Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium - by Levi Roach (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

An in-depth exploration of documentary forgery at the turn of the first millennium

Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium takes a fresh look at documentary forgery and historical memory in the Middle Ages. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, religious houses across Europe began falsifying texts to improve local documentary records on an unprecedented scale. As Levi Roach illustrates, the resulting wave of forgery signaled major shifts in society and political culture, shifts which would lay the foundations for the European ancien régime.

Spanning documentary traditions across France, England, Germany and northern Italy, Roach examines five sets of falsified texts to demonstrate how forged records produced in this period gave voice to new collective identities within and beyond the Church. Above all, he indicates how this fad for falsification points to new attitudes toward past and present--a developing fascination with the signs of antiquity. These conclusions revise traditional master narratives about the development of antiquarianism in the modern era, showing that medieval forgers were every bit as sophisticated as their Renaissance successors. Medieval forgers were simply interested in different subjects--the history of the Church and their local realms, rather than the literary world of classical antiquity.

A comparative history of falsified records at a crucial turning point in the Middle Ages, Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium offers valuable insights into how institutions and individuals rewrote and reimagined the past.

Review Quotes

"Levi Roach's book is convincing and impressive on many levels, both in the case studies and in the overarching narrative. . . .It is - contrary to what one might expect of a study that discusses charter studies - a joy to read."---Thomas Kohl, Early Medieval Europe

"

[A] clever book. . . . This study is a major achievement and has made visible a rich
vein of possibilities for further work.

"---Hans Hummer, Modern Philology

"Levi Roach's unfailingly interesting close contextual study . . . is a valuable contribution to the very substantial scholarly literature on history, memory and literacy in the early middle ages and is bound to stimulate further debate."---Rosamond McKitterck, Medieval Encounters

"There are few scholars who can match Roach's range and the result is impressive, based on deep familiarity both with primary materials and previous scholarship."---Kathryn A. Lowe, History Today

About the Author

Levi Roach is associate professor of medieval history at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Kingship and Consent in Anglo-Saxon England and Æthelred the Unready. Twitter @DrLRoach