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‘Instructing readers’ minds in heavenly matters’: Carolingian History Writing and Christian Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2019

Robert A. H. Evans
Robert A. H. Evans*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
*
*9 Amhurst Court, Grange Rd, Cambridge, CB3 9BH. E-mail: rae32@cam.ac.uk.
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Abstract

This article explores the ways in which histories were used in the moral and doctrinal education of Christian elites in the West from the late Roman to the Carolingian periods. In the sixth century, Cassiodorus wrote that histories, whether Christian or not, were useful for ‘instructing the minds of readers in heavenly matters’. How far was this characteristic of the period? Traditionally, scholars have emphasized either the apologetic purpose or the moral of specific histories, such as Orosius's Historiae or Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica. Few modern scholars, however, have examined the long-term development of history writing as a vehicle for Christian education during the transformation of the Roman world. Those who have done, such as Karl-Ferdinand Werner and Hans-Werner Goetz, have emphasized continuity rather than change. The article sketches some of the changes and continuities across the period. In particular, it demonstrates that there was a shift from the apologetic concerns of the fifth-century historians, writing to educate Christians from pagan backgrounds, to the doctrinal (as much as moral) concerns of Frankish historians, emerging from the Carolingian Renaissance.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 55: CHURCHES AND EDUCATION , June 2019, pp. 56 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2019 

The empire of Charlemagne and his successors in the late eighth and ninth centuries witnessed two highly significant and related cultural developments. Both had a lasting impact on the culture of western Europe. The first, and broader of the two, was a revival of Christian education, which was directly encouraged by the Carolingian rulers.Footnote 1 In a famous letter to Baugulf, abbot of Fulda, Charlemagne wrote that ‘everyone ought to learn’, so that ‘the mind might understand what ought to be done’ and the ‘tongue might charge ahead in praises to Almighty God’.Footnote 2 Fulda, to take the example of Baugulf's own monastery, could boast a rapidly expanding library with the resources of which its pupils were trained.Footnote 3 It would be here that many great Carolingian theologians were educated, including Hrabanus Maurus, Lupus of Ferrières and the controversial Gottschalk of Orbais.

The second, a more specific but related development, was an explosion in the preservation of older histories and the writing of new ones.Footnote 4 Even in Baugulf's time, his monastery possessed a copy of Eusebius-Jerome's chronicle,Footnote 5 and it later acquired extremely rare copies of certain Roman histories.Footnote 6 During the ninth century, the monastery also produced the Annals of Fulda, which were an outstanding example of the Carolingian enthusiasm for narrating their own recent past.Footnote 7 These annals were just one example of the many historical narratives being written and read in the Carolingian empire. This article considers the relationship between these two developments, by asking how these histories might have served Christian educational purposes.

Although these histories were often (although not exclusively) written in an ecclesiastical context, their narratives had much wider relevance. Annals such as those of Fulda, for example, recounted the military and political experiences of the wider Carolingian elites.Footnote 8 They reflected how boundaries between monastic and lay worlds were far more porous than earlier scholarship recognized.Footnote 9 For instance, Fulda's abbots sometimes led Frankish armies into battle alongside lay aristocrats and had close connections to the royal court.Footnote 10 Moreover, the extent to which the Carolingian lay elite was both literate and interested in improving itself has been substantially and positively re-evaluated in recent years.Footnote 11 As Mayke de Jong has put it, ‘this was not an elite in which military men proudly left the business of letters to women and priests’.Footnote 12 Despite the very limited evidence of how histories were read by contemporaries, it is necessary to consider how far these works sought to shape and inform attitudes and behaviour.

It will be argued in what follows that Carolingian historians were especially invested in shaping their readers’ attitudes to God's agency, and so represent an educational enterprise. The significance of divine agency in early medieval historiography is being recognized increasingly. Sarah Foot has argued that such histories ‘essentially recorded the workings of God's will on earth’.Footnote 13 Matthew Innes sees early medieval views of history as ‘a confusing mass of events which could only be understood in terms of divine agency’.Footnote 14 Nonetheless, the versatility and purpose of God's agency in historical narrative remains understudied. As Andrew Marsham notes, there was a ‘spectrum of perspectives’ on how to integrate religion into medieval historiography.Footnote 15 This article captures some shades of that spectrum in the specific context of Carolingian education.

We begin not with the histories themselves but with the educational handbooks which Carolingian historians were reading. This will highlight the place and purpose of historiography in Carolingian education. We shall then consider how the Carolingians adapted the histories which these handbooks recommended to their own context, in a way which shows both continuity and sensitivity to changing educational challenges. The remainder of the article discusses two case studies from Carolingian historical narratives and what these might have taught their readers, whether clerical or lay, about discharging their military and political duties.

