The introduction concerns itself primarily with establishing the historiography of the ordines romani, introducing the editions of Michel Andrieu, and showing how his presentation and study of the texts were shaped byassumptions about their proper origin and use. The overarching idea of liturgical refom is questioned, as well as the usefulness of synthetic editions, which fail to capture the variability and interactivity with which early medieval liturgical texts were compiled.

This chapter pulls together the previous chapters’ conclusions about the early medieval laity. It then asks why new, Carolingian-style formula collections stopped being made in the course of the tenth century. After surveying possible answers offered by the scholarship, it suggests – while acknowledging that we will likely never know for certain – another, namely that they continued to be produced as long as scribes wanted to write their documents and letters like others were writing theirs, for a clientele whose interests could span very long distances. As the Carolingian world disintegrated in the later ninth and tenth centuries, this became less important. The chapter closes with the history of the manuscript Paris, BNF, ms. lat. 2123, as it disappears from view, surfaces in the early modern period, arrives at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and ends up in the hands of Karl Zeumer as he edited the formulas for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. It discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the MGH edition, the impact that Zeumer’s editorial methods had on the formula texts and their images of the laity, and the resulting dangers of treating this edition, rather than the surviving manuscripts, as a primary source.

This chapter introduces the formulas as a source genre and in particular the manuscript and formula collection that occupies the center of this study: Paris, BNF ms. lat. 2123 and the formulas from Flavigny. It also introduces the concepts “early medieval Europe” and “early medieval laity,” in order to frame the questions that shape the book. The chapter briefly describes how the category “lay” even came to exist; that is, how and when a category “clerical” distilled out of late and post-Roman Christian society and came by the Carolingian period to separate clergy and monks from laypeople. From there it moves into what we know about how lay people lived their lives in post-Roman and early medieval Frankish Europe, and what remains unknown that makes it worth writing a new book about. The chapter then sets the Flavigny formulas in the context of the other Carolingian formula collections, presenting it (and them) as a gateway into a different world. Finally, the chapter briefly outlines the steps we need to open the gate and to understand what we see on the other side, and the topics we will explore when we get there.

The Epilogue identifies classical masculinity as reflected in depictions of late antique clothing,liturgy in Carolingian monasteries, and miniature illustrations in middle-Byzantine manuscripts. Fifth-century clergy wore specific apparel to signify manhood. Benedictine lectors (readers) were selected according to their virility of voice. And Byzantine artists set clergy face to face in manuscripts, in part a legacy of the agōn trope of reciprocal strength. These examples show that elements of classical masculinity continued to inform the Christian church in western Europe and Byzantium into the eleventh century. Such representations continued to evoke power and authority within the hierarchy of the church.Like fourth-century agōn rhetoric, these trappings of classical manhood provided a language of hierarchy for church leaders to integrate into a faith that lacked comparable platforms for displays of social and spiritual distinction.

Between the fourth and tenth centuries, across most of western Europe, law, legal institutions, and legal procedures became Christianized, in the sense that Christian rhetorical tropes, ideologies, and existential perspectives infused legal expression and practices. Royal and imperial courts were sites for interweaving secular and ecclesiastical authority, and hence for interweaving secular and ecclesiastical law. Such interweaving found voice in “mixed assemblies,” that is, assemblies in which both higher clergy and secular nobility participated in judicial and legislative processes; documents issued under the name of a king or emperor also show the integration of secular and ecclesiastical law. Law was not exclusively developed and implemented at royal courts and assemblies: complementing governmental efforts to instantiate Christian law, the educated elite took an interest in law, both as a subject for study and as a resource for informing arbitration, prosecution, or defense of rights and privileges. One of the many streams of legal formation was the practice of collecting, compiling, and conserving decrees and judicial opinions that would, in time, constitute the core of the canon law of subsequent centuries.

The Black Sea, Russia, and eastern Europe exported slaves throughout the medieval period. Most had been born free but were enslaved through capture or occasionally through sale by relatives. During the eighth through tenth centuries, slaves were traded from eastern Europe and the Baltic to elite households in Byzantium and the Islamic world via the Dniepr and Volga river systems, the Carolingian empire, and Venice. In the thirteenth century, the structure of this slave trade changed as a result of the Mongol invasion of eastern Europe, Italian colonization of the Black Sea, the success of the Mamluk state, and the crusading activities of the Teutonic Knights in the Baltic. People enslaved in the Baltic now tended to be traded westward rather than eastward; people enslaved in eastern Europe and the Caucasus tended to pass through the Black Sea into Italian, Mamluk, or Ottoman hands; and people enslaved in the Balkans were trafficked primarily by Venetians or Ottomans. Many aspects of this trade deserve further study, however, such as political marginality and decentralization as factors that enabled slaving; violations of the principle that slaves should come from a different religious background than their owners; and the logistics of local slave trades.

