An Empire of Memory (27 page)

imperator. But then, as above, the title changes when he returns to Francia; Charles

is called rex as he builds Charroux and then once more when he dies.4 Because of

how Charlemagne’s title seems to be applied, one might suggest that these two

authors saw great fluidity between the titles rex and imperator. Perhaps they

believed that the two titles essentially meant the same thing. But perhaps not.

Both Benedict of Monte Soratte and the anonymous author of the Historia were

actually being quite subtle in their use of the terms. Rex refers to an office––one

who rules over a people or a specific area (though we should be careful to note that

these are not the same thing).5 In Benedict’s Chronicon, the Carolingians and

Ottonians are all kings, just as Charlemagne is at the outset. None save Charles,

2 e.g. Stephen G. Nichols, Jr., Romanesque Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and Iconography (New

Haven, Conn., 1983), 73; Johannes Kunsemüller, Die Chronik Benedikts von San Andrea (Ph.D. diss.,

Erlangen/Nürenberg, 1961), 86–7; and F. Kampers, Die deutsche Kaiseridee in Prophetie und Sage

(Münich, 1896), 56.

3 ‘Qui mox imperator cum quanta donis et munera, et aliquantulum de corpore sancti Andreae

apostoli, ad imperatoribus Constantinopolim accepto, in Italia est reverses. . . . Victor et coronator triumphator rex in Francia est reverus.’ Benedict of Monte Soratte, Chronicon, MGH SS 3: 711.

Though he does not note this anomaly, Kunsemüller also suggests that Charlemagne’s power derives

more from his trip than his acclamation in Rome. See Kunsemüller, Die Chronik, 87.

4 ‘Imperator civitatem ingressus regiam vestem deposuit, pedes nudavit, sicque ad Domini sepulcrum

properare curavit. . . . Postquam ergo rex hoc quo descripsimus ordine locum construxit. . . . Nam mortuo rege Karolo et quibusdam regibus qui ei in regno successerant.’ Liber de Const. 31, 33–4, respectively. Cf. to the imperial adventus. See Ch. 2 n. 15.

5 There was e.g. a big difference between a rex Francorum and a rex Franciae. See Ronnie Ellenblum,

‘Were there Borders and Borderlines in the Middle Ages? The Example of the Latin Kingdom of

Jerusalem’, in David Abulafia and Nora Berend (eds.), Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

(Burlington, Vt., 2002), 110; and esp. Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘Gens: Terminology and Perception of

the “Germanic” Peoples from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages’, in Richard Corradini, Max

Diesenberger, and Helmut Reimitz (eds.), The Construction of Communities in the Early Middle Ages:

Texts, Resources and Artefacts (Leiden, 2003), 39–40. See also Ch. 5 below.

The Franks’ Imagined Empire

99

however, is ever called emperor.6 Charlemagne becomes a king once again at the

end of both Benedict’s Chronicon and Charroux’s Historia because he returns to

Francia to rule over his people, his gens. The ‘empire’, on the other hand, was not

confined to a single gens, nor did it ever really have fixed territory or boundaries (in

the modern sense) during antiquity or the early Middle Ages.7 An early medieval

emperor ruled over people, not places.

In both the Chronicon and Historia, the title of imperator is first applied to

Charlemagne at the completion of his pilgrimage––while at Constantinople in the

Chronicon and upon his arrival at Jerusalem in Charroux’s Historia.8 Charlemagne,

clearly the pre-eminent power in Benedict’s narrative, has the Byzantines quivering

in fear before him, revealing their inadequacies as rulers, while the Islamic Caliph

freely places the Holy Places under the great Frankish ruler’s power. In the Historia,

the point is even clearer. The text does not justify Charles’s power; it does not

assert; it simply assumes. The Historia has no Byzantines, no Muslims––only

Charlemagne, who is met outside Jerusalem’s walls (as if expected) by the patriarch

and the city’s Christians. Even Jesus works through Charlemagne. The Christ-child

appears for all to see during a mass performed explicitly for Charlemagne in the

Holy Sepulcher. Jesus recognizes Charles’s purpose, saying directly to him, ‘Most

noble prince, accept with reverence this small present, which remains from my true

body and blood.’9 The direct connection between Christ and Charlemagne sug-

gests that their statures are analogous: as Christ reigns in Heaven, so Charlemagne

reigns on Earth. These narratives appear to have similar understandings of rex and

imperator. An imperator is a ‘rex þ’, one who rules over many regna but who

demonstrates his authority/power even more broadly, over the populus christia-

nus––all Christians, West and East.

