Carolingian Biblical Culture

Abstract

“I am small in body, but great in strength”. Theodulf of Orleans used these words to describe the small format Bibles (33 cm. x 24 cm.) produced in his scriptorium. He might have used them to describe the impact of the Bible on Carolingian society. The influence of that “small body” on the thought, literature, art, political and social policy, religion and spirituality of the Carolingian realms was so ubiquitous that historians sometimes take it as inevitable that Carolingian society became a biblical society. But historians who study change and process recognize that the Bible's importance in European society changed dramatically between A. D. 750 and 900. Daunted by the complexity and magnitude of the transformation and its consequences, Carolingianists have not yet managed to chart this history, to write their “History of the Bible in the Carolingian Age” 2 . This essay can only consider the key moments in that history when the Bible moved from the periphery of political and intellectual culture into the Carolingian and European mainstream. If much of the complex history of Carolingian biblical culture remains unexplored here, perhaps the paths of future explorations will be more clearly marked.

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