New Research Project on Carolingian Text Culture in Septimania and Catalonia
A research project by ICREA-UAB and the Austrian Academy of Science will study the Carolingian textual heritage and its influence on the construction of religious, cultural and political identities in Septimania and Catalonia between the 9th and 11th centuries. It will allow to restore the Carolingian literary landscape to these territories during the Middle Ages.
The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) supports with c. 600,000 € a new four-year bilateral research project between Vienna and Barcelona under the title "Carolingian Culture in Septimania and Catalonia: The Transformation of a Multi-Ethnic Middle Ground of the Euro-Mediterranean World", which is coordinated since September 2020 by Prof. Dr. Walter Pohl, director of the Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and ICREA Research Professor Matthias M. Tischler, who has been working at our University since 2017.
"The main aim of the project is to investigate the rich, yet widely unknown, Carolingian textual heritage and its potential for religious, cultural and political identity building in Septimania and Catalonia between the 9th and 11th centuries. This heritage is key to understanding the formation of the Catalan identity in the Middle Ages and beyond. For this reason, it is important to unearth and disseminate this virtually unknown treasure", says Professor Tischler.
The focus will be especially put on the common transmission of the Latin Bible, its exegesis, the liturgy, and historiography. To this end, the project is developing a comprehensive database of the surviving manuscripts, fragments, and other medieval and modern evidence and their complete research literature.
The bilateral research group includes German, Austrian, Czech, and Catalan members and is supported by other external experts from France and the Netherlands. The project will offer several workshops on selected topics in Vienna and Barcelona at regular intervals, to which further scholars will be invited.
