Rollo on the Loire

Dudo of Saint-Quentin must rank as one of the most successful mythographers of the tenth century. Insofar as Rollo, a figure who is in actuality rather shadowy, seems like a fleshed-out historical person it’s thanks to Dudo and people inspired by him. Given how prominent and how well fleshed-out attacks on Dudo’s narrative, and particularly the early portions of, have been for well over a century, it is therefore remarkable how far elements of Dudo’s tale remain historiographical orthodoxy. Even the best work on the early history of Normandy, Pierre Bauduin’s La première Normandie, which takes a fair amount of space pointing out problems in Dudo’s work, takes as read that, for instance, Rollo arrived on the Seine well before 911, and that he was already an established figure in the region by the time of the so-called Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte. By contrast, I want to suggest two things in this blog post: first, that Rollo’s arrival in the West Frankish kingdom could have been fairly recent; and second, that all of our hints about his early career put him on the Lore and not the Seine. This, as I’ll argue, does have some implications for how we view the early founding of Normandy.

According to Dudo, Rollo arrived on the Seine in 876 and then immediately set about subjecting the land to him and his men. By the early 910s, therefore, Rollo had been (per Dudo) in control of the upper Seine for several decades. However many qualms they may have about the specific dating, this is a view broadly shared by most historians. There are some major exceptions, though – Janet Nelson, for instance, has suggested that Rollo need not have been in the West Frankish kingdom for very long at all. Three points are worth stressing here. First, there is some evidence that there may have been Scandinavian settlers in the area around Rouen in c. 900. What this evidence (and its significance is disputed) would not show in any case, though, is who was in on-the-ground political control of the area, let alone whether or not they were running a de facto independent viking statelet outside of the control of the West Frankish kings. Second, the best evidence we do have for political control around Rouen in the earlier tenth century suggests that it was under royal control. This is pretty direct: a diploma from 905 grants some serfs from the fiscal estate at Pîtres to a royal notary. There are readings of this diploma you could adopt which would allow Charles the Simple to make this grant without being in control of Pîtres, but these are motivated arguments based on the assumption that he couldn’t have been. The most straightforward reading of the diploma is simply that he was, or at least as in control as any Later Carolingian ruler was of anything. Equally, the archbishops of Rouen appear to have been and to have remained fully integrated into the regnal-ecclesiastical government and society of the kingdom throughout the early tenth century. Third, and more specifically to Rollo: none of the evidence we have places him on the Seine before the early 910s.

Partially, this is because we have no evidence for Rollo at all before the early 910s. The earliest contemporary mention of him is from 918, and evidence putting him on the Seine earlier than the early 910s dates to Norman sources from around 1000 (Dudo and the related Fécamp chronicle). In fact, this appears to be unique to Norman sources from that period – Richer, writing about the same time, puts him directly on the Loire, which I think shows at least that Rollo’s presence on the Seine was not an absolutely fundamental part of his legend as perceived a century later. Realistically, I think there are only three things we can say about Rollo’s early career with a decent degree of confidence:

1. He was either not active or not important in the West Frankish kingdom before 900, otherwise he is likely to have shown up in the sources along with other late ninth-century leaders like Siegfried, Hasting, and Hundeus.

2. In fact, he is likely to have been in Britain or Ireland around 900. The evidence for this comes from a Planctus for his son William Longsword, which refers to him having been born while his father was in orbe transmarino, the most likely meaning of which is ‘in Britain’. (In tenth-century sources, transmarinus virtually always means ‘Englishman’.) We don’t know how old William was, but he was old enough to rule in 927, putting his birth in around 912 or, more likely, earlier – probably, in fact, c. 900.

3. He was important by c. 912. This is, in a sense, self-evident, insofar as Rouen and its environs were granted to him. More concretely, he might not have been an unquestioned dictator even by the time he shows up in the pages of Flodoard in the 920s, but he was certainly the preeminent figure in the region by at least the time of the 918 diploma mentioned above.

You’ll note that what we can’t say about him is, for instance, where he came from originally, or what he was doing before he showed up outside the walls of Chartres in 911. Nonetheless, we can say some things about what the Northmen, in general, were doing in around 910.

Rollo’s spectacularly non-contemporary effigy in Rouen Cathedral (source)

The sources for the decade of the 900s are pretty poor, but after a raid on Tours in 903 there’s a bit of a lull. The next indication of raids comes from 909, when Archbishop Heriveus of Rheims complained at the Synod of Trosly that his church province was disrupted by attacks from the Northmen. However, the account of this was based heavily on the acts of the Council of Fismes in 881, so whether these attacks were recent or ongoing is a debatable point. More concretely, the Annals of Massay report that in 910, Archbishop Madalbert of Bourges was killed by pagans. This must mean Northmen – if it meant Saracens it would mean he was either right on the Spanish March in person or that raids from al-Andalus had come further north than they had in a century and a half – and whilst it is an assumption that he was killed somewhere in or around Berry, it seems an eminently reasonable assumption to make. This is then followed by a series of reports indicating attacks on Chartres (Flodoard, the Annals of Sainte-Colombe) and Auxerre and Nevers (the account of the Gesta pontificum Autissiodorensium concerning the life of Bishop Gerand of Auxerre – these are undated, but the Auxerre attack must be around late 910 or early 911 and it’s unlikely the Nevers attack is much later than 912).

None of these accounts are very detailed. They do not, for instance, give us any information about the point of origin of these Northmen. Now, it is possible to make some inferences. Broadly, since at least the middle of the ninth century, successes against the vikings in one geographical region tended to translate into higher levels of activity in other places. The instance of this I know best is Charles the Bald’s successful reorganisation of Neustria into the Neustrian March in the 860s, which kept the Loire Valley largely free of viking attack for about two decades. Equally, Alfred the Great’s successes against the vikings in the late 870s helped prompt the serious viking attacks on Flanders and the surrounding areas around 880. Equally, English successes against York in the 940s then appear to have contributed to an increase in activity on the southern shores of the Channel. By analogy, the successes of Alfred’s son Edward the Elder in the years surrounding his victory at the Battle of Tettenhall in 910 likely caused an increase in activity in the West Frankish kingdom. As it happens, we know from the Planctus that Rollo was, at one point, based in Britain; and if you read Dudo it is striking how close Rollo’s ties with England are presented. This might hint, perhaps, that not just a fair chunk of the armies that attacked the West Frankish kingdom in 910/911, but also Rollo himself, had come from England.  

In any case, the upshot of all of these is that, in the absence of explicit evidence, we don’t have to assume an origin on the Seine for any of these people; and that we wouldn’t be being unreasonable if we suspected many of them hadn’t been in the West Frankish kingdom long.

It might be objected that Rollo would have had trouble asserting his rule in Rouen if he hadn’t already got extensive personal connections there. Two counterpoints are possible here. First, this question never gets asked about Frankish magnates being parachuted into posts well outside their home regions, even sensitive or culturally distinct ones like the Spanish or Breton Marches; and differences between a Christian Northman leader and a Frankish one simply aren’t that significant on a day-to-day basis – about as significant, indeed, as between a Frank and a Goth. The second counterpoint is more on-the-nose: the last time a Frankish king made a major grant of land to a viking leader, that person was exactly a newcomer to the scene. I’m talking here about Guthfrith of Frisia, a man who showed up in the Frankish scene in around 880 (or perhaps a little earlier, but he’s first mentioned in 880) and was granted a big chunk of land in Frisia by Charles the Fat in 882. Now, Frisia was of course a region with plenty of ties to the Danish kingdom; but there were probably similar (if less well-attested) ties in Rouen, and that doesn’t change the fact that neither Rollo nor Guthfrith can be demonstrated to have had personal links to the regions they were granted. Appropriately, Guthfrith’s career seems to have been one of the main role-models for Dudo when describing Rollo’s, right down to Dudo’s giving Rollo a fictional wife named Gisla because Guthfrith married a woman named Gisla.

None of this is strictly provable in the absence of better evidence. Nonetheless, it is remarkable that all the more-or-less contemporary evidence for the viking armies (and thus implicitly Rollo, insofar as he was in charge of a large portion of them) in 910/911 puts them on or around the Loire, and nothing earlier than Dudo puts Rollo on the Seine before 911. For me, the upshot of this is that it is probable that Rollo was fairly new to the West Frankish kingdom and his zone of activity was the Loire valley; and consequently that when he and his men were granted Rouen, they were being introduced to a region in which their roots ran shallow.

For me, what is interesting about this is what it implies about the relationship between Rollo and Charles the Simple. Charles’ role is often seen as simply one of legitimating a fait accompli: hoping that by giving him the panoply of legitimate rule a man who is already implanted at Rouen and whom the Franks could not hope to remove would turn from poacher to gamekeeper. What I’ve suggested above suggests something quite different: Rouen was a genuine grant, a major bit of strategic innovation on the part of Charles and his court, and not somewhere Rollo could have hoped to settle on his own. Dudo of Saint-Quentin would have been infuriated by such a picture; but it may well be closer to the truth than his own ducal propaganda.

Source Translation: A Sermon of Abbot Lupus of Ferrières on Rapine and the Northmen for the Feast of St Judoc

Abbot Lupus of Ferrières is one of the more appealing Carolingian intellectuals. In preparation for this post, I re-read his letter collection and compared to, say, Hincmar or Agobard of Lyon, he seems like quite a charming guy. He’s also one of our best sources for how the division of the Carolingian Empire messed up a lot of people’s thinking. He reminds me of a story I heard once about a guy who spend his student days mostly rowing because he had a job at Barings Bank lined up. In 1994. Similarly, Lupus also strikes me as someone who spends the late 830s writing Einhard consolatory letters about his wife’s death, and also can I borrow some books, and then spends the rest of his career trying to get out of fighting Pippin II of Aquitaine, failing to get out of fighting Pippin II of Aquitaine, being imprisoned by Pippin II of Aquitaine, and also getting caught up in conflicts between different Carolingians which didn’t involve Pippin II of Aquitaine. Being based in Ferrières, he didn’t suffer the brunt of viking attacks, but he certainly had friends who did. For him, though, the biggest problem he faced was the loss of the cell of Saint-Josse near Montreuil, which apparently did severe damage to Ferrières’ finances. Eventually – eventually – he managed to prevail on Charles the Bald to get it back in around 852.

