A Multicultural Case for the Study of the Early Middle Ages (Powell & Maldonado)

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How might the study of multiculturalism in the Middle Ages differ across historical period and academic specialization? In this episode, Fordham University master’s students Kristian Powell and Sean Maldonado discuss their experiences studying the early medieval period. They reflect on conversations from their coursework, the importance of professorial/institutional support, and what excites them most about the diversity of the early medieval period.

Kristian Powell is a second-year master’s student at Fordham University. An early medievalist, he is writing his thesis on altars in Merovingian Gaul and their religious, cultural and archaeological context. After graduating in May, Kristian will be staying in the Bronx on a one-year teaching fellowship serving underprivileged children. 

Sean Maldonado is a first-year master’s student studying at Fordham University in New York City. His interests are in the Early Middle Ages. In particular, he studies Visigothic history with a focus on the Isidorian intellectual legacy and Isidore’s reception in the later Middle Ages. Sean also studies Augustine, specifically his political theology, as well as monasticism more broadly.

For further reading:

• East & West in the Early Middle Ages: the Merovingian Kingdoms in Mediterranean Perspective. Edited by Stefan Esders, Yitzhak Hen, Yaniv Fox, and Lauri Sarti.

• Economou, Andrew. Byzantine Rome & the Greek Popes: Eastern Influences on Rome & the Papacy from Gregory the Great to Zacharias (590-752).

• Maskarinec, Maya. City of Saints: Rebuilding Rome in the Early Middle Ages.

Episode transcript (Note: For a time-dynamic transcript, access the episode through a free podcasting platform such as Apple Podcats or Spotify):

Kristian: Good afternoon everyone. My name is Kristian Powell, your host for today. I'm joined by my colleague and, fellow classmate, Sean Maldonado. And we're coming to you today from the wonderful podcast studio of the Walsh Family Library here at Fordham University on this balmy February afternoon. Sean, for those listening who don't have the privilege to know you as well as I do, why don't you introduce yourself and tell our listeners a little bit about what you're doing here at Fordham.

Sean: Hey guys. My name is Sean. I'm a first year medieval study student here at Fordham University and I'm studying the Visigothic kingdom. There's anything about it really interests me and mostly philosophy, but yeah, it's my first year, so we'll see where my scholarship takes me.

Kristian: Awesome. My name's Kristian Powell. I'm a second year master's student here at Fordham. I'm a Frank Guy. I study the Franks, all about the Merovingians and the Karolingians as well. And I'm mostly studying the religious life and their experience.

My thesis that I just started writing is gonna be about all about altars in the frankish realm. It's gonna be really fun.

Sean: Nice.

Kristian: So today, we're gonna discuss something very near and dear to our hearts. The early Middle Ages probably near and dear, basically just to our hearts.

Sean: Yeah, I think so.

Kristian: Um, you know, in, in, in many senses of the word here in the Bronx in particular, we're gonna make the argument. That, you know, this time period, specifically the early Middle Ages, which we're gonna define in a second has so much opportunity for studying multiculturalism compared to the later middle Ages.

We're, we're gonna make that argument. It might be a little controversial, but I feel it's a good argument to make. We're gonna approach this, uh, topic from two different areas, uh, which we're most familiar with, which is, these like early Roman liturgical forms, as well as the political entity, the Visigothic Kingdom.

Sean: Let's go.

Kristian: We're gonna talk about a lot of different examples of, opportunities for studying multiculturalism in the early middle Ages, but we're definitely gonna be touching on these subjects that are so near and dear to both of us.

Sean: Yeah.

Kristian: Sean, what, what is the early Middle Ages? What about this period is early?

Sean: One of our professors, professor Mueller, bifurcates the Middle Ages, early from the later in terms of its understanding of law and how law gets systematized and how it gets codified and how law takes a preeminence over, other forms of justice like feuding or of just communal attributions of justice. He kind of divides it up. He says it's mostly the 12th century.

Kristian: I think it's really smart to kinda start around the year 500.

