Hypocrisy, performativity, and the Carolingian pursuit of truth

Abstract

By employing the notion of hypocrisy and its association with theatrical acting, this article makes the case for a re‐examination of the Carolingian understanding and use of the artefacts of ancient drama. It illuminates how, within a culture lacking formal theatre yet highly sensitive to performance and self‐fashioning, ceremony and comportment, early medieval authors and exegetes drew upon such pagan remnants (despite, or perhaps due to, their pejorative connotations) to conceptualize and frame the problems of duplicity, dissimulation, and hidden sin – problems that assumed a special urgency within the Carolingian ‘penitential state’.