The date of the following sermon is unknown, but is almost certainly after that (from the first lines, I presume it was delivered at Saint-Josse, or perhaps to monks of Saint-Josse who had come to Ferrières; either way, the strong implication is that Saint-Josse was under Ferrières’ control).  Lupus died in around 862, so that gives about a ten-year window; this has been dated c. 860, which seems about right. It is on the feast of St Judoc on December 13^th. So, what was bothering Lupus towards the end of his life? Let’s find out:

The Sermon of Abbot Lupus of Ferrières on the Feast of St Judoc the Confessor

ed. by Willhelm Levison, ‘Eine Predigt des Lupus von Ferrières’, in Aus rheinischer und fränkischer Frühzeit, pp. 561-564.

Your devotion, dearest brothers, is to be praised! You have gathered eagerly to pay due thanks to God on the solemnity of His most holy confessor Judoc. Winter’s harshness has deterred you not, nor has the journey’s difficult impeded you, nor the habit of inactivity delayed you; and the Lord will not despise the allegiance of your service – unless with eager voices you act unworthily in perverse deeds. Indeed, as He deigned to say: ‘praise is comely for the upright’ [Psalm 33:1]; and thus is He indignant that His words are trespassed upon by him who spurns them through living iniquitously. Indeed, ‘unto the wicked God saith, What has thou to do to declare my statues, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth? Seeing thou hatest instruction and casteth my words behind thee’ [Psalm 50:16-17]. Elsewhere: ‘praise is not seemly in the mouth of a sinner’ [Sirach 15:9]. The Saviour too: ‘And why do ye call me, Lord, Lord, and not do the things I say?’ [Luke 6:46] In such documents is the remedy of penance shown to initially purge the conscience of all sins, and thereby to sing praises which please the Creator. Perfect penitence, though, is to weep over things previously done, and in weeping to perpetrate them no more.* One should tearfully weep as often as divine gift concedes, as the Psalm admonishes: ‘Let us weep before the Lord that made us’ [Psalm 95:6]. Sacrifice should constantly be offered, which is otherwise called a broken spirit [see Psalm 51:17]. A broken spirit is a spirit wounded through sin, and pierced with the pain of sin. Whenever this sacrifice is suppliantly offered to God repetition of sin is avoided by its offering.

We rejoice with you, O most beloved, in the coming repayments of rewards for propitiating Him Who caused you to gather together here, because you have already ‘departed from evil and do good’ [See Psalm 36:27] (as we believe). It is our desire that you should keep doing what you have started, as much as your strength allows; and where it fails, that you should ask for help from He Who is Almighty.  We sorrow greatly over those who despise God’s commandments, and that those afflicted with so many evils do not cease from evil, not knowing that to the extent that their obstinate crimes increase, so too every day increase the manifold lashes of divine vengeance to the same extent.

Truly, there are those, who lived before we sinners; but because of the respect that they had for being Godfearing, they never experienced the sort of thing we are enduring. They never carried out public rapine; but we greatly delight in it as if it were permissible and very beneficial; we disregard with deaf ears the threat which roars against us: ‘nor shall those who commit rapine possess the kingdom of God’ [1 Corinthians 6:10]. They considered perjury a crime; we take the opportunity to deceive. Because nothing from us is believed except when we give oaths, we deceive with an oath those whom we could not otherwise, and we lead our own very selves to everlasting perdition, as is proven by this testimony: ‘I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers’ [Malachi 3:5]. This witness is also the Judge Who brings guilt back to conscience and without delay inflicts vengeance on a guilty man convicted by evidence of the truth. They detested wantonness, but we glory in adulteries. Thus, with our superior judgement(!)** we think little of this: ‘fornicators and adulterers God will judge’ [Hebrews 13:4]. To our ruin, we are in league with those who rejoice when they do evil and exalt in the wickedest things. They execrated murderers; but we honour them, despising this: ‘all they that take up the sword shall perish by the sword’ [Matthew 26:52]. By this it is made manifest that he who takes someone’s life without the authority of legitimate power is bound by the crime of homicide. They pursued banditry, but we punish it in the poor and weak, while extolling it in the rich and in those who with obvious madness use their strength for evil. Indeed, no few such men even invade the magistracy, and apostolic doctrine declares they will be excluded from the Kingdom of God. They enjoyed lengthy peace; we labour under long-lasting discord. Hence this can fit them: ‘to the counsellors of peace is joy’ [Proverbs 12:20]. To us, on the contrary: ‘amongst the proud cometh contention’ [Proverbs 13:10], and ‘there is not peace, sayeth my God, unto the wicked’ [Isaiah 48:22]. Therefore, God either guarded them through men with obvious defence or protected them secretly by His help alone. However, evils many and great oppress us, such that we should be very stupid unless we believe and say: ‘are not these evils come upon us, because our God is not with us?’ [Deuteronomy 31:17].

Pirates, that is, seagoing bandits, have most cruelly slaughtered and continue to slaughter the greater part of the Christians unpunished. They annihilate our most noble towns and in defending our country ‘we are at our wits end’ [Psalm 107:27]. And because we have not glorified God in observing His commandments, we are forsaken for those who spurn Him, and we are base tributaries. They are made our betters, and rejoice in occupying the most fruitful and fullest part of our country. Therein, once noble people lose not only their inheritance, but also their freedom. The leading men cannot agree with their equals; the populace is not greater than it was; leaders are not so many or so excellent as they were; and yet because we sinners have gone beyond the threshold of justice, we all complain that nothing suffices for us. We reject order; we labour at everything in confusion. On which account is fulfilled in us: ‘Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people’ [Proverbs 14:34]. Ultimately, Justice – which they received by God’s largess – elevated those who proceeded us. The sin of injustice, now God has deserted us because we first deserted Him, has submerged us in such ignominious misery that we who were previously thought warlike, having been left without God’s help, are now ridiculed as unwarlike by nearly all the nations. But what we endure is temporal and will be ended by an end; what will we endure if we fall into the hands of demons, when we suffer such unworthy things from those who are known to worship them? In the end, these corrections come from God: unless our perversity stops, if our correction follows, this is only the beginning of His vengeance.  

On which account, compelled by the magnitude and duration of God’s vengeance, in accordance with His teaching we submissively implore His mercy and we say ‘Turn us, O God of our salvation, and cause thine anger toward us to cease’ [Psalm 85:5]. And we believe Him piously inviting us: ‘Be converted to me, and you shall be saved’ [Isaiah 45:22]. Not only (which is preferable) will He protect us from the power of the invisible enemy; but also very quickly will He defend us from the aforesaid incursion of visible enemies. ‘His’ power ‘is’ not diminished at all; but our ‘iniquities have divided between’ us ‘and’ him [see Isaiah 59:1-2]. Wherefore, most beloved, let us together entreat the piety of our Creator, that He might turn away from us the lashes of His wrath, which we endure fully and more than fully by virtue of our actions; and that by the intercession of His blessed confessor Judoc, whose solemnity takes place today, we might be able to enter the palaces of the heavenly country, where we might reign happily with Him.

Through him who is truly ‘the way and the life’ [John 14:6], Jesus Christ the Lord, whose majesty endures with the Father and the Holy Spirit, equally, for ever and ever, amen.

* See Gregory the Great, Homilies on the Gospels, no. 14.

**Round not square brackets – Lupus is being sarcastic and it’s the best way I could think of to convey it.

The seafaring bandits in question (source)

…huh, that’s funny. I went away from my screen to grab some coffee and I guess the laptop switched to a Peace of God sermon? That’s fine, I’ve been meaning to write about that too. Anyway, as we can see from this text’s complaints about rapacious lay lords and the oppression of the poor, the composer was clearly writing at a time when public power had completely broken down and a major social crisis was wracking the West Frankish kingdom. The weakness of kingship and the unjust depredations of a new class of local lords-

Oh. Oh, hang on. No, this is Lupus of Ferrières, writing in the mid-ninth century. Well, that makes sense – lots of what he’s saying resemble the complaints of the sermon attached to the Capitulary of Ver in 882. The point I am making, with characteristic subtlety, is that complaints about the depredations of elites are a universal constant in the earlier Middle Ages, because depredating is what medieval elites do. Equally, hearkening back to the ideals of an earlier time – a time when all was right with the world and you weren’t so creaky and weary – is also pretty much universal. Lupus (like his almost exact contemporary Hincmar of Rheims) looks back to the eighth century as a golden age of righteous men, much as at least some tenth-century writers would perceive Lupus’ own time.

For all that the enduring interest of this sermon for us is in its depiction of the vikings, they come across as a secondary concern for Lupus. This isn’t to say that physical damage caused by raids isn’t on his mind. He mentions masses of slaughtered Christians and viking occupation of the best parts of the kingdom. Yet these masses and regions are not really concrete: the times and the places of their attacks or occupation are not specified, nor is there any sense that they affect anyone Lupus or his audience knows. (As it happens, it’s clear from Lupus’ letters that some of his friends were subject to viking attacks, but this is not evident from the way he deploys them for rhetorical effect in the sermon!) Compare this to the very pointed and specific comments of the Annals of Xanten on viking rule in Frisia, and the phantasmical nature of Lupus’ comments becomes clearer.

Rather, the really striking bits from the sermon are the psychological effects of defeat. Lupus is humiliated by having to pay tribute to viking raiders (shades here of the Annals of Fulda fuming over Charles the Fat ‘paying tribute to those from whom he ought to have taken it’). He refers to the ignominious misery, not of genuine physical threat to him or his people, but of humiliation in the eyes of what we might go so far as to call the international community. A Frankish Empire that once bestrode the world like a colossus is now laughed at by all for its inability to seriously do anything about viking raids. Simon Coupland has recently written something about ‘the blinkers of militarisation’, which is a very nice little argument: by the mid-ninth century, even monks like Lupus couldn’t conceive of genuine success vis-à-vis the vikings in any terms other than punching them hard enough that they fell down.

Lupus’ attitude does point towards something important, though, which is that the vikings do thwart any attempt to deal with them permanently, because the causes of the viking phenomenon are ultimately found within Scandinavia, and short of a full-scale invasion and occupation of the entire Scandinavian peninsula (logistically beyond Frankish capabilities at any time), any other measures would be reactive and partial. From an early medieval western European viewpoint, what this means is that the vikings will not stop coming no matter what they do. This is a problem. The ultimate point of the Carolingian reform movement was to purify the Frankish realm and correct its response to God’s demands, thereby to profit from God’s favour. If God isn’t favouring them, something isn’t working, and either their entire worldview needs to be reassessed or increasing hysterical measures to remedy matters need to be taken. Some polities, like Æthelred the Unready’s England, take the latter course. In the West Frankish kingdom of the latter part of the ninth century, most people seem to have taken the former. Someone once asked me why I though the mid-ninth to mid-eleventh century could be treated as any kind of historical unity despite the enormous variations we see. One part of the answer is that there’s something Brezhnevite about these two centuries – failure created a post-revolution. The Franks tried to influence God, but in the end, they couldn’t.  

