IMC 2008: Sessions
Session 1510: Texts and Communities in Early Medieval Europe
Thursday 10 July 2008, 09.00-10.30
Sponsor: | St Andrews' Institute of Mediaeval Studies, University of St Andrews |
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Organiser: | Simon MacLean, Department of History, Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge |
Moderator/Chair: | Simon MacLean, Department of History, Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge |
Paper 1510-a | The Audience of the Vita Columbani in Merovingian Gaul (Language: English) Index terms: Hagiography, Monasticism, Politics and Diplomacy |
Paper 1510-b | Hagiography and Monastic Identity: The Case of the Community of St Filibert (Language: English) Index terms: Hagiography, Monasticism |
Paper 1510-c | Community or Computus?: Carolingian Calendars and their Audiences (Language: English) Index terms: Hagiography, Monasticism, Political Thought |
Abstract | This session asks how we can use major written sources as evidence for the construction of communities in the early middle ages. This is an approach used to some effect in recent historiography, and the session appropriates it to cast new light on some important political and monastic communities. In particular, the papers challenge conventional understandings of the contemporary audiences of three major texts (the Life of Columbanus, the hagiography of St Fillibert and the Carolingian 'imperial calendar') and ask whether the communities they purportedly addressed were really as coherent as historians have assumed. |