Charlemagne: les temps, les espaces, les hommes, Construction et déconstruction d'un règne ed. by Rolf Grosse & Michel Sot (review)

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• Charlemagne: les temps, les espaces, les hommes, Construction et déconstruction d'un règne ed. by Rolf Grosse & Michel Sot
• Anthony Smart

Rolf Grosse & Michel Sot (eds.), Charlemagne: les temps, les espaces, les hommes, Construction et déconstruction d'un règne. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018, 604pp.

Charlemagne stands as the most important of all Carolingian kings and emperors. It was he who not only forged an empire, but had that empire branded as both Frankish and Roman. He developed strong links with the papacy in Rome, was a feared and capable military commander, and remained an unflinching defender of Christianity. He was also an agent of change, bringing to his court the most learned figures of the age. Their task was to transform his empire into a new Christian state, of learning, literature and correct religious practice. And yet there are questions over the planned longevity of the Carolingian experiment with empire. It may have called itself Roman, but to what extent is it really an incarnation of the classical past? Charlemagne himself sought to divide his empire between his male heirs, and only fate meant that it was bestowed instead fully upon his surviving son Louis. There are also darker elements to Charlemagne's rule that belie the favourable image contemporaries and later interpreters have offered. Recent research has begun to consider whether we can ever really know a person from the early Middle Ages. So much of the rhetoric on Charlemagne rests on how kingship was understood by contemporaries and how his learned elite sought to align Frankish regnal customs with a pre-existing classical model of imperial rule. These models were also then bridged with Christian ideas of ruling, and the result provides a complex network of competing ideologies.

The excellent volume edited by Grosse and Sot contributes to this reconsideration of Charlemagne. There is a temptation to think that the Carolingian period under Charlemagne can offer little in the way of substantive new scholarship—and there is not much chance, barring archaeological finds, that we will discover new writings and sources for the late eighth and early ninth [End Page 109] centuries. However, Grosse and Sot demonstrate just how valuable and valid the study of this dynamic period (and the character at its heart) can be. The editors also make it clear that their focus is not just on providing a new window into this world, but on moving away from the more typical approaches that provide a superficial perspective on Charlemagne: "Le but de notre colloque n'est pas de commémorer en Charlemagne le père de l'Europe ni le fondateur d'empire, mais de situer le demi-siècle de son gouvernement dans un jeu d'échelle spatial et temporal, en faisant la part des traditions et des innovations et en donnant une meilleure place aux périphéries et aux laboratoires qu'elles ont pu constituer" (15).

The book is divided into six sections, with twenty-seven chapters, in French, German and English. This is a substantial volume, and one that proves implicitly the benefit of large-scale conferences with an international team of scholars coming together to share their research and thoughts. The book is well-edited, and although there are moments where some of the chapters could have had a sharper structure or a more developed line of argument, each tranche is successful in suggesting new interpretations of the evidence. The first section ("Penser et organiser le pouvoir," 17-117) asks important questions about the dynamics of Carolingian authority and power, with the chapters by Depreux and Shimahara offering particularly persuasive viewpoints. Depreux considers the shift in the legal voice of the court through a study of capitularies, something we tend simply to accept as representative of Carolingian power ("Charlemagne et les capitularies: formation et reception d'un corpus normatif," 19-41). Shimahara provides an important discussion of biblical commentary, linking the practice to Charlemagne and thinking about what it could achieve for him and the ideals of Christian kingship ("Charlemagne, premier souverain chrétien commanditaire d'exégèse biblique?," 101-17). The second section ("Représenter le pouvoir," 119-79) follows well from the...