The Early Middle Ages | Carolingian Christianity (Lecture 15)

Lecture 15: Carolingian rulers were deeply involved in the affairs of the Christian Church, both because Christian clerics were responsible for interceding with God on behalf of the laity and because rulers had to rely on clerics to staff the royal and imperial bureaucracy. Kings and emperors presided over church councils and dictated theological policy to bishops and even popes. The Carolingians also sponsored Anglo-Saxon missionaries who worked among the German pagans living to the east of the Rhine River, although lasting conversions would have to await Charlemagne’s military conquest of this part of Europe. Carolingians also supported ecclesiastical reform in a variety of ways. They sponsored the creation of the parish system and imposed a means of financing those parishes. They reformed monastic life by making Benedictine monasticism normative and predominant in Europe.

Suggested Readings:
Richard Fletcher. The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity. University of California Press, 1997.
Judith Herrin. The Formation of Christendom. Princeton University Press, 1989.
J. M. Wallace-Hadrill. The Frankish Church. Oxford University Press, 2001 (first published in 1983).

Lecture 16: https://www.bitchute.com/video/yO7mjZ67qlU5/