Sean: Mm-hmm. I think so.

Kristian: Some people, you know, look at me a little funny. I'm like, ah, for me. I like to start at 300. I like to start at the persecution of Diocletian, go through Constantine and the, uh, legalization of Christianity. And then it's, you know, like broader acceptance.

Sean: Yeah. But the problem is always like, where does the, late antique period end? Where does the early Middle Ages begin? Is the early middle ages a legitimate time period to study? Like it's always, uh, murky waters when you come to this early period.

Kristian: I think for our purposes today, 500 to a thousand is perfect. 500 years very clean. And I think it really allows us to, leave no stone unturned in this discussion of multiculturalism and opportunities to study multiculturalism. I'm, I'm gonna be saying opportunities a lot during this.

Sean: Yeah,, there really is an untapped field that it really needs a lot of research, a lot of studying.

Kristian: Now we've defined, what are the early middle Ages, how do we define multiculturalism here?

Is it just contact between east and west? Mm-hmm. You know, which are obviously very ambiguous terms. Is it contact between Muslims and Christians, Islam comes about in the mid to late seventh century and really starts to dominate the political field during that time.

Sean: I think it encompasses some of this east and west dialogue, Muslims and Christians, but also like before there have been these sorts of inter, across boundary sort of contact.

So I think we need to broaden and widen our understanding of How early multiculturalism in the early Middle Ages differs from that of the later middle Ages. Because I think there is a very important distinction, and it mostly has to do with the Roman Empire. What do you think?

Kristian: I feel like. When you're looking at the multiculturalism in this earlier period, it's, and this is purely the way I imagine things, is that, I mean, from all of the books I've read from all of the secondary and primary sources,

Sean: and it's a lot, right?

Kristian: When you get this far into your master's degree, it's a lot. It starts to make your brain fuzzy. But when you, when you start looking at all of these things. When it comes to the, the quote unquote fall of the Roman Empire it's really a middle ground. It's really like a, a little sort of, in many ways yes, in many ways, no, at least like the way people identify themselves and the ways in which people trade. The way in which ideas are spreading. A lot changes, but a lot stays the same.

Mm-hmm. And there is still this very strong Mediterranean centered quasi Roman identity that persists throughout the Mediterranean world. Through and deep into this part that we call the early Middle Ages. And then it kind of starts to peter off as we get closer and closer to these like later period the 10th, the 11th and the 12th centuries.

It starts to peter out and it, it changes pretty drastically. And maybe that's a controversial take, but from everything I've read and from the ways I've been taught, it sounds like it's a. It's a pretty solid argument to stand on.

Sean: I think another way can, we can think about this is terms of intentionality. In the early Middle Ages, I think there wasn't this sort of perception that the east was all that different from the West. Like of course there was Greek speakers and there's Latin speakers, Christianity was taking different like forms and varieties in this period between east and west, but still, they thought of this Romanitas, that I can go to this other place and I'm still in this sort of cultural milieu, this Christian milieu.

Whereas, in the later middle ages I think there's a bit of a sharper divide, this intentionality, , the later middle ages, they sought out these places because they were foreign, because they had ideas and information and texts or what, whatever it be that was not available.

In the western or the northern parts of Europe. And so they sent people intentionally to go out and find these texts to God and meet these people. As far a field as India, but also like in the near East and Byzantium and like the eastern European kingdoms. So there's instead of this natural like multiculturalism through trade, through, just context through writing in letters, the sort of there has to be like a going forth of missionaries and of emissaries to try to seek out these, unknown areas.

Kristian: I think you're absolutely right. And, and there's so many ways you can see that. For example, I mean, Latin remains the primary political language of the Eastern Roman Empire through the reign of the Emperor Heracleus. He dies in 6 41. And they're still using Latin in official documents.

Sean: Wow.

Kristian: It isn't until after him that they start switching over to Greek and there persists a Latin speaking community of Christians in Constantinople . They, they start to dwindle and then I believe they're closed officially. And then they, they reopened during the later middle ages, but then they're reopening for foreigners. Mm-hmm. They're reopening for traders, whereas in, in sixth, seventh, and eighth century constant in ple.

