From the sources 12: Hilary the Englishman, a gay poet of the twelfth century

 

Happy LGBT History month everyone. Since its that time of the year, I thought I’d explore something I’ve barely ever touched on here – the history of medieval sexuality.

Why might the abduction of Ganymede by the lusty Zeus be the subject of a Romanesque column capital in the twelfth century monastery of Vezelay in Burgundy? More about that later ...

Scene from the Moralised Bible of Vienna, (Codex Vindobonensis 2554); Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, thirteenth century. The not so tolerant side of medieval attitudes towards homosexuality, which did get more severe in the Later Middle Ages.

The problem with studying LGBT history before about 1800 is basically twofold. The first is that the modern concepts of heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality and transgenderism are all very recent concepts for classifying people – the first three are all essentially Victorian, while the latter was first used in 1965. And for most of human history, people wouldn’t have identified themselves according to the type of person they felt a physical and psychological attraction to. In Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment (I’m less confident talking about non-western societies here), sexuality was about what you did to others or to your own body, not what you felt deep down inside. That’s not to say that there weren’t people back then who, in our modern terms, would be called straight, gay, bi or trans. In the same way, people of different skin colours have existed for millennia, yet it was only in relatively recent times that people started thinking in terms of “white people” and “black people.”

The second problem follows from this. How can we identify anyone who lived before the nineteenth century as gay? Its not as easy as you might think in the premodern sources named historical people who we can definitely show were exclusively attracted to their own biological sex.

Take for example one of the most famous gay men of Medieval England – Edward II. Did he have long-term sexual relationships with his right-hand men, Piers Gaveston and Hugh Despenser the Younger? The evidence generally suggests that he did. Was his marriage to Isabella of France a marriage of dynastic political necessity? Yes. But contrary to all the ingenious efforts of historical fiction writers to cast doubt on Edward III’s paternity (Mel Gibson making William Wallace a time-travelling paedophile has to be the most atrocious example), Edward II could get sufficiently aroused by his wife to father a son and heir. And while his wife Isabella was still a prepubescent girl, he fathered an illegitimate son, Adam Fitzroy, from an unnamed mistress in 1307. So, Edward II would be bisexual in our terms, right? That would probably make most sense.

 Similar things could be said about hundreds of other people from premodern history, from Alexander the Great to James VI of Scotland and I of England. That’s of course not to disregard the fact that sexuality is a spectrum, and that very few people are exclusively heterosexual or homosexual in their inclinations.

 And for some other noteworthy premodern gays, its all a matter of speculation. Take for example Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519). We know that he was arrested for sodomy with the goldsmith’s apprentice and gigolo Jacopo Saltarelli by the Florentine authorities in 1476. The charges were soon dropped, Leonardo never faced trial and no one made such accusations ever again. Was Leonardo homosexual? It’s a reasonable inference that he was. He certainly loved drawing and painting the (nude) male figure, he never married or had any known sexual relationships with women and he had a number of apprentices who weren’t very talented artists but were quite good-looking young men. At the same time, while it’s a reasonable inference to draw from the facts, even when put together they don’t exactly constitute proof either.

Thus for many figures in premodern history, especially from less well-documented periods (the late middle ages/ early modern period are much better in terms of sources than the early middle ages), we’re left with this dilemma. To say the historical figure in question was likely not gay can come across as mildly homophobic, or at the very least unable to read between the lines. This is brilliantly parodied in the popular meme format “historians … they were roommates.”

On the other hand, to say that these historical figures were gay without firm proof, bearing in mind of course that proof to the historian is somewhat different to proof for the lawyer or the scientist, can invite accusations of modern progressive wishful thinking.

Therefore, some historians would argue that it’s best not to focus on finding gay people in the medieval past. Instead, they would argue for focusing on how medieval people themselves thought about sexuality and what they saw as normal or deviant sexual behaviour, and how these things can be very different from our assumptions about human sexuality now. This is essentially the divide between LGBT and queer history explained, just how gender history differs from women’s history or the history of race differs from black history.

Still, I think we can find plenty of people who we can justifiably call gay in the Middle Ages. While there’s definitely too few sources to make medieval LGBT history anything more than a fairly small sub-field, what survives is actually quite rich and amounts to a lot more than political accusations of sexual transgression or records of homophobic persecution. For the pre-1200 period, the bit of the Middle Ages I’m mostly interested in, we have a surprising amount of Latin poetry written by clerics, monks and nuns that is undoubtedly homoerotic in tone. Whether monasteries were secret refuges for LGBT people or even gay subcultures hiding in plain sight, like the mollyhouses of eighteenth-century England, is debatable at best. And the very idea that LGBT people would have been more attracted to the religious vocation than straight people in the Middle Ages relies on all kinds of modern assumptions about masculinity and sexuality. To understand medieval monks, you’ve got to take seriously the idea that forsaking marriage and sex was once a lot more manly than it is now. Early medieval historian Rachel Stone has done some very good posts about why speculating about gay monks (but interestingly, not lesbian nuns) is fraught with problems but also a worthwhile historical exercise.

But anyway, here’s an example, one from the twelfth century by a certain Hilary the Englishman. We know almost nothing about him, except that he was apparently from England and he was one of the pupils of the great Peter Abelard, after his castration and separation from Heloise, at the Paraclete in Champagne in 1125. The poem is called “To an English boy” and goes thus:

Hail fair youth, who seeks no bribe,
Who regards being won with a gift as the height of vice,
In whom beauty and honesty have made their home,
Whose comeliness draws to itself the eyes of all who see him.

Golden haired, fair of face, with a small white neck,
Soft-spoken and gentle – but why do I praise thee singly?
Everything about you is beautiful and lovely; you have no imperfection,
Except that such fairness has no business devoting itself to chastity.

When nature formed you, she doubted for a moment
Whether to offer you as a girl or a boy,
But while she sets her mind’s eye to settling this,
Behold! You come forth, born as a vision for us all.

Afterward, she does finally extend her hand to you
And is astonished that she could have created anyone like you.
But it is clear that nature erred in only this one thing:
That when she had bestowed on you so much, she made your mortal.

No other mortal can be compared with you,
Whom nature made for herself, as if an only child;
Beauty establishes its home in you,
Whose sweet flesh shines brightly as the lily.

Believe me, if those former days of Jove should return,
His handservant would no longer be Ganymede,
But you carried off to heaven; by day the sweet cup
And by night your sweeter kisses you would administer to Jove.

You are the common desire of lasses and lads,
They sigh for you and hope for you, because they know you are unique.
They err or, rather, sin who call you “English”:
They should add letters and call you “angelic.”

(Translation is from John Boswell, “Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the beginning of the Christian Era to the fourteenth century”, Chicago (1980), pp 373 – 374)

The poet is definitely trying to demonstrate how learned he is here. He of course imagines the youth he is infatuated with replacing Ganymede on Mount Olympus, which of course shows knowledge of Virgil’s Aeneid Book V and Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book X both ancient Roman texts a well-educated twelfth century cleric with a good grasp of Latin would know. And at the end he humorously includes the incredibly famous pun (to medievalists anyway) supposedly said by Pope Gregory the Great in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History when he saw fair-haired slave boys in Rome in 590. Gregory’s pun of course works best in the original Latin where its non angli sed angeli. In another of his poems, to a certain boy of Anjou, Hilary refers to the myth of Phaedra and Hippolytus from Seneca, and to the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife from the Hebrew Bible.

Thus some historians and literary scholars might argue that these poems were little more than just writing exercises used as a pedagogical tool for practicing writing poetry like Classical Roman authors, or were just playful intellectual games. But if so, that begs a lot of questions. Why do so by writing love lyrics? Surely the other genres of Classical Latin poetry, like epics, odes and even satires would be more appropriate. Or indeed, why did these twelfth century clerics focus so much on the literature of the Augustan age? Why not instead make your main schoolroom texts the Christian Roman poets of the fourth and fifth centuries? Why Horace, Ovid and Virgil rather than Claudian, Prudentius and Rutilius Namantianus?

