This book 's themes are the writing and reading of history in the early middle ages. The primary focus is on the many remarkable manifestations of historical writing in relation to historical memory in the Frankish kingdoms of the eighth and ninth centuries. I consider the audiences for history in the Frankish kingdoms and the recording of memory in various new genres, including narrative histories, cartularies and Libri memoriales, and thus particular perceptions of the Frankish and Christian past. I offer analyses of manuscript material and of key historical texts from the Carolingian period, a remarkably creative period in the history of European culture. Presentations of the past developed in the eighth and ninth centuries were crucial in the formation of an historical understanding of the Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian past, as well as for the history of early medieval Europe in subsequent centuries. They also played an extraordinarily influential role in the formation of political ideologies and senses of identity within Europe.

This book draws in part on material already published in articles or chapters in books over the past decade, but here presented in a completely revised and augmented form. I am grateful to the original publishers as listed below for their kind permission to make use of my work in this way. In Cambridge I am fortunate in being able to draw on the wonderful resources of the Cambridge University Library, and I should like to thank all the staff in Manuscripts and Rare Books, the Periodicals Department, the West Room, the Reading Room, the Anderson Room, the Map Room, and the departments of Accessions and Cataloguing for their unfailing helpfulness over the years.