2.3 The Making of Christendom: Creed Commentaries and Explanations of the Faith in the Carolingian Empire

Susan Keefe's last book project was actually a three-volume series. The work had been mostly completed upon her unexpected death at the end of the summer of 2012, but the manuscripts had not yet been turned in. Impressive teamwork by members of the Duke Divinity School community and Brepols, the books' contracted publishers, resulted in the first two volumes heading to press. All three volumes (Catalogue, Texts, and Translations) were meant to work together in order to demonstrate how the Christian faith was taught in the Carolingian empire. The creed commentaries studied here were intended for use by Carolingian clergy, who in turn would instruct their people. In other words, Dr. Keefe was trying to illuminate the education of medieval pastors who would in turn be teachers in their parish. For further insight into Dr. Keefe's love of these texts, see the Faculty Talk she gave in April of 2009, "Passing on the Faith under the Carolingians."

The first volume, A catalogue of works pertaining to the explanation of the creed in Carolingian manuscripts, was the fruit of Dr. Keefe's travels to dozens upon dozens of European libraries to view and compare manuscripts. It appeared as volume 63 in the series Instrumenta Patristica et Mediaevalia. Dr. Keefe explained in her introduction, "The purpose of the catalogue is to identify works intended as explication of the creedal faith for the clergy and people of the Carolingian empire; that is, which were specifically composed or selected by Carolingian manuscript compilers for this purpose... The works are not all Carolingian in origin. Some that were composed before the Carolingian period were altered by a Carolingian, others were simply copied without any intentional editing. All the works, nevertheless, represent what the Carolingians chose to use in order to explain the creedal faith" (Introduction, p. 9).

The second volume, Explanationes fidei aevi Carolini, selected 43 texts from the catalogue that had never been edited for publication and immediately remedied this lacuna. A clean Latin text was provided with extensive apparatus noting the variations in manuscripts Dr. Keefe had studied. The book appeared as volume 254 in the Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis series.

Dr. Keefe's third volume never made it to publication. She intended to translate the 43 texts selected for the Explanationes, but the work was never fully completed. Dr. Keefe did, however, fully translate many of the texts, and partially translated still others. Released by her publisher, these incomplete files, the last efforts of Susan Keefe's uniquely gifted and patient work, are being edited for presentation in the Divinity Archive.