What all of this demonstrates is two things. One, twelfth century Western Europe’s reverence for Classical antiquity was very deep indeed. If they were simply in need of poetic eloquence, they could find it elsewhere. The second is that Hilary’s poems and others like it were most likely written as genuine gay love poems. Indeed, there is evidence that some monasteries and cathedral schools were worried that routine poetry composition exercises in the scriptorium were being used to deviant ends. Our old friend, Guibert de Nogent, a few generations before Hilary, got into trouble when he wrote sexually explicit and obscene poems inspired by his adolescent reading of Ovid. Some might call it in his case the medieval equivalent of a geeky teenager writing a Kirk and Spock, Legolas and Gimli or Nico DiAngelo with half a dozen different characters from the Percy Jackson universe (before his relationship with Will Solace became canon anyway). Websites like Wattpad are basically devoted to this stuff. Of course, Guibert was writing his juvenile compositions in a conservative Benedictine monastery, Saint Germer de Fly. The world of the twelfth century schools that Hilary the Englishman inhabited may have been a bit more liberal in this regard, making it all the more possible to sneak in some gay love poems to fellow students while you’re busying yourselves with the trivium.

I aim to, in future posts, explore more of these gay love poems from the twelfth century, including some by women. I also want to look at what general medieval attitudes to what we would now call homosexuality were like.

One year blogoversary

 And so here we are. This blog has reached its first-year anniversary. And what a ride it has been. It has gone well beyond what I initially envisioned for this blog. Initially, I’d envisioned it as mostly somewhere for random thoughts and musings about the early middle ages I kept getting all the time (even in the shower, believe it or not), but never wrote down somewhere. But once it actually got going, it ended up becoming properly educational, and encouraged me to read more into certain topics I hadn’t really explored in much detail before. And I’m pleased to see that it has a lot more enthusiastic readership than I expected, though I do think I need to work harder to grow the community of readers – a Facebook page and, though this does make me grimace, a Twitter account may need to be set up sometime in the immediate future. Thank you so much to all of you for your support, whether you’re one of my long-time readers or this is the first post on this blog you’ve read.

I have also thought about some other necessary changes to this blog. The age of monster articles, what the Guardian would call “the long read,” are over. As a rule, going forward, no blogpost can exceed 1500 words in length. If its too long for you to read while you’re having your morning coffee, when you’re on the bus/ train to and from work or when you’re doing some internet browsing before bed, then really it’s a load of self-indulgent time-wasting on my part, lets be honest. I’ll also make it a commitment to release content more regularly. Until now there have been that there have been some periods of really intense blogging activity, followed by lengthy caesuras, much like the activity of many an early medieval chancery. But now its time to go full Angevin England mode and commit to a regular and predictable output, just like the calendars of the pipe rolls, close rolls and patent rolls but a lot less bureaucratic. I shall aim to release one every Monday morning at 7 am, though that may have to sometimes be every other Monday morning – I am starting a PGCE programme to train as a secondary school history teacher next month, after all. All subsequent posts will also be placed into one of five categories: from the sources; theory time; book review; controversies; first hand encounters with the medieval past. All of this I should have done a long time ago, but I was spurred into action after a computer glitch resulting from faulty Wi-Fi destroyed the first draft of this post, which I had spent two days working on – you can imagine how upset I was. I hope you’ll like these changes. But now let’s get on to some exciting special content.

Beowulf and the Merovingians

I’m sure you, my readers, are familiar with Beowulf. Ever since it was first translated into Modern English and published in 1815, it’s been recognised as one of the great foundational texts of English Literature. Historians now would generally see it as an invaluable source for Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian kingship, warrior masculinity and how early medieval Christians in Northern Europe approached their pre-Christian past. It’s a shame that nothing like it exists from the Frankish world, where I work on. Einhard tells us that Charlemagne “ordered that the very old German songs, in which the deeds and wars of ancient kings were celebrated, should be written down and preserved.” but posterity has handed down none of these Old Frankish epics to us in the present, with no small consequences for how differently historians view elite culture in Francia and Anglo-Saxon England.

Now, the plot of Beowulf should be familiar to many of my readers anyway but (spoiler alert) the eponymous hero, after succeeding his cousin Hygelac as king of the Geats (a people living in southwestern Sweden), dies fighting a dragon at the end. His faithful warrior companion, Wiglaf, then makes an ominous speech at Beowulf’s funeral. Here is an extract from it:

Now must our people look for time of war, as soon as afar to Frisian and to Frank the king’s fall is revealed. Bitter was the feud decreed against the Hugas (Franks), when Hygelac came sailing with his raiding fleet to Frisian land. There the Hetware in battle assailed him, and valiantly with overwhelming strength achieved that the warrior should lay him down: he fell amid the host, not one fair thing did that lord to his good men give. From us hath been ever since the favour of the Merovingian lord withheld.

(“Beowulf”, translated and with a commentary by J.R.R Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien, Harper Collins, 2014, lines 2446 – 2555, p 98)

Now in terms of being a source for the political history (in the traditional sense) of Scandinavia and the North Sea in the age of the barbarian great migrations, Beowulf is highly suspect. While most scholars would agree that it is at least partially based on authentic folk memories and oral histories of what was going on in Northern Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries, collective memory, like individual memory, can be very unreliable, with various things getting distorted, omitted or invented over time – anyone who has done family history research will likely be aware of this. But in the case of Hygelac’s disastrous proto-Viking raid on Frisia/ Frankish Gaul, we do have an independent primary source to verify it. Let’s turn to someone who is very much a friend of this blog, none other than Gregory of Tours:

The next thing which happened was that the Danes sent a fleet under their King Chlochilaich and invaded Gaul from the sea. They came ashore, laid waste to one of the regions ruled by Theuderic and captured some of the inhabitants. They loaded their ships with what they had stolen or seized, and then they set sail for home. Their king remained on the shore, waiting until the boats had gained the open sea, when he planned to go on board. When Theuderic heard that his land had been invaded by foreigners, he sent his son Theudebert to those parts with a powerful army and all the necessary equipment. The Danish king was killed, the enemy fleet was beaten in a naval battle and all the booty was brought back on shore once more.

(“The History of the Franks” by Gregory of Tours, edited and translated by Lewis Thorpe, Penguin Classics, 1974, III.3 pp 165 – 166)

Chlochilaich sounds like a very mangled rendering of Hygelac, and he’s mentioned as a king of the Danes, not the Geats. But otherwise, its exactly what is described in Wiglaf’s funeral oration for Beowulf. Since we know, from the events that come immediately before and after this passage in Gregory of Tours’ histories, that Hygelac’s raid must have taken place c.521, that means that the poem is set in the first third of the sixth century. Beowulf is therefore meant to be a contemporary of Boethius, St Benedict of Nursia, Clovis, Justinian and Theodora and, if he existed, King Arthur.

And just as this incident didn’t go forgotten in Anglo-Saxon England, the Franks remembered it as well. The Book of the History of the Franks of 727 describes it almost identically to Gregory of Tours, who was the source its anonymous author used, but unlike in Gregory’s account, Hygelac is rendered Cothelac and he’s referred to as a rex Gotorum – literally, king of the Goths. And of course, we can rely on Adhemar of Chabannes, writing in the early eleventh century, to remember it – he remembered almost every significant episode in Frankish history:

(Original Latin) In illo tempore Dani cum rege suo, nomine Cothelaico, cum navali hoste per altum mare Gallias petunt, devastantes et captivantes omnia, et, plenis navibus de captivis, altum mare intrant, rege eorum ad litus maris residante. Quod cum Theodorico nunciatum fuisset, Theodebertum filium suum cum magnum exercitu in illis partibus direxit. Qui, consecutus eos, pugnavit cum eis cede magna atque prostravit, regem eorum interfecit, predam tulit et in terram suam restituit.

