Hagiography was a popular form of literature used to promote local political interests in Carolingian Lombardy
Carolingian hagiographies from Lombardy functioned as vigorous and highly competitive forms of pleading and political PR. According to new research they constituted a coherent group with a limited range of sanctity models. However a marked preference for the local martyrs and bishops from their local regions reveals a highly competitive milieu, wherein local bishops tried to further their diverse agendas in a shifting political landscape. In this the praxis differed from North of the Alps where the promotion of a cult and the translation of relics required royal or imperial approval. Down South it was if not a free-for-all, at least highly entertaining way of at least trying to keep some sort of independence from the encroachment of neighbours.
Nowhere was this more apparent in the on-going fight between Pavia – the former capital of the Lombard kingdom – and Milan, the new religious centre in the Carolingian kingdom south of the Alps. This meant that the scriptoria of bishops came to act as the local production sites par excellence, while the large royal monasteries up North of the Alps were playing that role. Both, however, took part in the general movement of correction, “the cultural movement that was meant to ensure the successful integration of the Roman and Christian empire reborn under Charlemagne”, writes Giorgia Vocino in a highly entertaining article, recently published in “Early Medieval Europe” (2014)
Under the aegis of the saints. Hagiography and power in early Carolingian Northern Italy
By Giorgia Vocino
In: Early Medieval Europe 2014, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 26–52
ABSTRACT:
In the transition from the Lombard to the Carolingian period, hagiography came to play a fundamental role in the strategies of legitimation and representation of the episcopal churches of the regnum Langobardorum. This article gives an overview of the features, choices, tastes and models of sanctity characteristic of Italian hagiography, against the background of local contexts and political competition. It demonstrates that in the territories under Frankish rule, hagiography represented a chief instrument in the hands of the ecclesiastical elites to shape and use the past in light of the concerns of the present.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Georgia Vocino, Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften
The article builds on the dissertation of Giorgia Vocino: Santi e luoghi santi al servizio della politica carolingia (774-877): Vitae e Passiones del regno italico nel contesto europeo (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia 2010). The thesis can be downloaded from academia.org