How do people, in both the past and the present, think about moments of social and political crisis, and how do they respond to them? What are the interpretive codes by which troubling events are read and given meaning, and what part do these codes play in suggesting specific strategies for coping with the world? In Past Convictions Courtney Booker attempts to answer these questions by examining the controversial divestiture and public penance of Charlemagne's son, the Emperor Louis the Pious, in 833.
Historians have customarily viewed the event as marking the beginning of the end of the Carolingian dynasty. Exploring how both contemporaries and subsequent generations thought about Louis's forfeiture of the throne, Booker contends that certain vivid ninth-century narratives reveal a close but ephemeral connection between historiography and the generic conventions of comedy and tragedy. In tracing how writers of later centuries built upon these dramatic Carolingian accounts to tell a larger story of faith, betrayal, political expediency, and decline, he explicates the ways historiography shapes our vision of the past and what we think we know about it, and the ways its interpretive models may fall short.

Courtney M. Booker's profile page

Courtney M. Booker teaches history at the University of British Columbia.

Booker is not content to question prevailing interpretations of a single set of events. Instead, he revises at least two centuries' worth of ways of knowing about them. Past Convictions will have paradigmatic significance for scholars seeking to know how various interpretations assumed their adamantine forms.

Thomas F. X. Noble, University of Notre Dame

The book makes two impressive contributions to medieval history. First, Booker's careful analysis of a thousand-year-long historiographical tradition sounds a warning about the dangers of relying on reified traditions. Second, he cleverly recovers stifled voices from the ninth century, ones well worth remembering for their power in deposing an emperor. . . . An important read for anyone interested in historiography or Carolingian history.

<i>Religious Studies Review</i>