A Pale Waning Light: An Anonymous Account of the Death of Louis the Younger (882)

Time cools the heat of the moment. Even for a professional medievalist, the flow of the river of centuries that stretches between now and then brings the past to us with its rougher edges smoothed. Unlike our modernist colleagues whose sources allow them to follow events as they unfolded over days, hours and minutes, early medievalists tend to have to think in terms of months and years. This perspective means that the immediate shocks and anxieties that punctuate human affairs are muted. This is not always a bad thing. Watching disinterestedly from the gods reveals much that was hidden to the participants. But, as a consequence, we can also miss the passions that formed as much a part of our past as deeds. Part of the reason I wanted to talk about the text below is that it reminded me that apparently brief irrelevancies mattered to the people who lived in them.

Narratio de Nortmannorum invasione et morte regis Ludovici II, ed. F. Kurze, MGH SS rer. Germ. 50 (Hannover, 1890), p. 180.

When we were near the river Aisne in the villa of Ritest on the 25th January, on the vigil of the holy Martyr Praejectus, after the ninth hour of the day a heavenly body of wonderful size and brightness suddenly appeared. It was notably bigger than the size of a star and wasn’t quite as big as the sun. Whence it seemed to us, who saw it, that it sometimes grew beyond measure with flaming rays, and sometimes faltered into a very great paleness. And thus, changing with unbelievable speed, it made its way west, and in the end, before it could hide itself away in the mountains’ fastnesses and remove from our gazes the hindrance of its fall, it completely disappeared. Nor indeed can the sign shown by a star of this sort be disputed, since at that time some people’s glittering power was in charge, but because of their sins it came to a swift end and vanished such that it is not even worthily remembered.

Otherwise. When Louis believed himself to be successful in the western kingdom, which he had then occupied with no regard for proper behaviour – during which invasion of his, sacrileges, murders, rapes, arson, and other unheard-of crimes had been committed – and he was elated with these most vain successes, the industry of the princes who then governed that kingdom drove him back beyond their borders. And on his return journey, having lost hope for the kingdom he had invaded, he encountered the Northmen, and after committing to battle against them he lost his beloved son; he was worn out with so much affliction during his return journey that he and his men could scarcely return to their own homes. And then in his kingdom many obstacles ran riot; beset on every side by unspeakable disasters and disturbed by the invasion of the Northmen, he was seized with a fever, and gave up his last breath.

A spot of bother, in the Stuttgart Psalter, fol. 58v.

This short account survives in one late ninth-century manuscript, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 3851, which can probably be described as an episcopal handbook, containing penitentials and capitulary material relating to bishops, produced somewhere in Lotharingia. Our text was added on the penultimate folio (fol. 74v) a little after the rest of the contents but probably still before 900. By the tenth century the manuscript was at the monastery of Ellwangen in southern Germany, before eventually ending up in Munich via Augsburg cathedral.

Structurally, the text breaks into two related parts. In the first our anonymous writer describes a star they witnessed on the 25^th January 882 by the river Aisne in what is now northeastern France. In the second, they report the death from fever of Louis the Younger, the Carolingian king of Saxony and Bavaria, beset by vikings and natural disasters. This was a just fate because of the crimes he had committed when invading the kingdom of the West Franks earlier. The fading and disappearance of the star in the first section serves as a thinly veiled portent for the death of Louis. I hesitate to say that the star was entirely invented, because the Annals of Fulda mentions a comet on the 18^{th of} January ‘in the first hour of the night’. This annalist also links it to the death of Louis. I am however a little troubled that I can’t find a reference for it elsewhere.

We’ve talked about comets as portents before, so we’ll put the celestial observations aside to focus on the second part. The 880s are generally viewed as an unusual period of cooperation in Carolingian politics. After decades of warfare between the sons of Louis the Pious, their heirs proved to be more amenable to talking instead. This might have been in response to the challenge posed by Boso claiming the crown of Provence in 879, or the large viking army that came over from England in the same year. These years saw a series of ‘summits’ between the Carolingian kings, in which they met to resolve disputes and redistribute territory.

(This was also a period characterised by an almost absurd mortality rate in the family, including in 880 Karlmann of Bavaria (illness), in 882 Louis the Younger (illness) and Louis III (hit head on a lintel while chasing a girl on horseback) and in 884 Carloman II (hunting accident), resulting in Charles the Fat inheriting everything.)

This sequence of conferences sounds extremely neat and cosy but was initiated with considerable violence. Upon the death of Louis the Stammerer in 879, the West Frankish nobility split between those who wanted one or more of Louis’ sons (Louis III and Carloman II) to inherit the entire kingdom, and a different group who invited the East Frankish Louis the Younger to intervene. Saxon Louis (never has the lamentable Carolingian absence of nomenclatural imagination vexed me more) invaded and got as far as Verdun before lack of supplies forced him to return home. In February the following year he returned, and met Louis III and Carloman II at Ribemont, close to the river Aisne. There the two brothers agreed to give the western part of Lotharingia to Louis the Younger, with Louis III leasing part of it from his cousin. They also arranged a future meeting at Gondreville which would include Charles the Fat.

This summary makes it seem much more amicable than it probably was. As we can see from the anonymous account, the invasion of 879 was a notably bloody affair. Hincmar of Rheims in the Annals of St-Bertin described Louis’ army as ‘committing so many atrocities of all kinds that their crimes seemed to outdo those of the pagans.’ Even the sympathetic Annals of Fulda mentions the looting of Verdun, although it explains this behaviour as being because they ‘could not buy the necessary victuals from the citizens at the just price.’ Our account was written by someone from Lotharingia, close to the devastation if their reference to the Aisne is to be taken seriously and not as a metaphorical reference to the treaty of Ribemont. No matter how successful that pact was, and how good relations became between Louis the Younger and his cousins, this writer was not going to forget the violence of 879.

The author telescopes the narrative. Rather than making a treaty, Louis is presented as having been driven off. The beats of what followed are accurate, although the writer implies a much quicker comeuppance than in reality. Louis did indeed meet a viking army in 880 while returning from Ribemont, at Thiméon in modern Belgium. Although he won the battle, his illegitimate son Hugh died in the fighting. Regino of Prüm records that Louis believed Hugh had been captured and attempted to negotiate his return, only to find his body in the viking camp after they fled in the night.

As the account suggests, Louis spent much of the next two years concerned with vikings. In 881 they sacked Cambrai, Utrecht, Liège, Maastricht, Cologne and Bonn, as well as the monasteries of Prüm, Kornelimünster, Stavelot and Malmedy. Most insultingly, they stabled their horses in the palace at Aachen. The king faced other afflictions, including an invasion of Thuringia by a coalition of Bohemians and Sorbs in 880 and resistance to his authority in Lotharingia from Hugh, the illegitimate son of Lothar II. The natural disasters referred to included harvest failure, an especially hard winter leading to famine, and an earthquake in Mainz on 30 December 881.

It would be left to others to solve these problems. Louis was ill in Frankfurt in late 881 and died on 20^th January 882. His body was buried next to that of his father, Louis the German, at Lorsch abbey, where his son Hugh had also been buried. Hincmar, writing with his customary charity towards deceased opponents, says he lived ‘with no benefit to himself or to the church or to his kingdom.’ Clearly our anonymous writer was similarly inclined. No matter how brightly Louis’ star had blazed, once it was extinguished his crimes ensured that there was no purpose in remembering him.

There is something pleasing about the irony of using this very invitation to damnatio memoriae to remember Louis the Younger. But what speaks to me more about this short passage is its hate. Less than three years after the treaty of Ribemont was signed, every one of its royal participants was dead. The violence with which Louis conducted the campaigns that led up to it is easily lost in the mayhem of viking armies. More than a millennium later the whole business appears to be an irrelevant nothing. But it mattered to the people caught up in it, for whom a year was not a couple of pages in a set of annals but lived every day in all its uncertainties and possibilities and dangers. As our anonymous writer sought to glimpse the future in the movement of the heavens, they also remind us of the immediacy of the past.

Charter A Week 113: The Actual Last Carolingian

Here’s a nostalgic surprise for everyone! When we talked about the last Carolingian diploma, one thing I didn’t mention is that it’s not the last Carolingian charter. You see, besides Louis V, Lothar had an illegitimate son whom he entrusted to a clerical education at Laon. He later became Lothar’s chancellor and then, approaching Hugh Capet, was made archbishop of Rheims in return for his support. This son, named Arnulf, was later to be accused of treachery against the Capetians, and of favouring his uncle Charles of Lotharingia and betraying Rheims to him. These accusations appear to have been trumped up, the result of paranoia amongst the circles around Hugh Capet: certainly, the Capetians’ replacement candidate for archbishop, Gerbert of Aurillac, seems from his letters to have been as much in cahoots with Charles as Arnulf was until external circumstances pushed both of them in opposite directions. Still, that’s not to say that the Capetians didn’t have some justification. They say that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you: in this case, I don’t think Arnulf was, but he still seems to have been riding around in a metaphorical black helicopter:

D Reims, pp. 31-33

In the name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, the holy and indivisible Trinity. 

I, Arnulf, by God’s grace archbishop of Rheims, wish to make it known to everyone that I, not unmindful of the liberality and munificence of my relatives which they faithfully had for our father and patron St Remigius, to wit, of the famous kings, my father Lothar and as well grandfather Louis [IV] and my grandmother the glorious Queen Gerberga, wish to increase the goods and power of the aforesaid saint, for the salvation of me and my relatives, so that he might intercede for us before the Lord, and we might merit to rejoice in the kingdom of the living. 

And thus, I concede into the right of his power the suburb which they call Bourg-Saint-Remi, which is also below his castle, and also all its adjacencies, that is, mills and gardens, fields and houses, such that from today forth they should not pass into an outside power; and that no power should exercise in them any force either. Rather, with their immunity being completely preserved, let it all be subject to the power of Saint-Remi and its monks, that is, taverns, the bakery, the market, the ban, the marketplace, and afterwards whatever will be seen to pertain to the bourg, and also all the justices pertaining to me will be subject to the aforesaid power. 

