An Empire of Memory (29 page)

may have begun building himself a palace on the Palatine Hill.27 Later eleventh-

century emperors continued their predecessors’ Rome policy, gradually adopting

the title Romanorum rex (which became standard by the time of Henry V, 1106–

25) and advancing their claims to far-flung empire through these Roman preten-

sions. Anselm of Bésate’s mid-eleventh-century Rhetorimachia thought that Henry

III (1039–56) as king of the Romans would soon rule the ancient provinces of

Greece, Judea, and Persia.28

But––and I cannot emphasize this enough––the study of imperial ideology by

modern scholars is too often confined to the imperial circle itself, despite abundant

evidence that shows how deeply others were thinking about universal empire too.29

The sources discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, especially those coming from religious

houses scattered across Europe, are replete with such instances. Even West Frankish

kings began to absorb some of this imperial language, sometimes calling themselves

imperator or augustus, oftentimes speaking of their special place as rex Francorum

and Pentecost A.D. 1000: A Reconsideration Using Diplomatic Evidence’, in Year 1000, 111–32. This

shift may have had something to do with the fact that the Carolingians were a more distant memory by

the turn of the millennium. Timothy Reuter, ‘The Ottonians and Carolingian Tradition’, in Janet L.

Nelson (ed.), Medieval Polities and Modern Mentalities (Cambridge, 2006), 279.

25 On Otto’s robes, see Geoffrey Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor: Ritual and Political Order in

Early Medieval France (Ithaca, NY, 1992), 163. On Henry II, see Nelson, ‘Kingship and Empire’, 246;

and Bernhardt, ‘Concepts and Practice of Empire’, 159–60.

26 Piotr Skubiszewski, ‘Ecclesia, Christianitas, Regnum et Sacerdotium dans l’art des Xe–XIe s.: Idées et structures des images’, Cahiers des civilisation médiévale, 28 (1985), 139–51.

27 See now David A. Warner, ‘Ideals and Action in the Reign of Otto III’, Journal of Medieval

History, 25 (1999), 1–18; Benjamin Arnold, ‘Eschatological Imagination and the Program of Roman

Imperial and Ecclesiastical Renewal at the End of the Tenth Century’, in Apocalyptic Year, 271–87;

and, of course, Percy Ernst Schramm, Kaiser, Rom und Renovatio: Studien zur Geschichte des römischen

Erneuerungsgedankens vom Ende des karolingischen Reiches bis zum Investiturstreit, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1929).

28 Generally, see Beumann, Der deutsche König als ‘Romanorum Rex’. On Anselm of Bésate and

Henry III, see Tilman Struve, ‘Kaisertum und Romgedanke in salischer Zeit’, Deutsches Archiv für

Erforschung des Mittelalters, 44 (1988), 424–9.

29 For an example of how narrow modern studies can be, see Werner Goez, Translatio Imperii: Ein

Beitrag zur Geschichte des Geschichtsdenkens und der politischen Theorien im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen, 1958).

106

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and their authority over many peoples.30 The Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Normans

were also heavily influenced by Carolingian models of governance and attempted to

lay claim to the mantle of Carolingian inheritance. Henry of Huntingdon, just to

take one example, constructed an ideal of imperium for Henry II (1154–89) that

drew directly and consciously from Carolingian precedent.31

In addition, the ecclesiastical reform movements of the tenth and eleventh

centuries attempted to appropriate for their own use the language of Christian

community inherited from the ninth-century Franks. At Cluny, especially under

Abbot Odilo (d. 1049), the monks expanded their horizons with the institution of

the feast of All Souls. Monks at Cluny, like the eighth- and ninth-century Franks

before them, were concerned about the whole of the populus christianus, making

explicit the connections they saw between the totality of time (life ! afterlife) and

the totality of space (the Christian community). Later in that century, the reform

papacy, still thinking in strikingly similar terms to what we have discussed thus far,

believed that they led the ecclesia and the entire populus christianus––West and

East––from Rome. The leader of this redefined Christendom, however, was now,

of course, the pope.32 Again, these eleventh-century ecclesiastical reformers were

not so much creating something new as trying to redefine something much older.

