The Liber vitae or confraternity book of Salzburg is a remarkable example of the use of writing in commemoration and the recording of social memory in the early middle ages discussed in the preceding chapter. As is well known, it is essentially a book full of lists of the names of living and dead people for whom the religious community wished to pray. The date of production at the end of the eighth century in Salzburg, and the names included in the lists, however, are potentially peculiarly placed in relation, firstly, to Frankish and Carolingian interests in Bavaria just before Charlemagne's annexation of Tassilo's duchy in 788 and, secondly, to its immediate aftermath. Texts can work simultaneously at many different levels of communication and understanding, and they can help to forge ideas and identities as well as mirror them. In addition, historians are not confined to narrative texts (despite post-modernist assumptions that they are). The texts themselves are of an extraordinary diversity and some, such as the Salzburg Liber vitae, are not usually regarded as ways of writing history. The Salzburg Liber vitae, like the other Libri vitae, however, is essentially a history book and thus a very distinctive way of creating an historical record. It reflects not only cultural assumptions but also specific political affiliations and social communities within Bavaria at the end of the eighth century.

It is important to see the Liber vitae of Salzburg in the context of historical record making in early medieval Bavaria.