Sarah Greer

In the early medieval world, the way people remembered the past changed how they saw the present. New accounts of former leaders and their deeds could strengthen their successors, establish novel claims to power, or criticize the current ruler. After 888, when the Carolingian Empire fractured into the smaller kingdoms of medieval western Europe, memory became a vital tool for those seeking to claim royal power for themselves. Commemorating Power in Early Medieval Saxony looks at how the past was evoked for political purposes under a new Saxon dynasty, the Ottonians, who came to dominate post-Carolingian Europe as the rulers of a new empire in Germany and Italy. With the accession of the first Ottonian king, Henry I, in 919, sites commemorating the king's family came to the foreground of the medieval German kingdom. The most remarkable of these were two convents of monastic women, Gandersheim and Quedlinburg, whose prominence and prestige in Ottonian politics have been seen as exceptional in the history of early medieval western Europe. In this volume, Sarah Greer offers a fresh interpretation of how these convents became central sites in the new Ottonian empire by revealing how the women in these communities themselves were skilful political actors who were more than capable of manipulating memory for their own benefit. In this first major study in English of how these Saxon convents functioned as memorial centres, Greer presents a new vision of the first German dynasty, one characterized by contingency, versatility, and the power of the past.

Writing and Rewriting the Past at Gandersheim and Quedlinburg

Commemorating Power in Early Medieval Saxony

Sandra Clarke

Land Law: Directions provides a lively introduction to land law and makes this traditionally daunting subject both clear and engaging. All the key topics covered on a typical land law module are explained with the use of helpful learning features, diagrams and photographs for a truly contemporary and student-centred approach.

Land Law Directions

Commemorating Power looks at how the past was evoked for political purposes under a new Saxon dynasty, the Ottonians, who came to dominate post-Carolingian Europe after 888 as the rulers of a new empire in Germany and Italy, focusing on two convents of monastic women who played a significant role in Ottonian politics.

Alice Hicklin

Stefan Esders

Using and Not Using the Past after the Carolingian Empire offers a new take on European history from c.900 to c.1050, examining the ‘post-Carolingian’ period in its own right and presenting it as a time of creative experimentation with new forms of authority and legitimacy. In the late eighth century, the Frankish king Charlemagne put together a new empire. Less than a century later, that empire had collapsed. The story of Europe following the end of the Carolingian empire has often been presented as a tragedy: a time of turbulence and disintegration, out of which the new, recognisably medieval kingdoms of Europe emerged. This collection offers a different perspective. Taking a transnational approach, the authors contemplate the new social and political order that emerged in tenth- and eleventh-century Europe and examine how those shaping this new order saw themselves in relation to the past. Each chapter explores how the past was used creatively by actors in the regions of the former Carolingian Empire to search for political, legal and social legitimacy in a turbulent new political order. Advancing the debates on the uses of the past in the early Middle Ages and prompting reconsideration of the narratives that have traditionally dominated modern writing on this period, Using and Not Using the Past after the Carolingian Empire is ideal for students and scholars of tenth- and eleventh-century European history.

Sarah Greer

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