If anyone should disperse this which has been established by the decree of our reinforcement, by the authority of God Almighty and Our own, let them incur the curse of perpetual damnation; and that it might endure fixed and reinforced, I confirmed it with my own hand, and I reinforced it with the annotation of authentic persons and the impression of Our seal. 

Sign of Arnulf, archbishop of Rheims, who commanded this writing of donation to be made. S. Arnulf, bishop of Orléans, vidame of King Lothar, who praised and confirmed this gift. S. Adalbero, bishop of Laon. S. Hervey, bishop of Beauvais. S. Godesmann, bishop of Amiens. S. Ratbod, bishop of Noyon. S. Dean Adalgar. S. Archdeacon Rotfred. S. Count Burchard [of Vendôme]. 

Enacted in the palace at Rheims, in the year of the Incarnate Word 989, in the 2nd indiction, in the 3rd year of the ordination of lord archbishop Arnulf.

Quick authenticity check to start with: this act has raised some eyebrows over the years, and parts of it are evidently mistakes. The description of hardcore Capetian loyalist Arnulf of Orléans as ‘King Lothar’s vidame (vicedominus)’ is evidently the result of something getting mixed up somewhere; and the dating clauses are off (the AD year and the indiction concur, but Arnulf’s regnal years don’t). However, Patrick Demouy, the charter’s most recent editor, points out that the content of the grant was confirmed shortly afterwards by Hugh Capet, and that the diplomatic is otherwise kosher. So it seems like there’s been some errors in transcription, but otherwise it’s fine.

In terms of its content, one of the themes I’ve been pushing recently is that the memory of the Carolingians was not much of a threat to the early Capetians. This isn’t to say that it was no threat (and indeed keep your eye out for next January when we’ll see how some Capetian ideological statements could try and de-legitimise the Carolingians); but this charter shows that it wasn’t ipso facto suspicious. You see, that witness list there, especially Arnulf of Orléans, Burchard of Vendôme, and (perhaps) Godesmann of Amiens, are all firm supporters of Hugh Capet. Arnulf of Orléans isn’t even Arnulf of Rheims’ suffragan bishop, and Vendôme isn’t under his supervision either; so they’re there either in an oversight capacity or as an expression of the alliance between Hugh and Arnulf of Rheims. (Which we can be sure they had because Hugh appointed Arnulf as archbishop; they don’t have to like each other to be allied.) On the other hand, not only is this explicitly a charter about Carolingian kingship, it’s also done in the context of Saint-Remi. Saint-Remi was, of course, the most prestigious monastery in Arnulf’s diocese; but it’s also one whose prestige is closely associated with the Carolingians. Its glory days might have been left behind with Arnulf’s grandmother Gerberga’s death, but that was only twenty-some years earlier. Arnulf was raised at Laon, not Rheims – something Gerbert of Aurillac, who wrote the notice of his election and who was extremely salty about not being chosen himself, was keen to emphasise – and this charter is an expression of his strategy of legitimation, linking himself, his family, and his new diocese, all without upsetting the new ruling family.*

*Oh, one thing I haven’t yet said explicitly, I think: one major difference between Hugh Capet and, say, Ralph of Burgundy was that it was clear Hugh was going to be succeeded by his son. Robert the Pious was crowned shortly after Hugh was, and was already adult and capable.

“Do As I Say, Not As I Do”: Archbishop Adalbero of Rheims’ Speech in Favour of Hugh Capet

If you’re one of those people who thinks that this blog can sometimes get a little niche, this ain’t the post for you. In my defence, I am currently in the middle of moving house, planning a visiting teaching fellowship in Passau, researching the Night Office, and doing all my usual writing work, and it’s feeling very intense. So when, in the course of writing a different post, it occurred to me that I would have fun doing a very narrow-lens bit of textual criticism about a passage which is both extremely important and extremely loaded in a way which I think I may be the only person who has noticed, I ignored the better angels of my nature and thought ‘one free blog post! I can bash this out before bed tonight!’ 

When I say that no-one else has noticed what’s wrong with this passage, of course, that might not be true: I can’t think of anyone, but it’s half-past midnight on a Sunday and my willingness to check is thoroughly diminished. I did check Justin Lake’s book on Richer, because Lake is an extremely learned classicist who discusses Richer’s rhetoric in detail; but he doesn’t talk about it and that’s good enough for me. 

OK, enough burying the lede. The passage we’re talking about is Richer, Historiae, 4.11. The narrative context is this: King Louis V (r. 986-987) has just died in a hunting accident without heirs. In the aftermath, a council of Frankish magnates gathers at Senlis to decide who should be the next king. There are two candidates: one is Hugh Capet, duke of the Franks; the other is Charles, Louis’ uncle and the duke of Lower Lotharingia. Charles has already approached Archbishop Adalbero of Rheims in the hope of getting him to support his candidacy, but Adalbero has refused, on the grounds that Charles is a prat. (I paraphrase.) Now, as the audience settles into silence, Adalbero makes a grand speech in favour of Hugh Capet as king. The speech, denying a role for hereditary succession in choosing kings and arguing for Hugh on account of his virtues, has attracted much attention from historians interested in the norms and beliefs surrounding king-making. It goes like this: 

The passage in Richer’s autograph manuscript, Bamberg Msc.Hist.5 (source)

After Louis of worthy memory was taken from this world without offspring, we should seek with careful thought who should take his place as king, in order that the republic be not neglected with no governor and fall. Wherefore we recently decided it was useful to put off this matter so that in due time each man might make a public consideration and pour out that which they have each been given by God, so that after having gathered everyone’s opinions, the sum of the whole opinion might be describe from out the mass of the multitude.  Therefore, now that we are now all together, we ought to see, with great prudence, with great faith, that hate does not dispel reason nor does love weaken truth. We are not unaware that Charles has his accomplices, who contend that he is worthy of the realm by grant from his relatives. But if we are considering this point, the realm is not gained by hereditary right, nor should anyone be promoted to the kingship except he who is not only ennobled by fleshly nobility but also the wisdom of the soul, whom faith defends, whom greatness of soul confirms for the role. We read in the annals that emperors of the most illustrious line were thrown down from the dignity on account of their worthlessness; some were succeeded by their equals, others by those unequal to them.  But what is it worthy to confer on Charles, whom faith does not rule, whom laziness weakens; he who has at last become such a moron that he does not shudder to serve a foreign king, and take a wife unworthy of him from the knightly class? How, then, can a great duke endure that a woman taken from his knights be made a queen and rule him? How can he put at his head a person whose equals and even betters bend their knees to him and place their hands under his feet [i.e. to help him mount a horse]? Consider the matter diligently, and see that Charles has been cast down by his own fault rather than another’s. Choose a blessing for the republic rather than a calamity for it. If you want to make it unhappy, promote Charles. If fortunate, crown the outstanding Duke Hugh as king. Let not, therefore, love for Charles entice anyone, nor let hatred for the duke cause anyone to turn aside from the profit of all. If you disparage the good, how will you praise the bad? If you praise the ill, how will you spurn the good? What does Divinity warn about such matters? He says: ‘Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil, that put darkness for light and light for darkness!’ [Isaiah 5:20] Therefore, promote the duke over you, a man most illustrious in action, in nobility, in resources; a man whom you will find a protector not only of the republic but also of private goods. By the favour of his benevolence, you will have him as a father. Who flees to him and does not find patronage? Who has been destitute of their helpers and has not been restored to their own through him?

This is my own translation, but I did check it against Lake’s! (Buy that, by the way, if you’re at all interested in Richer: it’s a lot more elegant than mine is…) 

So, what’s the problem with Adalbero’s speech which bothers me so much? Bluntly, this: it is so discordant with the historical Adalbero’s own actions and beliefs, as known to us and to Richer, that it is very likely to be a satire on Richer’s part rather than any kind of genuine exposition of tenth-century political thought. To repeat, the overall gist of Adalbero’s speech is that Hugh is a worthy, noble man whom Adalbero admires greatly, and for that reason should be preferred over Charles who has nothing going for him but hereditary right, and who is so wicked he even serves the Ottonian monarch. In context, this is all heavily ironic.

To begin with, Adalbero and Hugh were not long-term allies. Most recently, Adalbero and his secretary Gerbert of Aurillac had placed their hopes in Hugh as a counterweight to King Lothar during his invasion of Lotharingia; he had disappointed them, and followed up that disappointment by actually helping Louis V attack Rheims in order to bring Adalbero to trial for treason. In fact, the reason that Adalbero was at Senlis in the first place was to attend that trial. In short, in historical reality, Hugh had Adalbero over a barrel. 

Next, let’s consider the arguments Richer gives Adalbero about hereditary right. We know from Gerbert’s letters (to which Richer almost certainly had access) that Adalbero had spent years supporting the same foreign king he accuses Charles of serving – that is, Otto III – and defending him against would-be usurpers precisely on the grounds of hereditary right. Richer is making Adalbero a hypocrite, and Richer is a careful enough dramatist that I do not buy this is being done by accident. 

Charles’ wife is a different question. The only evidence we have for her identity comes from Richer’s Historiae and the Historia Francorum Senonensis. The HFS gives her as a daughter of ‘Count Heribert of Troyes’. If this is right, it means that Richer’s account here is fictional, but the HFS is a problematic source and I don’t want to trust it. I also don’t want to trust Adalbero’s speech here, either, because it’s so evidently tendentious. Later, Richer gives her name as ‘Adelaide’, which doesn’t help narrow it down via onomastics given how common a name it is. Ultimately, therefore, we can’t say anything about Charles’ wife’s family affiliations which are supported by reliable sources.

The passage at the end of the speech we can talk about that finds purchase in our sources is Adalbero’s summary. ‘Who flees to [Hugh Capet] and does not find patronage?’ A whole bunch of people, starting with Theobald the Trickster in 962 (an event Richer would have known about through Flodoard’s Annals, which he cites as a source). More relevantly, though, people whom Hugh Capet did not help included Richer’s teacher Gerbert, whose ultimate political abandonment by Hugh Richer spends a hefty chunk of the rest of Book IV describing; Adalbero, who, as I noted, had placed political hopes in Hugh and who had been disappointed; and Richer himself, who (per Jason Glenn’s book on the subject) appears to have been inclined to favour the claims of Charles of Lotharingia.   