They are there for, you know, foreign emissaries who are coming over from the extricate of Ravenna and the extricate of Africa. Who are speaking Latin. For example, just the other day professors McGowan and Bruce, they were talking about, how Gregory the Great, when he was apocresarius, he was a, uh, papal Envoy, living in Constantinople. They're like, he didn't learn a bit of Greek. And it's like, that kinda makes sense though, because there was a Latin speaking community. He didn't have to. Yeah. And the official language for him was still, was still Latin. So even though the emperors weren't weren't speaking Latin as a first language after Justinian, they were still, um, they still knew Latin and they were still learning Latin and speaking it officially.

Yeah. And just to add something to my own little. Area of interest like the Visigoths, just, just as Gregory the Gray was going into Constantinople. So is Leander Seville one of the most important, um, like crafters or the architects of, um, the Visigothic Kingdom. And so he also goes to Constantinople. Under uncertain circumstances, but he meets Gregory the Great, right.

They strike up a pretty good relationship where, uh, Gregory writes to Leander a couple times when he goes back to Spain. But yeah, but I think Leander is able to do so because, well, first off that there's a lot of Byzantine presence in southern Spain, so there's a sort of more tangible connection between Spain and the Byzantine, but also that, again, there's this sort of Roman ness, that he can, like, it feels natural for him. Or not natural, but like Constantinople doesn't seem like a foreign place for Leander to the point where he can go there, he can spend his time learning, being educated, getting an idea of what.

Emperorship or Imperial Imperial authority looks like. And so when he comes back to Spain, he takes not only just these ideas of Byzantine Empire and, and its many forms, but also of things like liturgical rights. He has record red. One of the kings that he's tutoring take on these Byzantine Imperial.

Costumes, like this manner of sitting on a throne, manner of wearing a crown. Right? And I think these things are evidence. It's evidence of this, cultural spread that it seems very natural.

I really didn't know that story. That, that's really cool.

Sean: Yeah.

Kristian: And it's not always Westerners going out east, there's also so many stories of Easterners coming out to the west. When that happens in the later middle Ages, it's like a huge deal.

Sean: Mm-hmm.

Kristian: Um, but then you read the story of Theodore, of Tarsus in the early Middle Ages. He's coming from Tarsus, he spends time in, I believe it was Damascus or Aleppo.

He gets training in Constantinople, then he is living as a monk in Rome for the greater part of two decades before he's chosen his Archbishop of Canterbury. So he ends his life in what's now modern day England. Yeah. The basically other side of the known world for him. And it seems like he had a pretty good time because him and Hadrian of Canterbury, a man from North Africa, his right hand man comes with him and they both start a-- and here I'm using, the small, the lowercase r Renaissance, but they start, a kind of cultural renaissance around the monasteries and the schools they found. Where there's an explosion of Greek learning and this wide dissemination of Greek texts that are being translated into Latin and so much so that Bede remembers it so fondly as like this perfect golden age.

Sean: Sorry to interrupt, but I wish you were at the history writing class that happened on Wednesday because we were talking exactly about that.

Kristian: I wish the listeners could see the sheepish grin me and Sean have our faces because I was with him on Wednesday and I was like, I don't think I can go make it to class today. And I ended up going home and it was the one class I missed that of course, they end up talking about Theodore and Hadrian. For those who don't know, uh, last year, me and another classmate, Thomas Warren, who's a second year student with me, we did a podcast on Theodore of Tarsus for the Multicultural Middle Ages podcast.. If you haven't listened, you should go. Listen, it's an amazing story about just one man who, lives like the quintessential multicultural life.

Kristian: We just talked about this, like broad sweeping,, multiculturalism that is, massive journeys back and forth between the cities of the Romans slash post Roman world in the early Middle Ages.

But this multiculturalism is also incredibly localized. And this is where I'm gonna get into a little bit, into my, you know, kind of like expertise, quote unquote.

