Accounting for crises in Carolingian annals

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which crises were recorded and conceptualized in Carolingian annals, with particular attention to the selective use of numerical information. Rather than treating references to famine, mortality, extreme weather events, or prices as transparent data points, it approaches annalistic quantification as a historiographical practice embedded in specific political and ideological frameworks. By analysing a series of case studies drawn primarily from the Annales Bertiniani, Annales Fuldenses, and related annalistic traditions, the article explores when, how, and why unusually precise numbers appear in narratives otherwise characterized by quantitative vagueness. It situates these practices within broader developments in Carolingian historical writing, biblical exegesis, and political culture, paying particular attention to the moral and providential interpretations attached to crisis events. In doing so, the study contributes to current debates on the use of narrative sources in environmental and economic history, and calls for a more critical engagement with numbers in early medieval texts, understood not merely as records of events but as instruments of meaning-making and historical explanation.