An Empire of Memory (6 page)

But not everyone in the generation of Nithard, Florus, and Louis the German

had lost hope. Bishop Fréculf of Lisieux, writing to Queen Judith in 829, claimed

that he saw Charlemagne figuratively reborn in her son, the new Charles, and

hoped that he could live up to his grandfather’s name. In 844, the participants of

the Council of Ver, including the archchaplain of Charles the Bald and a young

Hincmar of Reims (as monk of Saint-Denis), exhorted the new king Charles to

follow the examples of David and Hezekiah, but also of Charlemagne, that

domestic light, whose deeds adorned his family.16 During his reign, Charles

the Bald followed this advice, modeling some of his behavior on aspects of

Charlemagne’s rule, including his diplomas, seals, and coins. Charles’s com-

plex at Compiègne was also almost certainly built as a structural imitation of

Charlemagne’s palace complex, begun after 870 when Charles the Bald was

expelled from Aachen.17 The courts of Lothar and Louis the German also worked

hard to link their patrons to their grandfather. These rulers, however, did not

simply want to recreate what had been lost. Implicitly rebutting his contemporaries

who saw themselves in the midst of a long, slow descent from Charlemagne’s

Golden Age, Charles the Bald sought to create a new one.18 And he was not alone.

14 Astronomer, Life of Louis the Pious, tr. Allen Cabaniss (Syracuse, NY, 1961), 32. On Florus,

Godman, Poets and Emperors, 150–1.

15 Patrick J. Geary, Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 1994), 51–6; and Eric

Goldberg, Struggle for Empire: Kingship and Conflict under Louis the German, 817–76 (Ithaca, NY,

2006), 291; but cf. Dutton, Politics, 206–8. On the dating of the vision, see Dutton, Politics, 202.

16 Freculf, Ad Iudith, MGH Epist. 5: 319. See also the discussion on the importance of names to the

Carolingians in William J. Diebold, ‘Nos quoque morem illius imitari cupientes: Charles the Bald’s

Evocation and Imitation of Charlemagne’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 75 (1993), 289–92. Also,

Concilium Vernense, ed. Wilfried Hartmann, MGH: Concilia (Hanover, 1984), iii. 39. Parallels

between Charles the Bald and Charlemagne were also drawn by Heiric of Auxerre in his Life of

St Germanus and the author of the ‘Vivian Bible’, created c.845. See Godman, Poets and Emperors, 173–7.

17 Diebold, ‘Nos quoque morem’, 280–4.

18 Elina Screen, ‘The Importance of the Emperor: Lothar I and the Frankish Civil War, 840–3’,

Early Medieval Europe, 12 (2003), 34–47; Goldberg, Struggle for Empire, 259–99; Diebold, ‘Nos

The Birth of a Frankish Golden Age

19

Notker the Stammerer, monk of St Gall, dedicated his Gesta Karoli Magni to

Charlemagne’s great-grandson and Louis the German’s son, Charles the Fat

(emperor 881–7) and stopped writing c.885, likely after the emperor’s visit to

St Gall. Notker’s dependence on Einhard is now uncontested and Notker, the

schoolmaster, seems to have intended the work as an exposition of the Vita Karoli

for his new Charles.19 Evoking the book of Daniel, Notker’s first lines explained

that God had brought low the statue of the Romans, anchored by feet of clay, but

had newly raised up the golden head of another statue among the Franks––

Charlemagne.20 Dutton highlights Notker’s implicit assumptions. This new

image, topped by a golden-headed Charlemagne, ‘lay completely within the con-

fines of the ninth century, contained within four generations of kings. The feet of

iron and clay were the kings of [Notker’s] own diminished and fragmenting age, the

grandsons and great-grandsons of Charlemagne.’21 Just as the Visio Karoli Magni

used the four Old High German words to narrate the descent of Charlemagne’s

line––abundance to dissension to greed to the end––so Notker uses four compo-

nents––gold to silver to iron to clay––of a reimagined statue from Daniel to tell of

the weakness of this (his) fourth generation.

But Notker was not lamenting. Charlemagne had begun something new––

something great––that continued with the Franks. Instead of focusing on the

shadow cast by the great Charles, Notker looked up at what cast that shadow.

The focus of the text falls exclusively on Charlemagne. Einhard had had to

convince a skeptical audience but Notker had no one left to convince of Charles’s

greatness and none would doubt how his contemporaries paled in comparison.22

Charlemagne is larger than life in the Gesta Karoli, ruling his realm almost by force

of personality. He is consistently described in superlatives, presides over a united

Frankish people, and is wise, just, powerful, and holy. Notker’s Charles explicitly

equaled the Byzantine ruler and Islamic Caliph; implicitly he was their better.

