My dissertation focuses on a famous early Carolingian text, the Book of the Bishops of Metz (Liber de episcopis Mettensibus) that the Lombard scholar Paul the Deacon wrote around 784. The text treats the history of the bishops of Metz from the apostolic foundation of the see to the time of Paul's writing in the eighth century. The text is well known to historians for several reasons: first, it is one of the earliest original Carolingian works of history, produced at a time when the Carolingians were inclined to copy and adapt the histories of earlier authors. In addition, the text is famous for the fact that it contains the first genealogy of the Carolingian family, one which establishes a genealogical tie between the Merovingians and the Carolingians through the figure of Arnulf, the seventh-century bishop of Metz, presented as Charlemagne's forefather. For this reason, the Liber primarily has been studied as an example of royal propaganda, composed to support and legitimize the Carolingian dynasty, who had usurped the throne only thirty years earlier. My dissertation offers a novel interpretation of this text.

By considering the work in its entirety, and taking into account the fact that it was commissioned by Angilram, bishop of Metz and chief counselor of Charlemagne, I argue that Paul composed the Liber as an attempt to foster the new role that Metz had come to play from the time of the first Carolingian kings and promote the city as the cradle of the rising Carolingian kingdom, both spiritually, through the Roman foundations and reform of the bishopric, and politically, thanks to the Arnulfian roots of the Carolingian dynasty.