(“Chronique” by Adhemar of Chabannes, edited by Jules Chavanon, 1897, p 23)

(My translation): At that time, the Danes with their king, called Hygelac, with a host of ships made for Gaul through the North Sea, devastating everything and taking everyone captive, and, with ships full of captives, entered the North Sea, with their king residing by the shore. When that was announced to Theuderic, he ordered his son Theudebert to go to those parts with a large army. Theudebert, having pursued the Danes, fought with them and after great losses brought them to heel, killed their king, carried away the plunder and restored it to his land.

Notably, Adhemar, like Gregory before him, refers to Hygelac as a king of the Danes, rather than a king of the Goths like the “Book of the History of the Franks”, thus indicating he consulted Gregory’s work. This goes against Jules Chavanon’s claim that, in the first fifty-one chapters of his Chronicle, Adhemar just copied the “Book of the History of the Franks” almost verbatim and inserted a few additions. He was much too good a historian for that!

Even in the late middle ages, the defeat of Hygelac's raid was still remembered. Here it is depicted in the Tours manuscript of the Grand Chroniques de France, illustrated between 1455 and 1460 by the great French Renaissance painter Jean Fouquet. 

Now the account of Hygelac’s raid, specifically the mentioning of the Merovingians, has a bearing on an important scholarly debate. When was Beowulf composed? Since its author, if its ever appropriate to attribute a traditional epic to the work of a single author (Classicists will recognise this problem for the Iliad and the Odyssey), is anonymous, we can’t date it according to when they lived. Old English vernacular literature begins to appear in the final third of the seventh century, when the poet Caedmon wrote down his Hymn of Creation under the patronage Abbess Hilda of Whitby (d.684). But Beowulf survives in only one manuscript dating from either the last quarter of the tenth century or the first quarter of the eleventh century. Thus, as a notorious conference of academic Anglo-Saxonists in 1981 known as the “Scandal in Toronto” hammered home, scholars have a whole range of different estimates for the date of the composition of Beowulf, with c.685 at one end and c.1000 at the other.

The first folio of Beowulf in the Southwick Codex (c.1000), the one manuscript in which the poem survives.

Tom Shippey, a respected scholar of Old English literature and the leading academic expert on J.R.R Tolkien, is in the very early date (c.685 – 750) for Beowulf camp. In 2007, reviving an argument made all the way back in 1849, he suggested that that the mentioning of the Merovingians in Wiglaf’s speech indicates that Beowulf couldn’t have been written any later than 750. His reasoning for this is that, after Pippin the Short deposed the last Merovingian king, Childeric III, in 751, the new dynasty, the Carolingians, gave their predecessors damnatio memoriae treatment – like the ancient Roman emperors for whom that term was originally applied, they were vanished from the official histories.

Now Shippey’s argument was thoroughly criticised in a follow-up article that year by Walter Goffart. Goffart argued that the Carolingians did not give the previous dynasty damnatio memoriae treatment, and copies of the “Book of the History of the Franks” were present in Anglo-Saxon England. Goffart himself believes, for his own reasons, that Beowulf could not have been written any earlier than 923. Now, with regard to the whole damnatio memoriae thing I’m on Goffart’s side. While Carolingian historians, like the anonymous author of the Early Annals of Metz or Einhard in The Life of Charlemagne, did their best to portray the last Merovingian kings as lazy, degenerate and foolish, whose loss of real power to their mayors of the palace followed their eventual deposition was inevitable, they didn’t try to erase them from history at all. And in the 860s, Archbishop Wulfaldus of Bourges used Merovingian charters issued in the names of kings Childebert and Chilperic in a court case against Count Eccehard of Macon over ownership of the manor of Perrecy. Would King Charles the Bald’s judges have led that fly if it was no longer politically correct to speak of the Merovingians anymore? And, to state the obvious, England, while undoubtedly part of the wider Carolingian world, was never ruled by the Carolingians. So Shippey’s argument fails. But that doesn’t mean I agree with Goffart’s proposals for the dating of Beowulf either. And as someone with next to no knowledge of Old English philology, I can’t really take a position on the debate. But scholarly opinion, following the publication of Leonard Niedorf’s seminal The Dating of Beowulf: A Reconsideration (2014), is starting to gravitate towards the earliest date range.

 

Tolkien and the Carolingians

Since with the discussion of Beowulf we’ve ventured in the scholarly territory where J.R.R Tolkien was undisputed master (at least within the confines of Oxford) back in the day, where are the Carolingians to be found in Middle Earth? The northern early Middle Ages are there in abundance – the languages and place names of Middle Earth are modelled on Old English, Old Norse and Old Welsh, and many of the races that populate it are taken straight from Norse mythology (even the orcs, Tolkien’s trademark creation, get their name from an Old English word meaning hobgoblin or demon). Indeed, the Lord of the Rings is very consciously written to be like an Anglo-Saxon epic, and in many ways deviates from the literary conventions of the modern novel – fans like myself appreciate this, but other readers find it frustrating that more weight is given to lengthy descriptions of the exterior world over interior drama. But there doesn’t seem to be any place for the Carolingians in Tolkien’s majestic creation.

Or is there indeed? Concerning the hobbits (Tolkien’s other trademark creation and the only race that doesn’t have their provenance in Germanic folklore), some of them do have Frankish names – Pippin, Meriadoc, Fredegar, Adelard, Drogo, Dudo, Odo, Wilibald etc. But this is most likely intended for purely ironic effect. The Hobbits are famously idle, peaceable folks who just want eat and be left alone, while the Franks are famously vigorous, warlike and expansionist – can you imagine someone saying, to paraphrase a Byzantine proverb given by Einhard in The Life of Charlemagne, “have a hobbit as your friend, not as your neighbour”?

But there’s more. At the time Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry leave the Shire, the kingdom of Gondor is ruled by stewards, as it has been for 969 years since their branch of the royal house of Elendil died out – Aragorn is from the northern (Arnor) branch. The evolution of the office of the steward sounds remarkably identical to that of the mayors of the palace in the Merovingian realm. They started off as simple palace officials, responsible for managing the king’s household and doing the business of government during the king’s absence/ a royal minority. But gradually they assumed more and more de facto control of the executive, were able to make their office hereditary (in the Merovingian realm by the Pippinids/ Carolingians, in Gondor by the House of Hurin) and then after the royal line apparently terminated, ruled without a king – compare the Carolingians’ puny four years to the House of Hurin’s 969. But its here the comparison ends. After Charles Martel’s death in 741, the Carolingians found the last surviving Merovingian, Childeric III (what relation he was to his predecessor, Theuderic IV, we’ll never actually know) and made him king before deposing him in 751 due to his apparent uselessness. Meanwhile, the Stewards of Gondor soldier on until the one true king, Aragorn finally turns up. And in The Return of the King, Gandalf tells Pippin that Boromir once asked his father, Denethor, how long it would be until the stewards could make themselves kings. The penultimate steward of Gondor then replied “a few years, maybe, in other places of less royalty … in Gondor, ten thousand years would not suffice.” Perhaps Tolkien, who famously had a profound dislike of anything French, intended that as a bitchslap to the Carolingians and the Franks/ French for being less patient with their kings than the Gondorians.

 

"Francia has no king. Francia needs no king." So might Charles Martel have said in 740. But his son, Pippin the Short, evidently disagreed.

Did Charlemagne have a beard?

Certainly, its been artistic convention since the late middle ages to portray him with one. Albrecht Durer’s very famous 1512 portrait of the king of the Franks/ emperor in the west portrays him with a beard that wouldn’t look out of place on one of Tolkien’s wizards, and that’s kind of set the gold standard for artistic portrayals of Charlemagne since. But is it actually true to the historical record?

Definitely bearded here. The coronation of Charlemagne in 800 from the Saint Denis Manuscript of the Grand Chroniques de France (c.1325 - 1350)

The very famous Charlemagne reliquary bust (1349) at Aachen, photographed by me. Will do a post about this. There's more than first meets the eye.