Charlemagne was, in fact, an image of God Himself, the sight of whom would have

made David sing in praise of the Lord.23

quoque morem’, 297–300; and Egon Boshof, ‘Karl der Kahle: Novus Karolus Magnus?’ in Franz-Reiner

Erkens (ed.), Karl der Grosse und das Erbe der Kulturen (Berlin, 2001), 135–52.

19 See the dating discussion in Simon Maclean, Kingship and Politics in the Late Ninth Century:

Charles the Fat and the End of the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge, 2003), 201–4. On Notker’s sources,

see Hans-Joachim Reischmann, Die Trivialisierung des Karlsbildes der Einhard-Vita in Notkers ‘Gesta

Karoli Magni’ (Konstanz, 1984); David Ganz, ‘Humour as History in Notker’s Gesta Karoli Magni’, in

Edward B. King, Jacqueline T. Schaefer, and William B. Wadley (eds.), Monks, Nuns, and Friars in

Mediaeval Society (Sewanee, Tenn., 1989), 171–3; and Matthew Innes, ‘Memory, Orality and Literacy

in an Early Medieval Society’, Past and Present, 158 (1998), 15–18.

20 Notker the Stammerer, Gesta Karoli Magni imperatoris, ed. H. F. Haefele, MGH SRG ns (Berlin,

1959), 12: 1; cf. Daniel 2: 1–49. See also Hans-Werner Goetz, Strukturen der spätkarolinischen Epoche

im Spiegel der Vorstellungen eines Zeitgenössischen Mönchs: Eine Interpretation der ‘Gesta Karoli’ Notkers von Sankt Gallen (Bonn, 1981), 70–1.

21 Dutton, Politics, 200.

22 Theodor Siegrist, Herrscherbild und Weltsicht bei Notker Balbulus: Untersuchungen zu den Gesta

Karoli (Zürich, 1963), 112–14; Goetz, Strukturen der spätkarolinischen Epoche, 71; MacLean, Kingship

and Politics, 199; and Ganz, ‘Humour as History’, 182.

23 Citing Psalms 148: 11–12, see Notker, Gesta, ed. Haefele, 57. On Charlemagne’s power, see

Folz, Souvenir, 13; and Siegrist, Herrscherbild, 118–19.

20

The Franks Remember Empire

After the end of the Carolingian line in East Francia, the Ottonians, in need of

something to justify their hold on power, used a more-or-less exclusively positive

image of Charlemagne that they inherited (as well as their possession of Aachen) to

legitimize their new dynasty. Generally, this Ottonian interest attempted to pre-

serve the continuity of the empire. The late Carolingians, meaning everyone not

called ‘Charles the Great’, were glossed over. Legitimacy derived from the direct,

intellectual link that the Ottonians created back to Charlemagne, suggesting that

the empire progressed from Rome through Charlemagne to the Ottonians.24 In

936, Otto I (936–73) was crowned king in Charlemagne’s chapel of St Mary’s at

Aachen, in the presence of (the body of) Charlemagne himself, allowing the past

emperor to witness the transfer of power to this new dynasty. Charlemagne’s chapel

then hosted the coronation of every subsequent Ottonian and those rulers consis-

tently invoked Charles when donating to the town’s canons.25 Authors friendly to

the imperial cause parroted the Ottonians’ claim. In his Chronicon written at the

beginning of the eleventh century, Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg claimed in

several places that Otto I was directly in the line of Charlemagne. Thietmar did

not mention any other rulers of East Francia in the succession––no Louis the Pious,

no Louis the German, no Charles the Fat. Similarly, Bruno of Segni wrote that

Otto III (983–1002) had two true predecessors: Constantine and Charlemagne.26

Janet Nelson has argued that the Ottonians thought of themselves as the head of

a gens, much as Charlemagne had.27 But if so, the Ottonians led a new gens and

theirs was a new dynasty. They were in a sense trapped, needing legitimacy from the

past but simultaneously needing to carve a niche out for themselves that was

independent of that past. This paradox was especially evident during the reign of

Otto III. Otto visited the palatine-chapel of St Mary at Aachen numerous times,

showered it with gifts, secured the creation of seven cardinal-priests and seven

cardinal-deacons for Aachen by Pope Gregory V, and was eventually buried there.

