Saints and demons in the Carolingian countryside
Matthew Innes|Colin Thor West
This paper examines a series of stories about supernatural intervention in conflicts within Carolingian villages. These are primarily drawn from miracle collections put together at range northern Frankish monasteries (chiefly St-Riquier, Stavelot, St-Germain Auxerre, St-Vaast, Fulda, Seligenstadt and St-Denis), along with comparable anecdote included text different genre but similar institutional origin, the Annals Fulda. The demonstrates that such texts have much to tell us how these village communities worked, conventional terms. is not simply because monastic authors, order provide plausible backdrops against which rehearse saintly credentials their holy patrons, drew on experiences expectations villages so circumstantial detail; we also argue that, prior reworking fit authorial agendas expectations, raw strange events often originated they were set. We go suggest pose methodological challenge our normal frames analysis, by illustrating tensions social change early medieval could be processed »charismatic« ways as well or instead »routinizing« register privileged documentary archives. countryside was necessarily »legalised« »routinized« received canon charters polyptychs (perhaps deliberately) make it seem.