In the Descriptio qualiter, things begin slightly differently. Charles is called both

rex and imperator in the very first line, mildly echoing the well-known opening line

of the contemporary Oxford Chanson de Roland.10 This dual intitulation continues

throughout the Descriptio qualiter, with the anonymous author more often than not

6 Lothar I is called agustus (sic), but never imperator. See Benedict, Chronicon, 712.

7 Ellenblum, ‘Borders and Borderlines’, 106–10; also Warren Brown, ‘The Idea of Empire in

Carolingian Bavaria’, in Björn Weiler and Simon Maclean (eds.), Representations of Power in Medieval

Germany, 800–1500 (Turnhout, 2006), 37–55; and below.

8 A medieval pilgrimage was completed when the traveler reached his destination. The return was

something else. David R. Blanks, ‘Islam and the West in the Age of the Pilgrim’, in Year 1000, 257.

9 ‘Princeps, inquit, nobilissime, munusculum hoc cum veneratione suscipe, quod ex mea vera

carne et vero constat sanguine.’ Liber de Const. 31.

10 ‘Tempore quo rex et imperator Karolus magnus Gallicum regebat regnum’. Descriptio qualiter

Karolus Magnus clavum et coronam Domini a Constantinopoli Aquisgrani detulerit qualiterque Karolus

Calvus hec ad Sanctum Dyonisium retulerit, in Die Legende, 103. ‘Carles li reis, nostre emperere magnes’, La Chanson de Roland, ed. Gerard J. Brault (University Park, Pa., 1978), l. 1. There are also mild

echoes of this convention in other contemporary Frankish texts. In these, however, it is Christ who is both rex and imperator. See Ordines Coronationis Franciae: Texts and Ordines for the Coronation of

Frankish and French Kings and Queens in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard A. Jackson, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1995), i. 149, 161–2, 187; and Ernst H. Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae: A Study in Liturgical

Acclamations and Mediaeval Ruler Worship (Berkeley, Calif., 1946).

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The Franks Recreate Empire

calling Charlemagne by both titles simultaneously. Nonetheless, the very first

paragraph of the Descriptio qualiter justifies his two titles.

In the time when Charles, the king and great emperor (rex et imperator magnus), ruled over

the kingdom (regnum) of the Gauls, many opponents of the holy church of God belonged to

[his kingdom]. . . . He prevailed on the peoples all around him, through all the neighboring

regions almost everywhere, placing them under him either by conquering or by making

peace with the laws of God’s church. Further, often fiercely stirring up war among the most

worthless pagans, he always returned the arisen victor with the help of God and thereby

restored the church to commendable things in a short time. Hence, when the fame and

upright faith of so great and famous a man carried across the whole world of the faithful,

with great alarm the thoroughly frightened Romans gave to him the mightiest Roman

imperial authority (imperium), even indeed the choice of the pope. Thus by God’s surpass-

ing providence, he was made Roman Emperor (imperator Romanus).11

Charlemagne was a king because he ruled Gaul. He was an emperor because he

possessed imperium. He fought the pagans, converted them to Christ, maintained

authority among the faithful, and could even appoint the pope. In the Descriptio

qualiter, Charlemagne is an emperor because he has earned it.

Even if we should be careful not to discount the sometimes self-conscious role

Constantine himself played, Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 339/40) was one of the first to

paint a portrait of a specifically Christian emperor charged with guarding a

peculiarly Christian empire. Their collective influence on later thinkers was, as

may be guessed, profound. For Eusebius and Constantine, the earthly empire was a

reflection of the heavenly kingdom, its inhabitants united in their common

Christianity, transcending ethnic identity.12 Empire then was not a geographical

space but the power/authority that the ruler wielded. Bede, following many of the

Fathers, helped transmit this idea into the early Middle Ages by asserting that

imperium meant ‘power’ and ‘jurisdiction’, not necessarily attached to a territory––

the unification of a mosaic of peoples through the exercise of supreme power.13 We

