Will I love The Carolingians and the Written Word?

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… show more.