Knowledge of the Bible was the foundation of Carolingian intellectual life. Charlemagne's great capitulary, the Admonitio generalis, and his De litteris colendis leave no doubt that correct understanding of scripture was central to the king's efforts to lead his people to salvation. Biblical exegesis was the overwhelmingly dominant form of literary production during the Carolingian epoch. This volume draws on recent scholarship which challenges the fifty-year old assessment by Beryl Smalley that Carolingian commentaries lacked originality and were worthy simply for transmitting their sources to the more original scholars of the eleventh century. The articles contained here show that the Carolingian period was a major turning-point in the history of the medieval approach to the Bible. Commentaries were composed for books of scripture ignored during the patristic era; new exegetical methods were invented; ninth-century exegetes selected and handled borrowings from earlier sources in an individualistic manner; and exegetical techniques impacted on poetry, homilies, artistic imagery and other manifestations of Carolingian intellectual life.