In short, then, it is very implausible that this speech is a genuine reflection of Adalbero of Rheims’ views on the kingship, and unlikely that it is a serious intervention in debates about the king-making process. It does draw on ideas about king-making which were present in the Carolingian world, although they seem to have been minority opinions, and it assembles them in a plausible way. However, the result of this assemblage is to make Adalbero criticise Charles of Lotharingia sharply for actions and beliefs which Adalbero shared, and which Richer knew Adalbero shared. Thus, rather than a real attempt to say anything in particular about kingship one way or the other, this passage is more likely to be saying something about Adalbero: a dark mockery of his pro-Ottonian views, his political slipperiness, and the way that, when the duke of the Franks got physical control of his person, he was unable to wriggle out of endorsing Hugh Capet. 

ʿAbd al-Rahman II’s Nocturnal Visitor

We have been told that ʿAbd al-Rahman had a nocturnal emission in the city of Guadalajara, while on a campaign.

Early Islamic Spain: The History of Ibn al-Qūṭīya, ed. & trans. D. James, (London, 2009), 98-99.

So begins the historian Ibn al-Qutiya (d. 977) in one of his more unusual stories about the Umayyad Emir of al-Andalus, ʿAbd al-Rahman II (r. 822-852). As an opening gambit it’s certainly striking, particularly as if one were to attempt a Sellars and Yeatman style history of Muslim Spain (a 711 and all That, perhaps), ʿAbd al-Rahman II would appear as a Good Emir. His reputation is that of a reformer, who established government administration, built walls and mosques, oversaw a cultural flowering at his court and defeated viking raiders. Anecdotes about wet dreams do not normally feature in the description of such figures.

The rest of the passage runs as follows:

‘[ʿAbd al-Rahman] went to perform the ablutions for prayers, which being done, and while the servant was drying his head, he called for Ibn al-Shamir and recited the following verse:

‘From Córdoba, in the night came/ A nocturnal traveller, without the knower knowing it.’

Ibn al-Shamir responded to this rather unusual prompt with a verse of his own:

‘Welcome to the one/ Who comes in the dark of night!’

According to Ibn al-Qutiya:

This excited ʿAbd al-Rahman, and he was overcome with the desire to be with one of his favourite concubines, so he turned his command of the army over to his son al-Hakam and returned to Córdoba.’

What are we to make of this?

The first thing to note is that Ibn al-Qutiya is generally very positive about ʿAbd al-Rahman. Elsewhere in his History, Ibn al-Qutiya described the Emir as having ‘lived a meritorious life’, saying that ‘his subjects thought well of him’. ʿAbd al-Rahman leaving his military command to get laid doesn’t sound like a particularly responsible thing to do, but there is no explicit hint of condemnation in the passage in question.

With the exception of his account about the vikings, Ibn al-Qutiya downplays the very real military challenges the Emir faced in his reign, preferring instead to focus on the relationships within and culture of the court. Our picture of al-Andalus is generally one of high culture, the celebration of the arts and learning, patronised by enlightened rulers. That this is our image is in part testament to the skills of writers of the tenth century such as Ibn al-Qutiya. In the ninth century by contrast, al-Andalus was viewed as a rough and ready Wild West by the rest of the Islamic World.

In his History Ibn al-Qutiya presents a picture of Córdoba as a city of culture, presided over by a learned Emir. His ʿAbd al-Rahman is a fighter, but his superiority over his enemies is demonstrated by his focus on the things that really matter, poetry, friendship and love, all of which come out in this story. This is epitomised by the poem Ibn al-Shamir is said to have written representing the words of ʿAbd al-Rahman on their journey home:

When the morning sun comes up/ it recalls Tarub:

a girl of such beauty/ you could think her a wonderful gazelle.

And I am the son of the two Hishams of Gahlib/ I start wars and I end them.

It perhaps loses something in translation but keep Tarub in mind because we will return to her later.

This is all very well, but it doesn’t explain quite how weird this passage is. The whole account, in which ʿAbd al-Rahman has a wet dream, tells his best mate about it and the two start improvising free verse about the event until the emir is overcome by lust, reads almost like a parody of the civilised courts otherwise celebrated.

Given this week’s subject matter, there were so many options for the illustration, all of them terrible. I’ve opted for this picture from the Great Mongol Shahnameh of Darab sleeping in a vault.

The answer to this lies in genre. Ibn al-Qutiya was not writing a strictly chronological, annalistic chronicle. Indeed he wasn’t writing at all. His students, based on their lecture notes, put the contents of his History together. The History itself is a work of akhbar, effectively a heterogeneous string of anecdotes structured around the reigns of different Emirs. Akhbar existed for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they were written to prove a specific point, explicitly or otherwise, using stories as examples. Other times the purpose was to aid the moral education of the listener. The most common reason, however, was to be entertaining, to amuse an audience with witty stories about the past. In this context, a funny story about the emir deserting his post out of lust and exchanging amusing poetry was something that was going to appeal to a sizeable readership.

Masturbation was generally frowned upon in the medieval Islamic world, with critics drawing upon the Qurʿan 23:5-7

And they who guard their private parts, except from their wives or those their right hands possess, for indeed, they will not be blamed. But whoever seeks beyond that, then those are the transgressors.

In the ninth and tenth centuries, as the madhahib schools of Islamic law began to form, these admonitions became more solid, with the Maliki and Shafiʿi schools being strongly against it, while the Hanbali school was more divided. Even at this time there was disagreement on the question. The historian and jurist al-Tabari (d. 923) argued that masturbation was permissible on the authority of al-ʿAlaʾ b. Ziyad who said ‘There is no problem with it! We used to do it while on military campaigns.’ Ibn Sina (Avicenna, d. 1037) argued for the health benefits of masturbation, warning of the dangers of the build-up of too much semen. Prior to this period, the picture is even more varied, with the general consensus among legal authorities being that while masturbation might be less desirable than sex with a valid sexual partner (wife or concubine), it was better than sex with an invalid partner.

(On female masturbation, the picture is also mixed, with some legal scholars advising women to manage their sexual desires with a pestle, a cucumber or ‘a thing made of hide to resemble a penis’ while others condemned this.)

Outside the sphere of religion and law, masturbation could be seen as a failure of masculinity, a sign that one lacked the wherewithal to acquire a partner and the discipline to manage one’s urges. This made it a natural source of comedy, and it features heavily as a subject in funny stories from the period. The tale of ʿAbd al-Rahman’s nocturnal visitor probably fits in this context. Ibn Hayyan records a poem by al-Ghazali, last encountered in this blog as ʿAbd al-Rahman’s envoy to Constantinople, begging the emir to take pity on him and release him from prison, because the chains were so tight that he couldn’t even masturbate. This hints that jokes about masturbation might have circulated in ʿAbd al-Rahman’s court.

The emir’s friend in this story, Ibn al-Shamir, was a noted astrologer who had acquired favour with ʿAbd al-Rahman for predicting that he would succeed his father, al-Hakam I (r. 796-822). He was also famed for his poetry and was commissioned to write and perform verses at public occasions, including the funeral of al-Hakam and the celebrations for the enlargement of the Great Mosque of Córdoba. That this also prepared him to extemporise lines on his sovereign’s wet dreams becomes less surprising when we compare this to the career of his later contemporary in the Caliphate, Abu al-ʿAnbas al-Saymari (d. 888). This latter was an astrologer and qadi who came to the attention of Caliph al-Mutawwakil (r. 847-861) for his ribald stories, which made him a fixture at court. Some of these tales were gathered in his The Churning in the Flogging of ʿUmayra, a title which includes not one but two euphemisms for masturbation.

We know very little about the concubines in ʿAbd al-Rahman’s harem. The emir is reported to have had 87 children, which suggests a large number of concubines, only a handful of whom we can attach a name to. Even those whose names we know tend to appear in our sources as the mothers of emirs, including Halawa (‘Sweetie’), ʿAbd al-Rahman’s mother. His successor, Muhammad I (r. 852-886), was the son of Buhayr (‘Dazzling’), who died when he was young, so he was raised by one the other concubines, al-Shifaʿ (‘Healing’). Al-Shifaʿ also founded a mosque in the west of Córdoba, as did two other concubines of ʿAbd al-Rahman II, Fakhr and Tarub (about whom more below). Among the most celebrated concubines was Qalam, a Basque woman enslaved at an early age, who was famous for her dancing, singing, stories and calligraphy.

If there is more to Ibn al-Qutiya’s story than just an amusing tale, I think it lies in al-Shamir’s subsequent reference to Tarub. Later writers such as al-Maqqari (d. 1632) noted that ʿAbd al-Rahman II was famous for his libido. According to them, in his later years the emir was entirely under the sway of his favourite, Tarub, who had enormous influence over him. In that context, Tarub may be the concubine that ʿAbd al-Rahman abandoned his post to go and see. Al-Shamir (and through him, Ibn al-Qutiya) may have been trying to make a point about Tarub’s unhealthy sway over the emir.

While I strongly suspect that this might well be a story spread by Tarub’s enemies in court to discredit her, I think the biggest reason Ibn al-Qutiya included it is because it’s funny. A vast gap in time and experience separates us from the tenth century. Changes in cultural mores across more than a thousand years make it hard for us to react to material written then in the same way that the original audience was intended to. But I would suggest that when we as a modern audience laugh at the story of ʿAbd al-Rahman II’s nocturnal visitor, we are in fact responding exactly how Ibn al-Qutiya expected and hoped.

Charter A Week 112: Getting Closer to the Peace of God

Man, this takes me back. The last time I thought a lot about the Peace of God, it was 2018, the UK was still in the EU, nobody knew what a COVID was, I was living in Tübingen (for the first time), and everything about the Peace was bonkers. Since then, I have had few new thoughts on the Peace after the very early Councils, my views on which could be summarised as ‘what looked normal when Otto the Great did it looked weird when Bruno of Cologne did and even weirder in Auvergne, but it’s all still drawing on Carolingian precedent!’ After the very early period, though, things start changing quite fast. We’ll see a few Peace of God councils down the line, but for now we’re back with one of the earlier ones. I am cheating a bit putting it under 988: officially, the charter is dated to ‘c. 990’, which is good enough for my purposes; but in fact this council, held at Saint-Paulien, can be dated reasonably well to October 993 or 994. The Miracles of St Barnard describe how:

When, therefore, the Aquitanian people were celebrating a council with their pontiffs at the city which is called Saint-Paulien in the district of Velay, the congregation of Romans was also present, bringing with them the body of the aforesaid pontiff…’

Keep this description in mind, because we’ll see how ‘Aquitanian’ these bishops are once the charter is over. In the meantime, here’s the document:

Sauxillanges, no. 15 = Mansi XIX, cc. 271-2* (c. 990, but recte 993-994)

In the name of God, the highest and indivisible Trinity.