This chapter looks at the varieties and trajectories of unfree status in the Carolingian empire. Rather than seeing it only as a point of transition from A (Roman slavery) to B (medieval serfdom), it aims to consider the practical logic of unfreedom as a category in the early medieval West, in a variety of different contexts: enslavement (the slave trade, self-sale, penal enslavement), household slavery, on great estates, and in law-making.

In recent years research on the early medieval north-eastern Italy has made important advances in the study of archaeological finds from the entire Adriatic area but also in the field of critical analysis of the early Venetian duchy’s relations with the Lombard (and later Italian) kingdom and Byzantine Italy. This study focuses on the second subject, starting from the arrival of the Lombards in 569, which established the conditions for the birth of Venice. From the sixth to the ninth century, Venice was a Byzantine duchy embedded in a dense network of political, social and economic relations which extended across the whole northern Adriatic. The formation of Venetian society and the city itself, its institutions and political identity were profoundly influenced by social and institutional developments on the Italian mainland. Simultaneously Byzantine, Adriatic and Italian in character, Venice developed in delicate equilibrium with all these different social components.

One interesting way to discern how Carolingian ninth-century Italy actually was is to look at major narrative sources produced in Italy at that time and see how often and in what ways they talked about the Carolingians. This chapter looks in particular at History of the Lombards in the Gotha Codex, the history of Andreas of Bergamo, the Roman Liber Pontificalis,  Agnellus of Ravenna’s Book of Pontiffs, the Chronicle of Benedict of Monte Casino and the History of the Lombards of Benevento by Erchempert. One finds that Carolingians are mentioned surprisingly infrequently apart from the era of Louis II, and he turns out to have been a rather polarizing figure. Major wars and political struggles in southern Italy feature Carolingians only tangentially. Carolingians appear sporadically on the Roman scene. Carolingians appear infrequently in accounts fo development sin northern Italy. Reading the narrative sources would not lead one to speak of a 'Carolingian' Italy.

This chapter deals with the ways dynastic consciousness was expressed in naming and numbering practices. It was very unusual for a medieval dynasty to have a name. Dynastic labels such as Plantagenet and Capetian are modern constructions. Ruling dynasties with hereditary surnames are exceptional, the main cases being in Ireland and Byzantium after the eleventh century. However, dynastic identity was expressed in the choice of personal names, some of which were so characteristic of a family that it is often assumed that anyone bearing them is likely to be a member. The term “Carolingian”, derived from the recurrent dynastic name “Charles” is analysed as an example. New names were introduced into dynasties through marriage and through free choice of names for younger sons. Examples of a conscious change of name usually have political significance. Numbering of monarchs began with the papacy and spread slowly and unevenly. The systems of numbering always imply a starting point and a claim to continuity. Examples analysed in detail here include the Holy Roman Emperors, the post-Conquest kings of England and the kings of Leon-Castile. The conclusion is that “a number for a monarch is far from a neutral tool of chronology”.

The fifth chapter explores the sacralisation and liturgification of the royal investiture ceremony in eighth- and ninth-century Western Europe. With the progressive fusion of the rites of unction and coronation in the Carolingian monarchy, the royal investiture ceremony was sacralised and liturgified, and confirmed the increasingly prominent function of the bishop as its ordinary minister. Ceremonial liturgification and iconographic Christification are the two main processes in the consolidation of the ideology and practice of Western monarchies from the eighth century. Carolingian ceremonial practices developed the basic ceremonies of royal accession which would become prevalent in medieval Europe and early modern monarchies, and constitute the main formative period for the ideology and rituals of medieval royalty in the West, between the mid-eighth century and the mid-ninth century. This sacralisation preludes the transgressive nature of the performance of self-coronation among some late Western medieval kings, in which the mediating function of the priest will be damaged. The iconographical Christ substitutes (or, perhaps more accurately, is transferred from) the pagan and theocentric models of pre-Carolingian ceremonies and rites.