Educational Handbooks and Carolingian Education

Where did historiography sit in Carolingian education? Early medieval writers say frustratingly little about history's place in the educational curriculum. The Latin word historia did not denote a clearly defined genre or educational subject.Footnote 16 Historians and historiography had, however, appeared in various works from which the Carolingians obtained their ideas about education, and these educational handbooks, composed in Late Antiquity, exerted an enormous influence on Carolingian patterns of reading and book collection.Footnote 17

Jerome and his continuator, Gennadius of Marseilles, for example, mention several historians in their bibliographical guide to Christian literature, On Famous Men, which shows that histories were seen as important alongside exegetical and doctrinal works.Footnote 18 Jerome wrote that Hegesippus, whose works are now lost, ‘gathered many things useful to the reader’.Footnote 19 The reason for this utility, however, is rarely mentioned. Jerome simply listed the titles of Eusebius and his own chronicle, rather than explaining why they were worth reading.Footnote 20 Gennadius did the same for Rufinus and Orosius.Footnote 21 Hegesippus and Orosius, nonetheless, were seen as useful against paganism. For Jerome, Hegesippus wrote one history ‘arguing against idols … he showed the error from which they had first grown’.Footnote 22 For Gennadius, Orosius wrote ‘against the enemies of Christians’.Footnote 23 As the Carolingians read and copied these texts, they would have learned that history had educational value because of its support for arguments against paganism.

In addition to Jerome and Gennadius, the Carolingians also derived ideas about education from Isidore of Seville's Etymologies, written in seventh-century Spain.Footnote 24 Isidore treated history as part of grammar, a subject which he introduced as being about learning (disciplina).Footnote 25 Isidore's book on grammar concluded with a discussion of history, in which he wrote that ‘history of peoples’ was ‘no impediment to those who wish to read useful works’.Footnote 26 Indeed, histories were written ‘for the instruction of the living’.Footnote 27 Like Jerome and Gennadius, Isidore only alluded to history's educational utility. He was more interested in the rules of historiography, such as its chronological scope and the need for witnesses, than why it was useful. Although its place in Isidore's discussion of grammar granted history a formal role in the Carolingian organization of knowledge, this role was small and undeveloped.

Alongside Jerome, Gennadius and Isidore, however, the Carolingians were also reading Cassiodorus's Institutes of Secular and Divine Learning, which significantly influenced medieval ideas about education.Footnote 28 Indeed, several of the great monastic libraries of the Carolingian period were in part gathered and organized according to Cassiodorus's recommendations.Footnote 29 The Institutes provided a comprehensive guide to what literary Christians needed to read and supplied a series of bibliographical essays on every aspect of Christian learning, including exegesis, rhetoric, medicine, geometry, astronomy, music and history.

The Institutes’ first sixteen chapters concern the reading of Scripture, together with recommendations of what to read from the Fathers.Footnote 30 For Cassiodorus and his Carolingian successors, Scripture was the indisputable basis of Christian education.Footnote 31 The seventeenth chapter, however, at the head of the section dealing with extra-biblical Christian learning, considers historiography. This was a highly privileged position within the text as a whole and Cassiodorus's subsequent comments made clear that this was not accidental: ‘Christian studies … also have the relators of times … who, since they relate ecclesiastical matters and describe the changing happenings through different times, always instruct readers’ senses in heavenly matters.’Footnote 32 Having the Bible was not enough for serious Christian students; histories were also necessary. The reference to enlightenment in ‘heavenly matters’ further suggests that historiography was educationally foundational for the Christian because of its moral and spiritual significance.

For Cassiodorus, however, this heavenly instruction depended on a specific feature of Christian historical narrative. He explained that ‘these historians strive to ascribe nothing to fortuitous causes, nothing to the gods’ infirm power, as the Gentiles did, but ascribe everything truly to the Creator's will’.Footnote 33 Histories taught Christian students that events happened because God willed them, as opposed to pagan attributions of power to the gods or to fortune. This was similar to the commendations of Hegesippus and Orosius found in Jerome-Gennadius, but located the value of historical narrative specifically in what it taught readers about God, and about God's agency in history.

Adapting Orosius's Seven Books

Carolingian readers had access to numerous earlier Christian narratives which depicted God's agency in history. Most of these, especially those recommended by Jerome, Gennadius and Cassiodorus, were written in contexts where paganism presented a serious cultural and educational threat. This is reflected in the anti-pagan note sounded by these educational handbooks (with the exception of Isidore). Although the Carolingians had to contend with Vikings and Slavs, these groups were never depicted as a cultural threat in the way that late antique paganism had been. How did the Carolingians’ educational view of history adapt to this change in context?