Guy, by God’s grace bishop of Le Puy. 

Greetings and peace to those awaiting the mercy of heavenly piety.

We wish it to be known to all God’s faithful that, seeing the evildoing which arise daily amongst the people, We gathered certain bishops, lord Peter of Viviers, Wigo of Valence, Bego of Auvergne [Clermont], Raymond of Toulouse, Deusdedit of Rodez, Fredelo of Elne, and lord Fulcrand of Lodève, and Wigo of Glandèves, and many other bishops, and certain princes, and nobles whose number is not to be found.

And because we know that without peace no-one shall see the Lord, we admonish in the Lord’s name and in order that they might be sons of peace, that in the bishoprics which these bishops rule and in those counties, from this hour onwards:

[1] No man should knowingly break into a church, besides a church within the stronghold of a castle, except a bishop’s man on account of their rents.  

[2] Let no man take booty in these counties and these bishoprics, whether in horses, in chickens, in oxen, in cows, in male or female asses, or from the burdens they bear, nor in sheep or goats nor pigs; nor may he kill them; except that he or his men are on campaign, when they may accept provisions, [3] in such a way that they should take nothing home, or to build or besiege a castle, except each from his own land, either from his allod or from his benefice, or from his command. 

[4] Let clerics no bear worldly arms.

[5] Let no-one ever inflict any injury on monks or on those who do not bear arms accompanying them, save bishops or archdeacons on account of their rents.

[6] {Let no-one take} male or female villeins for ransom, except on account of their forfeiture, and unless the villein works or ploughs another’s land which is in contention; or unless they are from one’s own land or own benefice. 

[7] Let no-one dare to seize ecclesiastical lands, episcopal lands, canons’ lands, monks’ lands, nor dishonour them by any bad customs, unless they acquire them as a precarial grant from the hand of the bishop or by the will of the brothers.

[8] From this hour onwards, let no-one presume knowingly to apprehend merchants or despoil their goods. 

[9] We also forbid any layman from thrusting themselves into the matter of burials or offerings to the Church. 

[10] Let no priest accept a price for baptism, because it is the gift of the Holy Spirit. 

If there is any robber or cursed person who should infringe this institution and be unwilling to hold it, let him be excommunicated and anathematized and removed from the threshold of the holy Church until he comes to give satisfaction; and if they do not do this, let the priest not sing him mass, and let the divine office not be performed; and if he dies, let a priest not bury him (nor let him be buried in a church), and not knowingly give him communion; and if any priest knowingly infringes this, let him be deposed from the order.

We also pray and admonish that at this time, to wit, in the middle of the month of October, you should come to this assembly of God with a good heart and good will, in God’s name, so that you might be able to gain remission of your sins, in the presence of our lord Jesus Christ who liveth and reigneth with the Father and the Holy Spirit. 

Archbishop Dagobert of the see of Bourges and lord Theobald, archbishop of Vienne, confirmed this.

*A note on the text of this act. Given that this charter survives in just one manuscript, BNF Lat 5454, you wouldn’t have thought establishing a stable text would be this difficult, and yet here we are. I have used three editions (in the absence of an online manuscript): the Doniol edition of the Sauxillanges cartulary, the Mansi printing, and the text given by Magnou-Nortier in her article ‘La place du Concile du Puy (v. 994) dans l’évolution de l’idée de paix’. (Shout out to Bastiaan Waagmeester for sending me a copy of it!) Armed with these different versions, I’ve had to make some judgement calls about what the text actually is, to wit:

Under [1], Magnou-Nortier interpolates the phrase tam in atrio before extra aecclesiam, making it the start of a new line reading ‘Let no-one take booty… either in the atrium outside a church or in the stronghold of a castle…’ Geoffrey Koziol is sceptical of this reading, and I agree with him: there’s no reason to put it in there and it makes grammatical sense as it stands. Similarly, where Magnou-Nortier has [3] begin a new sentence, and Doniol has nec ut instead of sic ut, I have interpreted it as a follow-on from [2]. Finally, under [7], I have gone with Magnou-Nortier’s disonorare instead of Doniol’s dissonare.

These provisions look familiar. If you remember the Council of Charroux in 989, then by my reckoning, provisions 1, 2, 4, 5, and 7 are repetitions or elaborations of that council’s provisions. My 9 and 10 here, moreover, will be echoed a couple of years later at the Council of Poitiers in c. 1000, so these bishops are clearing participating fully in their zeitgeist. Some of these concerns are, as I read them, pretty new: the specifics on clerical purity and untouchability are old concerns, but this kind of focus on them has been absent for a lot of the tenth century. On the other hand, a lot of this is quite traditional. The bishops are concerned to regulate plundering. The impact of armies simply moving across terrain – heck, never mind armies, just large bodies of armed men, even if they were on routine business, this is what the Capitulary of Ver was concerned about – could be devastating to those they encountered. This is Guy’s concern: to prevent robbery and to control provisioning (functionally, ravaging); in essence, to limit the impact of warfare on civilians.

All very well, you might think, but isn’t it relevant that they feel a need to make these announcements now? Sure, and in fact 993/994 is a significant pair of years to try and regulate combat. For all that the Miracula Barnardi might describe these bishops as ‘Aquitanians’, that’s not really accurate. Here’s a map of the sees of these bishops:

Bego of Clermont is a real outlier here, both geographically and politically. I suspect he’s here to provide expertise at this sort of Church council: his predecessor Stephen II was really the first guy to get this sort of thing rolling, and there had been several in that kind of area in the previous few decades. Otherwise, we’re dealing with two sets of bishops. One lot (Raymond of Toulouse, Deusdedit of Rodez, Fredelo of Elne and Fulcrand of Lodève) are very evidently from the sphere of influence of the counts of Toulouse: compare them with the area of influence of Raymond III. The other lot (Guy himself, Peter of Viviers, Wigo of Valence, and Wigo of Glandèves) have two things in common: first, they’re either in or adjacent to the Transjurane Burgundian kingdom; and second, they’re all part of Guy’s network of alliance and patronage, having been dignitaries at Puy Cathedral or senior abbots in his diocese.

Why is this relevant? It’s relevant because this kind of (still scare quotes at this point) ‘Peace of God’ activity is often pegged to social collapse, but there’s something more specific happening here, and by that I mean a lot of high-profile deaths. Count William the Liberator of Provence died at some point after August 993; in October 993, King Conrad the Pacific of Transjurane Burgundy died, and his son Rudolf III almost immediately got into trouble, provoking some of his magnates so badly that they were in full-scale revolt by 995. Meanwhile, one of William’s stepsons, William Taillefer (son of Raymond dux Gothorum) emerges again in Toulouse at around this time, apparently reclaiming his inheritance from – well, from whoever was in charge, it’s not clear at this point. So it’s not a general process of societal angst we’re dealing with here: it’s a regionally delineated and, to a large extent, partisan response to a series of succession crises.

This emphasises the extent to which we’re still in the proto-Peace of God here. We don’t have evidence for important components of the ideology, notably oath-swearing. We’re getting to the point where this is a new, post-Carolingian phenomenon; but at the moment it is still just about recognisable as something a Late Carolingian prelate would have been familiar with.    

Bad Guy Charlemagne Killed a Bear: Goscelin of Saint-Bertin and Kingship in the Life of St Amalberga

It’s a heck of a task to get a handle on eleventh-century ideas of French kingship. The fragmentation in political culture that followed the middle of the tenth century means that our sources are, well, fragmented. Rather than the court-centred Mirrors For Princes of the ninth century, or even the East Frankish hagio/historiographical works which suggest some kind of shared discursive space about how to imagine good and bad kingship, you’re left comparing the Annals of Vendôme with mid-century liturgical notes (or just going back to ninth- or tenth-century sources and pretending not much has changed). This is why historians interested in the topic tend to go to the same few wells: Abbot Abbo of Fleury’s exhortations to Hugh Capet and Robert the Pious based on ninth-century normative works (old-fashioned and largely ignored); Bishop Adalbero of Laon’s poem to Robert the Pious (also largely ignored, and quite regionally specific); certain parts of the Histories of Richer of Saint-Remi, notably the speech he gives to Archbishop Adalbero of Rheims about why Hugh Capet should be made king (a sarcastic fiction; in real life, Adalbero and Hugh were not allies and Adalbero was probably coerced into crowning him); and Helgaud of Fleury’s Life of Robert the Pious (mostly bonkers). I’m being a bit unfair on Helgaud by calling him bonkers: all of this stuff is a bit weird, because there’s not much of a putative ‘normal’ to compare it against.

It was therefore with no little interest that I stumbled across an underexploited source for eleventh-century ideas about kingship: Goscelin of Saint-Bertin’s Life of St Amalberga. Goscelin is someone I was vaguely familiar with, but if you’re a certain kind of historian – by which I mean one with a particular interest in powerful female saints, especially in an English context – he’s probably someone you’ve thought about a lot, because he’s extremely important. Goscelin began his career as a monk in the abbey of Saint-Bertin, in Flanders, but as a young man in the years around 1060 he moved to England, and spent the rest of his career there, largely writing hagiography abut female saints for English communities. It’s not 100% certain that the Life of St Amalberga is his work, but the scholarly consensus is that it is, and in any case it’s certainly mid-eleventh century and Flemish.

