An Empire of Memory (30 page)

inaugurated the later belief that the Last Emperor would be a ruler who would not die, or would return from the dead. See Alexander, ‘Emperor’, 2–3.

38 ‘Tunc subito insurgent super eos tribulatio et angustia et exiliet super eos rex Gregorum [sic] sive Romanorum in furore magna et expergiscitur tamquam homo a somno vini, quem extimabant

homines tamquam mortuum esse et in nihilo utilem profecisse. . . . et omnis indignatio et furor regis

Romanorum super eos qui abnegaverint dominum Iesum Christum exardiscit . . . Tunc reserabuntur

portae aquilonis et egredientur virtutes gentium illarum. . . . Post ebdomada vero temporis . . . emittit dominus Deus unum ex principibus miliciae suae et percuciet eos in uno momento temporis, et post

haec discendit rex Romanorum et domorabitur in Hierusalem . . . [usque ad] apparebit filius

perditionis. . . . Et cum apparuerit filius perditionis, ascendit rex Romanorum sursum in Golgatha, in quo confixum est lignum sanctae crucis. . . . et tollit rex coronam de capite suo et ponet eam super

crucem, et expandit manus suas in caelum et tradit regnum christianorum Deo et patri.’ Pseudo-

Methodius, Sermo de Regnum Cantium, in Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen, ed. Ernst Sackur (Halle,

1898), 89–93. English tr. taken from McGinn, Visions, 75–6.

39 Prinz, ‘Eine frühe abendländische Aktualisierung’, 14. According to Marc Laureys and Daniel

Verhelst, there are ninety-one extant manuscripts of this 8th-cent. version (five from before 1100) and forty-four of the original Latin translation (ten from before 1100). See Marc Laureys and Daniel

Verhelst, ‘Pseudo-Methodius, Revelationes: Textgeschichte und kritische Edition. Ein Leuven-

Groninger Forschungsprojekt’, in Werner Verbeke, Daniel Verhelst, and Andries Welkenhuysen

(eds.), The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages (Leuven, 1988), 112–36. More generally,

The Franks’ Imagined Empire

109

The Explanatio somnii of the Tiburtine Sibyl was originally written in Greek

sometime in the late fourth century CE. The first Latin version of the text appeared

shortly afterwards, but underwent four major reworkings in eleventh-century

Italy––c.1000, c.1030, c.1090, and c.1100. The Latin Tiburtina enjoyed immense

popularity south of the Alps throughout the Middle Ages but it is only these

eleventh-century Latin versions that contain ‘a brief but forceful account of the

Final Emperor’.40 The Latin Tiburtina states that a king of the Romans will arise by

the name of Constans,41 who will conquer the world for Christ, converting the

Jews and pagans and putting those who refuse to the sword. Then, when all

worship the Lord, the antichrist will be born, signaling the release of Gog and

Magog. The Last Emperor will vanquish them, then journey to Jerusalem to hand

over the kingdom of the Christians to God. At this moment, when Roman imperial

authority (imperium) ceases, the antichrist will begin his reign and the Last

Judgment will shortly follow.42 Like Pseudo-Methodius, the eleventh-century

Latin Sibyls consistently speak of rex and regnum, specifically a rex Romanorum

and the regnum christianorum. This choice of language, as well as the reference to

Roman imperial authority (imperium Romanum), all makes sense in the context of

the Latin Sibyl’s composition. This rhetoric of authority follows Pseudo-Methodius

but ideas about Rome attached to a Christian kingdom sit well in the early

eleventh-century Ottonian context from which the Tiburtina sprang. The Latin

Tiburtine Sibyl suggested that imperial glory, even at the end, would be at the same

time wholly Christian and wholly Roman.

One can see this conceptualization at work in another Ottonian work––Liud-

prand of Cremona’s discussion of the Last Emperor legend in his Relatio de

Legatione Constantinopolitana, which was probably composed c.969. Paul Alexan-

der has suggested that Liudprand’s reference to some prophecies, supposedly

written by a Bishop Hippolytus of Sicily (now known as Pseudo-Hippolytus),

indicated the existence and acceptance of Pseudo-Methodius at the Byzantine

court.43 If this is indeed the case, the differences we see between Liudprand’s

account and the surviving Latin versions of Pseudo-Methodius become particularly

interesting. Liudprand first recounts the prophecy itself, how ‘the lion and the cub

together will exterminate the wild donkey’. The Byzantines interpreted this

see Paul J. Alexander, ‘The Diffusion of Byzantine Apocalypses in the Medieval West and the

Beginnings of Joachimism’, in Ann Williams (ed.), Prophecy and Millenarianism: Essays in Honour of

Marjorie Reeves (Harlow, 1980), 75–6; and Flori, L’Islam et la fin des temps, 182–6.