The Frankish emperor depicted here in an French book of hours from the early fifteenth century, British Library MS Harley 2952 folio 62v

Panel painting of Charlemagne from the Aachen cathedral treasury dating to 1470, photographed by me. In the late middle ages, they had to invent coats of arms for all the historical figures who lived before heraldry came into being in the twelfth century. So they gave Charlemagne a coat of arms that was half the German eagle, half the French fleur de lys to reflect his status as a forefather to both the French and the Germans.

Durer's portrait of Charlemagne - absolutely majestic, but anachronistic on so many levels.

We have a famous physical description of Charlemagne from Einhard:

His body was large and strong. He was tall, but not unduly so, since his height was six times the length of his own foot. The top of his head was round, his eyes were large and lively, his nose was a little larger than average, he had fine white hair and a cheerful and attractive face. So, standing or sitting his presence was greatly increased in authority and dignity. His neck seemed short and thick and his stomach seemed to project, but the symmetry of the other parts hid those flaws. His pace was firm and the whole bearing of his body powerful. Indeed, his voice was clear but, given his size, not as strong as might have been expected. His health was good until four years before he died, when he suffered from constant fevers. Towards the end he would limp on one foot. Even then, he trusted his own judgement more than the advice of his doctors, whom he almost hated, since they urged him to stop eating roast meat, which he liked, and to start eating boiled meats.

(“Two Lives of Charlemagne” by Einhard and Notker the Stammerer, translated with an introduction and notes by David Ganz, Penguin Classics, 2008, p 34)

Now, as I remember well from doing “The Transformation of the Ancient World, 370 – 900” with Conrad Leyser in my first year at Oxford, this is a classic extract that tutors in early medieval history give their students to teach them source criticism. You see, while Einhard is obviously a close friend of Charlemagne who knew him well, he has very consciously modelled his biography of Charlemagne on Suetonius’ Lives of the Twelve Caesars, and at various points in this passage he directly quotes the ancient Roman author. Thus, you do have to ask: how much of this is the real Charlemagne, and how much of this is Einhard trying to present him as a deified Roman emperor? However, on closer examination you realise that he’s quoting Suetonius’ biographies of half a dozen different emperors, which suggests that Einhard is not attempting a comparison between Charlemagne and, say, Augustus, and that actually he is talking about the real Charlemagne and has simply lifted the quotes from Suetonius that fit Charlemagne’s description, so he can be true to fact whilst also showing off his Classical learning. But, more to the point, there is no mention of a beard here!

For contemporary written descriptions of the emperor’s physical appearance, that is all we have got. But we do have three artistic depictions from the time. The first are coins minted with Charlemagne’s image after his coronation as emperor in 800. The second is a tenth century copy of a ninth century manuscript illumination that depicts Charlemagne with one of his sons, Pippin of Italy, and a scribe. The third is an equestrian statue, which I saw in the Louvre when I visited it in May this year, dating between 800 and 875 that may be of Charlemagne or his grandson, Charles the Bald. There is a common pattern between all of them – Charlemagne is clean-shaven with short hair and a moustache. If we combine these with Einhard’s account, the overwhelming likelihood is that Charlemagne did not have a beard.

And indeed, if we look at other surviving artistic depictions of Carolingian rulers from the ninth century, we’ll see the same pattern yet again – they’re all clean-shaven with short hair and moustaches. What is the reason for this?

Paul Edward Dutton, a North America-based Carolingianist scholar, has an interesting theory for this. He argues that the Carolingians groomed themselves in such a matter in order to present themselves as a clean break from the previous dynasty, the Merovingians, who famously sported luxurious long hair and beards. Indeed, the Merovingians would be known to posterity as “the long-haired kings.” The whole long hair and beards vs short hair and moustaches may well therefore have been part of the Carolingians’ propaganda drive to present themselves as vigorous and morally upstanding in contrast to their lazy and degenerate predecessors. But that leaves another question unanswered – why did artists from the later Middle Ages onwards feel the need to depict Charlemagne with a beard? I cannot even begin to speculate about that.

At least by the late nineteenth century they got it right! The mosaics from the upper camera of Aachen cathedral depict Charlemagne with short hair and a moustache - clearly the prosperous bourgeoisie of Wilhelmine Germany who funded this had read their Einhard. Photograph by yours truly.

Hercules and the Carolingians: corruption and classicism in the poetry of Theodulf of Orleans

 

A rather naturalistic depiction of Hercules from the Leiden Aratea (c.816 - 840), a Carolingian copy of an astronomical treatise by the Roman general (and father of Caligula) Germanicus Julius Caesar (15 BC - 19 AD), which is basically a Latin translation of the Phaenomena, a poem about the constellations by the 3rd century BC Greek poet Aratus. This manuscript was likely commissioned for and owned by the Emperor Louis the Pious himself. The Aratea is essentially a picture book, with the beautiful images of the constellations  captioned by the relevant verses of the poem written in Rustic Capitals (see the right hand folio in the image), the deluxe handwriting of the ancient Romans which the Carolingians liked to use for Classical texts. For the Bible and religious works they used Carolingian miniscule, which forms the basis of the handwriting we use today.

Hi everyone! Since its world poetry day, lets return to our old friend Theodulf of Orleans. Now, as you may remember from the post I did about him two months ago, as well as being a poet, courtier and bishop extraordinaire, he was a royal missus dominicus? But what the hell is a missus dominicus when it's at home? you might ask. 

The role of the missus dominicus in Carolingian government can be described as something of a hybrid of circuit judge and superintendent. Their job was basically to hear cases that the local courts (placita/ malla publica) were unable to deliver a fair verdict on, ensure that provincial governors (counts, dukes and margraves) and their teams subordinate officials were behaving themselves and generally ensure that everything was running smoothly and that the king's policies were actually being implemented in the localities. Typically, in each provincial circuit, the missi dominci would consist of one cleric (a bishop or an abbot) and a lay nobleman, both of whom would not be landowners/ provincial office holders in their own circuits so as to prevent conflicts of interest. They start appearing as ad hoc commissions under Charlemagne the late 780s, but their work had become more regularised by the end of the eighth century. They thus came to provide an important link between centre and locality - by 800, Charlemagne's Empire stretched from the Elbe to Catalonia and from the North Sea to Tuscany, so there was only so much work a peripatetic imperial court or even Charlemagne's sons being set up as regional sub-kings (Louis in Aquitaine and Pepin in Italy) could do.

A modern artist's impression of a pair Missi Dominici going on tour in the provinces

Theodulf of Orleans was indeed one of these missi dominici and as you might have gathered from the previous post, as a highly learned and energetic individual who commanded a lot of local power and respect (in the Loire valley area) and an enthusiastic supporter of Carolingian reform, he was the perfect fit for the job. Yet as we'll see in the poem, what he experienced in his activities, or at least claimed to have, as a royal missus he found sobering and darkened his outlook on the operation of the law and justice in the provinces and what is work as an agent of Carolingian reform could achieve. But, as we'll also see, there's a lot more to poem that kindles the historian's interest than that.

Theodulf and the antique vase

Too often I see that our judges relinquish the law to those 
Who bribe them with gold, fine food and delicious drink.
Often I am keen to prevent those who wish to accept bribes
But there are many wishing to take, few willing to say no.

