Download PDF | Ildar H. Garipzanov - The Symbolic Language of Royal Authority in the Carolingian World (c.751-877) (Brill's Series on the Early Middle Ages) -Brill, 2008.
417 Pages
PREFACE
This book is not a conventional political narrative of Carolingian history shaped by narrative sources, capitularies, and charter material. It is structured, instead, by numismatic, diplomatic, liturgical, and iconographic sources and deals with political signs, images, and fi xed formulas in them as interconnected elements in a symbolic language of authority, which was used in the indirect negotiation and maintenance of Carolingian authority. The study of this symbolic language allows us to glimpse how people of varying social strata in different regions viewed their rulers and how their views were affected by existing political traditions and by contemporary changes promoted by the Carolingians and their retinues.
I hope that such an interdisciplinary study will be comprehensible and useful for a general audience of medievalists—and Carolingianists in particular—less familiar with these non-narrative sources. Non-narrative sources have been traditionally studied separately, and perhaps some liturgists, numismatists, specialists in medieval diplomatics and sphragistics, and art historians would still argue that these types of evidence are too diverse to be brought together since they require skills too “specialized” to be analyzed effectively by one author. They may also think of my narrative as, in a way, simplifying these types of evidence. My only response to these objections is that in so doing I address a more general audience of historians and medievalists who are less familiar with these sources and demonstrate the ways in which the evidence they provide can be incorporated into a more general historical narrative.
At the same time, by revealing how these sources may be analyzed within broader political contexts, I hope that this book is of some interest for students of the above-mentioned specialized disciplines. This study is a product of ten years of study of the Carolingian period, some results of which have been previously published in English and Russian.1 The pursuit of this subject has made me an academic vagabond traveling in time and space not unlike Anglo-Saxon and Irish intellectuals wandering across the Frankish realm and writing in a language different from their mother tongues. It has also enriched me enormously with unique experiences of working in different scholarly environments and meeting a number of brilliant and inspiring medievalists in both Europe and North America. This book never would have been completed without these multi-cultural and interdisciplinary experiences.
This project started at Kazan State University in Russia, my alma mater in the 1980s and the early 1990s, with an interest in Roman imperial tradition and classical heritage in the Carolingian period. The upbringing in classical studies I received there prepared me for the critical reading of Latin sources as well as modern historiography. I am grateful to my former colleagues at the Department of Ancient and Medieval History, the members of the academic seminar “Classical Monday,” and especially Evgeny Chiglintsev and Oleg Gabelko, for their friendly support in the initial stages of my research.
The pursuit of this project brought me to the international M.A. program in medieval studies at Central European University in Budapest, in 1997/8, with one of the most vibrant and cosmopolitan academic communities of graduate students and permanent and visiting professors I have encountered. This truly interdisciplinary environment helped me fully understand the potential of numismatic, diplomatic, and iconographic evidence for the study of Carolingian politics. I owe special thanks to my supervisor in Budapest, János Bak, for his patience with a “Soviet ex-classicist” and constant encouragement and support in continuing this project. My primary focus on Carolingian coinage brought me in contact with many European and American numismatists. Among them, I am especially thankful to Alan Stahl, the coin curator at Princeton and my former supervisor at the Graduate Seminar in the American Numismatic Society in the summer of 1998.
He helped me to realize the potential application of numismatic evidence to political history. In addition, I would like to express my thanks to coin curators in Budapest, Copenhagen, Lund, Moscow, New York, Oslo, and Stockholm for their assistance. My work on this project continued in the United States in the doctoral program for medieval history at Fordham University, New York, from 1999 to 2004. I am grateful to faculty members of the History Department and Medieval Studies Program at Fordham University for their friendly support, especially to Joel Herschman and Daniel Smail, whose comments and critical advice stimulated my research and helped me better apply the methods and techniques of art history and social anthropology to the study of Carolingian politics. Special thanks to my supervisor at Fordham, Richard Gyug, who has encouraged my interdisciplinary approach and enlightened me on the signifi cance of liturgical evidence for understanding medieval political life; without his advice, constant assistance, and fruitful criticism this book would not have reached completion.
A short stay at St. John’s University, where I greatly benefi ted from proximity to the Benedictine abbey of St. John and its liturgical community, helped me internalize my liturgical experiences. I also owe great thanks to the staff of the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library at St. John’s University and the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, on whose assistance I relied so much in working with Carolingian manuscripts in 2002–2003. I would like to express my gratitude especially to Jennifer Cahoy, Katherine Gill, and Matthew Z. Heintzelman at the HMML and Jillian Bepler and Christian Hogrefe at the HAB.
This project has reached a successful completion in Scandinavia in 2007, thanks to a research position at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Bergen (2004–2007) and the friendly support of its members, especially Sverre Bagge and Kirsten Moen. In addition, I owe my gratitude to many North American and European medievalists with whom I have consulted at different stages of my project and who have commented on preliminary drafts of this book or some parts of it, in particular: Bonnie Effros, Helmut Reimitz, Patrick Geary, Geoffrey Koziol, Barbara Rosenwein, Matthew Innes, Haki Antonsson, and Aidan Conti.
Their comments and challenging criticism have helped me avoid some mistakes and rethink my argument, even though I have not always followed their advice. Finally, I owe numerous thanks to many institutions whose fi nancial support has facilitated my work on this book: the Open Society Institute for a travel grant in 1998 and a Global Supplementary Grant in 2000–2001; the Department of Medieval Studies at Central European University for travel grants in 1998 and 2002 and a summer school fellowship in 2003; the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library for a Heckman Research Stipend in 2002; the Herzog August Bibliothek for a Dr. Günther Findel-Stiftung Fellowship in 2002–2003; the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Fordham University, whose fellowships were so vital for me in the years of my doctoral studies; and the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Bergen for a postdoctoral research fellowship in 2004–2007. Bergen, August 2007
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