The phenomenal level of attention Charlemagne keeps receiving, along with epithets like ‘Father of Europe’, are not least due to the circle of pre-eminent international scholars he attracted to his court. Public interest more or less stops with the harmonic imagination of learned men from across Western Europe gathering at Aachen and jointly reawakening civilization. However, historians have often focused on conflicts and controversies between scholars of different backgrounds. My project aims to find out in how far scholars in this international environment stuck to their regional customs or championed them actively, and in how far they were either inspired by others or brought into line.

In 797, the leading court scholar Alcuin of York (d. 804) complained to Charlemagne about the influence of ‘Egyptian boys’ at court, who apparently prevailed in a calendrical argument. Fittingly, the Irish court scholar Dicuil (d. 825 or later), addressing the new emperor Louis in 814, proudly highlighted that his people in Ireland had a more reasonable custom than the English in the same matter. However, a closer look at his texts shows that he apparently silently adopted English customs elsewhere. In addition, he was inspired by ‘Visigothic’ features, while his respective text might have been written to compete with the new emperor’s Visigothic scholar Claudius (bishop of Turin from 817, d. 827). This shows that the interrelations of Carolingian scholars with different backgrounds are a complex topic. Dicuil’s texts, several of which I have made accessible as sources for the first time, promise new insights in this matter. By focusing on Irish and other scientific, geographical, and philological features in them and related texts like those of Alcuin and Claudius, I want to shed new light on the international climate at the Carolingian court.