The early Middle ages: europes Long Morning

Jennifer r. davis and Michael McCormick

The long morning: paul duttons felicitous phrase captures well the exciting new vision emerging from ongoing research into the early Middle ages. increasingly scholars recognize here the age when, after the collapse of rome, europe set off in the new directions that led to high medieval and even modern civilization. from the grandest superstructures to minute details of country life, early medieval women and men wrought patterns that shaped the next thousand years of european history.

not even a generation ago, scholars located around the year 1000 a series of crucial new directions in the development of european civilization: the demographic upturn after the late roman decline, the spread of new agricultural techniques and productivity, the beginning of medieval trading centers and circuits, to name only them. all have now been detected closer to 800, or even 700. These apparently precocious developments fit nicely next to those which have long been recognized as already underway in the early Middle ages: the rise of the papacy and the imperial idea, the triumph of coenobitic monasticism on the Benedictine model, sacralized monarchy, the spread of a new, pan-european handwriting in the form of Carolingian minuscule, the rebirth of classicizing Latin, and the diffusion of a romanizing liturgy and chant. Many features that distinguished the full flowering of medieval civilization in the eleventh and later centuries had in fact begun to develop two or three hundred years earlier than previously perceived. That forces us to rethink the place of the early Middle ages in the long-term development of european civilization. Today the early Middle ages appear not so much as a dark night after the fall of rome, but as a long morning whose creative powers laid down the parameters and future directions of european economic, cultural and political development. it is to this new vision, and to the last twenty years of distinguished scholarship in europe and north america which have produced it, that we pay tribute with this books title.

Like the languages still spoken there, modern nation states such as england and france reach their roots into what had been until then the roman soil of Britannia and Gallia. in that long morning of medieval civilization, the great and

The Long Morning of Medieval Europe2

permanent linguistic frontier came to distinguish the worlds of germanic- and romance-speakers, not so far from the edge that separated eaters of butter and of olive oil. it was the monasteries, scribes and ambitious patrons of this age no other who found, copied and preserved virtually every word we know of the great world literature of ancient Latin. The telling statistic bears repeating. from the birth of Latin literature down to 800 ad, even counting every fragment, only 1800 manuscript books or scraps of books have been preserved. Many, perhaps most of them were copied in the eighth century. flush with new-found or, as Chapter 2 argues, newly extracted wealth, ninth-century scribes in the Carolingian dominions alone used the skins of countless flocks and herds to produce another 9000 surviving manuscript books. and that does not include the works written in the British isles and Spain. These 9000 books constitute a cultural monument which, as Chapter 4 observes, is also a biological one. That we can even think so synoptically owes much to the quiet labors of previous generations great specialists of early medieval manuscripts.1

For the rest of the medieval millennium, power would flow through the kingdoms, counties and duchies that early medieval people imagined and invented, often out of the rubble of rome.2 So too the religious structures: Benedicts monasticism, the obsession with rome and the papacy, the ritual gestures and the very words performed down to the last century in village churches and great cathedrals across europe and the americas all are creatures of this age.3 alongside the ephemeral trading towns of the dawn of european commerce, places like dorestad, hamwic, haithabu, Birka and Kaupang, archaeologists are uncovering others, newly founded or revived, whose names are as familiar as dublin, London or venice. Their open economies were expanding into scarcely suspected economic circuits that stretched from Scandinavia to beyond Baghdad

1 See Michael McCormicks introduction to part Three in this volume.2 a pioneer here was Karl hauck in his von einer sptantiken randkultur zum

karolingischen europa, FS, 1 (1967): 393. See also Karl ferdinand Werner, La gense des duchs en france et en allemagne, in Nascit dellEuropa ed Europa carolingia: unequazione da verificare, Settimane, 27 (2 vols, Spoleto, 1981), vol. 1, pp. 175207, as well as the works in the series Transformation of the roman World: for example, hans-Werner goetz, Jrg Jarnut, Walter pohl and Sren Kaschke (eds), Regna and Gentes: The Relationship Between Late Antique and Early Medieval Peoples and Kingdoms in the Transformation of the Roman World, Transformation of the roman World, 13 (Leiden, 2003).

