This special issue seeks to fill a gap by taking the first steps towards locating the early Middle Ages in the broader history of the secular. While it has generally been assumed that a division between religion and secular was impossible to make in the early medieval period, taken together the articles in this collection show a variety of early medieval seculars, all arising from a general assumption that distinctions could, indeed had to, be made between what was secular and what was not. The introduction proposes that scholars should think in terms of a spectrum of secularity; key to determining what sits within this spectrum must be the identification of secularizing strategies, i.e. attempts to draw a distinction between religious and secular in a particular context. Such an approach offers the possibility of a history of the secular that does not privilege one time or place.

中文翻译：

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中世纪早期的世俗：范围和策略

本期特刊旨在通过迈出第一步，在较早的世俗历史中定位中世纪早期，以填补空白。虽然通常认为在中世纪早期不可能将宗教与世俗区分开，但合起来算来，本系列中的文章显示了各种各样的中世纪早期世俗，所有这些都是基于这样一个普遍的假设，即实际上可以有区别在世俗与非世俗之间做出选择。引言提出，学者们应该从世俗的角度来思考。确定这一范围内的内容的关键必须是世俗化策略的识别，即在特定情况下试图在宗教和世俗之间进行区分。。