Overview
Water and the Word focuses on a genre of literature written for the education of the Carolingian clergy: Carolingian baptismal instructions. This literature has never been brought together and studied collectively in the context of the books in which it circulated. This comprehensive study has three major objectives. One is to describe the codices in which the baptismal instructions are found, in order to show with what other kinds of material the baptismal tracts were associated and where, how, and by whom these codices were intended to be used. Another is to bring together the baptismal texts and study them systematically. Finally, a third objective is to interpret the Carolingian Reform in light of the baptismal instructions and the manuscripts in which they were copied. Volume 1 of this two-volume set is devoted to analysis and interpretation of the material in volume 2. It is divided into three parts. The first part is concerned with the manuscript context of the baptismal instructions. In the second, the baptismal expositions themselves are analyzed. Part 3 of volume 1 offers some conclusions about the Carolingian Reform. Volume 2 contains the Latin text of sixty-six manuscripts.
Full Product Details
Author: Susan A. Keefe
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Imprint: University of Notre Dame Press
Dimensions:
Width: 177.80cm
, Height: 1.40cm
, Length: 25.40cm
Weight: 0.599kg
ISBN: 9780268019655
ISBN 10: 0268019657
Pages: 216
Publication Date: 15 September 2002
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Awaiting stock
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Reviews
"""Most Carolingian texts, so we are taught, are in print, if sometimes in inadequate editions. The proper task of the Carolingian historian is the study of elites and cultural identity, as defined by written culture. Just as the columns of the Acta Sanctorum remind us of texts Carolingian historians take pride in ignoring, so Susan Keefe's two impressive volumes serve as a reminder that there are plenty of texts still to be edited and understood. By investigating Carolingian interpretations of how people were made Christians she may be contributing more to our understanding of their cultural identity than her contemporaries, but she is far too modest to say so. . . . Outstanding in this study is Susan Keefe's recognition that our best clues to the function of these texts in the Carolingian empire are found via an examination of the manuscript context in which her texts circulate. So there are detailed descriptions of all of fifty-nine Carolingian manuscripts . . . together with a full listing of all the later manuscript witnesses which she has found for these texts. They were texts that every priest was required to know, so that the manuscripts are essential guides to clerical culture and the range of instructional texts through which the Carolingian reforms were realised. . . . Water and the Word will still be an essential tool an hundred years hence."" —Journal of Ecclesiastical History"
Author Information
Susan A. Keefe is associate professor of church history at Duke University.
