ABSTRACT
The Carolingian Reform persists as a popular subject among scholars of the early Middle Ages. This chapter argues that the Carolingian reformers understood the Last Judgement as part of an argumentative framework based on revelation more broadly defined. It explores how the fundamental temporal logic of exegesis generated meaning in a different set of texts concerned with Christian behaviour, including admonitory literature, capitularies and liturgical exegesis. The chapter demonstrates how the multifaceted revelatory conceptualisation of time was not only restricted to exegesis, but instead shaped normative discourse from the beginning of reform. The Admonitio generalis is an ideal test case to shed some more light on how the complex model of time set out in Carolingian Reform. The chapter analyses how a time-inflected exegetical perspective relates to the regulation of Christian behaviour in the Carolingian era. The Admonitio generalis of 789, a key document of Carolingian reform, clearly exhibited such ideology.
