The Carolingian era has hitherto been largely neglected by scholarship investigating the meaning of beauty in Christian thought. This dissertation begins the project of redressing that lacuna, by means of a close linguistic and conceptual analysis of the writings of Theodulf of Orléans, Hrabanus Maurus, and John Scottus Eriugena. Through a careful study of each author’s particular idiolect of beauty, this dissertation uncovers the highly original discourses of beauty that marked Latin-language writings from approximately 770 to 870. Theodulf of Orléans develops an ecclesiological vision of beauty, in which the Church is the primary bearer of the beauty given to humanity through the incarnation of Christ. Hrabanus Maurus turns his attention more directly to the incarnation, seeing Jesus Christ as the source and apex of all beauty. For him, humanity’s labor on earth is to use the allegorical method to learn to see everything that exists in its true beauty, that is, as it exists in relationship to Jesus Christ. John Scottus Eriugena develops a more consciously thematized notion of beauty, influenced especially by Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor, and argues that beauty is an eschatological reality. Beauty is the attractive force of God, pulling all of natura to God through the human being, culminating in the eternal harmony of beauty in the reditus. After these examinations, the dissertation contextualizes the Carolingian discourses of beauty with the Bilderstreit, to provide concrete ways of learning more about the Latin West’s participation in the image controversy. The dissertation examines these three same authors’ individual theories of images, studying one specific work of art designed by each author as a practical illustration of his beauty discourse and image theory. For Theodulf, the dissertation considers the small church at Germigny-des-Prés outside Orléans; for Hrabanus, the Peterskirche near Fulda; and for Eriugena, the Codex Aureus (BSB Clm 14000). The discovery in each case is that each of these thinkers considers images to be an important part of Christian worship and takes their presence largely for granted. Their importance lies not in their sacrality, which each author denies with various degrees of vehemence, but in their beauty, which in its material sensibility can play a valuable role in the journey of the soul to God in the context of the Church’s life of worship.