Charlemagne's survey of the Holy Land : wealth, personnel, and buildings of a Mediterranean church between antiquity and the Middle Ages : with a critical edition and translation of the original text / Michael McCormick.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McCormick, Michael, 1951-

Series:

Dumbarton Oaks medieval humanities

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Carolingians.

History.

Christians.

Church buildings.

Historic buildings.

Palestine--Antiquities.

Palestine.

Jerusalem--Antiquities.

Jerusalem.

Historic buildings--Palestine.

Church buildings--Palestine.

Palestine--Description and travel--Sources.

Palestine--Church history--Sources.

Christians--Palestine--History--To 1500--Sources.

Palestine--History--638-1917--Sources.

Charlemagne, Emperor, 742-814.

Charlemagne.

Carolingians--History--Sources.

Genre:

Sources.

Physical Description:

xxii, 287 pages : illustrations, maps ; 26 cm.

Place of Publication:

Washington, D.C. : Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, [2011]

Summary:

In Charlemagne's Survey of the Holy Land, Michael McCormick rehabilitates and reinterprets one of the most neglected and extraordinary documents from Charlemagne's revival of the Roman empire: the report of a fact-finding mission to the Christian church of the Holy Land.

He edits and translates a roll of documents that preserves the most detailed statistical portrait of the female and male personnel, monuments (including exact dimensions), and finances of any major Christian church before Domesday Book. Setting its documents in the broader context of the economic trend since late antiquity and the archaeological evidence, and comparing the Holy Land churches and monasteries to their contemporaries in the West and East, this study shows that the Palestinian church was living in reduced circumstances; overall it was on the decline as the old financial links with Byzantium slackened. Charlemagne's move to outflank the Byzantine emperor allows McCormick to construct a microhistory of the Frankish king's ambitions and formidable organizational talents for running an empire. This volume supplements McCormick's other major feat of synthesis, The Origins of the European Economy, and will be indispensable reading for anyone interested in Mediterranean, economic and church history, medieval rulership, and the Holy Land, its Christian communities, and its late antique monuments. Book jacket.

Contents:

Pt. 1. A Mediterranean church in the early Middle Ages

The wealth of a Mediterranean church in comparative perspective

A bumpy road from late antiquity : the Holy Land churches

Toward a comparative sociology of early medieval religious houses

The Carolingian establishments in the Holy Land

Late antique monuments and early medieval people of the Holy Land

pt. 2. The documents

The Basel roll

The languages and sources of the roll

The date, purpose, and context of the documents

From Aachen to Jerusalem

pt. 3. Texts, translation, and textual commentary

The Basel roll : critical edition and translation (Breue commemoratorii de illis casis Dei uel monasteriis qui sunt in sancta ciuitate Hierusalem uel in circuitu eius; Memoria de illis monasteriis quae sunt in extremis Hierusalem in terra promissionis; Dispensa patriarchae inter presbiteris, diaconibus, monachis, clericis et omne congregatione ecclesiae)

Textual commentary.

Notes:

Folded insert attached to back cover.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN:

9780884023630

088402363X

OCLC:

387780602