3 See, for example, on Benedictine monasticism: Josef Semmler, reichsidee und kirchliche gesetzgebung, Zeitschrift fr Kirchengeschichte, 71 (1960): 3765, and his numerous other contributions, cataloged in Mnchtum, Kirche, Herrschaft, 7501000, ed. dieter r. Bauer et al. (Sigmaringen, 1998), pp. 33548. on the importance of religion in political life in general, see eugen ewig, Zum christlichen Knigsgedanken im frhmittelalter, in his Sptantikes und frnkisches Gallien: Gesammelte Schriften (19521973), Beihefte der francia, 3 (2 vols, Munich, 1976), vol. 1, pp. 371, and his numerous other contributions collected therein; on the creation of ties between empire and papacy, see peter Classen, Karl der Grosse, das Papsttum und Byzanz: die Begrndung des karolingischen Kaisertums, horst fuhrmann and Claudia Mrtl (eds), Beitrge zur geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters, 9 (Sigmaringen, 1985); on ritual, see the references in the introduction to part four of this volume, note 3.

Introduction. The Early Middle Ages: Europes Long Morning 3

and laid the groundwork for the global reach of high medieval commerce.4 as this volume argues, even the population geography of the modern european countryside goes back to these centuries. Water mills and heavy swivel plows were then spreading across the acres reconquered from the retreating forests and helping to spawn the villages that still structure the landscape.5 Kings, the aristocracy and the law too took on lasting new features amidst this ages complex politics.6

Medieval europes emerging long morning bears little resemblance to the dim barbaric era, illiterate and closed in on its stagnating self, that once dominated even medievalists vision.7 in europe, this period has proved a dynamic field of medieval investigation for a few decades, its growth scanned by the rise of important new journals, such as Frhmittelalterliche Studien (Mnster-Westfalen, 1967) or Early Medieval Europe (harlow, 1992). in north america, research change has come more slowly. notwithstanding expert investigators of early medieval civilization in leading universities, quite literally from coast to coast, the field sometimes suffers still from a lingering disdain, perhaps connected with the ever-shrinking territory labeled as dark ages, the last redoubt of an obscurantist myth that once engulfed the entire millennium of european civilization after the fall of rome. one reason the label lingers lies in a misperception that the evidence for the early Middle ages is so poor as to hopelessly impoverish the investigation of its civilization. in fact, the quantity

4 Joachim henning (ed.), Post-Roman Towns, Trade and Settlement in Europe and Byzantium, Millennium Studies, 5 (2 vols, Berlin, 2007); richard hodges, Dark Age Economics: The Origins of Towns and Trade A.D. 5001000, 2nd edn (London, 1989); Bjrn ambrosiani (ed.), Birka Studies, 8 vols to date (Stockholm, 19922003). on the archaeology of towns generally, Martin Biddle, Approaches to Urban Archaeology (edinburgh, 1988).

5 among fundamental contributions to the debates on the early medieval countryside, see adriaan verhulst, Rural and Urban Aspects of Early Medieval Northwest Europe (aldershot, 1992), and Jean-pierre devroey, Etudes sur le grand domaine carolingien (aldershot, 1993), in addition to the works discussed in part one of this volume.

6 Landmark works on early medieval aristocrats and/or royal power include: gerd Tellenbach, Knigtum und Stmme in der Werdezeit des deutschen Reiches (Weimar, 1939); eduard hlawitschka, Franken, Alemannen, Bayern und Burgunder in Oberitalien (774962), forschungen zur oberrheinischen Landesgeschichte, 8 (freiburg im Breisgau, 1960); Carlrichard Brhl, Fodrum, gistum, servitium regis. Studien zu den wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen des Knigtums im Frankenreich und in den frnkischen Nachfolgestaaten Deutschland, Frankreich und Italien, Klner historische abhandlungen, 14 (2 vols, Cologne, 1968); hagen Keller, Adelsherrschaft und stdtische Gesellschaft in Oberitalien, 9.12. Jh., Bibliothek des deutschen historischen instituts in rom, 52 (Tbingen, 1979); eckhard Mller-Mertens, Die Reichsstruktur im Spiegel der Herrschaftspraxis Ottos des Grossen (Berlin, 1980); Karl Schmid, Gebetsgedenken und adliges Selbstverstndnis im Mittelalter, ed. gerd althoff and dieter geuenich (Sigmaringen, 1983); Michael Borgolte, Geschichte der Grafschaften Alemanniens in frnkischer Zeit, vortrge und forschungen, 31 (Sigmaringen, 1984); herwig Wolfram, History of the Goths, trans. Thomas J. dunlap (Berkeley, 1988); Jean durliat, Les finances publiques de Diocltien aux Carolingiens (284889), Beihefte der francia, 21 (Sigmaringen, 1990); rgine Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc (VIIeXe sicle): essai danthropologie sociale (paris, 1995), and patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, vol. 1 (oxford, 1999).

