Past Convictions: The Penance of Louis the Pious and the Decline of the Carolingians (The Middle Ages Series)

How do people, in both the past and the present, think about moments of social and political crisis, and how do they respond to them? What are the interpretive codes by which troubling events are read and given meaning, and what part do these codes play in suggesting specific strategies for coping with the world? In Past Convictions Courtney Booker attempts to answer these questions by examining the controversial divestiture and public penance of Charlemagne's son, the Emperor Louis the Pious, in 833. Historians have customarily viewed the event as marking the beginning of the end of the Carolingian dynasty. Exploring how both contemporaries and subsequent generations thought about Louis's forfeiture of the throne, Booker contends that certain vivid ninth-century narratives reveal a close but ephemeral connection between historiography and the generic conventions of comedy and tragedy. In tracing how writers of later centuries built upon these dramatic Carolingian accounts to tell a larger story of faith, betrayal, political expediency, and decline, he explicates the ways historiography shapes our vision of the past and what we think we know about it, and the ways its interpretive models may fall short.

How do people, in both the past and the present, think about moments of social and political crisis, and how do they respond to them? What are the interpretive codes by which troubling events are read and given meaning, and what part do these codes play in suggesting specific strategies for coping with the world? In Past Convictions Courtney Booker attempts to answer these questions by examining the controversial divestiture and public penance of Charlemagne's son, the Emperor Louis the Pious, in 833.

Historians have customarily viewed the event as marking the beginning of the end of the Carolingian dynasty. Exploring how both contemporaries and subsequent generations thought about Louis's forfeiture of the throne, Booker contends that certain vivid ninth-century narratives reveal a close but ephemeral connection between historiography and the generic conventions of comedy and tragedy. In tracing how writers of later centuries built upon these dramatic Carolingian accounts to tell a larger story of faith, betrayal, political expediency, and decline, he explicates the ways historiography shapes our vision of the past and what we think we know about it, and the ways its interpretive models may fall short.

Introduction 1 PART I. REMEMBERING 1. Telling the Truth About the Field of Lies 15 2. The Shame of the Franks 68 3. Histrionic History, Demanding Drama 104 PART II. JUSTIFYING 4. Documenting Duty's Demands 129 5. Forgotten Memories 183 PART III. DISCOURSING 6. Eloquence in Equity, Fluency in Iniquity 213 Epilogue: Convictions Past and Present 247 Appendix 257 List of Abbreviations 265 Notes 273 Select Bibliography 387 Index 405 Acknowledgments 417 As much historiography as reception history, Past Convictions analyzes and explicates the production of historical narratives, the subsequent contestation and appropriation of these narratives, and the insight such activities allows us into how people understand change and its remembrance.