Sean: Yeah. Preach, preach.

Kristian: It, the diversity is incredibly localized though. There, there's so much, using a broad definition of multiculturalism to talk about these like individual local diversities, in, in Frankia for example. They're kind of using, a liturgical, rite? That nowadays we call the Gallican Rite, which has a ton of problems. So, it's used really purely scholarly because there's not, there isn't a unified, rite? There's like a structure that they have that's kind of unified, and it seems like the churches follow this broad structure, but. The gestures, the decorations, the vestments the prayers, the chants so much is swapped out, willy-nilly in a way. And so it's not just, large city to large city. There's diversity. It can be parish church to parish church.

You have all of this kind of diversity. And so, the people that are living in these villages are experiencing completely different liturgical lives compared to people in villages just a few miles away, or people in larger cities, and that, that does persist after this kind of dominance of the Roman rite that goes on following the reign of Charlemagne and Louis, the Pius and Frankie and,, it disseminates from there and, it kind of becomes, like, oh, the Roman rite is the right way to go.

But in many ways, we still see the persistence of some of these other local rites all the way up to the modern day. I went to Milan a few years ago and I went to an Ambrosian rite liturgy. It was beautiful. Very, very different. And in, in England you have the Sarum Rite, which is very, very popular. And that, you know, that persists throughout the entire, middle Ages. But all this stuff gets, its start this local, with this localization and this diversity that is occurring in the early middle Ages in the sixth, the seventh, and the eighth centuries. And so I love that there's this big multiculturalism, but there's also this smaller multiculturalism that is persistent kind of in every life. And I really think that's like the best part about studying it, is that you don't get that as much studying the later middle ages. And I don't know if I'm, I, I don't mean to make like grand, big claims.

Yeah. But I mean, what do you think?

Sean: I gotta harp back onto these different aspects of multicultural or these different ways in which multiculturalism expresses itself in, on these two periods. Again, one of them is more natural, where it just happens, right? They're just, people from different regions migrate across. Like, so one of, one of the guys that I'm researching is Martin Ab Bragga, who is from Pannonia, which is Hungary, and he goes to Southern Egypt to learn from the monks there and how to, do monasticism at the time when it's also very variable, very like wild and rugged instead of the more structured late, late manifestation of monasticism, middle Ages. And then, all right, he goes, he takes a beeline straight towards the Sueva Kingdom of Galicia in northwestern Spain. All right. Oh my gosh. Yeah. A guy taking massive journeys, like you just said. Yeah. Not for any particular like multicultural desire other than learning from the, Egyptian monks, but he's not going to Galicia because he wants to learn about the Galicians. He's going there because he intuits that it's part of the same world that he's inhabiting or even though Hidatius. One of the bishops there, he says that this is like the farthest part of the world possible 'cause he also Hidatius also sees himself as Roman, like he identifies him and his culture as Roman and he wants to associate with it.

But he knows also that he's at the very edge. Of Romanitas, right? And so, Martin, a Bragga and Hidatius represent this sort of macro view that we have of the early middle ages and of multiculturalism that dies out as we turn like the millennium and it reestablishes itself as a more tentatively trying to find, not the culture, but aspects of what remains from Roman history. In these, disparate areas of the Mediterranean, like the Middle East and Egypt to, yeah.

Kristian: It's just that natural instinct that seems to come with a lot of people living in this former Roman world. It's like we're all still part of this connected world. Benjamin Forlas did a great article, about, this Byzantine church civil that was found, and there's names of Frankish men inscribed on it. For their memory. And it was found in what's now modern day Lebanon. What this means is that, there are these frankish men, probably soldiers who might have been part of an army raised by Tiberius ii one of the eastern Roman emperors. And they're just there and they might have fought for Tiberius and then they spent the rest of their days living in the east. And you have to wonder if they got up and fought for the emperor because they almost looked at the emperor as still being, kind of in charge of them.

The Franks still use Byzantine regnal years and Byzantine type coinage, I believe, through the, reign of Heraclius I believe.

