Introduction: cultural memory and the resources of the past Walter Pohl and Ian Wood; Part I. Learning Empire: 1. Creating cultural resources for Carolingian rule: historians of the Christian empire Walter Pohl; 2. Cassiodorus's Historia tripartita before the earliest extant manuscripts Desirée Scholten; 3. Politics and penance: transformations in the Carolingian perception of the conversion of Carloman (747) Erik Goosman; 4. Lessons in leadership: Constantine and Theodosius in Frechulf of Lisieux's Histories Graeme Ward; Part II. The Biblical Past: 5. Carolingian political discourse and the biblical past: Hraban, Dhuoda, Radbert Mayke de Jong; 6. Biblical past and canonical present: the case of the Collectio 400 capitulorum Sven Meeder; 7. Divine law and imperial rule: the Carolingian reception of Junilius Africanus Marianne Pollheimer; 8. Framing Ambrose in the resources of the past: the late antique and early medieval sources for a Carolingian portrait of Ambrose Giorgia Vicino; Part III. Changing Senses of the Other from the Fourth to the Eleventh Centuries: 9. Pagans, rebels and Merovingians: otherness in the early Carolingian world Richard Broome; 10. Who are the Philistines? Bede's readings of Old Testament peoples Ian Wood; 11. Gens perfida or populus Christianus? Saxon (in)fidelity in Frankish historical writing Robert Flierman; 12. Fragmented identities: otherness and authority in Adam of Bremen's History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen Timothy Barnwell; Part IV. The Migration of Cultural Traditions in Early Medieval Europe: 13. Transformations of the Roman past and Roman identity in the early Middle Ages Rosamond McKitterick; 14. The eighth-century papacy as cultural broker Clemens Gantner; 15. Transformations of Late Antiquity: the writing and re-writing of church history at the monastery of Lorsch, c.800 Helmut Reimitz; Conclusion Mayke de Jong and Rosamond McKitterick; Bibliography; Index.