Margins at the Centre

At the beginning of the ninth century BCE, the Carolingian Empire encompassed large parts of what is now Western Europe. As early as the 830s, however, a process of political fragmentation began which led to the creation of the West, the Middle and the East Frankish Kingdom. These developed into independent units, despite formally remaining part of the Empire until 888. The project "Margins at the Centre" focuses on the East Frankish Kingdom and examines whether the process leading to political independence also entailed a new self-consciousness in the cultural sphere, especially with regard to the study of Latin and the Bible. These were the two disciplines which were dealt with most thoroughly in the Middle Ages. The Bible, which circulated in Latin in Western Europe, was the point of reference for moral, social, political and spiritual life. Therefore, it formed the main subject of scholarly interest in this period. Command of Latin was essential to understand the Bible`s text, its message, and the numerous explanations written by Christian exegetes over the centuries. While Latin in its medieval forms was still spoken in many regions of the Carolingian Empire, it was a foreign language in the East Frankish Kingdom. Here the people spoke mostly dialects of the so-called Old High German, while Latin was used, for instance, for administrative and scholarly purposes, as well as for written and, less frequently, oral communication. In the East Frankish Kingdom it had to be learnt from scratch by studying grammar. All this considered the main questions addressed by the project are: Did East Frankish scholars teach Latin differently from their contemporary fellows because of the different linguistic setting? Did they take into account possible difficulties of their East Frankish audiences when writing down their explanations of Latin grammar and the Bible? To tackle these questions, the project will investigate and compare several manuscripts, which were produced from c. 830 until the end of the ninth century. Special attention will be paid to the explanations added in the margins and between the lines, mostly in Latin, less often in Old High German. The analysis of these entries will enable me to trace the pedagogical priorities of the local scholars and the needs of their target audience. I have selected two groups of sources. The first includes glosses attached by East Frankish teachers to the Institutiones grammaticae of the late antique grammarian Priscian. They provide evidence of the issues, which were regarded as central in the study of Latin in East Francia. The second contains commented editions of the Bible, which were particularly widespread in East Francia in the period under scrutiny. I will create a digital edition of the glosses on Priscian and prepare a monograph with the results of my research.