The Carolingians, Ottonians, Salians, Capetians, Cluniacs, et al. had done this all

before. If a reforming cleric talked about ecclesia or the populus christianus in the

eleventh century, his audience would likely understand him––but maybe not in

precisely the terms the speaker had intended. Both speaker and listener might

disagree on who the ruler of that group might rightly be and the exact contours of

that populus, but both would understand that a single ruler was responsible for the

care of a universal Christian community. Both speaker and listener would also

likely agree that such a community had existed once in the past and would exist

once more in the future.

30 See the examples in Karl-Ferdinand Werner, ‘Das Hochmittelalterliche Imperium im politischen

Bewusstein Frankreichs (10–12. Jahrhunderts)’, Historische Zeitschrift, 200 (1965), esp. 14–18.

Werner argues that West Frankish sources, perhaps as a reaction to the Rome policy of the

Ottonians and Salians, began to speak of a ‘Frankish empire’ (as he translates imperium Francorum),

distinct from the ‘Roman empire’ (imperium Romanorum). This is problematic for a number of

reasons, not least of which is how problematic reading imperium as ‘empire’ is for this period.

Indeed, Werner’s examples seem to support reading imperium as ‘authority’ or ‘power’. See Werner,

‘Das Hochmittelalterliche Imperium’, 14 n. 2.

31 Nelson, ‘Kingship and Empire’, 239–42; and Wendy Marie Hoofnagle, ‘Charlemagne’s Legacy

and Anglo-Norman Imperium in Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum’, in Legend of

Charlemagne, 77–94. See also my discussion of Norman and Frankish identities in the 11th cent. in

Ch. 5, below.

32 On Cluny, see Robert G. Heath, Crux Imperatorum Philosophia: Imperial Horizons of the Cluniac

Confraternitas, 964–1109 (Pittsburgh, Pa., 1976), 93–4. On the papacy, see Skubiszewski, ‘Ecclesia,

Christianitas, Regnum et Sacerdotium’, 137–8; Maria Lodovica Arduini, ‘Il problema Christianitas in

Guiberto di Nogent’, Aevum, 78 (2004), 379–410; Paul Magdalino, ‘Church, Empire and

Christendom in c. 600 and c. 1075: The View from the Registers of Popes Gregory I and Gregory

VII’, in Cristianita’ d’Occidente e cristianita’ d’Oriente (secoli VI–XI): 24–30 aprile 2003 (Spoleto, 2004), 17–25; the still useful Jan van Laarhoven, ‘“Christianitas” et réforme grégorienne’, Studi

Gregoriani, 6 (1959–61), 1–98; and now the exceptional Brett Edward Whalen, Dominion of God:

Christendom and Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., 2009). See also Ch. 5, below.

The Franks’ Imagined Empire

107

T HE E MPI R E TO C O ME

Today, we often forget how integral prophecy was to medieval society, when it

‘deeply affected political attitudes. . . . [T]he stupendous drama of the Last Days

was not a phantasy about some remote and indefinite future but a prophecy which

is infallible and which at almost any given moment was felt to be on the point of

fulfillment.’33 In many ways, because of its connection to the divine plan for all

mankind, prophecy provided the most reliable, most authoritative, and truest

insight into the progress of sacred history.34 Eschatology, after all, is a fundamental

part of Christianity. Like it or not, the end will come.

One version of that end was the legend of the Last Emperor. The Last Emperor

legend has existed in a number of forms but generally is, by its very nature, a violent

prophecy that promises peace only after the destruction of Christ’s enemies.35

Called upon to fight against the enemies of Christ, whether they be Gog and

Magog or servants of antichrist, the Last Emperor creates an idealized, unified

Christian empire and leads that community into battle. Only when the world is at

peace will this last ruler journey to Jerusalem and relinquish his power directly to

God. Antichrist will then appear shortly thereafter to begin the events described in

Revelation.

Pseudo-Methodius, who likely was a seventh-century Syrian from Mesopotamia,

was the first to speak of the Last Emperor and this Syriac text should be seen as part

of a series of Byzantine apocalyptic writings that erupted in response to the Arab

invasions. Translated into Greek within a few years of its original composition, it

became available in Latin by the beginning of the eighth century. This translation

made Pseudo-Methodius one of the most widespread and influential of all Latin

medieval apocalyptic texts, especially north of the Alps.36 It relates that:

33 Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists

of the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1970), 35.

