La percezione papale e romana dei Carolingi nel IX secolo alla luce del Liber pontificalis

On Tuesday, Oct. 17, at 5 p.m. in Room F007 of Frascara Palace, the inaugural seminar of the Permanent Seminar on the History of the Papacy will be held. Opening this year's seminar series will be Rosamond McKitterick of Cambridge University, one of the most distinguished historians of the Carolingian era.

The scholar, in an attempt to overturn some credited beliefs in modern historiography regarding Carolingian involvement in Italy (between 774 and 877) will explore how the popes perceived their relations with the Franks and Carolingian rulers, and thus the degree to which Rome itself can be understood as "Carolingian" during this period. To do so, the scholar will analyze contemporary biographies contained in the continuation of the Liber pontificalis. Specifically, McKitterick will discuss what the ninth-century Lives of the Liber Pontificalis reveal about the attitudes or knowledge of the Romans toward the Franks and Carolingian rulers. She will then consider the implications of these texts as historical sources. The underlying themes of the seminar will be the particular institutional memory created by the contemporary narrative and how the Liber pontificalis relates to the papal archives that served as its sources.