Great crowds in gathering after gathering sought us out,
Every age and every sex was represented there:
Small ones, old and young ones, fathers, unmarried women and men,
Elders, youths, old women, husbands, wives, and children.
Why do I hold back? These people immediately offered us gifts,
Thinking that if they gave, they would receive what they wanted in return.
They tried hard to smash our resistance with this assault,
So that our will would collapse before the intense pressure.
One of them promises me gems and a crystal
If I can get for him the lands belonging to another.
Another showed me a huge number of golden coins,
Some of which bore Arabic lettering,
Some, these silver, bearing Latin inscriptions;
All to help him obtain estates, fields, and houses. 
In a hushed voice yet another whispered to my assistant, 
That he should carry the following message to me:
"I possess a vase decorated with ancient figures.
Its metal is pure and it is heavy to hold.
On its sides are engraved the crimes of Cacus:
The skulls of men stuck on stakes and rotting flesh,
His rocks chained down and evidence of rapine and theft,
The fields coloured with the blood of men and cattle. 
There Hercules in fury smashed the bones of Vulcan's son,
Who spits out his father's flame from his beastly jaw,
As Hercules knees him in the stomach and kicks his abdomen,
Shattering with his club the beast's smouldering face and throat.
There you can see the bulls emerging from the cave,
Afraid they might be dragged back again.
On the inner mouth of the vase, on a thin band,
Can be seen a series of small figures:
The Tirinthian infant [Hercules himself] slaying the two snakes,
And his ten labours shown in their proper sequence.
The outer surface of the vase, however, is well-worn from handling,
And a scene that once existed there is rubbed down. 
There Alceus, the river Calydon, and the centaur Nessus,
Fight over the beauty of Deianira.
The poisonous robe laced with the blood of Nessus is depicted,
Along with the frightening fate of the wretched Lichas.
As well Antaeus is seen losing life in the arms of the powerful Hercules,
For he is prevented from touching the ground as he needed to.
This vase I shall bring to you my lord - for he was calling me his lord -
If he heeds my requests.
There are a great many people - mothers, fathers,
Children and youths of both sexes -
Whom my father and mother left behind as free,
And from that fact they remain free.
If I could falsify their records, the lord would own the ancient vase,
I would own those people and you would soon receive gifts."
Another said, "I own a rug dyed in a variety of colours,
Which I believe a wild Arab sent.
On it a young calf can be seen following its mother and a heifer trailing a bull.
The colours of the calf and heifer are alike, while those of the cow and the bull are the same.
You can see the beauty of the piece, and the artistic use of colour.
And how a small circle is artistically joined to larger ones.
I am involved in a dispute with another man over some nice cows,
On behalf of which I am ready to give suitable gifts:
A calf for the calves, a bull for the bulls,
One cow for the cows, and one ox for the oxen.
Another man promises to give me some beautiful cups,
If I grant that he need not hand over what another demands ... 

Oh this foul plague [of bribery] which is found everywhere,
Oh this crime, this madness, this too savage habit.
Which lays claim to and evilly captures the whole world,
There is no one who does not give and no one who does not take bribes.

(Translation sourced from Paul Edward Dutton, Carolingian Civilisation: A Reader, University of Toronto Press, 2009, pp 100 - 102)

This highly intelligently crafted poem, rich and vivid in its imagery and full of emotion deserves much by way of literary analysis, but that is not what is going to be done here - while I very much prefer this kind of stuff to charters, I'm a historian not a literary scholar. 

Theodulf gives us much insight into the kind of corrupt practices that the missi were confronted with in the localities in the time of Charlemagne. The man who tries to bribe Theodulf with the gold and silver coins, and the one mentioned in the previous two lines who tries to bribe him with the precious stones, seem to be trying to obtain a title deed to estates in the rightful possession of others that they have obtained illegally. The man who offers him the beautiful Arab rug depicting the four cows is trying to get Theodulf to give him a favourable judgement in a dispute he has with another free landed proprietor over the ownership of some cattle. And the man who tries to bribe Theodulf with the antique vase is hoping that Theodulf will forge some documents so that the erstwhile unfree men and women his parents manumitted will become slaves again. 

Theodulf himself is completely horrified by these corrupt practices, which are very well attested in other Carolingian sources, and feels deep sympathy for those victimised by them. What Theodulf is describing is fairly quotidian, and are certainly far from being one of the worst examples of corruption encountered by a royal missus. A generation later, Wala (d.836), serving as a missus for Emperor Louis the Pious in Italy in the 820s, encountered an elaborate cover-up of the expropriation and murder of an aristocratic widow in which people at all levels of Italian society were implicated. Its precisely because of stuff like this that historians' assessments of the Carolingian reforms have been so mixed in the last hundred years - see Chris Wickham, "The Inheritance of Rome", pp 390 - 392 for a very even-handed view of the debate. On the one hand, we a high-minded and dynamic royal government that is clearly able to make its presence felt in the localities. On the other hand, we have pervasive corruption at all levels of society that requires the skeletal Carolingian state bureaucracy to bite off more than it can chew. future posts I'll hope to cover more about the Carolingian reforms - the evidence, when looked at as a whole, certainly permits a far more optimistic view of them, which is what historians have increasingly swung towards in the last 30 years, than does Theodulf's poem by itself.

Other significant details include the importance of written documents over memory and orality hinted at by the need to forge documents in order for the litigants to get favourable verdicts. Theodulf was of course a Missus Dominicus in Aquitaine and the Midi, where the Gallo-Roman legacy remained very strong and with it a very strong tradition of written law and archival and notarial culture among the law - written wills never disappeared here like they did in Gaul north of the Loire following the Frankish takeover at the end of the fifth century. Another thing that's interesting is the references to coinage, the gold coins being described as having Arabic lettering and the silver ones bearing Latin inscriptions. The golden coins are clearly gold mancuses imported from nearby Muslim al-Andalus, some of which made their way as far north as the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia (see below).

A Gold dinar with Arabic writing, bearing the name of King Offa of Mercia (757 - 796) 

Meanwhile, the Franks, since the failure of the sub-imperial gold coinage in the late seventh century and the currency reforms of Pepin the Short (r.741 - 768) only minted in silver (see below).

A silver denier of Charlemagne with a cross on the obverse and the Carolingian monogram on the inverse

Gold coinage in eighth and ninth century Trans-Pyrenean Europe was thus a real prestige item that could only be acquired by contacts with the Muslim world, as Carolingian Aquitaine and indeed Anglo-Saxon Mercia both clearly had - there, here's your nice little dose of fashionable global history for you.

What I found most interesting about it, however, were the Classical elements, specifically the antique vase. Traditionally, scholars following the lead of Julius Schlosser in 1892 presumed that Theodulf was providing a straightforward description of an ancient Roman vase which has since been lost. However,  Lawrence Nees in "Theodulf's mythical silver Hercules vase, Poetica Vanitas, and the Augustinian Critique of the Roman Heritage", Dumbarton Oaks Papers Volume 41 (1987), pp 443 - 451 argues against this. He points out that, for starters, Theodulf in the poem isn't actually describing an object that he can see with his own eyes. Rather he is describing an object that the slave master trying to sweet talk Theodulf's servant has described to him, and because Theodulf did not accept the bribe after the servant relayed the information on to him he never saw the object himself. He also demonstrates well that the descriptions of Hercules' encounters with Cacus and Nessus are not drawn from any extant Roman artwork but straight from Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses, and that what Theodulf was doing here fitted squarely into the poetic exercise of ecphrasis - describing an object or place (real or imagined) and extrapolating deeper meaning from it.

While I find Nees' arguments broadly convincing, I do think its overwhelmingly likely that Theodulf did have some interest in ancient Roman material culture. This is especially clear from the highly archaeological manner in which he describes it, such as mentioning how certain of its features are worn and erased by centuries of use, which strongly suggest that Theodulf had seen and handled a good few Roman antiquities in his time. And even if he had no real interest in them except as imaginary poetic devices, we know that other people in the Carolingian era did have an appreciation for them as physical objects which they used in their daily lives. See for example the "Cup of the Ptolemies" (see below), crafted from onyx in Alexandria sometime in the first century AD, which ended up in the possession of Charlemagne and his grandson Charles the Bald.

