The Fulda Annals - Studies in Frankish Historiography

Research project P 14313 The Fulda Annals - Studies in Frankish Historiography Walter POHL 06.03.2000 The Annales Fuldenses are the most important historiographic source that informs us about the Eastern Frankish Kingdom in the 9th century. It also contains several unique pieces of information about of the Carolingian `Ostland`, the region along the Austrian Danube. For research on the origins of medieval Central Europe, the Annales Fuldenses are of fundamental importance. However, the text has a history of its own that is much more complicated than the MGH edition (and all others) disclose. Especially the latter parts, from 882 onwards, exist in parallel versions that differ fundamentally. Recently, scholars have repeatedly called for a systematic new study of the manuscript transmission. This project proposes a systematic study of text and context of the Annales Fuldenses. It will use electronic media for an analysis and new collation of all relevant manuscripts, and their systematic comparison. Results of the project will be made accessible via the internet and debated by international specialists on the early medieval web forum of the Forschungsstelle. Thus, the question whether a new critical edition is necessary, and what it should look like (print and/or CD-ROM and/or internet publication, parallel texts/hypertext), will be resolved, and important methodological innovations in dealing with early medieval sources can be reached. The project will also explore the implications of a new methodological paradigm that has not yet been sufficiently used in the study of Carolingian annals. Former editors had always sought to establish an `Urtext`, linking the existing manuscripts through a hierarchical stemma, and tended to disregard variants and their codicological context. Nowadays, the variety of manuscripts, and their complex interdependence, is rather seen as an object of study in itself. Each manuscript attests to a specific approach to and reshaping of a text, and often also to a specific combination of different texts. Studying these manuscripts therefore does not only promise new insights into the construction and transmission of the text, but also a better understanding of the intellectual and political forces at work in the late 9th century and early 10th century Eastern Frankish kingdom, and the change of identities and the emergence of new communities during the latter years of the Carolingian period.