ABSTRACT
Personal piety and social convenience were the primary motives that prompted rulers to encourage monasticism in their dominions. The Benedictine Rule, which had made such spectacular progress in the outer territories of the Carolingian Empire, seems to have encountered more resistance in the central lands of Austrasia and Neustria. Copies of classical authors, commentaries on the books of the Bible, mainly distilled from the Latin Fathers, and anthologies of patristic texts, were the most characteristic works that emerged from the scriptoria of the Carolingian abbeys. The civil war between the sons of Louis the Pious, and the troubled period that followed the partition of the Empire in 843, led to the widespread secularisation of abbeys. The importance of the abbeys as mission stations and centres of Frankish loyalty was reflected in the pattern of royal munificence. The Carolingians extended royal proprietorship over the monasteries of the Frankish Empire were encouraged to donate their foundations to the king.
