This pioneering book studies the function and status of the Written word in Carolingian society in France and Germany in the eighth and ninth centuries.
While employing a huge range of primary material, the author does not confine herself to a functional ana.
It demonstrates that literacy was by no means confined to a clerical elite, but was dispersed in lay society and used for government and administration, as well as for ordinary legal transactions among the peoples of the Frankish kingdom.
This pioneering book studies the function and status of the Written word in Carolingian society in France and Germany in the eighth and ninth centuries