7 See, for an example of the new vison, rosamond McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge, 1989).

The Long Morning of Medieval Europe4

of textual evidence available since the nineteenth century is abundant enough that few if any scholars have read it all. This is not to say that it is evenly distributed over time and literary genre, or that the writings of early medieval women and men lack challenges for the linguistic and interpretive skills of the inexperienced.8 over the last few decades, nevertheless, scholars have grown more ingenious at devising penetrating new questions; more sensitive attention to our early medieval witnesses mental world has changed how we understand what they have to say.9 The level of investigation has deepened, and the probing grown more acute.10

The reasons behind the new vision are multiple, of course. in part, the very difficulty of studying this remote civilization has fanned scholars creative fires, challenging them to invent new ways of squeezing the rich surviving written record without stretching it. remarkably, in recent years the volume of written source materials securely assigned to this age has ballooned. new written evidence comes from texts long published but misattributed or misdated, while others have never before seen print. From the fifth century we have new sermons and letters of St. augustine; from the roman, germanic and Byzantine culture of north africa, quite literally hundreds of unnoticed texts have now been identified; a digital detectives astute flair has even uncovered a hundred short new texts of the venerable Bede.11 a hundred or so new documents from visigothic Spain, as well as ten thousand new charters have come from early medieval Catalonia to join the thousands of acts already known from the Middle rhine, Bavaria, and St. gall; from the folios of a famous ancient manuscript of virgil hundreds of hitherto unknown glosses have emerged to

8 on early medieval Latin, see dag norberg, Au seuil du Moyen Age: tudes linguistiques, mtriques et littraires (2 vols, padua, 197498); Bengt Lfstedt, Ausgewhlte Aufstze zur lateinischen Sprachgeschichte und Philologie, Walter Berschin (ed.) (Stuttgart, 2000).

9 Walter goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550800) (princeton, nJ, 1988) led the way here. Among studies of individual early medieval figures, see Jacques Fontaine, Isidore de Sville et la culture classique dans lEspagne wisigothique, 2nd edn (3 vols, paris, 1983); alain Stoclet, Autour de Fulrad de Saint-Denis (v. 710784) (paris, 1993); and donald a. Bullough, Alcuin: Achievement and Reputation, education and Society in the Middle ages and the renaissance, 16 (Leiden, 2004).

10 peter godman, Poets and Emperors. Frankish Politics and Carolingian Poetry (oxford, 1987); Matthias Becher, Eid und Herrschaft. Untersuchungen zum Herrscherethos Karls des Grossen, vortrge und forschungen, 39 (Sigmaringen, 1993); Martin heinzelmann, Gregor von Tours (538594): Zehn Bcher Geschichte: Historiographie und Gesellschaftskonzept im 6. Jahrhundert (darmstadt, 1994); patrick geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (princeton, nJ, 1994); guy halsall (ed.), Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2002); and ian Wood, Misremembering the Burgundians, in Walter pohl (ed.), Die Suche nach den Ursprngen: von der Bedeutung des frhen Mittelalters, sterreichische akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische Klasse, denkschriften, 322 (vienna, 2004), pp. 13948.

11 augustine, Vingt-six sermons au peuple dAfrique, ed. franois dolbeau (paris, 1996); augustine, Lettres 129: nouvelle dition du texte critique, ed. Johannes divjak (paris, 1987); for newly identified North African texts, see Leslie Dossey, Christians and Romans: Aspiration, Assimilation, and Conflict in the North African Countryside (unpublished Ph.D thesis, Harvard university, 1998), pp. 36678; for Bede see paul Meyvaert, Bedes Capitula lectionum for the old and new Testaments, Revue bndictine, 105 (1995): 34880.