40 McGinn, Visions, 43–4. On the reworkings of the text in the 11th-cent. West, see Bernard

McGinn, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (New York, 1994), 309 n.

87; and esp. Anke Holdenried, The Sibyl and her Scribes: Manuscripts and Interpretation of the Latin

Sibylla Tiburtina, c.1050–1500 (Burlington, Vt., 2006), 4–6.

41 This rex is initially rex Grecorum, cuius nomen Constans, et ipse erit rex Romanorum et Grecorum,

but is called rex Romanorum thereafter. See Tiburtine Sibyl, Explanatio Somnii, in Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen, ed. Ernst Sackur (Halle, 1898), 181–6.

42 Ibid. 185–6.

43 On the dating, see Liudprand of Cremona, The Complete Works of Liudprand of Cremona, tr.

Paolo Squatriti (Washington, DC, 2007), 30–1; and the comments of Paul Magdalino, ‘Prophecies on

the Fall of Constantinople’, in Angeliki E. Laiou (ed.), Urbs Capta: The Fourth Crusade and its

Consequences (Paris, 2005), 43–7; and Alexander, ‘Diffusion of Byzantine Apocalypses’, 67.

110

The Franks Recreate Empire

prophecy to mean that the Byzantine ruler, as the imperator Romanorum sive

Graecorum (the lion), along with the rex Francorum (the cub), would together

destroy the Saracens. Liudprand, however, didn’t agree. He saw the lion and cub as

necessarily being of the same type––something a Frankish king and Greek emperor

certainly were not. Instead, the lion and cub were Otto I and Otto II respectively,

who together would destroy the Byzantine emperor, Nikephorus Phocas (the

donkey), then move on to smash the Saracens. According to Liudprand, the two

Ottos were obviously of the same type but were more importantly both reges

Francorum and true imperatores Romanorum augusti, whose imperium (again,

meaning ‘imperial authority’ or ‘power’) spanned West and East.44 Like we saw

in Pseudo-Methodius and would later see in the Latin Tiburtine Sibyl, Rome and

Christendom are one and the same. But now the true emperor, the one who holds

imperium over all the different Christian peoples West and East, he who has the

duty to smash the enemies of Christ, is not a Roman and/or a Greek. He is a Frank.

The reference to a Frank as universal Christian ruler may have been a holdover of

eighth- and ninth-century Carolingian thought, as filtered through northern Italian

politics, then in turn filtered through early Ottonian ideology, but it also could be

evidence that Liudprand knew of Abbot Adso Dervensis’s (d. 992) De antichristo.

Written just a few years after 950, Adso addressed his tract on the antichrist to the

West Frankish Queen Gerberga (the sister of Otto II and wife of King Louis IV,

936–54).45 We don’t know much about Adso. He probably studied at Luxeuil,

then came to the abbey of Montier-en-Der from Toul after 935, when Montier-

en-Der was reformed by the bishop of Toul, with help from Fleury. Adso became

abbot of Montier-en-Der in c.960 and remained in that position until he died in

992, while on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.46

Adso’s brief work relies heavily on two authorities. Haimo of Auxerre’s (d. 855)

commentaries on 2 Thessalonians and Revelation provided most of Adso’s material

on antichrist, while Pseudo-Methodius served as the inspiration for the brief section

in De antichristo on the Last Emperor. Adso, like any number of Carolingian

authors before him, was no slavish imitator of his sources though, so the novelties

44 Liudprand of Cremona, Opera Omnia, ed. Paolo Chiesa, CCCM (Turnhout, 1998), 156: 204–6.

English tr. Liudprand, Complete Works, ed. Squatriti, 262–5. For an example of how Liudprand uses

imperium, he writes to Otto I, ‘Sed Hippolytus quidam Siciliensis episcopus eadem scripsit et de imperio vestro et gente nostra––“nostram” nunc dico omnem quae sub vestro imperio et gentem.’ Here, Liudprand

means the peoples (gentes) under Otto’s authority (imperium). Liudprand, Opera, ed. Chiesa, 204.

45 Robert Konrad, De ortu et tempore Antichristi: Antichristvorstellung und Geschichtsbild des Abtes

Adso von Montier-en-Der (Kallmünz, 1964), 23–6. To my knowledge, no one has suggested that

Liudprand knew of Adso’s work. Liudprand was, however, working more than a decade after Adso’s De

antichristo and, although Adso wrote for the West Franks, his text was almost immediately popular and

circulated near the Ottonian court (perhaps through Queen Gerberga, who was herself an Ottonian).

