In the growth of towns and the revival of commerce, historians have seen
the development of a bourgeois and capitalist Europe, but Pierre Riché
reminds us that Carolingians saw a world of forest and wasteland, in
which scattered castles and villages were outposts against the savagery
of nature, bands of outlaws, and a myriad of pagan superstitions. Daily
Life in the World of Charlemagne gives us a vivid and deeply textured
picture of the fear and insecurity that drove people, great and humble
alike, to draw together with one another, with their stronger neighbors,
and with God and His saints, in search of protection and sustenance.
Riché makes extensive use of modern social history techniques and the
tools of new studies on nutrition, disease, demography, and climatology,
as well as art history and archaeology, to comprehend the Carolingian
mentality and reconstruct the material culture of the early European
world.