Commemorating Power in Early Medieval Saxony: Writing and Rewriting the Past at Gandersheim and Quedlinburg

In the early medieval world, the way people remembered the past changed how they saw the present. New accounts of former leaders and their deeds could strengthen their successors, establish novel claims to power, or criticize the current ruler. After 888, when the Carolingian Empire fractured into the smaller kingdoms of medieval western Europe, memory became a vital tool for those seeking to claim royal power for themselves.

Commemorating Power in Early Medieval Saxony looks at how the pas...