There is insufficient space to consider the Carolingian reception of divine agency from earlier histories, such as those of Gregory of Tours and Bede. I shall focus instead on the specific example of Orosius's Seven Books of History against the Pagans,Footnote 34 which Cassiodorus and Gennadius had heartily recommended.Footnote 35 As Peter Van Nuffelen has argued convincingly, Orosius was engaged in a systematic assault on history's role in the pagan education system, while using the rhetorical techniques taught by that system to full effect.Footnote 36 The Romans were brought up to hunger for glory and power by reading the histories of Sallust, Livy and others.Footnote 37 Orosius used his history to deprogramme a Roman elite indoctrinated by this pagan system of education.Footnote 38 He did this in part by showing the horror of the pasts presented so attractively by earlier Roman historians, but also by showing the hand of the Christian God in the pagan past. A typical example concerned a miraculous hailstorm which saved Rome from Hannibal. Orosius demanded of his readers: ‘Now let the despisers of the True God respond to me: whether Roman fortitude or divine mercy prevented Hannibal from capturing and ruining Rome?’Footnote 39 Orosius's purpose in mentioning God's agency supported Cassiodorus's juxtaposition of ‘Gentile’ and Christian understandings of history. This approach was educational in that it sought to re-educate audiences who were used to thinking in non-Christian terms about history and human experience.

How was Orosius useful to Christian audiences in the Carolingian empire which did not face such pagan threats? An intriguing manuscript from Tours, which contains an epitome of the Seven Books, offers some clues.Footnote 40 The scribe removed Orosius's asides to his imagined pagan audiences, such as that concerning Hannibal. The scribe nonetheless continued to ascribe certain important events to God's agency. The emperor Theodosius, for example, was described as reforming the Roman empire ‘with God supporting him’.Footnote 41 The Roman general Mascezel was described as learning from Theodosius's example when he landed an army in Caprari. The scribe wrote, closely following Orosius, that Mascezel, ‘knowing from Theodosius how much the prayer of man through faith in Christ might obtain from God's mercy’, prayed for and ‘merited’ a bloodless victory over his enemies.Footnote 42 This showed how a particular character within the narratives learned about the personal implications of God's agency. History was still important to the extent that it educated its readers in responding correctly to God's agency, as Mascezel had. This lesson was clearly seen as relevant to this scribe's audience in a way that attacks on pagan understandings of history were not.

Learning from Carolingian Annals

The remainder of this article considers how two Carolingian historians taught their readers about the relevance and implications of God's agency for their own contexts. These texts were written by and for Christians, but this did not make their authors any less concerned to train and educate their audiences in a Christian worldview, which ascribed events purely to God's agency.

Divine agency, as the example of Orosius shows, was not a new element in Christian historiography. It had also played an important role (albeit with different emphases) in the histories produced by Gregory of Tours and Bede, which were also available to the Carolingians.Footnote 43 My intention here is to demonstrate how Carolingian historians carefully constructed their own narratives to press the practical implications of God's agency upon their ninth-century readers, both lay and clerical. Many of these examples are military, and the relationship between religion and war has been widely discussed in modern scholarship.Footnote 44 I am more concerned to explore how Carolingian historians brought a broader theological belief – that God governed history – to bear on the specific challenges facing their audiences, which often included military conflict.

The Annals of Metz

The Annals of Metz, in their earliest redaction, recounted Frankish history from 678 to 805, and were probably completed around 806.Footnote 45 Their authorship and purpose have attracted considerable discussion in recent years, with some suggesting the authorship of Abbess Gisela, sister of Charlemagne, at Chelles, and others defending anonymous authorship at Metz.Footnote 46 Whatever the case, the work seems to have been written to defend Charlemagne's succession plan of 806, and to support the primacy of Charles the Younger (d. 811) among the ageing emperor's sons. It might well have been written to educate Charles about the realities of kingship and military command.Footnote 47

The Annals of Metz ascribe numerous events in the narrative to God's will. The hero of the early part of the narrative was Pippin II (d. 714), Charlemagne's great-grandfather, who achieved de facto rule of the Frankish world in the late seventh century. Pippin defeats his various enemies ‘with the Lord cooperating’,Footnote 48 and governs the Franks ‘with Christ granting it’.Footnote 49 The author, therefore, consistently teaches her (or his) readers to view the history of Carolingian success as dependent on God. This was something which this annalist appears to have learned from other Carolingian historians. The Annals of Metz also incorporates an earlier narrative known as the Royal Frankish Annals, which was written around 790x800 and cover Frankish history from 741 to its present.Footnote 50 The Royal Frankish Annals had also framed recent history with consistent reference to God's agency.Footnote 51 The author of the Annals of Metz took this language and projected it onto the earlier past of the late seventh century, which suggests that the annalist learned from the earlier work how to write God into her narrative.