Introduction. The Early Middle Ages: Europes Long Morning 5

document the Carolingian reception of the ancient epic.12 Systematic scrutiny of ancient archives has even turned up new capitularies of Charlemagne, and finally produced a reliable edition of the royal charters of the Merovingians.13 The list goes on, but the point should be clear. and this is but the beginning of the revolution worked by the passage from paper and ink to digital format, whose barely broached analytical capacities are already transforming our knowledge, including for so big and so traditional a set of sources as the lives of the saints, as Chapter 6 will show.

however, even hundreds of new texts seem like small potatoes next to the extraordinary avalanche of new data from the soil and the sea. Medieval archaeology is today, first and foremost, early medieval archaeology. Since the path-breaking synthesis of hodges and Whitehouse in 1983, historians have been on notice that a whole new world of early medieval material remains pots, fences, forts, pollens, iron tools and slave collars, ships and the early medieval europeans themselves is opening up thickly documented new paths where before we saw only trackless deserts.14 So abundant are the materials that only computers can keep track of them. nor do they merely add to the written sources. once we analyze, classify, and understand the new material data, the inevitable result is to challenge the marvelous written sources bequeathed to us by early medieval men and women. Todays historians have only begun to wrestle with the fact that the emergence of a whole new window on medieval realities will force them back to the texts, to test and sometimes strip from them interpretations accumulated over the last two centuries. in the light of archaeological results, the texts must be reanalyzed, and our conventional wisdom, rewritten. That process is already underway among early medievalists, as numerous chapters in parts one, Three and five of this volume show.15 Yet the discovery of new fields must not come at the expense of our tried and

12 isabel velzquez-Soriano (ed.), Documentos de poca visigoda escritos en pizarra, siglos VIVIII, Monumenta palaeographica Medii aevi, Series hispanica (2 vols, Turnhout, 2000); Michael McCormick, Five Hundred Unknown Glosses from the Palatine Virgil, Studi e testi, 343 (vatican City, 1992); pierre Bonnassie and Jordi fernndez-Cuadrench, Les documents catalans des iXe-Xiie sicles: ditions rcentes et publications en cours, Le Moyen Age, 105 (1999): 14953.

13 hubert Mordek, unbekannte Texte zur karolingischen gesetzgebung, Deutsches Archiv, 42 (1986): 44670; hubert Mordek and gerhard Schmitz, neue Kapitularien und Kapitulariensammlungen, Deutsches Archiv, 43 (1987): 361439; Die Urkunden der Merowinger, ed. Theo Klzer, Martina hartmann and andrea Stieldorf, MGH Diplomata regum Francorum e stirpe Merovingica (2 vols, hanover, 2001), and Klzers articles: Theo Klzer, Merowingerstudien, Mgh Studien und Texte, 21 and 26 (2 vols, hanover, 199899).

14 richard hodges and david Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins of Europe: Archaeology and the Pirenne Thesis (London, 1983), which should be used in the extensively revised french edition: richard hodges and david Whitehouse, Mahomet, Charlemagne et les origines de lEurope, trans. and ed. Ccile Morrisson, Jacques Lefort and Jean-pierre Sodini (paris, 1996).

15 in addition to which, see, for example, patrick prin, The origin of the village in early Medieval gaul, in neil Christie (ed.), Landscapes of Change: Rural Evolutions in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (aldershot, 2004), pp. 25578; heiko Steuer, berlegungen zum Stadtbegriff aus der Sicht der archologie des Mittelalters, in peter Johanek and franz-Joseph post (eds), Vielerlei Stdte. Der Stadtbegriff (Cologne, 2004), pp. 3151.

The Long Morning of Medieval Europe6

true methods of close reading of the sources, as the chapters of part Three indicate.

When were the early Middle ages? few would contest that they began with the fall of rome. But when was that? and where in space, and in the logic of systems? economic, mental, social, biological, or political systems need not evolve in linear lockstep, much though we may suspect or impute dim webs among them. in space the chronology of collapse varies by regions, and by the markers that we accept as signifying the end of roman civilization.16 religion, for instance, was undeniably central to early medieval civilization, so the triumph of Christianity might urge an early date even in the Mediterranean, perhaps around 400.17 for political structures, the end of direct roman political authority militates for various moments in the fifth century in the northwestern provinces of the roman empire, in italy and north africa. for the rest of the imperial provinces, the period from about the mid-sixth to mid-seventh century was decisive, as the roman empire continued to be amputated into the Byzantine, to paraphrase Constantine vii porphyrogenitus, a tenth-century eastern heir of augustus and Constantine the great.18 from the point of view of economic structures, the answer varies also according to geography and sector of the economy.19 The modern nucleated settlements that replaced romes dispersed rural settlement began at a time which is controversial, but falls within our period. Western Mediterranean long-distance trade and shipping witnessed a first, sharp contraction in volume in the fifth century. When the final spasms constricted there around 700, the eastern Mediterranean was not far behind, however much some low level of ecologically conditioned connectivity persisted.20 In sum, the fifth or sixth centuries are good starting points for todays early Middle ages in most of western europe.