And they're still like maintaining this close cultural contact and still looking to the east for legitimacy in many ways. Quite late into, the period. And you don't see that later after the seventh or the eighth centuries.

Sean: . Did you mention regnal years?

Kristian: Yeah. They used Byzantine regnal years mm-hmm. In some of their documents. In speaking of which, , especially the Merovingians and Franks mm-hmm. They're obsessed with papyrus.

Sean: Ah, interesting.

Kristian: They're the only major group besides like the Papacy mm-hmm. That are using papyrus through the early middle Ages. They use it until, I believe, up until like the mid eighth century.

Sean: Wow. Wow.

Kristian: And you can't grow papyrus in France. Right, right. So they're getting it, they are trading with Egyptians to get papyrus or they're reusing papyri. Which is very common for their chancery documents. And the papacy does that too through the 11th century, but then it peters off.

Sean: Mm-hmm.

Kristian: And again, you can't grow papyrus in these climates. You have to get it from. Egypt and North Africa. So that is just a very quick explanation of, of cross-cultural contact and trade that continues through the Islamic conquests and, and the rise of the Islamic world.

Sean: And I think that's what I'm trying to say is that it's more mundane. It's more every day. . They're not looking for like, well of course they are looking for texts that are lost. Um, they're owning the Greek, but again, it's like papyrus. Yeah. It's forms of monasticism.

It's people or like grain shipments from Egypt or yeah, just a lot of different things that you wouldn't really consider multicultural.

But regardless, I think they're not looking at papyrus in Egypt and saying that, oh yeah, we need this to establish or like to know 'cause we don't have it, or because we want to connect ourselves to a later kingdom.

But it's just that we need paper. We know that Egypt makes paper and therefore we're gonna go out and we're gonna, because we're part of this Mediterranean economy that it just feel natural because we've always done it right. The Romans have done it, in post Roman, with the popes. Everyone's done it, so we're just gonna do it. And it's just unintentionally spreading ideas and spreading peoples around.

Kristian: We're very lucky to live in this world where we we're having a good succession of non Roman popes. Or non Italian popes. Not even my older brother who was born in the eighties was alive for an Italian pope. The last one we had was John Paul the first. Everyone since has been from outside of Italy.

And then before that it was, popes from Syria. And the Middle East in the early Middle Ages. Just to name a couple, we have Pope Theodor, who's one of two Palestinian popes. , And he's around in the mid to late seventh century. And then, one that I've always just had a particular interest in is, Gregory III.

He was the last non-European pope before Pope Francis, was elected in 2013, and he was, I believe it was 7 31 to 7 41. So the mid eighth century.

Sean: And where was he from?

Kristian: He was from Syria. Oh, okay. Um, they don't, I don't believe they know exactly where it might have been. Damascus. Yeah.

Sean: Yeah.

Kristian: And what's really remarkable about him, he's elected Pope. I don't believe they know exactly why he's living in Italy, but he, he was probably living in Italy when he's elected. Mm-hmm. Um, and he's approved by the ex arc in Ravenna. The Byzantine are still there up until 7 51 in Central Italy. But what what's really remarkable about him is he immediately gets involved in affairs with the Franks.

He sends out word to Charles Martel. And he's essentially begging him mm-hmm. For military assistance, um, against the lombards. Mm-hmm. So he arrives, he gets the papacy, and he's immediately involved in these, you know, western affairs mm-hmm. As an easterner.

Sean: Yeah.

Kristian: And he's vehemently opposed to iconoclasm almost immediately. Being from Syria, one of the most vehement opponents in the east of Iconoclasm is John Damascus, who was from Damascus in Syria. And so. It's just remarkable to see, you know, stuff like that.

Continuing to talk about popes, 'cause I, I said that, that Gregory III was the last from outside of Europe, but there is a slight chance that the Pope, that Crown Charlemagne Pope Leo ii had Arab descent. Because it said in, some chronicles about him that his father's name was Atsupius.

