Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages

Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies

by Rosamond McKitterick

“What McKitterick calls the ‘explosion of historical writing’ in the Carolingian age marked the dawn of a radically new and lasting culture in Europe and disclosed the mind-sets of its creators. Yet, in many cases, published editions deform the texts, not least by omissions, and obscure what Frankish authors actually wrote. Building on her internationally acclaimed studies of oral and written communication in the early Middle Ages, McKitterick goes back to manuscript sources. As she advances a compelling new key to the catalysts of Europe’s historical identity, she discovers what Carolingians actually wrote and how they did their work.” —Karl F. Morrison, Lessing Professor of History and Poetics, Rutgers University

 
“As perceptive as it is learned, Rosamond McKitterick’s book unpicks the complex web of Frankish perceptions of the past. . . . McKitterick deftly transforms texts that previous scholars have usually dismissed into clues from which she draws cogent arguments. This study of historical imaginations in the past is itself a model of imaginative history.” —Anthony Grafton, Princeton University

 
Historical writing of the early middle ages tends to be regarded as little more than a possible source of facts, but Rosamond McKitterick establishes that early medieval historians conveyed in their texts a sophisticated set of multiple perceptions of the past. In these essays, McKitterick focuses on the Frankish realms in the eighth and ninth centuries and examines different methods and genres of historical writing in relation to the perceptions of time and chronology. She claims that there is an extraordinary concentration of new text production and older text reproduction in this period that has to be accounted for, and whose influence is still being investigated and established.
 
Three themes are addressed in Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages. McKitterick begins by discussing the Chronicon of Eusebius-Jerome as a way of examining the composition and reception of universal history in the ninth and early tenth centuries. She demonstrates that original manuscripts turn out in many cases to be compilations of sequential historical texts with a chronology extending back to the creation of the world or the origin of the Franks. In the second chapter, she explores the significance of Rome in Carolingian perceptions of the past and argues that its importance loomed large and was communicated in a great range of texts and material objects. In the third chapter, she looks at eighth- and ninth-century perceptions of the local past in the Frankish realm within the wider contexts of Christian and national history. She concludes that in the very rich, complex, and sometimes contradictory early medieval perceptions of a past stretching back to the creation of the world, the Franks in the Carolingian period forged their own special place.

Genres: History

154 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2006

About the author

Rosamond Deborah McKitterick is one of Britain's foremost medieval historians. Since 1999, she has been Professor of Medieval History at the University of Cambridge where she is a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College. Much of her work focuses on the Frankish kingdoms in the 8th and 9th centuries and uses palaeographical and manuscript studies to illuminate aspects of the political, cultural, intellectual, religious and social history of the early Middle Ages.

From 1951 to 1956 McKitterick lived in Cambridge, England, where her father had a position at Magdalene College. In 1956 she moved with her family to Western Australia where she completed primary and secondary school and completed an honours degree at the University of Western Australia. She holds the degrees of M.A., Ph.D., and Litt.D.

In 1971 she returned to Cambridge University to pursue her career. She was a Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge and then became a Professorial Fellow of Sidney Sussex. She is also on the Editorial Board of the journal 'Networks and Neighbours'.

She married David John McKitterick, Librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge, and they have one daughter.