24 Karl Hauck, ‘Die Ottonen und Aachen, 876–936’, in KdG iv. 41–3, 53; and Timothy Reuter,

‘Regemque, quem in Francia pene perdidit, in patria magnifice recepit: Ottonian Ruler Representation in Synchronic and Diachronic Comparison’, in Janet L. Nelson (ed.), Medieval Polities and Modern

Mentalities (Cambridge, 2006), 136–7. Karl Hauck suggested that the progression was Caesar to

Charlemagne to Otto. Hagen Keller has more convincingly suggested that it should rather be

Constantine to Charlemagne to Otto. See Hagen Keller, ‘Die Ottonen und Karl der Grosse’,

Zeitschrift des Aachener Geschchtsvereins, 104–5 (2002–3), 79. But for a re-evaluation of the

importance of Aachen in the 10th cent., see Theo Riches, ‘The Carolingian Capture of Aachen in

978 and its Historiographical Footprint’, in Paul Fouracre and David Ganz (eds.), Frankland: The

Franks and the World of the Early Middle Ages (Manchester, 2008), 191–208.

25 Hauck, ‘Ottonen’, 51. For example, Henry II’s (1002–24) diplomas generally treated

Charlemagne as simply one name in a litany of predecessors. A diploma for Aachen in 1005,

however, only evoked Charlemagne and Otto III (983–1002). See Heinrici II. et Arduini Diplomata,

MGH Dipl. Ger. (Berlin, 1957), iii, nos. 115, 98, respectively.

26 Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, in Ottonian Germany: The Chronicon of Thietmar of

Merseburg, tr. David A. Warner (Manchester, 2001), 89, 124. Bruno of Segni, Vita sancti Adalberti,

MGH SS 4: 599. But others pushed back. The late 10th-cent. chronicler Benedict of St Andrew on

Monte Soratte pointedly compared the glory of Charlemagne with the barbarism of the Ottonians.

Benedict of St Andrew, Chronicon, MGH SS 3: 719.

27 Janet L. Nelson, ‘Kingship and Empire in the Carolingian World’, in Rosamond McKitterick

(ed.), Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation (Cambridge, 1994), 77.

The Birth of a Frankish Golden Age

21

Moreover, on Pentecost of the year 1000, the 20-year-old emperor entered the

chapel of St Mary’s at Aachen and descended into Charlemagne’s tomb to re-

emerge as his successor. Yet Otto also fostered new, different connections with

Rome, Byzantium, and newly Christianized Poland.28

The Salians did not immediately pursue the same relationship with Charlemagne

and Aachen as the Ottonians had, perhaps because Salian legitimacy derived from

continuity with the Ottonians, rather than the Carolingians. Conrad II (1024–39)

often listed Charlemagne among his predecessors but much more often invoked the

precedents of all three Ottos and Henry II.29 Henry III (1039–56) almost exclusively

followed his father’s example but Henry IV (1056–1105) began to reassert the

association between Charlemagne and the holder of the imperial title. For instance,

a diploma for Aachen given in 1072 invoked only Charlemagne, defender and founder

of churches.30 However, the use of Charlemagne by Henry IV and his imperial

supporters became problematized later in his reign, as Charlemagne’s legend became

a battleground, marshaled for and against the right of investiture. Lambert of Hersfeld,

writing of Henry IV in the 1070s, said that Henry had had the promise to become like

Charlemagne but instead (presumably because of the Investiture Contest) had become

Roboam (Solomon’s son who had allowed the kingdom of Israel to splinter).31

In West Francia, the Capetians did not initially claim to be successors of

Charlemagne, perhaps because the Carolingians and Capetians continued to vie

for the throne throughout the tenth century. (It would indeed have been quite an

act of chutzpah to claim that your legitimacy sprang from the greatest progenitor of

your rival’s line.) The early eleventh-century Historia Francorum Senonensis, for

instance, recorded that the ascension of Hugh Capet (987–96) marked the ‘end of

28 On this event, see Matthew Gabriele, ‘Otto III, Charlemagne, and Pentecost A.D. 1000: A

Reconsideration Using Diplomatic Evidence’, in Year 1000, 111–32; and, without reference to the

Last Emperor legend, Gerd Althoff, Otto III. (Darmstadt, 1998); Ludwig Falkenstein, Otto III. und

Aachen (Hanover, 1998); and Knut Görich, ‘Otto III. öffnet das Karlsgrab in Aachen: Überlegungen

zu Heiligenverehung, Heiligsprechung und Traditionsbildung’, in Gerd Althoff and Ernst Schubert

(eds.), Herrschaftsrepräsentation im Ottonischen Sachsen (Sigmaringen, 1998), 381–430. Part of Otto’s

thinking seems to have been that, as the son of a Saxon father and Byzantine mother, Otto’s idea of

empire was focused on Rome and he aped Byzantium in attempting to cohere his polyethnic empire.

See John W. Bernhardt, ‘Concepts and Practice of Empire in Ottonian Germany (950–1024)’, in