Carolingian Catalonia Politics, Culture, and Identity in an Imperial Province, 778–987 Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series

Drawing on a range of evidence related to royal authority, political events and literate culture, this study traces how kings and emperors involved themselves in the affairs of the Spanish March, and examines how actively people in Catalonia participated in politics centred on the royal court. Rather than setting the political development of the region in terms of Catalonia's future independence as a medieval principality, Cullen J. Chandler addresses it as part of the Carolingian 'experiment'. In doing so, he incorporates an analysis of political events alongside an examination of such cultural issues as the spread of the Rule of Benedict, the Adoptionist controversy, and the educational programme of the Carolingian reforms. This new history of the region offers a robust and absorbing analysis of the nature of the Carolingian legacy in the March, while also revising traditional interpretations of ethnic motivations for political acts and earlier attempts to pinpoint the constitutional birth of Catalonia.

Introduction; 1. Gothic Catalonia and Septimania to 778; 2. Creating the Spanish March, 778–840; 3. March and monarchy, 840–878; 4. Counts, church and kings, 877–947; 5. Learned culture in Carolingian Catalonia; 6. The March toward sovereignty? (947–988); Conclusion: Carolingian Catalonia, 778–988.

Cullen J. Chandler is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Lycoming College, Pennsylvania. He has, with Steven Stofferahn, co-edited a Festschrift in honour of John J. Contreni, and his first article, 'Between Court and Counts', won the Early Medieval Europe-Blackwell Essay Prize.