Rethinking the Carolingian Reforms. By ArthurWestwell, IngridRembold, CarinevanRhijn (Eds), Manchester: Manchester University Press. 2023. x + 280 pp. ISBN: 9781526149558.
Year: 2025
Type: book-review
Abstract: Right from this book's introduction, penned by Carine van Rhijn, it is clear that commonly used terms for the Carolingian cultural movement renaissance, reform, correctiofail to encapsulate the complexity and multivalence of the period.Indeed, no single, unifying term comes to us from the Carolingian age.Modern scholars have focused on the products, whether treatises, letters, rules, liturgy, or the like, rather than on the process, leading to a top-down understanding of Carolingian 'reform' or a small circle of writers involved in a Carolingian 'renaissance'.To discuss reform, or correctio, which seems to be the volume's preferred contemporary term, modern historians have struggled to escape a post-Reformation mindset, wherein a few leaders set pathways for others to follow.This volume as a whole, and each of the chapters within it, seeks to correct our understanding of correctio, highlighting the ways in which the Carolingian movement was not always top-down, but rather made up of local individuals exercising their own agency and engaging in horizontal networks of knowledge, communication, and support.In the first chapter, Ingrid Rembold notes that, despite contemporaries not using a single term to denote their 'reform' effort, the rule-makers of the Carolingian era 'took comfort in labels' (p.32).If everyone in society knew their proper roles, they would behave accordingly.With that in mind, Rembold considers horizontal monastic networks, finding a place where people did know and fit comfortably in their labelled roles.Ultimately, she finds that the networks were 'fundamentally and insurmountably gendered' (p.36), so that women were excluded, even as they lived cloistered lives under monastic rules.Monastic women were not allowed to travel to court or councils, and apparently did not exchange letters with their counterparts in other houses, so their voices were left out of the formulation of institutional change.On the theme articulated in the introduction, Rembold says that 'reform' language is rare for women's experiences, and that terms like corrigere and emendare are more common, but not in a programmatic way.
Source: Early Medieval Europe
DOI: 10.1111/emed.12783
Author: Cullen J. Chandler
Institution: Lycoming College
Language: English
Subfield: Classics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4413065042