MONASTICISM, SPIRITUAL PATRONAGE AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE
Matthew Innes
GIFTS TO THE CHURCH: PATTERNS AND POTENTIAL ‘Total history’ is an impossibility, because in studying any historical society we are totally reliant on the highly selective and carefully selected views transmitted to us by that its successors. Any serious attempt at reconstructing a past must therefore begin confronting problem of representativeness or otherwise surviving sources. The evidence which survives from early medieval period only tiny subset what once existed, but survival not necessarily random. Those documents were just lucky enough avoid random variables destruction loss; most copied conscious decisions made preserve them later generations. In Carolingian middle Rhine, large numbers they recorded important process social change, saw monasteries acquiring rights over land unprecedented scale. If consider lost, it clear more less through decay, war natural disaster played part: hence absence material archives cathedrals Mainz, Worms Speyer. Similarly, abbey Hersfeld preserved originals royal grants, recording dealings with non-royal individuals. odd do survive are, essentially, lucky: three ninth-century charters used as bookbindings tenth century thus rediscovered.
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