Charter A Week 78: Meet the New Dux, Same as the Old Dux

With this Charter A Week, we enter a new age: as 2022 finishes, so too does the reign of Louis IV. Louis died young, aged only in his mid-thirties, in a hunting accident. One source remembered him as ‘having led his whole life full of troubles and strife’, and indeed his final year or so was somewhat anti-climactic. One of the reasons for this was that his patron Otto the Great was locked in the last major rebellion of his career, as his son Liudolf and son-in-law Conrad the Red allied with dissident elements to try and regain influence they perceived they were losing at court.

In the West Frankish kingdom, a combination of these difficulties and Louis’ death opened the door for Hugh the Great to make one last stab at becoming secundus a rege, second only to the king. In return for a promise not to make trouble, Hugh was allowed access to the new king, Lothar. Lothar’s main guardian was his mother, Queen Gerberga, with hefty input too from her brother, Otto the Great’s new point man in Lotharingia, Archbishop Bruno of Cologne. They decided that, to stabilise the first period of Lothar’s reign, it was worth giving Hugh access to the king to legitimise some of his pet projects. And so we get documents like:

D Lo no. 2 (954-955)

In the name of the holy and indivisible Trinity.

Lothar, with divine clemency propitious most excellent and most powerful king of the Franks of youthful age.

If (preserving the custom of kings) We confer any supplement on Our followers through a precept of Our defence, We hold most firmly that this will eternally benefit the increase of Our honour.

Wherefore We wish it to be known to the followers of God’s holy Church and of Us, to wit, present and future, that Hugh, duke of the Franks and nearly the most powerful man in the whole empire, and Gilbert, special count of Burgundy, the strongest knight of the aforenoted Hugh, and Count Theobald [the Trickster], Our follower extraordinary in everything, came and asked Our Highness and the dignity of Our Sublimity, strenuously beseeching that We might deign to have a precept of immunity made for Witlenc and his sons, to wit, Guy and Norduin, concerning certain goods of Saint-Beurry lying in the district of Burgundy. These goods are sited in the district of Burgundy, as We said, in the estate of Cheilly on the river Dheune, that is, 10 and 8 manses and half a church in the county of Beaune, with another entire church in the county of Chalon, named in honour of St Lupus, sited on the aforesaid river.

Lending the ears of Our Serenity to their petitions, preserving the custom of kings, We commanded this precept be made to the people spoken of, and (led by free-flowing piety) We confirmed it, on the condition that the said Witlenc and his two sons Guy and Narduin should have, hold and possess it in their lifetimes, and after the course of their lives it should all return to the aforesaid basilica of Saint-Beurry.

But that the writing of this precept might be held more firmly and creditably, and be more diligently conserved by all in future times, We confirmed it below with Our own hand and We commanded it be signed with the impression of Our signet.

Sign of Lothar, glorious king of the Franks.

Chancellor Guy witnessed on behalf of Artald [of Rheims], archbishop and archchancellor.

Enacted in the town of Paris, in the first year of the reign of the most glorious king Lothar, in the 13^th indiction. 

This act, issued some time between the middle of 954 and the middle of 955, is more pointed than it looks. For one thing, its protagonists either are about to, or have just (probably the former), launched a military campaign on Poitiers. This campaign would not be a massive success: Lothar would acquit himself well (doubly well for someone only just pubescent) on the battlefield, but the siege of Poitiers was a failure and Hugh and his men retreated home ingloriously. (The embarrassment of the defeat was remembered at Sens decades later.)

To justify this war, we have Hugh the Great with titles as grandiloquent as they had been since the early years of Louis IV. ‘Nearly the most powerful man in the whole empire’! After decades of warfare, it was as close as Hugh could have come to validating the position he had always sought. Even more, the presence of Gilbert of Chalon, now Gilbert of Burgundy, indicates that a significant shift has taken place in the balance of power. Hugh the Black, duke of Burgundy, was dead. Gilbert had taken his place, but Gilbert was also deeply ensconced within Hugh’s network of allies: one of Gilbert’s only two children was married to Hugh’s son Otto and the other to Hugh’s nephew Robert. From being a counterbalance to the Robertians, it looked like Burgundy might swing fully into their camp. It is thus noteworthy that Burgundy is described as a ‘district’ (pagus) – usually some more prestigious word is used. The hint, I think, is that Burgundy has been reduced to a mere appendage of Hugh’s ducal power. How that situation would play out, we will see next year, as we dive into the long, poorly documented reign of Lothar.

Finally, a brief bit of housekeeping: with Christmas and the move back to the UK from Tübingen, my buffer has run low. As you future people of the year 2023 read this, I am writing it at the end of December 2022, about to leave for the US to finish our wedding celebrations. As such, I’m going to be taking a week off. Normal service (minus a bit of rejiggling to sort out the scheduling of Charter A Week) will resume with another post from Sam on the 12th.