34 R. W. Southern’s observations, as summarized in Monika Otter, ‘Prolixitas Temporum: Futurity

in Medieval Historical Narratives’, in Robert M. Stein and Sandra Pierson Prior (eds.), Reading

Medieval Culture: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Hanning (Notre Dame, Ind., 2005), 61. See also

Djelal Kadir, Columbus and the Ends of the Earth: Europe’s Prophetic Rhetoric as Conquering Ideology

(Berkeley, Calif., 1992), 4–6.

35 Paul J. Alexander, ‘The Medieval Legend of the Last Roman Emperor and its Messianic Origin’,

Journal of Warburg and Courtald Institutes, 41 (1978), 2. I will retain the common phrase ‘Last

Emperor’ here, even if that title is a bit misleading. As we will see, it might better have been termed

‘Last King’ because the first sources of the apocalyptic prophecy spoke exclusively of a rex. Medieval commentators understood it thus, which allowed them of a great deal of flexibility in determining who

this ‘last king’ might be. Modern historians have, however, tended to read the Last ‘Emperor’ legend far too literally. For instance, see Bernard McGinn, ‘Iter sancti Sepulchri: The Piety of the First Crusaders’, in Bede Karl Lackner and Kenneth Roy Philip (eds.), The Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lectures:

Essays on Medieval Civilization (Austin, Tex., 1978), 47–8.

36 Jean Flori, L’Islam et la fin des temps: L’Interprétation prophétique des invasions musulmanes dans la chrétienté médiévale (Paris, 2007), 130–42; Paul J. Alexander, The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition

(Berkeley, Calif., 1985), 13; idem, ‘Byzantium and the Migration of Literary Works and Motifs: The

Legend of the Last Roman Emperor’, Religious and Political History and Thought in the Byzantine

Empire, 12 (London, 1978), 61; and Otto Prinz, ‘Eine frühe abendländische Aktualisierung der

lateinischen Übersetzung des Pseudo-Methodius’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters,

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the king of the Greeks, that is the Romans, will come out against [the enemies of God] in

great anger, roused as from a drunken stupor like one whom men had thought dead and

worthless37 . . . [and the] whole indignation and fury of the king of the Romans will blaze forth

against those who deny the Lord Jesus Christ. . . . [Then, after Gog and Magog have been

released and defeated,] the king of the Romans will go down and live in Jerusalem . . . [until the

time] when . . . the Son of Perdition will appear.

After antichrist appears, the Last Emperor will ascend Golgotha to place his crown

upon the Cross, giving up his spirit and returning ‘the kingdom of the Christians to

God the Father’.38 In all of its iterations, the narrative speaks consistently of a rex

ruling a unified regnum, making it clear that this last ruler would lead a united

Christendom against Christ’s enemies––many gentes have become one Christian

gens here. We should also note that the Latin versions of Pseudo-Methodius,

especially those reworked during the eighth through the tenth centuries, privileged

the West in leading Christ’s armies against the forces of evil, working to replace the

rex Gregorum (sic) of the Syriac and Greek versions with a rex Romanorum, who

would hand over the regnum christianorum to Christ before he dies. An early

recension of the Latin translation, probably completed after 732 and in response

to the Frankish action against the Arab incursions into Aquitaine and Provence, was

even more insistent. When the last ruler emerges to rage against the enemies of

Christ, he is no longer the rex Gregorum sive Romanorum of the original Latin text

but rather a rex christianorum et Romanorum, elsewhere sometimes simply a rex

christianorum.39 A Christian king will war against Christ’s enemies.

41 (1985), 3. On its popularity, see Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York, 1979), 72; Folz, Souvenir, 141.

37 In the original Syriac text, the Last Emperor will suddenly arise ‘like a man who shakes off [the

effects of] his wine’ and go forth to victory against the pagans ‘as if they were [already] dead’. In the Greek and subsequent Latin translation of this text, these two lines were combined and corrupted into

what we have in the Latin version of the Pseudo-Methodius: ‘he will awake like a man from

drunkenness, whom men considered as if he were dead and of no use’ (expergiscitur tamquam homo

a somno vini, quem extimabant homines tamquam mortuum esse et in nihilo utilem profecisse). This