Introduction

Abstract This chapter begins with an outline of the change between the secular understanding of politics promoted by Augustine of Hippo at the dawn of the fifth century and the concept of Christian kingship embraced by the elites of the Carolingian Empire in the 830s. By drawing on recent anthropology on immanentism and sacred kingship by Sahlins, amongst others, it shows that cult (worship of the divine) was a vital element in the politics of most pre-modern societies; sacrality was not an irrational distortion of politics, but central to political practice. The most sophisticated existing explanation of the changing nature of Christianity after late antiquity remains Markus’s theory of ‘de-secularization’. This book will engage with but also critique that model of early medieval change. It will do so not by reconstructing early medieval Christian political thought, but through exploring the fluid and messy nature of political practice and ideology.