The rich legends spun between 1000 and 1250 and by the monks of southwestern France to explain the origins of their communities are the subject of this provocative study. Amy G. Remensnyder explores the monastic foundation legends in all their variety - including forged charters, hagiographic texts, chansons de geste, architecture, and sculpture - to show how such imaginative rememberings of the past worked to affirm the liberty and identity of the abbeys in the present.

At the center of the legends stand three kings whom the monks favored as founders: Clovis, Pippin the Short, and, above all, Charlemagne. Remensnyder reveals the many implications of this legendary affection for kings, a startling predilection on the part of monks living in a region where actual rulers hardly ventured during the period.

1. A major contribution to the cultural history of images of French kingship, the book demonstrates how communities far from effective royal power could create and manipulate royal images, using them to serve their own interests. For Remensnyder also situates these legendary images in the web of local social relations from which they emerged. She shows that when threats to their liberty and identity arose, the monasteries could shield themselves by invoking their legendary founders.

The book illuminates the world of medieval southern France, and its relation to the French kings. It will interest all those who seek to understand the processes by which a community imaginatively remembers its past so that it becomes the basis for its identity in the present. It also demonstrates that texts often discounted as "fiction" can tell us as much as those classified as "fact."