Pastoral Works
Priests, Books, and Compilatory Practices in the Carolingian Period
by Bastiaan Waagmeester
A study of the compilation and usage of the previously unexplored material that is the Carolingian priest’s book.
Much of the Christian empire established by the Carolingians in the eighth century was not only built through royal initiative, but also through the work of local priests. Living among the laity, these clerics provided pastoral care and religious instruction. Yet despite their vital contribution to the development of Christianity in Western Europe, these clergymen and the communities they served remain understudied. This book investigates the manuscripts they used, offering a glimpse into everyday life around the local church. Far from being poor and illiterate, priests had access to texts specifically adapted to their needs. By examining how these materials were compiled, this study reveals what mattered most in the early medieval countryside. Drawing on excerpts from collections of liturgy, canon law, and patristic expositions – often preserved in the great monastic and court libraries – it uncovers the diversity of local religious practice. These texts reflect how the efforts instigated by Carolingians to foster ‘good Christianity’ were interpreted and implemented outside the centres of power. In exploring these seemingly modest manuscripts, this study opens new pathways into the world of the Carolingian local church and the people who inhabited it.
- By (author) Bastiaan Waagmeester
Other Titles in this Series
Homo Legens
Styles et pratiques de lecture: Analyses comparees des traditions orales et ecrites au Moyen Age / Styles and Practices of Reading: Comparative Analyses of Oral and Written Traditions in the Middle Ages
Volume 26
Writing Names in Medieval Sacred Spaces
Inscriptions in the West, from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages
Volume 56
Manuscript Communication
Visual and Textual Mechanics of Communication in Hagiographical Texts from the Southern Low Countries, 900-1200
Volume 32
Medieval Women in Letters
Letters by Women, to Women, and about Women in Medieval Literatures
Volume 66
Literacy in Medieval and Early Modern Vilnius
Forms of Writing and Rhetorical Spaces in the City
Volume 55
Documenting the Everyday in Medieval Europe
The Social Dimensions of a Writing Revolution, 1250-1350
Volume 42
Orality and Literacy in the Middle Ages
Essays on a Conjunction and its Consequences in Honour of D. H. Green
Volume 12
Understanding Monastic Practices of Oral Communication (Western Europe, tenth-thirteenth centuries)
Volume 21
Seeing the Invisible in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Papers from Verbal and Pictorial Imaging: Representing and Accessing Experience of the Invisible, 400-1000 (Utrecht, 11-13 December 2003)
Volume 14
Stilus – modus – usus
Regeln der Konflikt- und Verhandlungsfuhrung am Papsthof des Mittelalters / Rules of Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at the Papal Court in the Middle Ages
Volume 44
The Use of Pragmatic Documents in Medieval Wallachia and Moldavia (Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries)
Volume 47
Reading Images and Texts
Medieval Images and Texts as Forms of Communication. Papers from the Third Utrecht Symposium on Medieval Literacy, Utrecht, 7-9 December 2000
Volume 8
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