And in the writings of Jonathan Damascus, he has an adversary that's also named Adsupius. It's either a nickname or a name. And that's one of the only times it's ever seen used historically. So it could point to the fact that Leo the third had. He definitely had Greek heritage, but there's a good chance he might've had Arab heritage.

And so here's a man of Arab descent living in Italy and crowning a Frank, the emperor of the Romans. Christmas Day 800. And that is the event that I've always looked at as kind of the beginning of the end for this broader multicultural Mediterranean world that continues to exist and takes its last breaths going into the ninth century.

Not that multiculturalism ends, but that. It's it's style kind of ends.

Sean: Yeah.

Kristian: You know, it

Sean: shifts like, like most of the middle ages. It kind of takes a very subtle shift over a couple of, you know, maybe a century or a couple of decades. Professor Mueller said that over that shift in ideas and conceptions and perspectives on, on law perhaps.

Kristian: And, it's also like self-perception and it's really remarkable to see that shift. That's where I get into, this, this despair I've had thinking about the fact, sean and I are the only early medieval students here at Fordham.

Sean: Dug it out.

Kristian: And we only have one professor, Dr. Scott bruce, shout out Dr. Bruce Woo. He's my advisor. But that's it. There are like almost, I believe, 50 people in this program. Mm-hmm. Across the the master's and the PhD students. I wasn't able to access records on the undergrads. But for the masters and the PhD students, we are the only ones that are explicitly studying something that only happens in the early middle Ages.

And having only one professor, it kinda limits the opportunities we have because there's only so much we can learn from one person. But. At the same time, the fact that so few people are studying what we're studying does mean that there is so much opportunity to tap into these stories that aren't really told that often.

These archeological findings, like for example, the the Church of Santa Maria Antiqua mm-hmm. Which is just over the last like two or three decades, has become like the center of understanding early medieval art. You can't open an early medieval art book without hearing about Santa Maria Antiqua like a thousand times because there are mosaics and there are, frescos in that church from the entire early middle ages.

From the fifth century all the way to until I believe the ninth or the 10th century, potentially. And so you get to see glimpses of every single century of the early Middle Ages and the way in which art shifts, but also in many ways stays the same.

Sean: Yeah.

Kristian: And it's a remarkable opportunity for study because.

There's not that many people studying it, so. Very true. Very true. There's a lot of chances for us to hop in there and, tap into some archeology.

Sean: Yeah. But what I always tell people is that, when they say that, oh, why are you studying the early middle of ages?

Just that you gotta start with the foundation. It, it like late middle age doesn't just spring outta nowhere, right? Yeah. There's antecedents, , there's, ideas are latent in the society that are being like called upon. And these have their origins in the classical world, but also right to the synthesis of writers like Isadore, Seville, Gregory of Toss, Gregory the Great.

Yeah, right. They're synthesizing all this information and then even though you're reading something like, written in like 1400 or 1300, like in their like latent intellectual minds, they're calling back to these people, right? I think for an early medieval list, you're really digging into the sources that build up the later middle Ages. So I think the great thing about the early Middle Ages that you can always proceed forward.

Whereas for the late middle ages you're dealing with things that are very removed from their original context.

Kristian: Yeah. It's very good to understand this early period because there are a lot of opportunities for learning, of course in the later period.

I mean, that's why so many people are studying it. But there's like. Big opportunities left, still for people to pick one.

Sean: Yeah. Big questions. Unanswered.

Kristian: Yeah. Huge questions. Unanswered. There's this mausoleum. It was built next to St. Peter's Basilica and, three Roman emperors were buried there.

And when they destroyed old St. Peter's to build New St. Peter's, they never found the, or at least they never recorded, that they found these sarcophogi.

I'm just saying there's a pretty solid chance that at least one of those sarcophagi still buried underneath New St. Peters Basilica.

Sean: Yeah, maybe.

Kristian: And that could be this, that would be like the modern day finding of, of King Tut.

