An Empire of Memory (10 page)

Roland, when he offered his final praise to his sword Durendal, just before his

death. Roland boasted:

With . . . [Durendal] I conquered Anjou and Brittany,

With it I conquered Poitou and Maine,

With it I conquered Normandy the free,

With it I conquered Provence and Aquitaine,

Lombardy and all Romagna;

With it I conquered Bavaria and all Flanders,

Burgundy, all Poland,

And Constantinople, which rendered homage to him,

And he does as he wishes in Saxony;

With it I conquered Scotland, Iceland,

And England, which he held under his jurisdiction;

With it I conquered so many countries and lands

Over which white-bearded Charles rules.99

the entry for this year to have been a 12th-cent. addition but that need not have been the case, given my discussion in the following chapters. Joanna Story, Carolingian Connections: Anglo-Saxon England and

Carolingian Francia, c.750–870 (Burlington, Vt., 2003), 93–133.

97 Thiofrid, Vita sancti Willibrordi, MGH SS 23: 25. ‘The Ocean’ likely refers to the great body of

water which surrounded the entire world. For example, see Plutarch, The Life of Pompey, in The Fall of the Roman Republic, tr. Rex Warner (Baltimore, 1958), 175. On the significance of the stars for the

Carolingians, see Dutton, Charlemagne’s Mustache, 93–127.

98 ‘Er matin sedeit li empere suz l’umbre. / Vint I ses niés, out vestue sa brunie . . . , / En sa main tint une vermeille pume: / ‘Tenez, bel sire,’ dist Rollant a sun uncle, / ‘De trestuz reis vos present les

curunes.’ Roland, ed. Brault, ll. 383–88. The angel Gabriel also appears to Charles in the last laisse of the poem, commanding him to take his army to aid the city of Imphe, which is being attacked by

pagans. The besieged Christians recognize Charlemagne as their protector and cry out to him for help.

Although there is no doubt he will respond, Charles laments his weariness and implies that the war

against the enemies of God has occupied him for a long time and may never end. This could be

understood as an exhortation by St Gabriel to rescue endangered Christians in this one specific

instance, but Charlemagne is weary (penuse)––not simply because he is 200 years old but because he

stands at the forefront of a never-ending battle between good and evil, having implicitly marched off to save beleagured Christians on a number of occasions. Roland, ed. Brault, ll. 3998, 4000. See also the

comments in Paul Rousset, Les Origines et les caractères de la Premiére Croisade (New York, 1978), 131.

99 ‘Jo l’en cunquis e Anjou e Bretaigne,/Si l’en cunquis e Peitou e le Maine; / Jo l’en cunquis

Normendie la franche, / Si l’en cunquis Provence e Equitaigne / E Lumbardie e trestute Romaine; / Jo

l’en cunquis Baiver e tute Flandres / E Burguigne e trestute Puillanie, / Costentinnoble, dunt il out la fiance, / E en Saisonie fait il ço qu’il demandet; / Jo l’en cunquis e Escoce e Vales Islonde / E Engletere, que il teneit sa cambre; / Cunquis l’en ai païs e teres tantes, / Que Carles tient, ki ad la barbe blanche.’

Roland, ed. Brault, ll. 2322–34. It should also be noted that Roland’s conquests are explicitly for

Charlemagne. Robert Francis Cook, The Sense of the Song of Roland (Ithaca, NY, 1987), 100.

The Birth of a Frankish Golden Age

33

Karl-Heinz Bender has suggested that Charlemagne’s possession of such a vast domain

is meant to correspond to the expansion of ‘French’ territory in the late eleventh and

early twelfth centuries.100 Bender’s formulation is not quite right though––not

‘French’, but ‘Frankish’. Look again at Charlemagne’s conquests: West Francia, East

Francia, much of Italy, Saxony, Poland, the British Isles, Iceland, and Constantinople.

Roland’s conquests most likely represent a contemporary eleventh-century under-

standing of Charlemagne’s legendary empire, encompassing virtually the whole of

Christendom in the late eleventh century. The list pushes the boundaries of Charles’s

empire to include both Christian lands that he never conquered (e.g. the British Isles)

and even those made Christian after his death (e.g. Poland and Iceland). Moreover,

note how Roland boasts that Charles holds Constantinople, which should probably be

taken to mean the whole of the Eastern empire, and note how seemingly insignificant

Roland considers that conquest.101 The Byzantines are fixed in Roland’s list after the

Poles and before the Saxons, just another people in Charles’s heterogeneous empire.

