Parergon

Editors Graham A. Loud and Martial Staub have excelled themselves in producing a collection of articles that is in many ways more than the sum of its parts. The eleven essays included in the collection range from the arcane to the thematic, grouped in five parts examining the categorization of the medieval period, identity, nationalism, land and frontiers, and religious history. As the introduction by the editors states, ‘if we do not study the Middle Ages, and try to understand and explain it in as unbiased a way we can, then we leave the field open to those who abuse and exploit the past to justify modern injustice’ (p. 3).

More specifically, the collection seeks to explore the issues and particulars of historiography: to take stock, if only partially, of the oppositional framing of medieval history—as compared to the modern era, with the stereotypical pairs of religious versus rational, feudal versus capitalist, and so on—and the changes in historiography that have led to current thinking in medieval history. All too often popular medievalism finds the roots of modern institutions such as liberal democracy or market forces in the emerging merchant class, struggles between the Church and kings, and the Magna Carta, but this collection is a timely reminder that teleological history is an intellectual dead end.

The first part of the collection, entitled ‘Imagining/Inventing the Middle Ages’, consists of two essays, by Dame Janet Nelson and Professor Emeritus Ian Wood. It is probably at this point in the collection where its ambitions are at its strongest. Nelson’s piece is an overview of changes in the techniques of history over the past few decades, and how new understandings of economic history, better appreciation of climatic evidence, and evidence of other physical impacts such as plague, has led to rethinking of medieval history and a particular focus on cross-disciplinary projects such as the studies of diaspora populations and the transfer of ideas. Nelson also details an example of how rethinking inside the discipline has changed her own practice in researching and teaching Charlemagne and Carolingian history—there is a solid undercurrent exhorting other historians to be just as reflective about the ways in which they do history. And Professor Wood’s essay adds to this by exploring how retellings of the late antique and early medieval past were appropriated across a broad variety of historical and literary contexts in Western Europe around the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The next part, ‘Constructing a European Identity’, is equally successful. The two contributions, by Patrick Geary and Michael Borgolte, explore the changing nature of ethnic identities, with Geary providing a sound overview on the transformation from the Roman populace, with its division between citizens and barbarians, into a Europe of nations, and how this has been seen by historians over the last two centuries. Borgolte shows how twentieth-century historiography, and recent ‘global’ European histories, are complicated by communities of religion [End Page 222] and permeated by a divide in thinking between historians resident in Eastern Europe and those in Germany and the West.

The third section of the collection is the most arcane: three essays, by Bastian Schlüter, Joep Leerssen, and Bernhard Junsen, each explore elements of the Carolingian and Holy Roman legacy, from the use of Staufer imagery in museum and ceremonial contexts to the ideological basis of the imagery generated through the restoration of medieval buildings in the nineteenth century, and the contrasting illustrated depictions of Charlemagne in school textbooks in France and Germany. Each of these articles relies on close interpretation of material evidence: the intersection of imagery and architecture, the use of wood engravings, or the collectible picture cards presented with chocolates. Some of the arguments boil down to observations on whether Charlemagne is portrayed with a moustache (in German depictions) or a beard (in French). While not explicitly addressed in...