Why read The Carolingians and the Written Word?

Book cover of The Carolingians and the Written Word

Book description

This pioneering book studies the function and status of the written word in Carolingian society in France and Germany in the eighth- and ninth-centuries. It demonstrates that literacy was by no means confined to a clerical elite, but was dispersed in lay society and used for government and administration, and…

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European history

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Carolingians and the Written Word as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Yitzhak Hen

Author

This pioneering book challenges the notion that literacy in the early Middle Ages was confined to a small clerical elite and a very thin layer of lay aristocrats. By looking at a wide range of documents that survive from the eighth and the ninth centuries, Rosamond McKitterick demonstrates that literacy in the Carolingian period was widespread, not only among clerics and governmental agents but also among the lay population.

Indeed, as McKitterick points out, the written word played a central role in both the legal system and the royal administration, but it also had an important cultural and social role…

From Yitzhak's list on challenge views of the Early Middle Ages.