A reliquary of St Amalberga in her modern church at Temse. (source)

The plot of the Life of St Amalberga is relatively simple. Amalberga is a noble and beautiful virgin who wants to dedicate her life to Christ. However, Pippin the Short sees her and decides she should marry his son Charlemagne. She says ‘no, I’m a bride of Christ’; Pippin is cool with this but Charles is very emphatically not. He spends quite a lot of time trying to seduce her with flattery or overawe her with threats, only being distracted by fights small (against a bear) or large (against the Aquitanians). Amalberga has to resort to extreme ends to fend him off, from boarding herself up in a church to fleeing by night as Charles closes the roads. In the end, God infect Charles with a disease that only appeasing her can cure, and she is able to live out her life in her monastic foundation. Historically, this is all nonsense, or perhaps better fanfiction*. Most notably, Amalberga is made a contemporary of various historical personages, such as St Willibrord, who were not contemporaries with each other. In addition, little of this is in Goscelin’s main source, a sermon of Bishop Ratbod of Utrecht known as the Tomellus. In the Tomellus, Amalberga is threatened with marriage by ‘Charles, king of the province’ – a figure I like because he’s clearly supposed to be just a Carolingian, not any Carolingian in particular – but this Charles the Generic is not really described, and is the protagonist of just one episode. Granted, it’s a major episode, because the Tomellus is short; but he’s not the villain deuteragonist like he is in Goscelin’s version. This, though, is really useful: Goscelin wrote a basically fictional Charlemagne – which means he wrote a character who is largely a vessel for his ideas about kingship!

So what kingship do we see in the Life of St Amalberga? A lot of it, it has to be said, is fairly standard. The most explicit statement regarding good kingship is about Pippin the Short: he ‘conducts many wars gloriously and is most serene in domestic affairs’; he is a ‘king magnificent in justice and piety’. This isn’t a lot to go on. But Goscelin’s portrait of Charlemagne is more interesting. First, it’s not especially positive. There’s a lot of positive adjectives used (Charles is praestantissimus, most excellent; dote virtutis digna, worthy in his endowment of virtue; potentissimus, most powerful; and so on), but in terms of the overall story, he’s violent, selfish, horny, and ultimately a persecutor of martyrs, breaking Amalberga’s arm in an act Goscelin explicitly compares to martyrdom. The idea that Charlemagne couldn’t control his lust had a long history, and there are several ninth-century depictions of Charlemagne suffering in the afterlife for his concupiscence; but this is the late eleventh century, the age of the Song of Roland, and this is not a usual portrait of the Frankish emperor. In fact, it reminds me most of all, in a strange way, of the Historia Francorum Senonensis. Goscelin isn’t as prima facie pessimistic as the Historia’s author, but most of the attributes of lay rule in this text are twisted into being bad things.

A case in point is counsel. Taking counsel and reaching consensus were fundamental virtues of rulership in the Late Carolingian and even Post-Carolingian world. Goscelin’s work includes numerous examples of counsel, including one description of an assembly taken directly from the Annales regni Francorum. But this counsel does not usually produce good ends! When Pippin first sees Amalberga, he ‘takes counsel with the Frankish princes present’, who all agree that she should marry Charles, thus kicking off all the trouble of the plot. Again after Charlemagne becomes king, he hosts an assembly at Herstal where he receives the same bad counsel to marry Amalberga. In the end, it’s only Charlemagne’s illness which persuade the assembled crew of Frankish nobles to advise him to give it up already. This does not, to me, point at a world view which is happy with the old-fashioned values of Carolingian kingship.

So who is Charlemagne, in the Life? What sort of person is he? Well, yes, a prick; but there’s a more analytical answer too. Unlike in the case of Adalbero’s Poem to King Robert, there isn’t that one killer quotation I can pick out, but an overall picture does emerge, and it’s exemplified by the episode I mentioned briefly above where Charlemagne fights a bear.

The episode begins with a good-looking Charles trying to seduce Amalberga, covering her with kisses and embraces. Suddenly, a woman runs up and screams ‘Help! There’s a huge bear over there!’ Charles quickly jumps on his horse, summons his men, draws his (?)knife**, tells the woman’s husband to shut up and hand him a shield, and boldly, without doubt or hesitation, kills it by stabbing it in the head. He gives the pelt to Amalberga’s protectress Abbess Landrada, who says ‘Wow, Charles, you look so fearsome (“you bear in your face a dread majesty”) and are so strong, they will call you ‘Charlemagne’ forever’. This is true, Goscelin notes: he later became emperor and ‘crushed and subjugated the whole world’. Then he goes back to Amalberga, convinced that this triumph will have her melting into his arms. Instead, she’s barricaded herself into the church, and the clarae militiae iuvenis orders the doors be broken down by force. Landrada has to beg him off by persuasion and entreaty, something she just about manages.

Charlemagne has a number of characteristics here. He’s bold and victorious in combat, and good-looking and impressive in appearance. He takes what he wants, when he wants it, and gets angry and violent when people tell him no. In short, he’s a knight. (There’s a reason I didn’t translate clarae militiae iuvenis, because ‘youth of noble knighthood’ would have given away the punchline!) Even when he becomes king, he is not really sacralised – Goscelin’s go-to language is Roman imperial, not Old Testament. Neither he nor, really, Pippin displays much interest in managing the Church, and this is especially interesting because that is actually one of the characteristics of both Charlemagne and of Carolingian kingship more widely mentioned by Ratbod in Goscelin’s source!

In short, whilst Goscelin knows about the ideals of Carolingian kingship, he’s evidently not particularly invested in them, and his main image of kingship is purely military rule. It’s also, despite appearances, basically pretty negative. Pippin, of course, is a good king, but he’s also very lightly sketched – Goscelin’s visceral pictures come when dealing with abusive power. (As a side note, this seems to have stayed with him when he moved to England, because he does similar damage to the reputation of the English king Edgar in a late saint’s life!) Such a view of royal power is distinctive to Goscelin, but even though communicated in Goscelin’s juvenilia, it’s distinctive and coherent enough to take it seriously. Certainly, Helgaud of Fleury’s mild and gentle Robert the Pious would be less recognisable to many people than a king who shows up and demands things with menaces…

*One thing that’s not going to be relevant to what follows is that some of it is specifically Fix Fic – Charlemagne’s brother Carloman and uncle Carloman both play major, and largely positive, roles in the plot!

**Goscelin notes that he does not have a gladius, but only a spata. I would have thought a spatha would be a longsword, myself, but the context implies a less impressive weapon.

Orlando Whom? Or, Why Roland was not Charlemagne’s Nephew

‘He looks to earth and sees his nephew dead,/ And very softly thus utters his lament:

“God show thee mercy, Count Roland, my dear friend!/ So great a knight as thou was ne’er seen yet,

To undertake great wars and win them well./ Alas! my glory is sinking to its end!”’

Chanson de Roland, trans. Dorothy L. Sayers

At the climax of the battle of Roncesvalles in the Chanson de Roland, the eponymous hero finally accepts that the Saracen host has him beat and belatedly decides to blow his magical horn. Such is its power that upon doing so blood comes out of Roland’s mouth and temples, and he perishes, apparently of an aneurysm. This is not the only curious detail in the epic poem. Among the manifold opponents that Charlemagne battles as he seeks vengeance for his nephew is the king of Florida (or rather Floridee). Charlemagne chops him down with a mighty sweep of his sword with nary an alligator to be seen. Strange deaths abound in the narrative. Having avenged the betrayed deceased at Roncesvalles, Charlemagne returns home to give the news to Aude, Oliver’s sister and Roland’s betrothed. She drops dead at the news.

Roland on the rampage in this twelfth-century illustrated Rolandslied, Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. germ. 112, fol. 74v.

Touches like these might encourage us not to take the eleventh-century Old French chanson de geste entirely seriously as a source for the events of the Battle of Roncesvalles in 778. This was the incident when Charlemagne’s ill-fated invasion of al-Andalus culminated in his army being ambushed by Basques on its return through the Pyrenean pass. Writing decades later, Einhard would remark that the memory of this disaster loomed large over Charlemagne and his court. In the centuries to come, it would grow ever larger in the legendary tradition that first becomes visible in the eleventh century with stories like the Chanson de Roland. These accounts bear little resemblance to the historical battle, inventing out of whole cloth new characters before having them kill each other in gloriously gory and ludicrous ways.

Yet a couple of recent publications have drawn upon the Chanson de Roland to think about the eighth-century campaign. I won’t comment further on the pieces as a whole, particularly as in the case of the first one I have reviewed it elsewhere and mentioned it on the blog. But one detail did jump out at me, which is that both suggest that the historical Roland could have been Charlemagne’s nephew, as in the chanson. It struck me that it might be useful to explain why this probably isn’t the case and thus demonstrate some of the problems with using the chanson as evidence for the reign of Charlemagne.  

Our evidence for the historical Roland is pretty meagre. He shows up as Count Rothlandus in a charter of 772 while Charlemagne was staying at the palace of Herstal. A late eighth-century coin has the name Rodlan on one side; this is generally interpreted by historians and numismatists to be our Count Roland, and I am happy with this suggestion. Then, in his Life of Charlemagne, Einhard said of Roncesvalles:

In this battle Eggihard, the royal steward; Anselm, the Count of the Palace; and Roland, Prefect of the Breton frontier, were killed along with very many others.

That’s it. Roland was clearly a very important figure, entrusted with the sensitive border with Brittany and prominent enough to be named among the numerous dead of Roncesvalles. His presence was missed. But none of these sources call Roland Charlemagne’s nephew. Nor do they do anything to elevate him above the non-royal figures also listed. In the Herstal charter Roland appears second, after a Count Hagino. Einhard places Roland after both Eggihard and Anselm in his accounting.

This doesn’t necessarily rule out Roland being a relative of Charlemagne. We might compare him with the analogous figure of William of Gellone who, as Count of Toulouse from 790, played a similar role on the Spanish March to Roland’s on the Breton. William was almost certainly Charlemagne’s cousin (although the exact line of descent is surprisingly hard to discern) but most of our sources don’t make it explicit.

A bigger issue is the ‘Child Roland’ problem. Charlemagne was born on 2 April 748. If we wanted to speculate, as some people have, that ‘nephew’ here was a polite way of saying Roland was Charlemagne’s illegitimate son – well, first we’d run into the fact that this involves taking seriously a legend first attested in the thirteenth-century fiction Chronique Saintongeaise; but having hurdled that obstacle we would then immediately run into difficulties of chronology. Even assuming Charlemagne was 14 when he fathered Roland, that would make the latter 10 at most in 772 when the charter at Herstal was issued, too young to be a count.

