La fine dell'impero carolingio e il conflitto per il regno italico nei Gesta Berengarii

This article analyzes how the crisis of the Carolingian empire was represented in the Gesta Berengarii, an anonymous panegyric composed at the beginning of the 10th century. It examines in particular how the author of the poem, like other contemporary historians, modified the political reality rather than merely describing it. With his poem he sought to make sense of the changes that had happened after the death of Charles III using the rhetorical-political “topos” of the “Carolingian dynastic monopoly” and reinventing the genealogy of Berengar I from a Carolingian perspective. Berengar would not only have been one of the many reguli who had come to power after 888 but also he would have been the last Carolingian king and emperor.