The formation of Christian Europe : the Carolingians, baptism, and the imperium christianum / Owen M. Phelan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Phelan, Owen Michael, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Europe--Church history--600-1500.

Europe.

Church history.

Carolingians.

France--History--To 987.

France.

History.

Baptism--History--Middle Ages, 600-1500.

Baptism.

Physical Description:

viii, 312 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2015.

Summary:

The Formation of Christian Europe analyses early medieval effors to fashion an imperium christianum with the organizing principle of the sacramentum. Owen M. Phelan argues that baptism, understood as a sacramentum, both provided a conceptual foundation for a Christian Empire in Europe and offered a medium for the communication and the popularization of key beliefs and ideas featured by the Carolingian Renewal. He explores how baptism was seen to unify people theologically, socially, and politically. The sacramentum enabled reformers to think in ways which were ideologically consistent, publically available, and socially useful. Phelan also examines the influential court intellectual, Alcuin of York, who worked within the Carolingian court to implement a sacramental society through baptism. The book finally looks at the dissolution of Carolingian political aspirations for an imperium christianum and how, by the end of the ninth century, political frustrations concealed the deeper achievement of the Carolingian Renewal. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Sacramentum: An Ordering Concept from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages 8

2 The Articulation of Polity: Baptism as the Foundation of an Imperium Christianum 48

3 The Carolingian Subject: The Sacramentum of Baptism and the Formation of Identity in Alcuin of York 94

4 The Carolingian Machinery of Christian Formation: Charlemagne's Encyclical Letter on Baptism from 811/812 and Its Implications 147

5 The Sacramental Assumption: Baptism and Carolingian Society in the Ninth Century 207

Conclusion: Loss and Legacy 262.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780198718031

0198718039

OCLC:

875151717