Concerning the broader meaning of this part of the poem, Nees argues that Theodulf's take on the labours of Hercules is far from celebratory. He points to how for all that the description of Cacus lair matches the one contained in Virgil's Aeneid, while the Roman poet portrays Hercules as a civiliser clearing the site in which the glorious city of Rome will one day flourish of a troublesome monster, Theodulf's Hercules comes across more like a thug driven by rage and a desire for violence. I think Nees goes a bit too far in claiming that Theodulf, like St Augustine before him, tries to cast a sympathetic light on Cacus - its clear from Theodulf's description that he thinks Cacus had been an absolute menace in the countryside of Latium, stealing cattle and terrorising innocent humans. And in describing Deianira, Theodulf emphasises how Hercules fights with Nessus out of lust for her beauty. And after the poisoned robe kills Hercules, there is of course no suggestion of his Apotheosis. Nees thus argues that Theodulf is using Hercules, a heroic figure yet one nonetheless, by his estimation anyway, driven by pride, lust and brutish impulses, as metaphor by which to attack pagan Roman culture as fundamentally inadequate, lacking as it did the higher truths of Christian revelation which would otherwise make people cast aside its flawed notions of heroism and virtue. He argues, fairly convincingly, that Theodulf was following in the tradition of St Augustine, who in his "City of God" (430) his extensive knowledge of pagan Roman literature and histories to turn the pagans own stories and symbols against them, which is what, as Nees sees it, Theodulf is doing with Hercules' exploits as recounted in Virgil and Ovid. 

Here it is interesting to note that Theodulf most likely wrote this poem in 799, in the build-up to Charlemagne's coronation as Roman Emperor in the West on Christmas Day 800. Charlemagne had just rescued Pope Leo III from the Roman mob, and talks must have already begun about him whether or not the pope should repay him by granting him the imperial title - contrary to what Einhard in The Life of Charlemagne claims, the coronation in Old St Peter's Basilica was almost certainly not a surprise to the emperor. Perhaps he might have seen his royal master taking up the mantle of the Caesars as another poisoned cloak, and in writing this poem was trying to weigh in against Charlemagne's other advisors, such as Alcuin, who were more positive about the idea of Roman imperial revival. This is incredibly speculative on my part, but perhaps Theodulf, in placing this in a longer excursus on judicial corruption, was trying to give a warning to Charlemagne. That being that he should not lose sight of the fact that, first and foremost, he is a Christian king with a duty to uphold justice and good morals among his subjects and to eradicate corruption and oppression of the poor by the powerful. Taking up the glamorous yet tainted mantle of Roman Emperor, synonymous with the celebration of power and might (represented in the poem by Hercules), makes him potentially risk losing sight of that, and from there all kinds of trouble begins.

Theodulf may be a figure very mentally remote from us in certain respects. If Lawrence Nees is right to see him as a thinker in the Augustinian tradition, which would later be a huge influence on mainstream Protestant Christianity in both its Lutheran and Calvinist forms, then Theodulf obviously believed that people could not be truly moral without being blessed with the divine revelations of Yahweh (in the Old Testament/ Jesus Christ (in the New Testament). As Martin Luther, probably one the greatest and most famous Augustinians (in both the narrow and the broad sense) who ever lived, and John Calvin would argue 700 years after Theodulf, Socrates and Cicero were not exemplary figures (contra Erasmus) and would be burning for all eternity in the fires of Hell. Why? Because, as Augustine had argued back in the early fifth century, they, unlike Moses or St Paul,  did not have God's revelation and grace and therefore could not be moral or be saved. Theodulf would have probably agreed, and I doubt that he, like Dante Alighieri (1265 - 1321), would have had Virgil guide him through Hell and Purgatory, let alone, like Peter Abelard (1079 - 1142), imagine the pagan poets and philosophers being taken up to Heaven, along with the Old Testament Prophets, by Christ in the Harrowing of Hell. Except among extreme Protestants in places like the US Bible Belt, this way of thinking would come across as profoundly disturbing to most Christians, let alone most people generally, today. It seems self-evident to most of us that people in all times, place and cultures are capable of being good and virtuous, and the idea that people can rightly to be condemned to eternal punishment and alienation from God simply for not knowing about him, indeed not being able to know about him, seems revolting to us. More than a generation after Theodulf, the heretic Gottschalk of Orbais (808 - 867) would anticipate the Protestant theologians of the sixteenth century in taking Augustinianism to its extreme. According to Gottschalk, not only are all non-Christians damned, but so are all but a small chosen group of Christians (God's elect), who have been destined to go to Heaven before they were even born on account of God being all-powerful and all-knowing. A brilliant book on this whole subject area is John Marenbon's "Pagans and Philosophers: The Problem of Paganism from Augustine to Leibniz" (2015) in which the author explores how medieval and early modern Christian thinkers grappled with the three thorny questions of whether pagans could provide valuable intellectual and moral wisdom to Christians, whether they could be virtuous and whether they could be saved without conversion, both in relation to Graeco-Roman antiquity and more contemporary encounters with Scandinavians, Mongols, Native Americans and Chinese. The story he tells is an incredibly erudite and complex one, and certainly not one of linear progression from medieval bigotry to early modern open-mindedness.

Yet at the same time, there are many ways in which Theodulf isn't actually that mentally removed from us secular liberal humanists in the twenty-first century at all. This is a man who, as is evident from the poem, believes in the rule of law and an honest and equitable judicial system, and despises official corruption and the oppression of the poor and vulnerable by the rich and powerful. Indeed he points to the invaluable contribution medieval Christianity made to shaping our western liberal values and how, while we like to see them (with some justification) as having their ultimate roots in Classical Greece and Rome, the pagan ancient world perhaps wasn't as amenable to them as we think and its contribution to them has been overstated. This is very much the argument pursued in Larry Siedentop's "Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism" (2016), one of the books I read in the summer before I applied to university, and more recently in Tom Holland's "Dominion" (2019) - Tom Holland is the creme de la creme of popular historians and I'm a huge fan of his "The Rest is History" podcast which he co-hosts with Dominic Sandbrook. See here the debate between Tom Holland and A.C Grayling on the subject of Christianity's contribution to Western values - its great good fun to watch, and in my opinion it was Tom Holland who carried home the day. 

Indeed, late antique and early medieval history whom we expect to be completely removed from us mentally, but we actually find quite a lot of common ground with. John Chrysostom (347 - 407), one of the Church Fathers, denounced wife beaters, corrupt politicians and people who didn't show compassion for the poor. Caesarius of Arles (470 - 542) rejected the double standard, denouncing male promiscuity, drunkenness and loose morals. Jonas of Orleans (760 - 843) and Hincmar of Rheims (806 - 882) are all about denouncing corruption in church and state and aristocrats oppressing their social inferiors. Agobard of Lyons (779 - 840) even went so far as to attack the institution of slavery. This is a huge contrast to a lot of modern Christian moralists, who focus only on attacking women and the poor and neglecting the abuses committed by rich and powerful men, above all, the 45th President of the United States. There's no doubt that any early medieval Christian would have harboured beliefs we'd now consider highly distasteful, though frankly nothing one wouldn't also find in earlier or later periods. But that shouldn't conceal some aspects of their thought that are quite genuinely admirable and arguably formative to the moral universe in which we live in today.

I will return in future posts to the importance of the Carolingian age in shaping our ideas about power, accountability and good government. But as Theodulf is also demonstrative of, is its importance to shaping how we approach the past. For all that Theodulf might have been downbeat about the pagan ancient world, he was deeply fascinated by it and had studied its literature so extensively. And he clearly saw the Greek myths as invaluable cultural artefacts that imparted necessary moral lessons, even if the lessons he extrapolated from them weren't entirely the same as those that the Classical Roman poets and their readers would have done, and as many modern writers are now doing, especially in the recent trend towards feminist retellings of the Greek myths and explorations of their "subversive power." Yet he approached it nonetheless as a culture separated in time and in many other ways removed from his own. As Anthony Kaldellis points out in relation to how Theodulf's contemporaries in the East Roman world approached the same issues in "Byzantium Unbound" (2019) Chapter 3, this sense of critical distance from the classical culture is in fact precisely what is needed for classical studies to emerge. If you treat it as a living culture that you yourself continue to inhabit, its not classical studies, its just literary studies. Theodulf combines fascination with and serious stud of the literature and beliefs of the ancient world with an all too keen awareness that this is not his own culture, but rather one of a bygone age, that needs to be approached with care. Indeed, and here I'm deliberately being provocative and controversial, it might even be fair to say that he was one of the first ever Western European classicists, as opposed to participants in a living classical culture (as Desiderius of Cahors more than a a century and half before arguably still was, being the last participant in a continuous tradition of letter writing as an art going back to Cicero and Seneca). All in all, Theodulf is a reminder that for all that the Carolingians, and early medieval more generally, feel mentally remote from us, they played a critical role in shaping Western Civilisation and the world we live in today.