It is especially significant that the Annals of Metz describes the young Pippin being taught about divine agency in his education.Footnote 52 His saintly aunt Begga, for example, instructed Pippin that ‘in his coming rule, he should keep himself, with the Lord helping, among his teenage lessons’.Footnote 53 Begga herself is described as educating him ‘with the Lord providing’.Footnote 54 His aunt Gertrude also taught Pippin ‘heavenly discipline’, while ‘filled with God's grace’.Footnote 55 Pippin, ‘gifted with divine grace, went beyond all his relatives’ salutary admonitions’.Footnote 56 This shows the importance of divine agency in education itself, but is also significant if these annals were indeed written by an abbess in order to educate a Carolingian prince. Begga and Gertrude may be representing Gisela's perception of her own role in teaching Charles the Younger. If this was the case, these passages suggest that the writing and reading of the Annals of Metz were themselves seen as acts willed by God for the education of Christians.

The narrative depicts Pippin putting his teenage lessons into practice on various occasions. The most significant and well-constructed episode concerns the battle of Tertry in 687, traditionally seen as the starting point of Carolingian supremacy.Footnote 57 The Annals of Metz does not simply ascribe Pippin's triumph to God. Instead, it presents the respective combatants as examples of good and bad responses to divine agency. The annalist compared Pippin to Theuderic III (d. 691), ruler of the Frankish kingdom of Neustria and opponent of Pippin, who led the rival kingdom of Austrasia. Theuderic and Pippin approach the battle differently, ‘with unequal plans’.Footnote 58 The reader is invited to consider the contrasting attitudes, either of which were possibilities for contemporary Carolingian commanders.

The annalist begins with Theuderic, the proud and oppressive king of Neustria. Theuderic ‘boasted more in his multitude of innumerable people than in the counsel of prudence’.Footnote 59 The annalist uses language intended to denote pride, as in the description of Theuderic's forces as ‘his multitude of innumerable people’. Theuderic tells his men that Pippin had sought peace because Pippin was terrified of the Neustrian king. Theuderic even believes that Pippin ‘had been handed over to him’.Footnote 60 This use of the passive is significant. God could be the implied agent here, but it also makes Theuderic the centre of attention. The boast was itself groundless, because Theuderic was in fact trusting in his own strength.

Pippin, by contrast, describes himself as fighting ‘for love of him who has the power to save those hoping in him [Ps. 16: 7]’.Footnote 61 As Begga and Gertrude had taught him, he defines himself in terms of his trust in God rather than his own strength. He also now teaches these lessons to his men, telling them ‘to commend themselves with prayers and offerings … to the omnipotence of God, who gives honour and victory to all fearing him and guarding his precepts [Ps. 118: 36]’.Footnote 62 While the annalist could simply have ascribed Pippin's victory to God, she prefers to demonstrate the correct attitude to God's agency through the direct speech of her hero. The vocabulary of hoping in and fearing God, as opposed to boasting, emphasizes the importance of attitudes and beliefs as much as actions. It is no coincidence that Pippin's speech also describes God's faithfulness and power (using language from the Psalms), precisely those attributes which evoked this kind of trust.

Readers could easily have identified themselves with Pippin's army, especially if they were among the higher echelons of the Carolingian elite. Pippin's speech is as much a challenge to these readers as it was to the characters within the narrative. The annalist then uses the narrative to demonstrate the efficacy of such an attitude. Pippin attacked, ‘superior in arms and counsel’, and Theuderic was routed.Footnote 63 Pippin subsequently ‘bestowed ample spoils to his followers’, an important measure of his success, while also ‘giving thanks to God’.Footnote 64 Throughout the text, the author uses the words and attitudes of Pippin and his men both to demonstrate God's agency and to show the proper human response.

The Annals of Fulda

The Annals of Metz’s demonstration of correct attitudes to God's agency can also be found in the Annals of Fulda, introduced above. These exist in several different versions, involving different authors and continuations from the 830s until the early tenth century, and between them cover Frankish history from 714 until 901.Footnote 65 For most of their history, they were linked to the monastery of Fulda and the archbishopric of Mainz, with one other continuation being written in Bavaria.Footnote 66 Just as the Annals of Metz were deeply relevant to the concerns of the Carolingian elite in the early 800s, so the Annals of Fulda address the east Frankish elites of the late ninth century.Footnote 67

As various scholars have argued, the entry for 869 was the work of a new author, who continued the narrative until 882.Footnote 68 This author was clearly passionate about God's agency, and took a very different approach from that of his predecessor. Up to this point, the annals had been remarkably reticent about ascribing events to God's will.Footnote 69 By contrast, the entry for 869 depicted God's agency in almost every episode. A rebel army, for example, was defeated ‘with the Lord dealing out a worthy reward for [their] treachery’, while King Louis the German (d. 876) lay ill but ‘merited to be cured by the Heavenly Doctor’ by distributing alms.Footnote 70 This pattern continued, albeit slightly less intensely, for the remainder of this author's section into the 880s. The different treatments of divine agency show how different historians, apparently all monks at Fulda, could write about God very differently. The later author wanted to teach his readers that God was active in their recent past.

