In the Footsteps of the Ancient Fathers

The Construction and Use of Patristic Authority in the Carolingian Era

Series: 

Author:
Josh Timmermann
This book traces the categorical construction and discursive employment of the Church Fathers across a variety of textual genres and contexts during the Carolingian era. This study shows that Carolingian intellectual culture was imbued with a distinctive sense of ‘progress toward the past,’ bolstered by texts associating the Church Fathers with the perceived harmony and continuity of the ancient Christian tradition across time and space. The new Christian ‘Roman’ empire that the Carolingians sought to create, reform, and ultimately perfect was fundamentally rooted in a certain idealized vision of ancient Christianity and the Church Fathers as a special type of timeless, transdiscursive authority.
Copyright Year:
2025
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ISBN:
978-90-04-69027-1
Publication:
13 Jun 2025
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ISBN:
978-90-04-69026-4
Publication:
12 Jun 2025
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Josh Timmermann, Ph.D. (2021), University of British Columbia, teaches courses in History at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. His publications include studies of the early medieval reception of Augustine of Hippo and Julianus Pomerius.
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
Abbreviations
Editorial Note

Introduction: The Carolingians and the Christian Past(s)
 1 Constructing Christian ‘Tradition’ and ‘Orthodoxy’
 2 Carolingian Reform and Renewal
 3 The Uses of the Resources of the Past

1 Verba, Vitae, Vestigia: On ‘Illustrious Men’, Their Books, and Their Lives
 1 Introduction: doctor mundi
 2 Teacher(s) of the World
 3 In veterum vestigia patrum
 4 Toward ‘Christian literature’: Jerome’s De viris illustribus and Its Continuations by Gennadius of Marseille and Isidore of Seville
 5 Alcuin of York, Versus de patribus regibus et sanctis Euboricensis
 6 Reading, Writing, and the Poetic Past
 7 Notker Balbulus, Notatio de illustribus viris
 8 Exemplary vitae, Eloquent verba
 9 Possidius’s Vita Augustini and Other Textual Lives of the Fathers
 10 Carolingian Lives: Boniface of Mainz and Adalhard of Corbie
 11 Radbertus as Jerome? The Cogitis me
 12 Conclusion

2 Redeeming the Time: Exegetical Strategies from Tyconius and Augustine to The Carolingians
 1 Introduction: How Soon is ‘Now’?
 2 The ‘Messianic’ Eschatology of the Pauline Letters
 3 Christianity and the pax Romana
 4 Tyconius: Rules, ‘Keys’, Possibilities
 5 Tyconian Influences on Augustine’s Thought and Work
 6 A More Proximate Influence for Carolingian Exegesis: The ‘Venerable’ Bede
 7 Alcuin of York on Paul and the Apocalypse
 8 Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel, Liber comitis
 9 Claudius of Turin’s Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles
 10 Hrabanus Maurus’s Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles
 11 Haimo of Auxerre on Paul and the Apocalypse
 12 Sedulius Scottus’s Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles
 13 Florus of Lyon, Expositio in epistolas Beati Pauli ex operibus Sancti Augustini
 14 Conclusion

3 In Search of Lost Time(s): Augustine’s De Civitate Dei as a Source for Knowledge of Ancient History in the Carolingian Era
 1 Introduction: Historia and tempora Christiana
 2 Reading and Writing about the Past in the Early Middle Ages
 3 Studying and Using the De civitate Dei: The Evidence of Carolingian Manuscripts
 4 On the Borders of the City of God: Ninth-century Annotations on the De civitate Dei
 5 Capitula libri XVIII
 6 Fashioning Useable Augustines
 7 Harmonious historiae: Frechulf’s Universal History and Its Late Antique Sources
 8 Frechulf of Lisieux, the De civitate Dei, and the veritas historiae
 9 Conclusion: Everything is Uncertain?

4 Progress Toward the Past? Antiquity, Orthodoxy, and Consensus among Authorities in the Carolingian Reformatio
 1 Introduction: ‘Everywhere, always, and by everybody’?
 2 ‘Maintaining a position about halfway between the ancient and the modern’
 3 In Search of Ancient, Roman Tradition: Amalarius of Metz’s Liber officialis
 4 Historicising Difference: Walafrid Strabo’s De exordiis et incrementis
 5 Two Senses of Carolingian ‘Reform’
 6 Shaping and Using ‘The Fathers’ as a Unified Source of Authority: Evidence from Church Councils

Conclusion: Reformatio, Renovatio…nonne tertium quid?

Bibliography
Index of Names
This book is intended for scholars and students of medieval history; Late Antiquity; Patristics; the construction and appropriation of ‘golden ages’ from the past; the ideological relationships between authorship and authority.
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Publisher:
Brill
Language:
English
Pages:
xiv, 337 pp.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004690271

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