The Beginning of Time at the Edge of the World: Visigothic Minitexts in Autun, Bibliothèque Municipale, S 129

The disruption caused by the Arab Conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in 711 made the already poorly sourced northeastern fringe of the Visigothic world harder to see. This was a complex multiethnic and multifaith zone on the border with the Frankish kingdoms. Fortunately, surviving in Autun, Bibliothèque municipale, S 129 (107) are a large number of minitexts written in the late seventh-early eighth centuries in the vicinity of Urgell. These texts, ranging from psalms and legal formulae to poetry and computus, provide an extraordinary window onto the period. Taken together, they offer compelling evidence for a complex and intellectually involved world sat between the Visigothic and Frankish kingdoms.