Abstract

On the eve of the Carolingian revival of learning, Wigbod compiled for Charlemagne a commentary on Genesis that was encyclopedic in scope. A decade or two later, not long before the year 811, Claudius of Turin prepared another exhaustive commentary on Genesis at the request of Louis the Pious. Like Wigbod's, the commentary on Genesis of Claudius of Turin reveals much about the literary and exegetical interests of its author and his patrons, the methods of its compiler, and the sources he used. The commentaries supplied by these two scholars illustrate how biblical interpretation developed in the first decades of the Carolingian period