Uni-Tübingen

Project F02: From Carolingian order to société féodale? Threatened order and re-ordering around 900 C.E.

Abstract

Project F02 studies the threatened order of the crumbling Carolingian Empire around the year 900, showing how actors in three of the Empire’s regions were able to mobilize legal texts of both worldly and ecclesiastical provenance and historical memory itself as re-ordering resources. The operant assumption is that although legal texts and historical memory were essential for practicing crisis management, such was the manuscript culture by then (900 C.E.) that their availability could no longer be assumed. This first had to be secured by a process of excerption, compilation, etc., from extant manuscripts, before actors could be mobilized for such purposes.