An Empire of Memory (5 page)

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Figure 1.1. Map of sites important to the Charlemagne legend, ninth–early twelfth centuries. Map created by author using ArcGIS 9.3.1. (See Appendix 1 for legend.)

The Birth of a Frankish Golden Age

15

I am always struck by the tone and imagery of the latter quotation. One can almost

hear Nithard weeping (or perhaps cursing) as he despaired of the dissolution he

saw around him, wistfully thinking back two generations to the reign of his

grandfather, Charlemagne, and the splendor of his empire. And Nithard was not

alone, even among his contemporaries, in remembering Charlemagne as wise, just,

righteous, and a conqueror. Indeed, the period Nithard witnessed was nothing

less than a struggle among Louis the Pious’s sons over Charlemagne’s legacy. This

battle would continue through the high Middle Ages to, at least, the end of the

ancien régime.3

This chapter will begin with a brief overview of the early Charlemagne legend,

then consider how that legend took shape as it progressively moved into the tenth

and eleventh centuries. The chapter will conclude by looking at how, in the

religious houses of the period, the remembered borders of Charlemagne’s empire

seemed to grow with each passing year, fluctuating in detail but generally remaining

coterminous with the extent of contemporary Christendom. This chapter is not

intended to be comprehensive but will rather highlight some critical themes in the

legend that would shape how tenth- and eleventh-century authors understood

Charlemagne’s reign.

T H E F R A N K S A F T E R C H A R L E M A G N E

Charles’s immediate successors struggled over his legacy almost from the day after

his death in January 814.4 An observer to the early years of the reign of Louis the

Pious (814–40) might even be excused for thinking that Charles had not been all

that well liked, as criticism of the recently deceased ruler, led by the new court circle

Louis brought with him from Aquitaine, surfaced quickly. Men mourned his

passing but Louis’s court poets, such as Walahfrid Strabo, thought Charlemagne’s

death and Louis’s ascent had initiated a true Golden Age. Also, a succession of

dream visions, almost all originating at Reichenau in the early ninth century,

focused on the perceived moral laxity pervading Aachen late in Charlemagne’s

reign. Charles was imagined suffering for his lustful sins, animals gnawing at his

3 On the audience and agenda of Nithard’s work, see Janet L. Nelson, ‘Public Histories and Private

History in the Work of Nithard’, Speculum, 60 (1985), 251–93; some conclusions revised in idem,

‘History-Writing at the Courts of Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald’, in Anton Scharer and Georg

Scheibelreiter (eds.), Historiographie im frühen Mittelalter (Vienna, 1994), 438–40. And now see Stuart Airlie, ‘The World, the Text and the Carolingian: Royal, Aristocratic and Masculine Identities in

Nithard’s Histories’, in Patrick Wormald and Janet L. Nelson (eds.), Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2007), 61–3. On later manifestations of the legend, see Gabrielle M. Spiegel,

Romancing the Past: The Rise of Prose Historiography in 13th-Century France (Berkeley, Calif., 1993);

and Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the 18th Century (Cambridge, 1990), 31–106.

4 The essential works on this subject are now Paul Edward Dutton, ‘KAROLVS MAGNVS or

KAROLVS FELIX? The Making of Charlemagne’s Reputation and Legend’, and Thomas F. X. Noble,

‘Greatness Contested and Confirmed: Remembering Charlemagne in the Ninth Century’, both in

Legend of Charlemagne, 23–37 and 3–21, respectively. Also, still useful is Heinrich Hoffmann, Karl der Grosse im Bilde der Geschichtschreibung des frühen Mittelalters (800–1250) (Berlin, 1919).

16

The Franks Remember Empire

genitals, even if these visionaries acknowledged that he would soon take his place

among the elect.5

Although such texts were never the primary vehicle of political discussion, only

appearing at critical junctures where other avenues of expression were blocked, here

a ‘king, in fact the greatest of all the Frankish kings . . . , [was] criticized candidly,

but stains will spread. What Louis had unloosed soon overtook him personally.’

