IMC 2024: Sessions
Session 236: Writing in Crisis?: Three Scholars after Charlemagne and Their Manuscripts
Monday 1 July 2024, 14:15-15:45
| Sponsor: | IRC 'Early Irish Hands' / IRC 'Dicuil: an Irish and Carolingian Universalist and his Intellectual Legacy (DICUIL)' / FWF 'Carolingian Culture in Septimania and Catalonia: The Transformation of a Multi-Ethnic Middle Ground of the Euro-Mediterranean World' |
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| Organiser: | Christian G. Schweizer, School of Languages, Literature & Cultures, University of Galway |
| Moderator/Chair: | Joanna Story, School of History, Politics & International Relations, University of Leicester |
| Paper 236-a | Struggling Scribal Hands in a Crumbling Empire: The Making of the So-Called Reichenau Schoolbook (St Paul im Lavanttal, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 86b1) (Language: English) Index terms: Education, Language and Literature - Celtic, Manuscripts and Palaeography and Monasticism |
| Paper 236-b | Dicuil: A Carolingian Court Scholar at a Critical Time and His Manuscripts (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Literacy and Orality and Manuscripts and Palaeography |
| Paper 236-c | Claudius of Turin's De sex aetatibus mundi and Its Manuscript Transmission: Observations and Reassessment ahead of a First Critical Edition (Language: English) Index terms: Genealogy and Prosopography, Historiography - Medieval, Manuscripts and Palaeography and Science |
| Abstract | Was the time after the death of Charlemagne in 814 a crisis or a heyday of scholarly writing? To answer this question, this panel analyses manuscripts related to three individuals. An anonymous scribe who wrote the famous 'Reichenau schoolbook' (St. Paul im Lavanttal, Cod. 86b1) tells us something about the personal and professional crises Irish scribes faced while working in the Carolingian Empire. They were caught between a longing for home, signified for example by Old Irish poems, and an eagerness to learn new scripts and languages such as Greek. At the same time, the Irishman Dicuil openly worried about the quality of the manuscripts of his sources and his own texts. He and Claudius of Turin were directly affected by the death of Charlemagne, in different but critical ways. The transmission of their texts gives insights into later crises of scribes (and editors). |