Yeah. Not to, not to overemphasize things, but if they found an intact Roman emperors tomb, even these pretty horrible Roman emperors. It would be, the discovery of the century. And that's like obviously very grand and something that's probably never gonna happen. Right? I don't think anybody at the Vatican's gonna let us dig underneath the South Transit to St. Peters. But if they did, if they let somebody in there,

Sean: come on, Pope Leo,

Kristian: If they did, there would be at the very least some pretty remarkable archeological findings. 'cause the foundation certainly do still exist.

Mm-hmm. So even that is still really remarkable. I love a good foundation as much as the next guy. So, it really presents us with a lot of opportunities. And it does take a lot of work because people are very right. There aren't many sources that survive from this period.

But if you know where to look. You can really find some really great things.

Sean: I think one of the things that kind of detracts people from the early Middle Ages is, and I think this is also one of the strong suits of, the Fordham , medieval studies department is that it's, it needs to be interdisciplinary.

Kristian: Yeah.

Sean: Right? Yeah. Whereas people can focus on law or on literature or whatever it be. I think for the early middle Ages, you have to mix philosophy, history, law, like all these different things. They kind of get a really good sense of, the world in which we're in. 'cause you need to know the Roman Empire, right? Yeah. All the things that came from there. You need to know, what's going on in particular Kingdom. My say Visigothic Kingdom. So. That's one example. Like for Isador, one of the things that I'm gonna try to research now, is his reception of Augustine.

Kristian: Yeah.

Sean: Right. So you need to know philosophy. You need to know Isador context. not just his, for example, like his history of the kings of the goths. You need to just analyze that source either in secondary translation or in the primary source in the Latin, but you also need to know like. What does it mean that he's writing a history? What does history mean? Which encompasses so much other stuff. So it's not just I feel like the early medieval can't just like fall into a very small niche. So you, you have to be both narrow and very broad.

I've taken both worlds at the same time, and that's what makes it challenging, but what makes it very unique in terms of fields of history that you can dig into?

Kristian: You have to know a little bit of everything. That just made me think of the paper I had to write about, Augustine. Back in December and it was about Augustine's reception among the Karolingians.. And it was very specifically among Alcuin of York. And he uses Augustinian language specifically from Augustine's, like praises of the Emperor, Theodosius and Constantine to kind of justify the imperial coronation of Charlemagne.

So there it's, , Alcuin and using Theodosius and Constantine and this Roman identity

and applying it to Charlemagne and implying that he's part of this continuation of this Roman political world. Yeah,

Sean: Yeah. Yeah.

Kristian: It's really great.

Kristian: Do you have any, have any last remarks?

Sean: No. Well, if we convinced you to, um, study the early Middle Ages, share this with your friends, share this with a professor. Hopefully we haven't sent anything that's, that's too erroneous. But, but uh, yeah. Share with all the people. Give the smash that like button. Anything you want to spread the message, 'cause early middle Ages, there's a lot of stuff to research.

Kristian: Yeah. Study the early Middle Ages. Study the whole Middle Ages. And you know, this isn't message just for prospective students who are thinking about getting into medieval history. This is for every scholar, every person, if you already know a ton about the later middle Ages or if you already know a ton about the early Middle Ages, keep studying.

Learn to appreciate what the early middle Ages and, and try to take 'em what for what they are, which is something that is, is really great. It's really complex. It's a challenge for sure, but it, it's really, really wonderful. And every time I hear somebody say early medieval, oh, I, I tingle a little bit, I get so happy.

So study the early middle ages.

I just wanted to thank first of all, , professors Bruno and professor, , Riley the directors of the Medieval studies program, just for giving us this wonderful opportunity to be able to study at this university. I want to thank the, uh, Fordham University Walsh Library for making this podcast,, studio available to all students. , It's a really great service to be able to be offered. I could not afford this kind of equipment.

Yep.

Um, it was either this or recording on my phone and this is way better.

And yeah, I just want to thank, all of our classmates and Dr. Scott Bruce, our early medieval list here at our champion. Our Champion. So thank you all for listening. I hope you have a wonderful day.

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