ABSTRACT
Patrick Wormald’s remarkable discussion of Continental law manuscripts in his chapter on ‘The background and origin of early English legislation’ in The Making of English Law, and his suggestions therein about the recording of Carolingian capitularies, will be familiar to all readers of this volume. I shall approach the important issues Patrick addressed in that chapter from a different angle, that of the capitularies as communication of the king’s wishes rather than as legislation. Because the essential element in the dynamic between the Frankish court and the rest of the kingdom was Charlemagne’s network of communications, both oral and written, it is more constructive to see the capitularies in this context rather than forcing them to lie on a Procrustean bed of law.1 Further, I wish to move beyond Patrick’s own rather too definite lay/ecclesiastical dichotomy in the dissemination and preservation of capitularies and work backwards from the context in which some of these capitularies are preserved, hence the focus indicated in my title of Carolingian missi and their books. It is a matter of great personal regret that such issues cannot any more be debated with Patrick himself but only offered to his memory.