11 ‘Tempore quo rex et imperator Karolus magnus Gallicum regebat regnum, multe quoque

contrarientes sancte dei ecclesie inerrant. . . . Quas circumquaque gentes attingere prevaluit, aut eas debellando aut eas pacificando legibus dei ecclesie supposuit adeo, ut fere per omnes circumadiacentes regiones longe lateque, sepius etiam in nequissimos paganos acriter bellum exagitando, sed semper deo

oppitulante victor existens ubique brevi tempore res ecclesiasticas celebrabiles reddiderit. Proinde

postquam tanti tamque famosi viri per totum fere orbem terrarum fidei probitatisve fama

transvolavit, Romani magno terrore perterritit potentissimum Romanum imperium, immo etiam

pape electionem ipsi prescripserunt. Ita dei providentia precurrente Romanus imperator effectus est.’

Descriptio qualiter, 103.

12 On Eusebius’ portrayal of Constantine and its later impact, see D. M. Nicol, ‘Byzantine Political

Thought’, in J. H. Burns (ed.), The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, c.350–c.1450

(Cambridge, 1988), 52–3; and R. A. Markus, ‘The Latin Fathers’, ibid. 92–122. On Constantine’s

hand at work, see Yves Christe, ‘Victoria-Imperium-Judicium: Un schème antique du pouvoir dans l’art

paléochrétien et médiéval’, Rivista di archeologica cristiana, 49 (1973), 90–1; and Jeremy M. Schott,

Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia, 2008), 110–35.

13 Steven Fanning, ‘Bede, Imperium, and the Bretwaldas’, Speculum, 66 (1991), 1–26, esp. the

discussion 7–14. Also, Donald Bullough, ‘Empire and Emperordom from Late Antiquity to 799’,

Early Medieval Europe, 12 (2003), 380–3; James Muldoon, Empire and Order: The Concept of Empire,

800–1800 (New York, 1999), 29; Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in

The Franks’ Imagined Empire

101

should not accept the nineteenth- and twentieth-century tendency to translate

imperium as ‘empire’. ‘Imperial authority’ is a much better translation, at least

through the early Middle Ages.14

The Carolingians followed Bede. The language of Frankish rulership, even back

to the 740s, had long paralleled the language of Christian hierarchy and order. As

such, Frankish power was thought to be universal and derived from the community

of all believers over which the emperor ruled and whom he protected. In other

words, the empire was Christendom: its boundaries thought to be coextensive with

the boundaries of the ecclesia, the boundaries of orthodoxy. This conception

became even more pronounced during the reigns of Louis the Pious and his

sons.15 Take the example of Rome.

The ninth-century Franks tried to split hairs, asserting that they possessed

Roman imperium but not that this power was inextricably tied to the city of

Rome itself. Indeed, Charlemagne’s coronation in 800 only seems to have ampli-

fied earlier ideas. Even if the Carolingian architectural program drew heavily from

models in Rome, Ravenna, Trier, and Constantinople, the Franks tried to be very

careful about taking their examples specifically from Christian emperors. Moreover,

neither Charlemagne nor Louis the Pious ever tried to rule from––or in––Rome.

Instead, Rome and Jerusalem moved north and west with their relics under

Charlemagne, translating sacred space and sacred time with them, making the

Franks (as the populus christianus) successors of the Romans and Hebrews, but with

their own special place in sacred history.16 As we saw in Chapter 1, conquered

Spain, Britain and France c.1500–c.1800 (New Haven, Conn., 1995), 25; and Rosamond

McKitterick, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2004), 114–15.

14 Mayke de Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–840

(Cambridge, 2009), 27. The intitulation of one of Charlemagne’s diplomas reads: ‘Karolus serenissimus

augustus a deo coronatus magnus pacificus imperator Romanum gubernans imperium, qui et per

misercordiam dei rex Francorum atque Langobardorum.’ (‘Charles, most serene augustus, crowned by

God, the great and peaceful emperor who controls Roman imperial authority, and who is king of the

Franks and Lombards by the mercy of God.’) Pippini, Carlomanni, Caroli Magni Diplomata, ed. Engelbert

Mühlbacher, MGH Dipl. Karol. (Hanover, 1906), i, no. 197.

15 Robert Folz, The Coronation of Charlemagne, 25 December 800, tr. J. E. Anderson (London,

1974), 74, 120–1; Janet Nelson, ‘Kingship and Empire in the Carolingian World’, in Rosamond

McKitterick (ed.), Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation (Cambridge, 1994), 61; Lutz E. v.