When did they end? The easy answer is 1000, or at least the eleventh century. By then towns were growing smartly, new forms of art and culture were afoot, and feudalism was triumphing as a political and social force.21 our chapters

16 Bryan Ward-perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (oxford, 2005); alexander demandt, Die Sptantike. Rmische Geschichte von Diocletian bis Justinian, 285565 n. Chr. (Munich, 1989).

17 The debate over magic in the early medieval world is relevant here: peter Brown, Society and the Supernatural, in his Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, Ca, 1982), pp. 30232; valerie i.J. flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (princeton, nJ, 1991); alexander Murray, Missionaries and Magic in dark-age europe, Past and Present, 136 (1992): 186205.

18 De administrando imperio 21.1, ed. gyula Moravcsik and trans. romilly J.h. Jenkins, Corpus fontium historiae Byzantinae, 1, 2nd edn (Washington, dC, 1967), p. 86.314.

19 See Chapters 1 and 5 in this volume.20 peregrine horden and nicholas purcell, The Corrupting Sea. A Study of Mediterranean

History (oxford, 2000).21 on the debated political transformations of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, see

Thomas Bisson, The feudal revolution, Past and Present, 142 (1994): 642; with responses of dominique Barthlemy and Stephen d. White, Past and Present, 152 (1996): 196205 and 20523, respectively; responses of Timothy reuter and Chris Wickham, Past and Present, 155 (1997): 17795 and 196208, respectively, and Bissons reply, pp. 20825.

Introduction. The Early Middle Ages: Europes Long Morning 7

in fact fall within the broad framework of the period from 400 to 1000, but reach back to the early days of roman economic structures and forward to the religious transformations of the later Middle ages. echoing slow transformation and abrupt change, the studies in this book include close readings of particular moments such as Charlemagnes empire or King Wambas triumph, as well as analyses of gradual shifts underlying economic systems or the perception of weather.

So dynamic a field of investigation defies the compass of one volume. As patrick geary observed, research into the early Middle ages has today grown so prolific that a comprehensive overview would require a multi-volume text authored by an army of early medievalists; they would have to specialize in everything from architecture to zooarchaeology. We chose to illustrate, very selectively, rather than attempt an encyclopaedia. The papers focus on part of western europe, knowing full well that they leave largely untouched vast and dynamic areas of europe whose transformations owed and brought so much to early medieval civilization: england, the Celtic fringe, Scandinavia, the emergent Slavlands.22 The islamic and Byzantine frontiers too were important in this age, and fertile work is under way on early medieval iberia.23 rather, moreover, than impose an exclusive vision on a vibrant field whose very dynamism authors its complexity, we chose to approach a number of accomplished practitioners. We asked them to come to harvard to discuss what they found most exciting and promising from their varied disciplinary perspectives. Those who could come proposed questions and issues that were wonderful in their variety. We

22 The essays in Lars Jrgensen, Birgir Storgaard and Lone gebauer Thomsen (eds), Sieg und Triumpf. Der Norden im Schatten des rmischen Reiches (Copenhagen, 2003), conveniently introduce the emergence of pre-viking age Scandinavia; for an admirable synthesis of one aspect of viking age civilization, see Jesse L. Byock, Viking Age Iceland (London, 2001). in the Slavlands, archaeology is fundamental: see Joachim henning and alexander T. ruttkay (eds), Frhmittelalterlicher Burgenbau in Mittel- und Osteuropa (Bonn, 1998); Przemysaw Urbaczyk (ed.), Origins of Central Europe (Warsaw, 1997), surveys in english recent work; for poland, see andrzej Buko, Archeologia Polski wczesnoredniowiecznej. Odkrycia, hipotezy, interpretacje (Warsaw, 2005). important recent work on anglo-Saxon england includes nicholas Brooks, Anglo-Saxon Myths: State and Church, 4001066 (London, 2000); James Campbell, The Anglo-Saxon State (London, 2000); Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature, 600899 (London, 1996). on the Celtic world, see, for example, Wendy davies, Small Worlds: The Village Community in Early Medieval Brittany (London, 1988); prinsas n Chathin and Michael richter (eds), Ireland and Europe in the Early Middle Ages: Texts and Transmission (dublin, 2002), and the overview in donnchadh Corrin, ireland, Scotland and Wales, c. 700 to the early eleventh Century, in NCMH, pp. 4363.

