In the Footsteps of the Ancient Fathers

This book traces the categorical construction and discursive employment of the Church Fathers across a variety of textual genres and contexts during the Carolingian era. This study shows that Carolingian intellectual culture was imbued with a distinctive sense of ‘progress toward the past,’ bolstered by texts associating the Church Fathers with the perceived harmony and continuity of the ancient Christian tradition across time and space. The new Christian ‘Roman’ empire that the Carolingians sought to create, reform, and ultimately perfect was fundamentally rooted in a certain idealized vision of ancient Christianity and the Church Fathers as a special type of timeless, transdiscursive authority.