By the eleventh century, Charles’s power over the magnates of the East was a

commonplace in sources of his legend, due in large part to the work of his

Carolingian contemporaries.102 Charlemagne and his court circle indeed seem to

have paid some attention to the Holy Land. During his lifetime, he exchanged

numerous emissaries with the Islamic Caliph Harun al-Rashid, Byzantine emper-

ors, and patriarch of Jerusalem.103 According to the ARF, an embassy reached

100 Karl-Heinz Bender, König und Vasall: Untersuchungen zur Chanson de Geste des XII. Jahrhunderts

(Heidelberg, 1967), 29–30.

101 Elsewhere, the poet hinted that Charlemagne would again go to the East as its conqueror.

‘L’emperere meïsmes ad tut a sun talent. / Cunquerrat li les teres d’ici qu’en Orïent.’ Roland, ed. Brault, ll. 400–1. The word cunquerrat is the future tense of the verb cunquerre (to conquer/vanquish), so the second line would read ‘He will [again?] conquer the lands from here all the way to the East.’ The only part of contemporary Christendom that the Roland poet does not include in Charlemagne’s conquests

is Hungary––recently Christianized by St Stephen around 1000 CE. (Incidentally, the poet includes the

Hungarians in Baligant’s army, which may be evidence of the existence of the legend before that

country’s christianization. See Roland, ed. Brault, l. 3254.) The author’s geography, however, is rather sketchy anyway. He is apparently quite familiar with West Francia and displays a limited knowledge of

Italy, but seems to have been quite ignorant of lands to the East––save, of course, the fabled

Constantinople.

102 Jean Flori, La Guerre sainte: La Formation de l’idée de croisade dans l’Occident chrétien (Paris,

2001), 30–1; and Anne Austin Latowsky, ‘Imaginative Possession: Charlemagne and the East from

Einhard to the Voyage of Charlemagne’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 2004). See also the

discussion of the impact of Carolingian sources on later writers in Ch. 2 and the more ideological (and theological) motives behind the 8th- and 9th-cent. Frankish interest in Jerusalem in Ch. 3, below.

103 On these historical contacts generally, see Steven Runciman, ‘Charlemagne and Palestine’, English

Historical Review, 50 (1935), 606–19; Giosuè Musca, Carlo Magno ed Harun al Rashid (Bari, 1963); Karl

Schmid, ‘Aachen und Jerusalem: Ein Beitrag zur historischen Personenforschung der Karolingerzeit’, in Karl Hauck (ed.), Das Einhardkreuz (Göttingen, 1974), 122–42; Michael Borgolte, Der Gesandtenaustausch der

Karolinger mit den Abbasiden und mit den Patriarchen von Jerusalem, Münchener Beiträge zur Mediävistik und Renaissance-Forschung, 25 (Münich, 1976); Klaus Bieberstein, ‘Der Gesandtenaustausch zwischen

Karl dem Großen und Harun ar-Rasid und seine Bedeutung für die Kirchen Jerusalems’, Zeitschrift des

deutschen Palästina-Vereins, 109 (1993), 152–73; Franz Tinnefeld, ‘Formen und Wege des Kontakes

zwischen Byzanz und dem Westen zur Zeit Karls des Grossen’, in Franz-Reiner Erkens (ed.), Karl der

Grosse und das Erbe der Kulturen (Berlin, 2001), 25–35; Colin Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ and the

Medieval West: From the Beginning to 1600 (Oxford, 2005), 94–6; and Rosamond McKitterick,

Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge, 2008), 328–30.

34

The Franks Remember Empire

Charlemagne’s court in 799, bearing relics and a blessing from the patriarch of

Jerusalem. An emissary from the Caliph Harun al-Rashid reached Aachen in 802,

with the elephant Abul Abaz. Another delegation consisting of agents sent from

both the Caliph Harun and the patriarch of Jerusalem arrived at the Frankish court

in 807.104 The Benedictine monastery on the Mount of Olives first contacted

Charlemagne as members of the delegation from the patriarch of Jerusalem that

arrived in Rome in 800 and the house enjoyed Charles’s patronage during the later

years of his reign.105 At approximately the same time, Charlemagne sent both

money and a number of monks to populate a hostel near the monastery of St Mary

Latin in Jerusalem so that the Latin rite could be administered to any and all

Western pilgrims.106 Likely just before Charlemagne’s trip to Rome in 800, Alcuin

wrote to ‘David’ (Charlemagne) that he now ‘ruled and governed’ Jerusalem.107

Shortly thereafter, and probably in conjunction with his coronation in Rome,

Charlemagne had a list drawn up of all the religious houses and clerics in the

Holy Land. The list names, among other things, seventeen religious Charles had sent to

‘serve the Holy Sepulcher’.108 A capitulary from 810 mentioned alms destined for the

restoration of churches in Jerusalem.109 In the late ninth century, Christian of Stavelot

and the pilgrim monk Bernard both mentioned a specific house on the Mount of

Olives, just outside of Jerusalem, that had been built under Charlemagne’s direction.

