Carolingian: In the Beginning

Tag-5 did something a little different this pastThursday.  Instead of the coffee shop, we went to Mary L.’s home for class and lunch.  It worked out well as we needed an extra jump start into our studies. Mary L. hooked up her laptop to the television; we got comfortable in her Family Room and started out by placing the word Carolingian into her preferred search engine.  Speaking of Comfortable, we had to tease Deborah J. because she looked like a Matisse model as she lounged on the chaise—so comfy she was!  This turned out to be so much fun—it’s difficult for five people to huddle around one laptop in a coffee shop and be able to read a small computer screen. 

Woman in a Purple Coat by Henri Matisse, 1937.

As we read text from the computer via the television screen, questions of who, what, when, where and why surfaced.  It was so handy to bring up a new tab to explore the questions and have a discussion at the same time. Link after link was explored and it was decided there’s a lot to learn about the Carolingian period.  In this day-and-age instantaneous gratification is so much fun.

According to Wikipedia,   “The sense of renewal in a newly stabilized society was galvanized by an elite group of scholars gathered to the court of Charlemagne. For moral betterment the Carolingian renaissance reached for models drawn from the example of the Christian Roman Empire of the 4th century. During this period there was an increase of literature, writing, the arts, architecture, jurisprudence, liturgical reforms and scriptural studies.”

So, this is where and how we started .  More blog posts will be forthcoming about the Carolingian period .

A wonderfully prepared lunch after our study was enjoyed, at which Mary's husband joined us.  We left with a new excitement about studying this, relatively speaking, short period in history.

Mary B.