This annalist's account of campaigning on the eastern border of Louis’ kingdom in 869 shows that it was not simply the frequency of God's intervention that taught these lessons but the whole shape of the narrative. Whereas the Annals of Metz had contrasted the different attitudes of its characters to divine agency, the description of the Bohemian rebellion in the Annals of Fulda shows how the correct attitude had played out in recent events. The entry for 869 begins dramatically, with the annalist writing that ‘constant’ Bohemian raids ‘infested’ the frontier, the raiders burning settlements and taking women captive.Footnote 71 Although these raiders were checked, more tribes joined them. The Bohemians then ‘devastated many places and killed those rashly assembling against them’.Footnote 72 The historian thus raises the stakes within the narrative by emphasizing the threat facing the Franks. As King Louis made a plan of campaign against the particular threat posed by Rastiz, ruler of the Moravians, further disaster struck: Louis fell ill. At the crisis point of the narrative, with the king dying and the Bohemians overrunning the kingdom, Louis, ‘forced by necessity, gave command of his army to Charles, his youngest son’.Footnote 73 Although Charles the Fat (d. 888) was actually thirty years old, the annalist here implies his inexperience. The annalist seeks to stress to the fullest extent the catastrophe facing the kingdom: as its fate hung in the balance, the least experienced prince marched out to face the foe.

At this point of crisis, the historian notes, Louis also ‘commended the result of this affair to the Lord’.Footnote 74 In the light of what follows, this is the turning point of the narrative. Charles came to Rastiz's fortifications, which were described as ‘vast’ and ‘unlike any older ones’, a further threat.Footnote 75 He and his army, however, attacked, ‘relying on God's help’.Footnote 76 All Rastiz's fortresses were burned, his treasures looted and his followers routed. In other words, Charles's victory was comprehensive. Just as the annalist had stressed the threat facing the kingdom, so he also describes the extent of Charles's victory in lavish detail. The annalist then concludes the account with Charles meeting his brother Karlmann (d. 880), with both ‘rejoicing together in the victories given to them by heaven’.Footnote 77

The historian took his readers carefully from threat and danger to hope and finally success. In many respects, such a structure is a basic form of storytelling, which has been discussed at length by literary scholars.Footnote 78 There is an inciting incident (the Bohemian rebellion), a further complication (the illness of Louis) and finally a reversal and resolution (military victory). The resolution comes, however, as a result of God's agency within the narrative. The characters’ response to the unfolding events is to recognize that the resolution of the story depends on God. Louis commends the result of the campaign to God from his sickbed. Charles advances against the huge fortresses ‘relying on God's help’. The story concludes with the recognition by Charles and Karlmann of God's hand in their success. The Fulda historian is presenting a carefully constructed vision of how the world works, which commends the behaviour of Louis the German and his sons. When its readers faced similar crises and challenges, the logic of the narrative would have encouraged them to depend on God.

Conclusion

Both these historians were sensitive to the practicalities of campaigning, especially the importance of leadership. Each narrative, nonetheless, ultimately ascribes responsibility for the course of events not to human efforts but to God, just as Cassiodorus had recommended. This supports recent conclusions that these and other Carolingian educational texts were read by the laity.Footnote 79 These narratives were too carefully constructed to have been written simply to teach novice monks facts and dates. Rather, the men who ran the Carolingian empire continued to need training and educating in the correct response to battles against the odds.

It is noteworthy that both sets of annals emphasize attitude as much as behaviour. Carolingian armies often undertook certain ritual actions before and after battle, such as fasting and the praying of litanies.Footnote 80 Charlemagne himself described such rituals in a letter to his queen, Fastrada, in 791.Footnote 81 An older generation of scholarship used to present such ritual rather mechanistically, as a quid pro quo intended to obtain God's favour.Footnote 82 Elements of this could have been read from Orosius, such as his reference to how Mascezel's fasting ‘merited’ victory. While Carolingian historians occasionally described similar rituals, their emphasis is much more on the attitudes which these actions reflected. Pippin urges his men not only to make offerings to God but to fear and trust him. The Fulda annalist describes Charles the Fat's dependence on, and celebration of, God's help, rather than the specific ritual actions this may have involved. Theuderic, by contrast, failed to perceive God's agency correctly and relied on his own strength, which proved insufficient. These narratives were, therefore, educating their audiences in the faith and its implications, showing that God was a trustworthy and powerful source of help.

These histories thus presented practical examples of the relevance of deeply held Christian beliefs. Their approach was inspired by the examples of Cassiodorus, Orosius and others, but the authors also developed their works much further. As a result, history writing can be seen as representing what was fundamental about the Carolingian renewal of Christian education: the practical application of correct doctrine in a changing political context.