Theodulf of Orleans (c.755 - 821): Charlemagne's ferociously witty courtier and why medieval Latin poetry needs a lil' bit of love

 If you were asked to name three great medieval poets (European, 450 - 1500), who would you name? If  you're just a well-educated, well-read man/ woman/ non-binary person of culture, not a "fanatical medievalist" (as I have been called once by a certain expert on the legal and intellectual history of Norman England), you'll probably go for those who undoubtedly hold a much deserved place in the hall of fame of world literature - the likes of Chretien de Troyes (c.1135 - 1185), Wolfram von Eschenbach (1170 - 1220), Snorri Sturluson (1179 - 1241), Dante Alighieri (1265 - 1321), Giovanni Bocaccio (1313 - 1375), Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340 - 1400) and Sir Thomas Malory (1415 - 1471). Of course, here its worth noting that we don't actually know the identity of many of the most celebrated works of medieval literature - this is true of such famous epics as "Beowulf" (which could have been written any time between 604 and 1000), "The Song of Roland" (written sometime between 1040 and 1129), "The Poem of the Cid" (written sometime between 1140 and 1210), "The Nibelungenlied" (written c.1200) and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (written c.1400). If you're hardcore medieval literary scholar you might go for someone not well-known at all outside medievalist circles, like Aneirin (6th century), Caedmon (d.684), Giraut de Bornelh (1138 - 1215), Ulrich von Liechtenstein (1199 - 1275), Jean de Meun (1240 - 1305), Guido Cavalcanti (1255 - 1300), Richard Rolle (c.1300 - 1349) or James I of Scotland (1394 - 1437). Or, if you're a hardcore medieval literary scholar and your feminist conscience (if you have one, that is) is telling you that it ought not to be a sausage fest, and that the literary accomplishments of medieval women deserve better recognition, you might pick Marie de France (fl.1160 - 1215), Hadewijch (c.1200 - 1250), Mechtild of Magdeburg (1207 - 1294), Christine de Pizan (1360 - 1430), probably the most famous medieval woman writer with a valid (if somewhat disputed) claim to being the first feminist author in the western tradition, or Gwerful Mechain (fl.1460 - 1502). The latter is getting a lot of attention now as Gwerful's poems include an invective against domestic abusers, an ode to the vagina and other things that really speak volumes to the issues women still face in the twenty-first century. Now, hands up if you picked Theodulf of Orleans as one of your three. One of two things will happen. Either the room will just go deathly silent, or the Carolingianists (people like me, in other words) will be outed. 

Now you might have been noticing a theme in most of the names I've mentioned. You might have noticed that almost all of these authors are from the period 1150 - 1500, which is both symptom and cause of why that final third of the medieval millennium defines for most historically-aware people what medieval European civilisation was like - knights in shining armour, monumental stone castles, tournaments, trebuchets, soaring gothic cathedrals, monarchical popes proclaiming crusades and inquisitions, fat friars preaching compassion for the poor while enjoying the alms in food and drink they receive from the better off a bit too much,  university students getting into fights with each other over arid scholastic debates like problem of nominalism and universalism or with the townsfolk over being sold poor quality alcohol for rip-off prices, craft guilds having fancy processions and stifling competition/ keeping at bay the dangerous forces of unfettered capitalism (depending on who you ask), courtly love, ladies in fine gowns and funny pointy hats, deluxe manuscripts with gothic script (Microsoft word's Blackletter font) and colourful marginalia that very often look straight out of a Monty Python film (they had to get the inspiration somewhere, after all), revolting peasants, the list goes on. The previous 650 years, especially the period up to the year 1000, doesn't register so much when people think of the Middle Ages, for various reasons that I don't need to go into here, but will do elsewhere. 

For those of you who have some knowledge of the various names, including the less well-known ones, I've mentioned, you might have noticed another pattern. All of these authors wrote in the vernacular, which is itself closely linked to the previous pattern noted - with the exceptions of Wales, Ireland, Anglo-Saxon England and a few Old High German poems, there's barely any vernacular literature from most parts of Europe before the twelfth century, and in some places not until quite sometime later (Albanian doesn't even attain written form until the fifteenth century, being the last Indo-European language to do so). We focus on the vernacular literature of the Middle Ages because many of the works written in it are undoubtedly pioneering masterpieces in and of themselves which have resonated throughout the ages (Chretien de Troyes' Arthurian Romances, Dante's Divine Comedy and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are undoubtedly in that category), and in part out of a sense of patriotism and national pride. They represent the birth of English, French, German, Italian etc literature and in some cases signify even more than that. For example, since Italian Unification in the 1860s, Dante Alighieri has always been held as Italy's national poet in the singular and as a sort of prophet of Italian unification (indeed, the colours of the Italian flag - green, white and red, representing hope, faith and charity respectively - come from Beatrice's dress in the Paradiso). To the French, the Song of Roland and the Arthurian Romances of Chretien de Troyes demonstrate (like with the Abbey of Saint Denis and Gothic architecture) the leading role of France and the French in the development of medieval European civilisation, here specifically in the emergence of chivalry and courtly romance. Similarly, over here, Chaucer is seen as emblematic of a resurgent and self-confident English nation emerging phoenix-like from the Hundred Years War and the shaking off, at last, of the dominance of French language and culture since the Norman Conquest in 1066. 

Meanwhile the vast corpus of Medieval Latin poetry and prose fiction - Latin was of course used as a literary language all over Western Christendom throughout the Middle Ages and into what we call the Renaissance or the Early Modern Period (when it becomes what modern scholars call Neo-Latin) - neither holds a widespread reputation for containing works of great literature, and certainly doesn't inspire any kind of patriotic or nationalistic feeling. Instead, in so far as its really taken notice of by anyone at all outside of hardcore medievalist circles, its presumed to be conservative, elitist and mostly religious (which is a big turn off for most people) given Latin's status as the language of the Church in the Middle Ages. Unlike most medieval vernacular literature, which is available in nice helpful user-friendly Penguin classics editions, most medieval Latin literature remains untranslated and in editions not safe for distribution to students. And to many classicists, who do have the relevant linguistic training, medieval Latin literature is automatically presumed to be second rate at best. This is because its been the opinion, going back to at least the Renaissance, that Classical Latin (the high literary Latin of the period 75 BC - 200 AD) represents the perfection of the Latin language, which is then presumed to have declined in quality thereafter, and that the literature of that period is the only Latin literature that's actually good and worthy of a place on school and university classics curricula. For poetry the six Latin authors considered great and worthy of study are Catullus (84 BC - 54 BC), Virgil (70 - 19 BC), Horace (65 - 8 BC), Ovid (43 BC - 18 AD), Martial (40 - 104 AD) and Juvenal (late first to early second century AD).  The poets of the later Roman Empire like Ausonius (310 - 395), Prudentius (348 - 414), Paulinus of Nola (354 - 431), Claudian (370 - 404), Namatianus (5th century) and Sidonius Appolinaris (c.430 - 491) definitely don't make the cut - most classics graduates won't necessarily have even heard of them - and those of the Middle Ages even less so. Never mind that many medieval Latin poets (including Theodulf, as we'll soon see) had a very in-depth knowledge of the language, literary style and content of the Augustan poets (Virgil, Horace and Ovid). That only opens them to charges of imitation or being derivative - tiresome slurs so often levelled at medieval writers by modern scholars. Richard Ashdowne, an Oxford Classics professor and editor of the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, really has a good sense of the problem in his excellent short introductory article to the Latin poetry of Medieval Britain. And among medievalist literary scholars, they overwhelmingly gravitate towards the vernacular, if in part for economic reasons - they simply join English, French, German, Spanish, Italian etc departments and many universities offer chairs in Old English/ Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Old Norse, whereas professorships in Medieval Latin simply don't exist. There are, however, a good number of medievalists who have fought against the marginalisation medieval Latin literature. Probably the most famous is the German philologist Ernst Robert Curtius (1886 - 1956), whose "European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages" (1948) earned the praise of TS Elliot, of all people, and is definitely to be regarded as a classic - indeed, Curtius can be credited with single-handedly introducing the technical term topos to modern literary criticism.

