Trotz beachtlicher Fortschritte der mittelalterlichen Epigraphik in Frankreich, insbesondere im Hinblick auf die Anzahl der Editionen und Rekonstruktionen der Inschriften, hat bislang noch keine Synthese zur Paläographie der Inschriften die inzwischen in die Jahre gekommene von Paul Deschamps (1929) zu ersetzen vermocht. Ebenso fehlt es an regionalen Synthesen, die vergleichbar wären mit denjenigen, die in Deutschland erstellt wurden. Zwischen dem 6. und dem 15. Jahrhundert entwickeln sich die Form der Buchstaben, der Gebrauch der Zeichensetzung, das Layout und die künstlerische Ausgestaltung der Inschriften, Bildhauereien etc., und zwar nach wechselnden Kriterien: Wir können beobachten, dass sich derWunsch nach Lesbarkeit (sichtbar etwa in Karolingerzeit mit seinen «klassischen» Formen) und der nach Ästhetik (verkörpert beispielsweise durch die freieren Formen der ornamentalen Erneuerung in der romanischen Zeit) entweder gegenüberstehen oder vereinbar gemacht werden. Die vorliegende Studie thematisiert neben der Beschreibung graphischen Haupteigenschaften jeder Epoche deren historischen Kontexte (kulturell, sozial und politisch), in die die Inschriften eingebunden sind. Deren Entwicklung verläuft zum Teil parallel zu den Manuskriptschriften, zum Teil aber, aufgrund der Tatsache, dass die Inschriften sich an ein größeres Publikum wenden, auch eigenständig.
Around the Year 1000, counts of Poitiers and dukes of Aquitaine, in particular Guillaume the Great, were linked to the Carolingian tradition, which was even the origin of their family and their office. The duke's penitential attitude and personal devotion were concertized by donations, charity and foundations. Together with religious houses that the duke favoured, foundations formed a sacral geography, an essential component of his exercice of power. Monasteries granted the salvation of his soul and the stability of the duchy, the Precursor's relics at Angely sacralized his power, and the blessing ritual at Saint-Martial of Limoges legitimized it. The duke's religious politics, realized with the support of the episcopal group, reveals a close collaboration between the Prince and the Church, in quest of peace, justice and unity, an ancient tradition that will be broken by Gregorian Reform.
The presence of evidence later than the Neolithic period on sites of megalithic collective tombs has often been shown. In particular, the presence of graves or important cemeteries from early Middle Age, seems not to be anecdotal. The recent works have often been about funerary gestures which appeared at the end of the history or the use of the collective tombs, which can be a matter of putting away, emptying, blocking up or even using again. However, the phenomenons of fune rary reoccupation" stay, until now, a rather undeveloped side of their history. The authors have tried to point out the modes of these reoccupa- tions at early Middle Age from the archeolog i cal datas ; they have also tried to answer to the following questions : is the attaction of these monuments only a matter of chance, or due to particularities of the site they have been built on, or to their original funerary function, or their symbolic value ? What interpretation is to give to the early Middle Age texts which could evoke the megalithic stones ?
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