Footnotes

I wish to thank the audience at the Ecclesiastical History Society's Winter Meeting in January 2017 for their helpful observations, my supervisor Rosamond McKitterick for her feedback on early drafts of this article, and the anonymous peer reviewers for their stimulating comments. Any mistakes remain, of course, my own.

1 McKitterick, Rosamond, The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms, 789–895 (London, 1977); Contreni, John J., Carolingian Learning, Masters and Manuscripts (Aldershot, 1992); Brown, Giles, ‘Introduction: The Carolingian Renaissance’, in McKitterick, Rosamond, ed., Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation (Cambridge, 1994), 1–51.

2 ‘[D]ebet ergo quisque discere … quid agere debeat intelligat anima, quanto in omnipotentis Dei laudibus…cucurrerit lingua’: MGH Capit. 1, 79 (Epistola de litteris colendis). All translations are my own except where noted otherwise.

3 McKitterick, Rosamond, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge, 1989), 169–70.

4 Hen, Yitzhak and Innes, Matthew, eds, The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2000); McKitterick, Rosamond, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2004); Reimitz, Helmut, History, Frankish Identity, and the Framing of Western Ethnicity 550–850 (Cambridge, 2015); Gantner, Clemens, McKitterick, Rosamond and Meeder, Sven, eds, The Resources of the Past in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 2015).

5 McKitterick, Written Word, 170.

6 Reuter, Timothy, The Annals of Fulda: Ninth Century Histories 2, Manchester Medieval Sources (Manchester, 1992), 5; Kelly, Gavin and Stover, Justin, ‘The Hersefeldensis and the Fuldensis of Ammianus Marcellinus: A Reconsideration’, Cambridge Classical Journal 62 (2016), 108–29.

7 Annales Fuldenses (hereafter: AF; MGH SRG i.u.s. 7).

8 Reuter, Fulda, 8; Matthew Innes and Rosamond McKitterick, ‘The Writing of History’, in eadem, ed., Carolingian Culture, 193–220, at 201.

9 Innes, Matthew, ‘Memory, Orality and Literacy in an Early Medieval Society’, P&P 158 (1998), 3–36.

10 For example, Sigihart of Fulda: AF, 76 (s.a. 872).

11 McKitterick, Written Word, 210–70; Mayke de Jong, ‘The Empire as ecclesia: Hrabanus Maurus and biblical historia for Rulers’, in Hen and Innes, eds, Uses of the Past, 191–226; Wormald, Patrick and Nelson, Janet L., eds, Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2007); Stone, Rachel, Morality and Masculinity in the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge, 2011); Brown, W. C. et al. , eds, Documentary Culture and the Laity in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2013).

12 Mayke de Jong, ‘Carolingian Political Discourse and the Biblical Past: Hraban, Dhuoda, Radbert’, in Gantner, McKitterick and Meeder, eds, Resources of the Past, 87–102, at 89.

13 Foot, Sarah, ‘Annals and Chronicles in Western Europe’, in eadem and Robinson, Chase, eds, The Oxford History of Historical Writing, 2: 400–1400 (Oxford, 2012), 346–67, at 364.

14 Innes, ‘Memory, Orality and Literacy’, 13.

15 Andrew Marsham, ‘Universal Histories’, in Foot and Robinson, eds, Oxford History of Historical Writing 2, 431–45, at 441.

16 Deliyannis, Deborah M., ‘Introduction’, in eadem, ed., Historiography in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 2003), 1–12.

17 McKitterick, Written Word, 165–210.

18 Jerome, De viris illustribus (ed. W. Herding, Hieronymus, Liber de viris inlustribus. Gennadius, De viris inlustribus [Leipzig, 1924]). For Carolingian interest in De viris, see McKitterick, Written Word, 201.

19 ‘[M]ultaque ad utilitatem legentium pertinentia hinc inde congregans’: Jerome, De viris 22 (Herding, ed., Hieronymus, 24; italics in translations mine). For the reception of Hegesippus, see Pollard, Richard, ‘The De Excidio of “Hegesippus” and the Reception of Josephus in the Early Middle Ages’, Viator 46 (2015), 65–100.

20 Jerome, De viris 22, 81 (Herding, ed., Hieronymus, 24, 50–1).

21 Gennadius, De viris 17, 40 (Herding, ed., Hieronymus, 78–9, 88–9).

22 ‘[A]dversum idola disputans, quo primum errore crevissent … ex qua ostendit’: Jerome, De viris 22 (Herding, ed., Hieronymus, 24).

23 ‘[A]dversus querulos Christiani nominis’: Gennadius, De viris 40 (Herding, ed., Hieronymus, 88).

