Collecting the Desert in the Carolingian West
Lynda L. Coon
Abstract The Egyptian desert summoned for its early medieval progeny memories of a past age superhuman askêsis that posed challenge to Carolingian attempts at Benedictine hegemony. In response, the architects ninth-century monastic reform labored present their votaries with carefully controlled memory past, and they did so through propagandistic aesthetic literary, visual, ritual "bricolage." Jaś Elsner defines this bricolage as an artistic form based on symbolic ownership display ancient spolia contemporary monuments (e.g., sculptured reliefs collected from imperial regimes exhibited Arch Constantine) or layering present-day texts literary forms Christian typological exegesis Hebrew Scripture). Similarly, Carolingians, who also ventured into realm bricolage, collecting, embodying, displaying were methods exerting control over past.
Church History and Religious Culture