23 on these frontiers, see, for example, philippe Snac, La frontire et les hommes (VIIeXIIe sicle): le peuplement musulman au nord de lEbre et les dbuts de la reconqute aragonaise (paris, 2000), and Michael McCormick, The imperial edge: italo-Byzantine identity, Movement and integration, a.d. 650950, in hlne ahrweiler and angeliki e. Laiou (eds), Studies on the Internal Diaspora of the Byzantine Empire (Washington, dC, 1998), pp. 1752. for work on early medieval iberia beyond the frontier, in addition to Chapter 10 in this volume, see, for example, Kimberly diane Bowes and Michael Kulikowski (eds), Hispania in Late Antiquity: Current Perspectives (Leiden, 2005), and for archaeology, for example, the contributions collected in Josep Mara gurt esparraguera and nria Tena (eds), V Reuni darqueologia cristiana hispnica: Cartagena, 1619 dabril de 1998 (Barcelona, 2000).

The Long Morning of Medieval Europe8

were surprised at some of the themes that turned up, such as the weather, and at others that came up only rarely, for instance, gender.24 even so, the volume offers a broad sampling of some of the most exciting new directions of early medieval research, including by authors who rarely publish in english. and, still more satisfying, across papers, comments and lengthy open discussions, a remarkable synergy emerged among participants, many of whom had never before met.

The result is this book, a sampling of some very new ways that people are thinking about five great themes in early medieval studies. They form the five parts of this book: discovering the early Medieval economy, Sounding early Medieval holiness, representation and reality in the artistry of early Medieval Literature, practices of power in an early Medieval empire and The intellectuality of early Medieval art. Michael McCormick introduces each part with a brief essay indicating the broad lines of how research into each theme has developed to date, and where the papers are pointing future investigation. accompanying essays conclude each part, highlighting and complementing the new approaches and the new questions raised by each thematic strand.

part one, discovering the early Medieval economy, presents new interpretations, new tools, and new data about the production and distribution of wealth. Chris Wickham brings fundamental concepts of modern economics to bear on early medieval realities. his new view of the early medieval economy sketches its broad logic and organization across regional variation. Joachim henning turns the old historical questions about why empires fail into new ones by using archaeology and texts to compare the nature of the production and distribution of wealth in the late roman and early medieval countrysides. Slave labor, the much-touted great estate, technology, and economic performance fuel this essay in archaeological synthesis. drawing on decades of excavation and field survey, Riccardo Francovich confronts the results with documentary records. The patterns that emerge challenge the conventional wisdom about how, and especially, when villages developed in early medieval italy, and it is earlier than historians have hitherto supposed. new tools are essential for Michael McCormicks recent investigations. Biomolecular archaeology opens up questions previously inconceivable outside of science fiction, from the sexual relations of the anglo-Saxon invaders to the paths of the pathogens that struck the early medieval world, and the reader will find here a humanist-friendly introduction to the main methods and results of this entirely new approach to

24 A lively field in early medieval studies since the foundational work of Suzanne Fonay Wemple, Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister 500900 (philadelphia, pa, 1981). See also Julia M.h. Smith, The problem of female Sanctity in Carolingian europe c. 780920, Past and Present, 146 (1995): 337; Janet L. nelson, Women at the Court of Charlemagne: a Case of Monstrous regiment?, in her The Frankish World, 750900 (London, 1996), pp. 22342, and the essays collected in Leslie Brubaker and Julia M.h. Smith (eds), Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West, 300900 (Cambridge, 2004). See also Chapter 8 in this volume on the importance of gender as a category of analysis.