24 Isidore, Etymologiae 1.41–4 (Etymologiarum siue Originum libri XX, ed. W. M. Lindsay, vol. 1, Oxford Classical Texts [Oxford, 1911]; this volume is unpaginated); cf. McKitterick, Written Word, 201; Deliyannis, ‘Introduction’, 3–4.

25 ‘[D]isciplina a discendo nomen accepit’: Isidore, Etymologiae 1.1.

26 ‘Historiae gentium non inpediunt legentibus in his quae utilia dixerunt’: ibid. 1.43.

27 ‘[A]d institutionem praesentium’: ibid.

28 Cassiodorus, Institutiones (Cassiodorus senatoris Institutiones, ed. R. A. B. Mynors [Oxford, 1937]); cf. Innes, Matthew and McKitterick, Rosamond, ‘The Writing of History’, in McKitterick, Rosamond, ed., Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation (Cambridge, 1994), 193–220, at 193.

29 McKitterick, Written Word, 194.

30 Cassiodorus, Institutiones 1.1–16 (ed. Mynors, 2–55).

31 For Carolingian attitudes to Scripture, see de Jong, ‘Empire as ecclesia’.

32 ‘[H]abent etiam … relatores temporum et studia Christiana … qui cum res ecclesiasticas referant, et vicissitudines accidentes per tempora diversa describant, ut sensus legentium rebus caelestibus semper erudiant’: Cassiodorus, Institutiones 1.17.1 (ed. Mynors, 55).

33 ‘[Q]uando nihil ad fortuitos casus, nihil ad deorum potestates infirmas, ut gentiles fecerunt, sed arbitrio Creatoris applicare veraciter universa contendunt’: ibid.

34 Footnote Ibid.

35 Orosius, Historiae (Orosius, historiarum adversum paganos libri VII accredit eiusdem liber apologeticus, ed. Karl Zangemeister [Vienna, 1882]).

36 Peter Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History (Oxford, 2012), 186–207; although see the recent response by Goetz, Hans-Werner, ‘Orosius und seine “Sieben Geschichtsbücher gegen die Heiden”. Geschichtstheologie oder Rhetorik?’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 96 (2014), 187–98.

37 Van Nuffelen, Orosius, 68–9.

38 Footnote Ibid. 17–18.

39 ‘[R]espondeant nunc mihi obtrectatores ueri Dei hoc loco: Hannibalem a capessenda subruendaque Roma utrum Romana abstinuit fotitudo an diuina miseratio’: Orosius, Historiae 4.17.8 (Orosius, ed. Zangemeister, 252–3).

40 Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, VLQ MS 20. I have discussed this manuscript elsewhere, with Rosamond McKitterick, in ‘A Carolingian Epitome of Orosius from Tours: Leiden VLQ 20’, in Helmut Reimitz, Rutger Kramer and Graeme Ward, eds, Historiographies of Identity, 4: Historiography and Identity towards the End of the First Millennium, a Comparative Perspective (Vienna, forthcoming).

41 ‘[D]eo sibi adminiculante’: VLQ MS 20, fol. 139v; cf. Orosius, Historiae 7.35.23.

42 ‘[M]asezel iam inde ad theodosium sciens quantum in rebus desperatissimis oratio hominis per fidem Christi a clementia dei impetraret … uictoriam meruit’: VLQ MS 20, fol. 139v; cf. Orosius, Historiae 7.36.5.

43 For Gregory, see Reimitz, History, Identity, Ethnicity, 27–125, with discussion of Christianity at 65–70; for Bede, see Higham, N. J., (Re-)reading Bede: The Ecclesiastical History in Context (London, 2006), especially 148–67.

44 For summary of recent scholarship, see Evans, Robert A. H., ‘Christian Hermeneutics and Narratives of War in the Carolingian Empire’, Transformation: A Holistic Journal of Mission Studies 34 (2017), 150–63, at 152–4.

45 Annales Mettenses Priores (hereafter: AMP; MGH SRG i.u.s. 10); Paul Fouracre and Gerberding, Richard, Late Merovingian France: History and Hagiography 640–720 (Manchester, 1996), 330–49; Yitzhak Hen, ‘The Annals of Metz and the Merovingian Past’, in idem and Innes, eds, Uses of the Past, 175–90; idem, ‘Canvassing for Charles: The Annals of Metz in Late Carolingian Francia’, in Corradini, Richard, ed., Zwischen Niederschrift und Wiederschrift. Hagiographie und Historiographie im Spannungsfeld von Kompendienüberlieferung und Editionstechnik (Vienna, 2010), 139–46.

46 For a summary of the debate, see Hen, ‘Annals of Metz’, 176–7.

47 Nelson, Janet, ‘Gender and Genre in Women Historians of the Early Middle Ages’, in Genet, J.-P., ed., L'Historiographie médiévale en Europe (Paris, 1991), 149–63, at 159.

