The Politics of Memory and Identity in Carolingian Royal Diplomas
The West Frankish Kingdom (840-987)
By (author) Geoffrey Koziol
Based upon a ‘performative’ interpretation of royal charters, The Politics of Memory and Identity offers a new and surprising narrative of West Frankish history from the death of Louis the Pious in 840 to the demise of the Carolingian dynasty in 987. The key is a carefully contextualised analysis of the circumstances in which kings issued charters and an alert examination of the charters’ verbal and visual semiotics. For which monasteries and cathedrals did kings issue diplomas and under what conditions? Who were the patrons who interceded for the recipients of diplomas and what titles were they given? Which kings were named as predecessors and which were omitted? Such clues allow us to recover the meaning of events whose significance was concealed by chroniclers, and to find unsuspected continuities in 150 years of West Frankish politics. They allow us to see a ruthless exercise of power in the use of forgeries and a commitment to political reform in the reform of monasteries. They reveal the long shadow cast by the reign of Charles the Bald in West Frankish history and the importance of a handful of monasteries as ‘sites of memory’. Above all, an intertextual reading of diplomas shows that political leaders in the kingdom made decisions based on policy, where the policy was articulated in terms of lessons drawn from their understanding of the past, and diplomas were the records that conveyed the lessons.
- By (author) Geoffrey Koziol
Other Titles in this Series
Ruling the Script in the Middle Ages
Formal Aspects of Written Communication (Books, Charters, and Inscriptions)
Volume 35
Diplomatics in the Netherlands
The Use, Editing, and Study of Charters by Dutch Historians from the Middle Ages to the Present
Volume 63
Sins of the Tongue in the Medieval West
Sinful, Unethical, and Criminal Words in Middle Dutch (1300-1550)
Volume 36
Strategies of Writing
Studies on Text and Trust in the Middle Ages: Papers from Trust in Writing in the Middle Ages (Utrecht, 28-29 November 2002)
Volume 13
Looking Back from the Invention of Printing
Mothers and the Teaching of Reading in the Middle Ages
Volume 40
Medieval Women in Letters
Letters by Women, to Women, and about Women in Medieval Literatures
Volume 66
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
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