The Carolingian period

Abstract

By and large, it is only in the carolingian period that what we now possess of the literary legacy of Roman antiquity and of the Latin patristic age was first preserved. This legacy nourished education and learning in the middle ages, which was in large measure dominated by the ancient authorities, until the influx of translations in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries resulted in a new orientation. Work with these texts is closely bound up with the literary production of the middle ages, is indeed a part of that production. Because the history of manuscripts in the medieval period begins with this securing of the heritage, I would like to preface this section with a few remarks on how manuscripts were used in the middle ages. Liturgical manuscripts, by virtue of their purpose, were truly functional books, and lectionaries were often supplied at a later date with introductory and closing formulae, while divisions into lections were often added in homiliaries and passionals. Chapter numbers and occasionally instructions for the lectio continua are often added to carolingian bibles in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Collations, marginal notes by readers, ‘nota’ signs, and underlinings with a stylus or red chalk are found nearly everywhere. Now and again such traces are clear symptoms of textual reworking, as occurred in the innumerable canonistic, dogmatic, exegetical, and ethical compilations and florilegia.