Wahrnehmen – Nutzen – Deuten

Even north of the Alps, Ancient Roman heritage formed the substrate of medieval societies. The present study investigates the resulting culture historical and artistic aspects, as well as the impact on the history of thought, using different bodies of sources. Group-specific situations of transmission are used to elucidate different approaches in order to outline the attitudes of the rural farming population as well as of the educated clergy and the secular nobility towards Ancient remains in the Upper Rhine area. First, the perceptions of rural sections of the population are focussed on. Given the lack of reading and writing skills, this social group was largely excluded from the direct reception of scholarly texts over large parts of the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, the contributions of local inhabitants to the reflection on Roman remains becomes evident in the names for fields and settlements, which according to research were being established largely by them from the Early Middle Ages onwards. The present study uses charters, parchment scrolls and land registers, which document references to Ancient remains for the south-west of the medieval empire. The second chapter is dedicated to the perception of Roman remains by clerics with a literary education. Their viewpoints are recorded in historiographical and hagiographic texts, as well as in monastic charters. Finally, the third chapter focuses on the secular nobility. These noble perspectives and perceptions are very difficult to trace in the sources and particularly in the chronicles available for the study area. For this reason, the re-use of Roman sites for the building of medieval fortifications is examined on the basis of archaeological and historical sources. Therefore, this innovative study combines an analysis of written sources with archaeological remains in order to illustrate the presence of Roman Antiquity in the Middle Ages. For the first time, this provides a comprehensive overview of the perceptions and interpretations of Roman heritage by different social groups of the medieval Upper Rhine area.