Criticism of Charlemagne reaped political benefits for Louis and his advisors in the

short-term because it ushered in the prospect of reform but the criticism ended up

costing Louis dearly in the long term (especially during the revolts of 830 and

833).6 Even the visionaries began to turn on Louis towards the end of the 820s.

The Vision of the Poor Woman of Laon reported a scene of Charlemagne suffering for

his sins, waiting for masses to be sung in his memory, just as previous visions had.

But this woman of Laon also saw the torment of Louis’s wife Ermengard and the

erasure of Louis’s name from the list of the saved (for the murder of Bernard of

Italy).7 The object of criticism had shifted from past to present, from Charlemagne

to Louis. Soon, criticism of Charlemagne dropped entirely and he became a model

for emulation, ‘a legacy, not simply to be explored with the exuberant superlatives

of the Royal Frankish Annals . . . but also as a stick to beat others with’.8

The groundwork for this second, more positive vision of Charlemagne was laid

within his lifetime. Paul Dutton has thoughtfully considered how Charlemagne

surrounded himself with those who would sing his praises, while Rosamond

McKitterick has elaborated how Carolingian texts such as the continuations of

Fredegar, the Gesta episcoporum Mettensium, the Annales Mettenses priores, and the

Annales regni Francorum (ARF), among others were skillfully constructed versions

of the Frankish past.9 The program of these late eighth- and ninth-century Frankish

historians––derogate the Merovingians, legitimize the Carolingians, embellish their

accomplishments, stress the cohesion of the Franks as a people––was remarkably

successful, fending off the challenge to Charles’s legacy by Louis and his circle

and effectively eliminating nearly all criticism of Charles until the middle of the

twelfth century.10

5 e.g. ‘Lament on the Death of Charlemagne’, in Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, ed. and

trans. Peter Godman (Norman, Okla., 1985), 206–11. Visions summarized in Paul Edward Dutton,

The Politics of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire (Lincoln, Neb., 1994), 61–7.

6 Dutton, Politics, 77–112, quotation at 79; and Roger Collins, ‘Charlemagne and his Critics, 814–29’, in Régine LeJan (ed.), La Royauté et les élites dans l’Europe carolingienne (début IXe siècle aux environs de 920) (Villeneuve, 1998), 202–11. But now see Mayke de Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement

in the Age of Louis the Pious (Cambridge, 2009), esp. chs. 4–6.

7 Dutton, Politics, 67–76.

8 Ganz, ‘Einhard’s Charlemagne’, 43.

9 Rosamond McKitterick, ‘Constructing the Past in the Early Middle Ages: The Case of the Royal

Frankish Annals’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser. 7 (1997), 116–19; idem, ‘Political Ideology in Carolingian Historiography’, in Uses of the Past, 168–9; and Dutton, ‘KAROLVUS

MAGNVS or KAROLVS FELIX’, 23–37. See also the comments of Peter Godman, Poets and

Emperors: Frankish Politics and Carolingian Poetry (Oxford, 1987), 82–91; and the foundational

Gaston Paris, Histoire poétique de Charlemagne, 2nd edn. (Paris, 1905), 37–8.

10 On the success of the 9th-cent. historians, see Roger Collins, Charlemagne (Toronto, 1998), 23.

On the 12th-cent. re-emergence of criticism directed at Charlemagne, see Baudoin de Gaiffier, ‘La

Légende de Charlemagne: Le Péché de l’empereur et son pardon’, in Recueil de travaux offerts à

The Birth of a Frankish Golden Age

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Einhard’s Vita Karoli, likely composed sometime in the 820s in order to defend

Charlemagne’s reign and legacy (either specifically against the dream critics cen-

tered at Reichenau or more generally from the ‘moral housecleaning’ being con-

ducted by Louis and his followers), tapped into the lionizing tradition of these

annals and soon became the tradition’s primary exemplar.11 So much has been

written on the Vita Karoli, it would be foolish to try to recapitulate it all here.

