CONCEPTS OF EUROPE IN THE EARLY AND HIGH MIDDLE AGES
Henrietta Leyser
Like so much else, Bede, Fredegarius and the Carolingian savants inherited their ideas of Europe from late antiquity, above all luminaries who conveyed substance this disintegrating world to eager anxiously waiting disciples in eighth ninth centuries eventually high Middle Ages altogether. Both mythology cosmology which emerged as one constituent parts intrigued exercised imaginations court circles they reached and, it could be said, poured into lavish poetry up very end century. Most this, if not all, resounded again festive notes struck by Ottonian historiography panegyric celebrate triumphs tenth-century Saxon rulers following. They too wanted seen measured European scales. Among writers at least, Liudprand Cremona, nursed truly continental