Water and the Word focuses on a genre of literature written for the education of the Carolingian clergy: Carolingian baptismal instructions. This literature has never been brought together and studied collectively in the context of the books in which it circulated. This comprehensive study has three major objectives. One is to describe the codices in which the baptismal instructions are found, in order to show with what other kinds of material the baptismal tracts were associated and where, how, and by whom these codices were intended to be used. Another is to bring together the baptismal...