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List of contents
1. Introduction: using the past, interpreting the present, influencing the future Matthew Innes; 2. Memory, identity and power in Lombard Italy Walter Pohl; 3. Memory and narrative in the cult of the early Anglo-Saxon saints Catherine Cubitt; 4. The uses of the Old Testament in early medieval canon law: the Collectio vetus gallica and the Collectio hiberniensis Rob Meens; 5. The transmission of tradition: Gregorian influence and innovation in eighth-century Italian monasticism Marios Costambeys; 6. The world and its past as Christian allegory in the early middle ages Dominic Janes; 7. The Franks as the new Israel? Education for an identity from Pippin to Charlemagne Mary Garrison; 8. Political ideology in Carolingian historiography Rosamond McKitterick; 9. The annals of Metz and the Merovingian past Yitzhak Hen; 10. The empire as ecclesia: Hrabanus Maurus and Biblical historia for rulers Mayke de Jong; 11. Teutons or Trojans? The Carolingians and the Germanic past Matthew Innes; 12. A man for all seasons: Pacifus of Verona and the creation of a local Carolingian past Cristina La Rocca.
Summary
This book investigates how people in the early middle ages used the past: to legitimate the present, to understand current events, and as a source of identity. Each essay examines the mechanisms by which ideas about the past were - sometimes - subtly reshaped for present purposes.
