The Formation of Christian Europe: Politics, Religion, and Imperial Culture considers how Carolingian writers, as they reflected on sacraments, and particularly on baptism, were led to distinctive understandings of politics, government, society, and culture. Owen M. Phelan re-centers scholarly understanding of a key development in the course of Western Civilization: the establishment of Christendom, or as early medieval leaders termed it, theimperium christianum. Whatever Christendom has come to mean in popular understanding, it was for the Carolingians the society of the baptized. Phelan examines the religious metaphors and theological concepts whichunderlie the political and social ideas common to a variety of early medieval texts including law codes, theological treatises, land charters, ethical instruction, liturgical commentaries, chronicles, and other narrative sources. This work reinterprets the meaning and importance of the "Carolingian Renewal" by unlocking the theological discourse common to a wide array of sources produced in diverse centers over more than a century.

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