Local Priests and their communities in the early middle ages. An edition of handbooks of priests

在8世纪到11世纪之间，中欧和西欧的乡村教会组织发生了根本性的变化。它见证了教区的发展，一个新的机构，塑造了当地的社会实践，直到现代。然而，人们对这种转变知之甚少。在过去的一个世纪里，研究人员试图用诸如“特征kirche”（Stutz）和“samglise privacei”（Lesne）等概念来接近它，但这两种概念现在都被认为过于局限，甚至具有误导性。然而，迄今为止还没有开发出一种替代方法。此外，最近的研究表明，当地牧师在与宫廷有联系的精英和当地社区之间扮演着中间人的角色，这使他们成为加洛林王朝“纠正”的重要主角。他们的社会概况、经济潜力、教育和知识几乎没有得到研究，尽管各种案例研究表明，有丰富的来源可以告诉我们这些问题。此外，还有大量现存的手稿曾经被当地牧师在他们的教育中或作为手册使用，这些手稿几乎没有被探索过。因此，这个项目有三个目标。(1)首先，它的目的是分析地方教会的制度化，以便为“特征kirche”和“samglise privacei”的概念提供替代方案。(2)其次，它希望探讨加洛林派世界各地区当地神父的社会、经济和法律概况。(3)九世纪地方祭司手抄本将作为重要的一手资料新语料库进行开拓和探索。这项工程的成果不仅对我们对加洛林王朝的印象产生重大影响，而且对11世纪所谓的“格列高利改革”也产生重大影响。申请人现正拟备一本书，以达致目标(1)及(2)；为了这项研究，他得到了大众基金会的“杰作”资助。为了实现目标(3)，我们正在申请资助一名博士后（65%），为期两年，为牧师准备三本重要的9世纪手册的网络版。

Between the 8th and the 11th century, rural church-organisation changed fundamentally in central and western Europe. It saw the development of the parish, a new institution that was to shape local social practice until deep into the modern age. However, little is know about this transformation. In the past century, research has attempted to approach it with concepts such as the „Eigenkirche“ (Stutz), respectively the „église privée“ (Lesne), but both of these have now been recognised as too limited and even misleading. However, an alternative approach has not been developed so far. Recent research has, moreover, demonstrated that local priests acted as intermediaries between court-connected elites and local communities, which made them into important protagonists of Carolingian „correctio“. Their social profiles, economic potential, education and knowledge has been hardly studied, even though various case-studies show that there are rich sources to inform us about such matters. Additionally, there is a substantial corpus of extant manuscripts once used by local priests, either during their education or as handbooks, which has been barely explored at all. This project, therefore, has three goals. (1) First of all, it aims to analyse the institutionalisation of the local church in order to develop alternatives for the concepts of „Eigenkirche“ and „église privée“. (2) Secondly, it wishes to explore the social, economic and juridical profiles of local priests in various regions of the Carolingian world. (3) Thirdly, the manuscripts for ninth-century local priests will be opened up and explored as an important new corpus of primary sources. The results of this project will have significant consequences for our image of not just the Carolingian world, but also of the so-called „Gregorian reform“ of the eleventh century. The applicant is currently preparing a book which will achieve goals (1) and (2); for this research, he is funded by an „Opus-Magnum“-grant of the Volkswagen-Stiftung. To achieve goal (3) we are applying here for the funding of a Post-Doc (65 %) for two years, to prepare an online-edition of three important 9th century handbooks for priests.