International
Medieval Society, Paris
Société Internationale des Médiévistes,
Paris
Symposium 2006 Abstracts
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Symposium Program
"Wanderers between two worlds: Irish and Anglo-Saxon scholars at the court of Charlemagne"
Linda Dohmen, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
Nos ergo pauperes et peregrini oneri forsitan et fastidio vobis videamur esse propter nostram multitudinem et inportunitatem et clamositatem (...).
This quotation attributed to Dungal, an Irishman associated with the court of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, could have been written by many of the ‘foreign’ scholars that Charlemagne assembled at his court from the 770s onwards. In this context the Anglo-Saxon and Irish presence seems especially striking, most of all because of the famous Alcuin and his abundant correspondence with friends and dignitaries from all over Christian Europe, many of them Irish or Anglo-Saxon. It seems at least as remarkable, however, that in contrast to other ‘foreigners’ at the Frankish court, the ‘foreignness’ – i.e. the ‘ethnic’ and geographic origin – of the Anglo-Saxons and particularly of the Irish was continuously stressed both by themselves and by their contemporaries.
Concentrating on the poems and letters left to us by Charlemagne’s scholars I shall examine the Irishmen’s and Anglo-Saxons’ relations to their homeland and people on the one hand and their situation at the Carolingian court on the other. From these texts, I seek to answer whether these ‘foreigners’ understood themselves and were regarded by others as ‘strangers’ in their new surroundings. Taking potential markers of ‘strangeness’ (e.g. language, appearance, customs, legal rights) as well as testimonies of court life into consideration, I shall argue that many of these ‘foreigners’ were indeed respected and contented members of court but at the same time constructed themselves as ‘strangers’ by stressing their lonely situation inperegrinatione. Where does that discrepancy come from? In fact, the peregrinus can be regarded as both a ‘foreigner’ and a ‘stranger’ by definition for he has left his worldly homeland in self-denial in order to find his true home in heaven. Therefore, he must remain a ‘stranger’ wherever he goes. If he found a new home on earth, he would no longer be a peregrinus.