Suffice it to say that Einhard’s Charlemagne was a Roman emperor, a sovereign

Frank, and a protector of the Church; an ideal ruler who ruled over an ideal age. He

was a new Constantine, who had reunited the Roman empire from the farthest

reaches of West and East. Hidden within this characterization of Charlemagne,

however, was a shot across his successor’s bow. This was admonitio for Louis the

Pious from a loyal courtier but also, I think, a bit of a lament: a mirror for a prince

who could never hope to fill the shadow cast by his father, especially following the

very real difficulties the Franks encountered during the 820s and 830s.12

Within decades of his death, Charlemagne already existed in a time that was

‘other’––a Golden Age from which the Franks had fallen. It is perhaps telling that,

while the poets of Charlemagne’s reign looked to Virgil for inspiration, the next

generation of poets instead looked to Ovid and evinced themes of exile and

disillusionment. The historians of the late Carolingians moved from a discourse

of unmitigated praise to one of contest and critique.13 No contemporary subject

was safe from their scrutiny. In his Life of Louis the Pious, composed shortly after

Louis’s death, the Astronomer held Charles up as a most Christian king who held

power by strengthening the Church: maintaining the internal cohesion of its

institutions and expanding its borders through conversion. The Astronomer was

paying Charlemagne quite a compliment, implicitly contrasting his reign with the

fragmentation and dissension that took place under Louis. As noted above,

Nithard’s Histories admired Charlemagne greatly, longing for the return of the

peace and concord that had vanished since his death. Although Florus of Lyon does

M. Clovis Brunel, 2 vols. (Paris, 1955), i. 490–503; Rita Lejeune, ‘Le Péché de Charlemagne et la

Chanson de Roland ’, in Homenaje ofrecido a Dámaso Alonso: por sus amigos y discupulos con ocasion de su 60. aniversario, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1961), ii. 339–71; and Amy Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past:

Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca, NY, 1995), 183–7.

11 Einhard, Vita Karoli, ed. G.H. Pertz, MGH SRG (Hanover, 1911), 25: 1–60. English tr.

Einhard, Vita Karoli, in Charlemagne’s Courtier: The Complete Einhard, tr. Paul Edward Dutton

(Peterborough, Ontario, 1998), 15–39. On the dating of Einhard’s biography, see the thorough

review in Matthias M. Tischler, Einharts Vita Karoli: Studien zur Entstehung, Überlieferung und

Rezeption, 2 vols. (Hanover, 2001), i. 78–239. Rosamond McKitterick still argues for an earlier date

in her History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2004), 29–30; and Mayke de Jong

intriguingly ties the appearance of the text to the birth of Charles the Bald in 823 in her Penitential State, 68–9.

12 Problems ticked off with precision in Dutton, ‘KAROLVS MAGNVS or KAROLVS FELIX’,

32–3. On Charlemagne as Constantine in Einhard, see Anne Latowsky, ‘Foreign Embassies and

Roman Universality in Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne’, Florilegium, 22 (2005), 30–42.

13 Robert Morrissey, Charlemagne and France: A Thousand Years of Mythology, tr. Catherine Tihanyi

(Notre Dame, Ind., 2003), 21–3; and Nelson, ‘History-Writing’, 435–7. On Ovid at the Carolingian

court, see Godman, Poets and Emperors, 148.

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The Franks Remember Empire

not mention the great Charles in his Lament on the Division of the Empire, he hovers

over every stanza––a remembered model of concord in a time of discord.14

An unknown contemporary of Nithard and Florus, two generations removed

from the great Charles, also perceived great trouble around him and produced the

Visio Karoli Magni sometime around 870 for Louis the German (840–76). In this

vision, an angel presented Charles with a sword inscribed with four words––RAHT

RADOLEIBA NASG ENTI. Charles interpreted the inscription himself to say that

the four words respectively meant: (1) the abundance of things he himself had,

(2) the decline of the monarchy under his sons, (3) the greed of his grandsons, and

(4) the end (either of the world or the Carolingian line). Abundance was followed

by the beginnings of dissension, followed by the nadir of greed, followed by the

end. Patrick Geary has argued that the vision should be seen as a piece of

propagandistic literature for Louis the German, against his relatives. But Dutton’s

exegesis of the text has thoughtfully modified Geary’s conclusions, brilliantly

explaining that the Visio does not exclude Louis the German from the text’s

more general criticism of his generation (representing the nadir of greed).15