Despite the fact that Charlemagne’s successors no longer patronized it, Charlemagne’s

foundation remained a popular stopping-point for Western pilgrims until the twelfth

century, since the hostel was the only permanent Western presence in the city until the

foundation of the Hospital of St John in 1055.110

104 Annales regni Francorum, ed. Friedrich Krauze, MGH SRG (Hanover, 1895), 6: 108, 117, 123,

respectively.

105 On the initial embassy, see Annales regni, ed. Krauze, 112. Several embassies were also sent to

the Mount of Olives during the reign of Louis the Pious, suggesting that even though Charles’s interest in the monastery did not begin until about the last ten years of his reign, it continued well into the reign of his son. On the contacts between the Mount of Olives and Charlemagne, including the

spurious letter addressed from this monastery to the Frankish emperor, see the good summary in

Daniel F. Callahan, ‘The Problem of “Filioque” and the Letter from the Pilgrim Monks of the Mount

of Olives to Pope Leo III and Charlemagne: Is the Letter Another Forgery by Ademar of Chabannes?’

Revue Bénédictine, 102 (1992), 81–8.

106 See Runciman ‘Charlemagne’, 612–15; and Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine, 634–1099, tr.

Ethel Broido (Cambridge, 1992), 285–7. Klaus Bieberstein notes that Charlemagne’s foundations

were likely begun during his lifetime but completed during the reign of Louis the Pious. See

Bieberstein, ‘Der Gesandtenaustausch’, 161–9.

107 ‘Dum vestrae potentiae gloriosam sublimitatem non periturae Chaldeis flammis Hierusalem

imperare scio, sed perpetuae pacis civitatem pretioso sanguine Christi constructam regere atque

gubernare.’ Alcuin, Ad Carolum regem, MGH Epist. 4: 327.

108 Commemoratorium de casis Dei vel monasteriis, in Itinera Hierosoloymitana et descriptiones Terrae

sanctae: Bellis sacris anteriora, ed. Titus Tobler and Augustus Molinier, Publications de la Société de l’Orient Latin, 2 vols. (Geneva, 1879), i. 301–5.

109 Capitulare missorum Aquisgranense primum, MGH Capit. 18, nos. 64, 154.

110 Christian of Stavelot, Expositio in Matthaeum Evangelistum, PL 106: 1486; Bernard the Monk,

A Journey in the Holy Places and Babylon, in Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades, tr. John Wilkinson (Warminster, 1977), 265–6. Colin Morris argues that the house Christian and Bernard were referring

to was a hostel and attached community of nuns located on the Mount of Olives. See Morris, Sepulchre

of Christ, 96. On the house’s survival, see Aryeh Graboïs, Le Pèlerin occidental en Terre Sainte au Moyen Âge (Paris, 1998), 32, 134.

The Birth of a Frankish Golden Age

35

For later authors, one of the most important contacts between East and West can be

found in the ARF entry for the year 800, just before Charles’s coronation in Rome. The

ARF recorded that emissaries from the patriarch of Jerusalem arrived in Rome carrying

gifts for Charles, including ‘mementos of the Lord’s Sepulcher and Calvary, as well to

the city and mountain [which is unspecified] along with a relic of the true cross’.111

Most scholars shrug off these gifts as purely honorary. Steven Runciman’s seminal

article on Charlemagne’s historic contacts with the East points out, quite rightly, that

Einhard’s Vita Karoli does not even mention them.112 The symbolic meaning of the

vexillum and claves, especially for later writers, however, was well understood. Essen-

tially, the patriarch was making Charlemagne the symbolic defender of the Holy Places

and transferring his allegiance from the emperor in the East to the great Charles.113

Einhard’s biography of the great Frankish ruler made this symbolic transfer of

power from East to West even clearer. Einhard almost certainly knew the ARF but was

no slavish imitator––not of the ARF nor of Suetonius––and he was writing at a

significantly different time, now defending (indeed, creating) Charlemagne’s lega-

cy.114 Einhard’s work supplemented his sources, offering a distinct but not necessarily

competing version of events, thus counting on his audience to have been familiar with

sources such as the ARF (as he himself was). Versions of how Charlemagne took

possession of the East ‘accumulated’ to create a much richer picture.115 So, it may not