48 ‘Domino cooperante’: AMP, s.a. 688 (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 5).

49 ‘Christo largiente’: AMP, s.a. 691 (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 13).

50 Annales Regni Francorum (hereafter: AMP; MGH SRG 6); see Reimitz, History, Identity, and Ethnicity, 335–45, for the most recent discussion.

51 Evans, ‘Christian Hermeneutics’, 154–5.

52 For the role of women in Carolingian education, see Nelson, Janet, ‘Les Femmes et l'évangélisation au IXe siècle’, Revue du Nord 68 (1986), 471–86.

53 ‘[U]t sese regno futuro inter adolescentiae erudimenta … Domino adiuvante servaret’: AMP, s.a. 678 (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 3).

54 ‘[P]restante Domino’: AMP, s.a. 688 (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 2).

55 ‘[G]ratia Dei repleta caelesti disciplinae’: ibid. (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 4).

56 ‘[G]ratia divine preditus cunctas salubres suae genitricis ammonitiones … preveniebat’: ibid. (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 3).

57 Fouracre and Gerberding, Late Merovingian France, 24.

58 ‘[N]on paribus consiliis’: AMP, s.a. 690 (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 10).

59 ‘[I]n innumerabilis populi multitudine magis quam in consiliis prudentiae confidens … gloriabatur’: ibid.

60 ‘[T]raditum sibi iam Pippinum’: ibid.

61 ‘[Q]uod pro eius amore gerebat, qui potestatem habet salvos facere sperantes in se’: ibid. (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 10–11).

62 ‘[S]ese votis et orationibus Dei omnipotentiae … commendarent, qui dat honorem et victoriam omnibus timentibus eum et custodientibus precepta eius’: ibid. (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 10).

63 ‘[P]restantior consilio et armis’: ibid. (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 11).

64 ‘[S]polia ampla, Deo gratias referens, suis fidelibus impertitur’: ibid. (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 12).

65 Reuter, Fulda, 1–14; MacLean, Simon, Kingship and Politics in the Late Ninth Century: Charles the Fat and the End of the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge, 2003), 23–47.

66 MacLean, Kingship and Politics, 24–7.

67 For the east Frankish kingdom, see Goldberg, Eric, Struggle for Empire: Kingship and Conflict under Louis the German, 817–876 (Ithaca, NY, 2006)

68 Hellmann, Sigemund, ‘Die Entstehung und Überlieferung der Annales Fuldenses. I’, Neues Archiv 33 (1908), 705–17; Reuter, Fulda, 8–9.

69 For a few exceptions, see AF, s.aa. 850, 854, 857 (MGH SRG i.u.s. 7, 41, 45, 48)

70 ‘Domino illi infidelitatis suae condignam mercedem retribuente … unde et a caelesti medico … curari promeruit’: AF, s.a. 869 (MGH SRG i.u.s. 7, 68–9).

71 ‘[C]rebris incursionibus infestant’: ibid. (MGH SRG i.u.s. 7, 67).

72 ‘[P]lurima loca devastant et quosdam sibi incaute congredientes interficiunt’: ibid.

73 ‘[U]nde necessitate conpulsus Karolum filiorum suorum ultimum eidem exercitui praefecit’: ibid. (MGH SRG i.u.s. 7, 68–9).

74 ‘Domino exictum rei commendans’: ibid. (MGH SRG i.u.s. 7, 69).

75 ‘[I]neffabilem … munitionem et omnibus antiquissimis dissimilem’: ibid.

76 ‘Dei auxilio fretus’: ibid.

77 ‘[D]e victoria sibi caelitus data gratulantes’: ibid.

78 See O'Neill, Patrick, ‘Narrative Structure’, in Herman, David, Jahn, Manfred and Ryan, Marie-Laure, eds, Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory (London, 2005), 366–70.

79 For example, Costambeys, Marios, Innes, Matthew and MacLean, Simon, The Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2011), 302–3; Stone, Morality and Masculinity, 45–50.

80 McCormick, Michael, ‘The Liturgy of War in the Early Middle Ages: Crisis, Litanies, and the Carolingian Monarchy’, Viator 15 (1984), 1–25; for a survey of recent literature, see Evans, ‘Christian Hermeneutics’, 153–4.

81 See McKitterick, Rosamond, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge, 2008), 43–8, especially for the links between this letter and contemporary histories.

82 For example, Wallace-Hadrill, Michael, Early Medieval History (Oxford, 1975), 72–3; Nelson, Janet, ‘On the Limits of the Carolingian Renaissance’, in Wood, Derek, ed., Renaissance and Renewal in Christian History, SCH 14 (Oxford, 1977), 51–69; Campbell, James, Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London, 1986), 14.

Ibid
Ibid