschalk forcibly tonsured. These circumstances led Gottschalk to compose his first surviving writings, which cast him as God’s loyal, but suffering servant in need of assistance. The chapter explores how Gottschalk used this self-representation in a verse letter to Archbishop Ebbo to protest his innocence in the rebellion and to recover the archbishop’s favor. Central to the investigation here is an examination of Gottschalk’s biblical and patristic literary allusions, which were meant to provide a hidden message to readers of his letter: an admonishment of unjust judges clearly meant to make Archbishop Ebbo reconsider Gottschalk’s condemnation and incarceration.

This introductory chapter presents the importance of memory as a theme within the study of medieval history and explains the ability of monasteries to function as memorial sites in multiple different ways. It introduces the main argument of the book, that the development of Ottonian female monasteries reveals how these communities of women deployed memory and history-writing to achieve their own aims as active participants in power politics rather than passive bearers of familial memory.

This concluding chapter elucidates the larger points which emerged over the preceding chapters. Memorial centres like Gandersheim and Quedlinburg were able to embody and articulate concepts of identity, dynasty, and legitimacy to a broad audience. In an environment where various members of a new dynasty were trying to assert their claim to royal power, the centres tied to the family of Henry I and Queen Mathilda were positioned at the heart of political conflicts amongst their descendants. The women of Gandersheim and Quedlinburg were not passive figures in these conflicts, but instead carefully deployed new historical texts to shape their relationships with Ottonian rulers and external patrons for their own benefit.