Introduction. The Early Middle Ages: Europes Long Morning 9

the early medieval economy. What the new interpretations, new data, and new tools mean for our understanding of the economy as a whole becomes clearer when examined by angeliki Laiou in the comparative light of Byzantium.

part Two, Sounding early Medieval holiness, plumbs two different perspectives on early medieval piety. guy philippart and Michel Trigalet use their massive database of the manuscripts that preserved medieval hagiography to detect broad new patterns in the copying and composing of the literature of the saints in the early Middle ages. The mental underpinnings of religious offerings of real property in the early Middle ages, and beyond, emerge from arnold angenendts analysis of the long-term cultural trajectories that shaped this fundamental component of medieval religion, culture, and economy. Thomas head deepens both perspectives by drawing in recent english-language research into hagiography and the anthropology of real property transactions in the early Middle ages.

in part Three, representation and reality in the artistry of early Medieval Literature, literary approaches balance traditional strengths with new methods, as they take early medieval literary works with the seriousness they deserve. heated debates over global warming have gotten paul edward dutton thinking about discussions of the weather in early medieval literature. The responses of medieval men and women to weather illuminate their fears and joys, helping us to see their reality through its literary representation. Joaqun Martnez pizarro trains the tools of literary criticism on an ambitious writers depiction of betrayal and confrontation in the high literary art of seventh-century Spain. he spotlights the sophistication with which early medieval writers manipulated and thereby developed literary conventions inherited from late antiquity. Combining literary criticism and philology with the archaeology of weapon finds and manuscript illumination allows Jan Ziolkowski to illuminate the Latin verse epic Waltharius and clarify the compositional tactics behind an early medieval adventure poem, while danuta Shanzers erudite commentary on these papers throws into relief the classical and biblical background which continued to inform the literary art of the early Middle ages.

part four, practices of power in an early Medieval empire, highlights new directions in the study of the Carolingians. as Janet nelson observes, connections and communication are crucial to understanding Charlemagnes ungainly empire. hostages shepherded across the landscape, oaths sworn by all, and the kings multiple intrusions into the localities of the Carolingian realm tied together the far-flung regionalisms of the Frankish empire. Rather than bemoan the irregularity of the evidence for governance, Jennifer davis searches out underlying patterns of political response in Charlemagnes politics and approach to ruling. They reveal new details of how Charlemagne and his advisers actually exercised power and they sketch a new method for evaluating fragmented political evidence. The complex ways in which early medieval women and men used property to save their souls and to act out their familial and political ambitions form the theme of Matthew innes study. as Stuart

The Long Morning of Medieval Europe10

airlie insists, future work will reach beyond uncovering new patterns in the evidence, old and new, to link such patterns to broader changes over time.

finally, part five, The intellectuality of early Medieval art, studies from three different angles this most striking aspect of the artistic creation of the early Middle ages. Todays early medievalists are an interdisciplinary lot, and so it is not untypical that historian Mayke de Jong takes us on a novel tour of Carolingian architecture. She explores the meaning in ninth-century palaces of an expression for an architectural feature borrowed from the Bible. how early medieval artists grappled with the fundamental issue of the nature of god and its implications for visual art attracts herbert Kessler. early medieval artists manipulated color and techniques of representation in their quest to depict the divine in a powerfully evocative yet theologically respectful manner. as Thomas noble observes, seeing was never simply a visual phenomenon; his concluding essay once again underscores the deeply intellectual underpinnings of early medieval peoples thinking about the art and architecture they created.

in the long morning of the early Middle ages, the peoples of western europe rebuilt their societies on the surprisingly sturdy ruins of romes culture and traditions. The framework of the edifices constructed then structures western europe to this day. These essays illuminate both the transformations that marked this period, and the new directions which are defining its study. rather than a dark age, what we discover in western europe between 400 and 1000 ad is the long morning of an expanding and changing world. Where do twenty-first-century scholars go from here? New tools and methods highlighted in this volume open new possibilities for discovering the early medieval past. But they also require new skills. no single intellect can master the intricacies of all these disciplines as our expanding knowledge becomes more and more specialized, more and more diverse, yet more and more interconnected. This means that we in the humanities need to learn to collaborate better, with each other and with our colleagues in disciplines that are coming to be related fields, such as economics, certainly, but biology and computer science as well. The vision of the early Middle ages conveyed by these studies shows us a vibrant, expanding europe, illuminated by a rich and varied source base. particularly in north america, we need to do better at sharing the new vision of the early Middle ages with other scholars, including other medievalists. We hope that this book may mark one step in this new direction. our understanding of the early Middle ages has shifted in only the last generation or so from the dark ages to a long morning of rebirth, and of building the foundations of medieval and modern europe. Still more unsuspected new directions await us.