Means, motives and opportunities: The architecture of monasteries during the reign of Louis the Pious (814-840)

This thesis questions what we actually know about the architecture of monasteries built during the reign of Louis the Pious (814-840) as opposed to what we believe to know based on the reconstructions of it that have become accepted as reality over the years. It further investigates how these buildings can be interpreted in their respective contexts. The starting point of this project was the idea, more or less accepted by scholarship, that monastic architecture in the 810s and 820s was directly influenced by the so-called ‘reform councils’ held in 816 and 817. This theory has to be dismissed on the basis of the research presented in here. This study has sought a middle ground between studying a single site in as much detail as possible and surveying all known monastic architecture from the period under scrutiny. A number of case studies were chosen based on the availability of a wide range of source material, the themes that could be addressed through each cluster of case studies and the frequency with which these buildings appear in the literature. The case studies were grouped together in four chapters.