On Adso’s popularity at the Ottonian court, see Bernhardt, ‘Concepts and Practice’, 146–7; and Jean-

Pierre Poly, ‘Le Procès de l’an mil ou du bon usages des leges en temps de désarroi’, in La giustizia

nell’alto Medioevo, secoli IX–XI: 11–17 aprile 1996 (Spoleto, 1997), 32–9.

46 On Adso’s background, see Bernd Schneidmüller, ‘Adso von Montier-en-Der und die

Frankenkönige’, Trierer Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst des Trierer Landes und seiner

Nachbargebiete, 40–1 (1977–8), 189–99; and Constance Brittain Bouchard, The Cartulary of

Montier-en-Der, 666–1129 (Toronto, 2004), 4–7, 365.

The Franks’ Imagined Empire

111

Adso introduced are telling.47 His essential argument is that because the Romans

‘had all the kingdoms [regna] of the earth under their control’ antichrist would not

appear. He continues:

This time [of the antichrist] has not yet come, because even though we may see Roman

imperial authority (imperium) for the most part in ruins, nonetheless, as long as the kings of

the Franks, who now rightfully possesses Roman imperial authority (imperium), endure, the

dignity of the Roman kingdom (regnum) will not completely perish because it will endure in

its kings. Some of our learned men truly say that one of the kings of the Franks will possess

Roman imperial authority (imperium) anew. He will be in the last time and himself will be

the greatest and last of all kings.

Just before the end, this king of the Franks will go to Jerusalem to lay down his

crown and scepter on the Mount of Olives, signaling the ‘end and consummation

of Roman and Christian imperial authority (imperium).’48 Unfortunately, because

modern scholars have tended to render imperium here as ‘empire’, we tend to miss

Adso’s point. When referring to a territory or political unit controlled by someone

or something, Adso consistently uses regnum––the regnum Romanorum was the

greatest of all other regna. Imperium is used as his Frankish predecessors understood

the term and as Liudprand (Adso’s contemporary) seemed to use the word. It refers

to universal imperial authority/power. Roman imperium allowed its regnum to

control all the world’s regna.49 This is what Adso’s Last Emperor will resurrect––

not the Roman regnum, but something greater, Roman and Christian imperial

authority (imperium). The Last Emperor will be defined by his power, by his ability

to unite the rest of the world’s kingdoms under the banner of Christ. And, as

Nithard had suggested a century earlier, and as Liudprand would suggest just a few

years hence, only a Frank could accomplish this.50

47 On Adso’s sources, Kevin L. Hughes, Constructing Antichrist: Paul, Biblical Commentary, and the

Development of Doctrine in the Early Middle Ages (Washington, DC, 2005), 147–57, 168–9; Daniel

Verhelst, ‘La Préhistoire des conceptions d’Adson concernant l’Antichrist’, Recherches de Théologie

Ancienne et Médiévale, 40 (1973), 52–103; and Alexander, ‘Diffusion of Byzantine Apocalypses’, 67;

but now see Flori, L’Islam et la fin des temps, 206–7.

48 ‘Hoc autem tempus nondum uenit, quia, licet uideamus Romanum imperium ex maxima parte

destructum, tamen, quandiu reges Francorum durauerint, qui Romanum imperium tenere debent,

Romani regni dignitas ex toto non peribit, quia in regibus suis stabit. Quidam uero doctores nostri

dicunt, quod unus ex regibus Francorum Romanum imperium ex integro tenebit, qui in nouissimo

tempore erit et ipse erit maximus et omnium regum ultimus. Qui, postquam regnum suum feliciter

gubernauerit, ad ultimum Hierosolimam ueniet et in monte Oliueti sceptrum et coronam suam

deponet. Hic erit finis et consummatio Romanorum christianorumque imperii.’ Adso Dervensis, De

ortu et tempore Antichristi, in De ortu, ed. Verhelst, 25–6. The phrase ex integro is rather difficult to translate. Often, it is rendered as ‘wholly’ or ‘entirely’. The coupling of ex with integro, however, gives the phrase a slightly different meaning, which I have followed here. See A Latin Dictionary, ed.

Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (Oxford, 1879), 973; and Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. P. G.

W. Clarke (Oxford, 1992), 934.

49 This distinction between regnum and imperium is particularly evident in Haimo of Auxerre, one

of Adso’s sources. See Haimo of Auxerre (mistakenly called Haimo of Halberstadt), In divi Pauli