| Although scholars generally acknowledge the importance of the Carolingian reform movement, the extent of its impact on the ninth-century world remains unclear. Contemporary records of the transferal of saints' relics provide one means of assessing regional interest in the program of the royal court. This dissertation investigates the translation narratives written by Einhard, Rudolf of Fulda, Jonas of Orleans, an anonymous monk of Saint-Germain-des-Pres and others as mirrors of the ideology of reform as it developed under Charlemagne and his successors. While Charlemagne and his advisers tried to control translation through legislative means, before 814 there was little interest in examining or cultivating the event as a vehicle of reform. The emergence of the narrative description of translation as a literary form coincided with the diversification of thought on reform during the reign of Louis the Pious.;While in some respects the movement of church reform in the Carolingian period may be viewed as a precursor of the revival movements of the central Middle Ages, ninth-century authors were more aware of the need to improve individual believers within the church than the church as a whole. The translation narratives surveyed here reveal the effort of some churchmen and writers to lead their parishioners from a devotion to the saints as heroic exemplars of Christian virtue to a new piety limited and directed by the sacraments and liturgy of the church. The translation narratives helped incorporate the power of foreign saints in the local Christian community in a manner that would reinforce the sacramental bonds that protected that community. The liturgy provided a means of conveying selected parts of the narratives to a wider, mostly illiterate audience. Miracle stories that emphasized the close relationship between a saint and the church that housed his relics were meant to trigger a process of mimetic reform, shaping their audience in accordance with the ideals of the leading churchmen. The translation narratives thus were thought to furnish a powerful means of improving all members of Christian society, not only its higher strata. |