It would also make Roland 16 at Roncesvalles. Carolingian male aristocrats were given a military education and it was not entirely unknown for them to play a leading role at a young age. Pippin of Italy was in charge of the campaign against the Avars in 796 aged 19, while Louis the Pious led expeditions into al-Andalus at about the same age. Charles the Bald had just turned 18 at the Battle of Fontenoy in 841. Karlmann of Bavaria led an army at the age of 14 in 842. That said, these were all individuals who were either already kings or expected to become so. They were probably also advised by older councillors. William of Gellone, for instance, seems to have acted in this capacity for Louis the Pious. We should probably expect Roland,  someone who had been appointed to command the Breton frontier, to be, like William, an older, more experienced figure.

Similar difficulties apply if we assume Roland genuinely was Charlemagne’s nephew. We can rule out him being a son of Charlemagne’s brother and co-ruler Carloman (r. 768-771). Carloman’s two legitimate children were seized by Charlemagne after the conquest of the kingdom of the Lombards in 774 and ominously vanished. It seems unlikely that he would have advanced the career even of the illegitimate son of his fraternal rival. More to the point, Carloman was born in 751, making the chronological problems even more acute. Such considerations apply to Charlemagne’s sister Gisela who, after a proposed marriage to the future Byzantine Emperor Leo IV fell through, dedicated herself to a life of religion and learning. She became a nun and later abbess of Chelles. As Charlemagne’s daughters demonstrated, Carolingian women sometimes acquired lovers, but there is no hint that Gisela’s vows ever failed. She was also born even later than Carloman, in 759.

Could Charlemagne’s father Pippin have had a previous marriage? If you look at his Wikipedia page, you will find a reference to one ‘Leutberga from the Danube region’, and this has gained some traction on the lazier sort of genealogy website. However, the source cited is what appears to be a deeply eccentric 2019 publication called Chrysalis: Metamorphosis of Odium (sample quote from the blurb: ‘resisting all this [i.e. the attempt to “extinct all non-conformists within their divine Medieval European World Order”] were all Carpathian cultures, the last being the Slavic-Turkic Ungars…’). Still, this work isn’t the origin of the legend. That appears to be in the chansons de geste of the thirteenth century: in his legendary poem Berte aus grans pies, the minstrel Adenes le Roi mentions that Pippin had a first wife. He also makes Berthe, the heroine of the poem, based in part on Pippin’s real wife Bertrada, the daughter of the king of Hungary – evidently fictional, but perhaps explaining the Danube connection. Adenes does not name Pippin’s wife, and the earliest references I can find to the name Leutberga go back to the Habsburg court in the sixteenth century, notably in the work of the imperial court historian Wolfgang Lazius. Notably for our purposes, Lazius says precisely that Roland is the son of one of Leutberga’s kids! He does, however, at least implicitly make her a second marriage. So the version of Pippin’s family tree on Wikipedia is mashing up thirteenth- and sixteenth-century genealogical legend. This was apparently clear from the outset: already in 1652, Philippe Labbé was condemning the efcriuains fabuliftes who gave Pippin a second wife. So, in short, the answer is ‘no’.

There is a minute possibility that Pippin had otherwise unknown illegitimate children before his marriage to Bertrada in 744 from whom Roland could have been descended. Nonetheless, it is exceptionally unlikely. Charles Martel’s illegitimate male offspring, Bernard, Remigius and Jerome, appear in the sources. If Pippin had politically active children apart from those with Bertrada, they don’t seem to have made much of an impression. 

One final consideration here are the sources for Roland being Charlemagne’s nephew. The idea first seems to have started circulating in the eleventh century. It’s not entirely impossible that a writer then might have access to material that we have since lost. But given the wildness of the Chanson de Roland, and the narrative purpose being served in intensifying Charlemagne’s relationship with Roland, I’m sceptical that it’s built on anything substantial at all.

To me the important question is not ‘Was Roland the nephew of Charlemagne?’ Instead, the interesting point is that the idea that he was is still circulating today in academic circles. Part of this is a simple consequence of scholarly specialization. For obvious reasons, researchers of the high and late middle ages don’t pay as much attention to the earlier period and often aren’t aware of how much later depictions distort it. Based as I currently am at the University of Oslo, which naturally has a strong background in Norse studies, I am becoming increasingly conscious of how much Icelandic saga material is still used to think about early medieval Scandinavia in ways that make me uncomfortable. I wonder if from that vantage point, the idea that an eleventh-century epic poem might shed light on the reign of Charlemagne seems more plausible.

The biggest explanation though is probably the lasting artistic legacy of the chanson. Just as our Macbeth will probably always be that of Shakespeare, so the historical count of the Breton march will always be swallowed up by the Roland of myth. With that kind of literary legend lingering in the background, the temptation to try to read the epic onto the past grows ever larger. Considering the shadows our subjects cast is a part of the practice of history. But we should not do so at the expense of the figures in the light.  

Charter A Week 111: The First Capetians

A lot has happened since mid-March. Not for me, I mean*; but for the West Frankish kingdom. Between early 986 and the middle of 987, two kings have died, and another has come to the throne. If you’ve been following this blog for the last few weeks, you’ll know that, with a remarkable level of joined-up thinking, we’ve been examining some aspects of the accession of Hugh Capet. If I’m honest, though, it’s hard to get that excited about it, and I think this lack of excitement betrays a fundamental truth about the nature of the Carolingian-Capetian tradition. Hugh Capet gained the throne through a coup, certainly, insofar as he likely extorted out of Archbishop Adalbero of Rheims a royal anointment that Adalbero would rather not have given him; but he couped his way on to an empty chair. He was not a man with a mission: he was a powerful magnate with an unusually prestigious descent and a history of alliance with the previous two kings who just so happened to be putting the archbishop of Rheims on trial in front of a quorum of powerful nobles at a remarkably convenient time. This was not a moment to promote radical change. A few months after his coronation, then, we get the first surviving Capetian diploma:

ARTEM, no. 743 (26^th September 987)

In the name of the holy and indivisible Trinity. 

Hugh, by God’s grace king.

If We hear the requests of those soldiering for God in any place and receive them with calm assent; and in providing those things necessary for their advantage which, following the custom of Our predecessors, to wit, kings and emperors of the Franks, We, inspired by divine fervour, either confirm upon them or, after it has been bestowed, confirm by Our edicts, We do not doubt – far from it! – that this will benefit Us in the reception of everlasting blessing and the firmness of the rule bestowed on Us by God. 

Therefore let it be known to all the followers of God’s holy Church and Us, both present and also future, that Abbot Berland of the monastery of Saint-Vincent and his monks, approaching the mildness of Our Royal Excellence through the extraordinary bishop of the holy church of Laon Adalbero, humbly petitioned that, for love of God Almighty and venerability of the aforesaid martyr and the honour of Our royal status, We might deign to renew by the strength of Our precept whatever was granted to the same monastery by royal liberality or bestowal by pontiffs or by the command of God’s faithful, up to Our times, reinforced by Our authority, so that any grant supported by this protection might henceforth endure no inconvenience. 

And so, because this petition was necessary and reasonable and beholden to Our ministry, We opened Our ears to this petition; and because We know that because We were elevated to the height of royal ministry for no reason other than that We were honoured by God’s grace, We should take care to increase and raise up the honour of His grace wherever We can, We decreed that the petition of the aforesaid bishop and monks should be satisfied, so that We might have a part in their prayers with Our wife and child; and We determine that the goods written below should serve their various necessities and supply their uses.

In the first place, therefore, We establish that on the mount of Laon, where the temple of the most glorious martyr Vincent was founded, i.e. the site itself and the surroundings pertaining to it; and of the churches of St Otbod and St Hilary, neither Our estate manager nor anyone subject to Our rule, should presume to give or accept hospitality, nor unjustly inflict any contradiction on the same holy places and all its subjects, nor presume at any time to exercise any judicial power over the goods or people pertaining to the same churches whether held now or to be conferred in future, or exact peace-money or toll from any of their men. We also establish that in the estate of Chevregny which is on the river Ailette, they should have for their perpetual uses the church consecrated in the name of Saint-Médard and given with its appendages to the same place by Bishop Roric of blessed memory through an episcopal privilege and through a royal precept; and the church in the castle of Pierrepont given by the current Bishop Adalbero, who is beloved to Us, for the reasons which are contained in his episcopal privilege; and also the estate which they have in Attencourt, which was similarly given by the same bishop; and half a manse in the estate of Vercigny lying between its lands in Senancourt.

We corroborate all this and the other things given to the same place by anyone, whether in writing or not, by Our royal authority through this precept of Our command, so that, with all obstacles from contradictions beaten away, the monks assigned to live quietly therein might be able to hold divine religion freely and make exhortations for Us and for all Christianity. 

And that this precept of Our authority might in God’s name have greater vigour, We confirmed it below with Our own hand, and We commanded it be sealed with the impression of Our seal. 

Sign of the most glorious King Hugh. 

Enacted at the palace of Compiègne.

Happily in the name of God, amen.

In the first year of the reign of the most serene King Hugh, on the 6th kalends of October [26th September], in the 15th indiction.

An Early Modern image of what Hugh’s seal looked like (source).

This act is, I think, lightly modelled on an old act of King Odo for the cathedral church of Laon, but the parallels aren’t that close and there’s little by way of specific intertextual links between this and any other surviving diploma. However, although there’s clearly not a specific model here, the general one is clear: this is West Frankish royal diplomatic classic. We’ll see next year, when we start getting into the diplomatic of Robert the Pious, how much royal acts will change in the eleventh century (or you can read Geoffrey Koziol’s excellent article on the subject); but even Ottonian diplomatic looks recognisably different from this. Similarly, comparing this to the early acts of Charles the Simple in Lotharingia, or Robert of Neustria or Ralph of Burgundy, it is noticeably more conservative.

Even the choice of beneficiary, Saint-Vincent de Laon, is important here: Bishop Adalbero of Laon had been a prominent member of Lothar’s court, Saint-Vincent had been reformed by his predecessor, Lothar’s uncle, Bishop Roric; and Lothar himself had issued diplomas in favour of the institution. That the abbey was an early beneficiary of the new regime signalled that the new regime would be much like the old.

This was a conscious choice on the part of Hugh’s government. There was evidently wiggle room to do something different with the form or content or both of acts, but Hugh Capet and his circle chose not to use it. In terms of how Hugh came to the throne and the underlying legitimacy of his regime, this makes sense. Because Hugh was not a change candidate, his political communication was conservative in order to stress how little anything that mattered was changing.

*Well, I assume, anyway; I’m writing this in mid/late-February and working on the presumption that I won’t have any big news in the next six weeks to communicate to the blog-reading public.