Valerie L. Garver is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Northern Illinois University, USA. Her research interests center upon the Early Middle Ages, particularly the social and cultural history of the Carolingian Empire. She is the author of Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World. Owen M. Phelan is Associate Professor of Church History at Mount Saint Mary's University, USA. His primary research interest is the religious history of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. He is author of the forthcoming The Formation of Christian Europe: The Carolingians, Baptism, and the Imperium Christianum.