On the face of it, the Carolingian “lay intellectual” would seem an unpromising topic for investigation, an oxymoron wrapped in an anachronism. Nevertheless, the category proves immensely valuable, in part because we learn so much from the points of congruence and divergence. The laypeople we meet in these pages may not have been intellectuals in the manner of Bernard-Henri Lévy, but they still thought actively and creatively about society and its problems and wrote for a public that understood what they were writing about. This was obviously true for Einhard (discussed by David Ganz), but equally so for Nithard (discussed by Stuart Airlie) and even Dhuoda (discussed by Janet Nelson), who expected her son to show her handbook to others. As Scott Ashley puts it in his fine contribution on Æthelweard, they were “public moralists” (243). Demonstration of their degree of engagement and their intelligence and learning is a welcome corrective to received opinion. Equally interesting is the fact that “lay” is shown to be such a wholly anachronistic category for the ninth and tenth centuries. The articles make it clear that specialists on the Gregorian Reform have it right: the divide between “lay” and “clerical” was an eleventh-century program. The ninth and tenth centuries saw it much differently. Here, too, Ashley has a nice formulation: “‘Lay’ and ‘ecclesiastical’ were less antagonistic and impermeable orders than complementary and overlapping identities” (238–239). Einhard is again an obvious example, and again far from unique: Nithard's epitaph at Saint-Riquier lauded him as being both brave in battle and knowledgeable in sacred wisdom (54). Several conditions made the overlaps possible. The most important was the centrality of the court as the arena of childhood education and later political advancement, for it fostered constant interaction among members of the elite (whether “lay” or “clerical”). Interaction at court thereby helped create an educated “lay” audience that understood ecclesiastical discourse intelligently and with a sense of social urgency. As Nelson shows, even Dhuoda was formed by the court and may have written to reform it. In Michael Wood's interpretation, the great reforms of Æthelstan's reign reflected the king's own decisions and values, but they were implemented by those who had received their formation in Alfred's court. A second important factor was the close relationships between lay patrons and monasteries. Here Valerie Garver's reading of the Life of Liutberga of Windenhausen is very revealing, first in its evidence for women teaching women, but even more in its depictions of close, ongoing interactions between lay aristocrats and convents. The result of such interactions was what Nelson calls “a shared scientia” (117). One should come away from this volume with heightened respect for its sophistication. We are now used to evidence that the later medieval laity had quite a deep understanding of the Catholic faith, partly as a result of mendicant preaching and devotional innovations. It therefore comes as something of a surprise to read Celia Chazelle's magnificent exegesis of an ivory crucifixion scene originally made for Charles the Bald (now the cover of the Pericopes of Henry II in Munich). Not only are its scriptural, sacramental, and ecclesiological allusions immensely challenging intellectually, but they also anticipate some of the most important later devotional iconographies, particularly with respect to the Eucharist. Nelson similarly insists on Dhuoda's sophistication and originality, as does Paul Kershaw for Eberhard of Friuli—Kershaw arguing that Eberhard not only understood but sympathized with Gottschalk of Orbais's teaching of double predestination, as he actively sought a copy of Hrabanus's difficult De laudibus sanctae crucis. (Kershaw also makes the tantalizing suggestion that warriors like Eberhard might have been particularly drawn to Gottschalk's strong doctrine of predestination because its fatalism would have matched that of men whose lives were at risk in every battle.)

Despite the collection's title, three of its ten substantive articles do not concern the Carolingians at all but rather tenth-century England. This reflects the interests of the late Patrick Wormald, who originally convened the papers that these articles develop; for Wormald understood that the West Saxon legal and monastic reform was built on Carolingian precedents. The three articles on England more than confirm his insight, with the kind of concrete analysis at which Wormald excelled: for instance, Michael Wood traces a poem personally associated with Æthelstan to a manuscript brought to England by his tutor, John the Saxon. But the three essays are also interesting within a purely English context: thus, David Pratt's careful demonstration of the mind behind Alfred's recasting of Boethius and Augustine; Wood's reconstruction of the distinctive piety underlying Æthelstan's innovative political program; and Ashley's discovering intelligent purpose in the very characteristics for which Æthelweard is usually disparaged. These articles also agree with the more properly “Carolingian” contributions in at least one particularly important way: so far as the category “lay intellectual” applies to the period, it applies only to a very narrow segment of the laity. We are not dealing with the laity as a whole, not even with the aristocracy as a whole. Three of those discussed were kings; all the others had unusually close ties with the royal family, at least by patronage and often by kinship. This was true of Einhard, Nithard, Eberhard, Dhuoda (certainly through her husband), and famously Æthelweard. It was also true of Liutberga's patron Gisla (daughter of the quasi-royal Saxon chieftain Hessi). Several authors suggest a thought-provoking explanation: scientia was a royal virtue. In his contribution, Thomas F. X. Noble defines the attributes of a “secular sanctity” that was thought to characterize the virtuous noble and notes that these were not just royal virtues but virtues believed necessary to those counts (and ealdormen) who shared the royal ministry. Thus, to write for the public welfare, to act as patrons for the writing of books, and to be able to understand the exegesis of Bede or Hrabanus was to show that one had a king's responsibilities and a king's virtues. It is surely not a coincidence, then, that the aristocratic leaders who replaced the Carolingians or who began to rule provinces in the style of kings came from these very same families or from families much like them.