260 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINregion that began their lives or were restored in the eighth and ninth
centuries did so under the guidance of the Rule of St Benedict, which
was promoted as the norm for monastic observance by the Carolingian
rulers.^60 This distinguished Catalonia from the rest of the peninsula
where older traditions survived unchallenged. Similarly the old
Visigothic liturgy was eclipsed in the region by the introduction of
new service books that followed the rites of Rome, though these were
adapted to suit local needs and the cults of indigenous saints.
This tide did not just run in one direction. Distinctive contribu-
tions were made to the Carolingian Church and to the government
of the state by a number of individuals who came from the former
Visigothic lands on both sides of the Pyrenees. Amongst the most
distinguished of these were the poet Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans
(d. 821), the chronicler Prudentius, Bishop of Troyes (d. 867) and
Benedict of Aniane (d. 821), the great monastic reformer and adviser
of the Emperor Louis 'the Pious', whose original name had been
Wittiza. In addition, some of the products of the learning ofVisigothic
Spain, notably many of the writings of Isidore of Seville and the great
Hispana canonical collection, were influential in the ninth-century
intellectual revival of the Frankish Church.
Although, as has been mentioned, the physical limits of the part of
Catalonia under Christian rule hardly expanded after 801, the surviv-
ing documents show that an intensive repopulation of that area took
place in the course of the next century and a half. The process began
in the areas north of the Pyrenees during the reign of Charlemagne
and was extended to the south and then further westward in the course
of the ninth and tenth centuries. A significant though unquantifiable
proportion of those who were settled on the formerly abandoned
lands were immigrants from Umayyad-controlled Spain, and are
referred to in the sources, principally Carolingian royal charters, as
Hispani. Where they originated is not certain, though it might as
easily have been the Ebro valley as Cordoba. Some of the new mon-
asteries, notably Cuxa, also show clear evidence of Mozarabic archi-
tectural and artistic influence.
These new settlers are first recorded in the time of Charlemagne,
and they received special treatment from the Carolingian regime,
anxious to maintain by repopulation its initially precarious hold on the
region, which as a result of decades of conflict was seriously under-
occupied. It is clear from the charters that significant amounts of
land in the area, both to the north and the south of the Mediterranean