Lateran Thinking: Building an Idea of Rome in the Carolingian Empire

This article re-addresses the question of the so-called Lateran in Aachen, mentioned in a number of texts produced in the wake of the Carolingian reform movement during the first decades of the ninth century. Scholars have searched for this “Lateran” as a physical space in the palace complex commissioned by Charlemagne in the late eighth century. This contribution tries to demonstrate that this search is problematic; the concept could also have been used in a more metaphorical or conceptual sense: Councils taking place in a “Lateran” would reflect the self-perception of the people gathered there, placing themselves in a Roman imperial and explicitly Constantinian tradition rather than demonstrating an actual architectural invocation of the Constantinian buildings in Rome. While the Lateran in the Carolingian sources may have referred to a specific part of the palace, it need never have been an official name, and may have only been used by a limited group of people with grand ideas and an even greater project on hand.