Our knowledge of ancient Latin texts from (Late) Antiquity is mainly based on manuscripts dating back to the early Middle Ages. More manuscripts have been handed down from the 9th century than from any of the six centuries that followed. The notes in the margins of the early medieval texts are valuable indications of how the texts were interpreted by readers at the time. These marginalia have long been regarded as insignificant scribblings made by anonymous monks. Yet, these comments form valuable sources of intellectual history, telling the (hi)story of the changes that occurred in the concepts of learning in many areas, ranging from neo-platonistic views on Creation to natural cosmic phenomena. They reveal the methods and interests of science in that period. Due to their inaccessible style and often smudgy appearance, these marginalia have hardly been charted. In this project, due attention is drawn to these notes, which form an indispensable element in gaining an understanding of intellectual life in Europe in the early Middle Ages.

“Cultural memory and the resources of the past, 400-1000 AD” is the title of a joint research project by the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Universities of Utrecht, Cambridge and Leeds. It is funded by Humanties in the European Research Area (HERA), a project led by the European Science Foundation (ESF). The project combines two elements: on the one hand, the careful analysis of the transmission of texts and manuscripts; on the other, the problem of identity formation, including perceptions of difference on the part of specific social, political and religious communities.

 

The early Middle Ages are the first period of history from which many thousand original manuscripts survive. Ancient literature and scholarship, the Bible and patristic writing have come to us through this filter. This rich material has mainly been used to edit texts as witnesses of the period in which they were written. But it also constitutes a fascinating resource to study the process of transmission and transformation of texts and other cultural contents. It can shed new light on the codification and modification of the cultural heritage and its political uses, and constitutes an exemplary case to the study of cultural dynamics in general. The project will explore this understudied area with a number of interrelated studies:

• “Learning Empire – creating cultural resources for Carolingian rulership” concentrating on the role of the popes as cultural brokers in the 8th century;
• “Biblical past as an imagined community” dealing with learning in 8th century Bavaria and with the meaning of ‘populus’ in early medieval texts;
• “Otherness in the Frankish and Ottonian Worlds” which explores changes in attitudes towards aliens; and
• “Migration of Roman and Byzantine cultural traditions to the Carolingian world”, exemplified by the reception of the Historia Tripartita and by Freculf’s Chronicle.

The project thus combines two elements: on the one hand, the careful analysis of the transmission of texts and manuscripts; on the other, the problem of identity formation, including perceptions of difference on the part of specific social, political and religious communities. It regards written texts as traces of social practice and its changes. By studying their potential as resources for repeated scenarios of identification/Othering, this project proposes an exemplary study of the distant past also intended to shed light on the present.

To go to the project webpage, click here

To go to the project workspace, only available to project members, click here