At the same time, to be more sympathetic to classicists, it really depends on why you want to read the texts. If you want to read texts that are timeless literary masterpieces, which have spoken equally to every subsequent era in the history of Western literature and are full to the brim with eternal themes and values, then obviously you read Horace's "Odes", Virgil's "Aeneid" or Ovid's "Metamorphoses." Meanwhile, you shouldn't bother with Prudentius' "Battle of the Spirits", Angilbert's "Lament for Fontenoy" or Joseph of Exeter's "The Trojan War." As Mary Beard said in conversation with Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook on my favourite podcast "there wasn't a day since 19 BC when Virgil's Aeneid wasn't being read somewhere" and that certainly can't be said of the latter three. And if what you want to write about, say, reading rape and sexual violence in Ovid's "Metamorphoses" as a woman in the age of #Metoo, then of course you can ignore the writings of the dead (implicitly white) male poets and scholars of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Victorian Age and beyond, though I must say that (proto) feminist readings of Ovid do go back to the Middle Ages, albeit a bit too late in the Middle Ages for me. 

However, if you're a cultural historian interested in the long-term development of Western literature, rather than a pure literary scholar, then you ignore Late Antiquity and the Latin Middle Ages at your peril, not least because Late Antiquity and the Latin Middle Ages were what kept the classical literary tradition alive and those particular poets I mentioned so popular for it all to be passed on to the men (and women) of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Victorians and then us. If you're writing a history of the reception of Virgil or Ovid you can't just say something brief and vague about monks copying and preserving stuff (implying that they didn't actually engage much with the texts), give a token glance at Dante and Chaucer and then go straight to Quattrocento Italy or sixteenth century Europe - just as you shouldn't write about the reception of Suetonius without mentioning Einhard's "Life of Charlemagne" (I don't want to be that snotty Carolingianist, but I wasn't exactly happy to see neither Einhard nor Charlemagne mentioned once in the index to Mary Beard's exciting new release "Twelve Caesars"). to say this, Anthony Kaldellis has argued along much the same lines for the role of Byzantium in the Greek literary canon - see his article "Byzantium for Classicists" in his brilliant yet polemical booklet of essays "Byzantium Unbound" (2019) pp 55 - 74. I wouldn't go as far as him, though, in claiming that Classicists (especially those specialising in ancient Greece) are "bad Byzantinists", nor would I call Classicists who specialise in ancient Rome "bad Carolingianists", but he's essentially right that classicists don't realise that every time they stare at a great shelf of Loeb classical text volumes, they're staring at two medieval libraries - with the green cover volumes being the Byzantine library and the red cover volumes being the Carolingian library.

But enough pointless, self-indulgent, barely relevant introductory ranting about something I have a vested interest in (I've translated all 436 lines of the "Carmen ad Robertum Regem" by Adalbero of Laon) - there's a new year's resolution for me - lets get on to Theodulf of Orleans, the star of the show here. 

Now, if you're not a Carolingianist or at least an early medievalist, you'll probably be wondering "who the *@#! is Theodulf of Orleans." Well, let me give you a little bit of background on him. Theodulf of Orleans was born sometime in the 750s, somewhere in the area around Zaragoza in Spain. Barely anything is known about his family background, though ethnically they would have been Visigoths. A couple of generations before Theodulf was born, the old Visigothic kingdom of Hispania (Spain) had been conquered by the Arab Umayyad Caliphate, which by c.720 stretched from modern day Portugal to Pakistan. The Visigothic kingdom fell very quickly (in less than a decade) and this kind of rapid, very total conquest has led to much debate among historians, - was the Visigothic kingdom a prodigiously centralised state that fell quickly after it became politically decapitated following the death of King Roderic at the battle of Guadalete in 711, or was it because of court factionalism and political divisions among an "overmighty" aristocracy. Such debates will certainly ring a bell to those familiar with the scholarship on the Norman Conquest of England, and 711 certainly is for Spain that great watershed moment that 1066 is seen as for England - indeed, in Spain and Portugal 711 is reckoned to be the beginning of the Middle Ages full stop, and the preceding Visigothic period is taught by classics and ancient history departments. The only part of Spain that was not conquered by the Muslims was the small mountainous region of Asturias in the far north, on the Atlantic coast. There's been a lot of debate among Spanish medievalists over whether it was in any way continuation of the Visigothic state, indeed to what extent the the Romans and Visigoths had ever set roots in Asturias or had even really controlled it politically except on paper. Some Marxist-leaning historians (Abilio Barbero and Pascual Vigil) have even suggested that the old Celtic tribal society that had existed there since the Iron Age had basically remained untouched by the Roman and Visigothic conquerors in Asturias, and that most of the kingdom's elites were actually some very ancient chiefs with deep roots in their communities. All of this has gotten really politicised. According to Chris Wickham, after the fall of the Franco regime in 1975, excavating a Roman villa in Asturias would often be decried as a right-wing political act (ironically, as Chris can easily confirm, most archaeologists in Southern Europe tend to be leftists).

 As for elsewhere in the peninsula, we can infer from the sources that at least half of the Visigothic nobility decided to make peace with their conquerors, being allowed to keep their local political power in return for tribute. For example, in the Treaty of Orihuela (dated to 5 April 713, or 4 Recheb 94 AH in the Islamic Hegira calendar), which we have preserved in three later texts - including the thirteenth century history of Ibn Adari and a fourteenth century biographical dictionary - General Theodemir agreed with Emir Abd al-Aziz Ibn Musa that he could keep control of seven cities in the Carthaginensis region and all of the Christians living in the territories he governed could continue to practice their faith under the Dar al-Islam (Muslim rule) if they paid one dinar and four jugfuls of wheat, barley, grape juice and vinegar and two of honey and oil if they free and half of that if they were slaves. Some nobles even converted to Islam - the Banu Qasi, a powerful dynasty of frontier emirs (marcher lords) in northeastern Spain first appearing in the sources in 788, claimed to be descended from Count Cassius, a Visigothic nobleman (though with a name like that he was likely of Hispano-Roman aristocratic origins) who had converted to Islam earlier in the century. Similarly, Umar ibn Hafsun (850 - 917), a rebel emir, claimed to be descended from a Visigothic nobleman called Count Marcellus (again, probably of Roman ancestry originally). Some historians are sceptical of these claims, given that they originate the tenth century history of Ibn al-Qutiyya (d.977), who himself claimed to be descended from Sara the Goth, a granddaughter of King Witiza (d.710) no less, who had travelled to Damascus and married Isa ibn Muzahim, a prominent courtier at the court of Caliph Hisham, and together they had returned to al-Andalus. His cousins, the Banu Hajjaj, also based in Seville, also claimed descent from Visigothic royalty. Because sceptical historians gonna be sceptical, they argue that all these tenth century Muwallads (people in al-Andalus claiming mixed Arab and Gothic ancestry) were just engaging in spurious antiquarianism to bridge the gap in the records for much of the eighth century make their genealogies more exciting. The other options available to Visigothic nobles during the Conquest were to resist Muslim rule, which except in Asturias didn't exactly work out, or to become refugees and flee north to the Frankish kingdom. 

Theodulf's parents, having hung around in Muslim Spain for the time being as Christians under Muslim protection, in the end decided to take the fourth option. Theodulf and his family went to live in Aquitaine, where he received his education, and he then enrolled at the monastery of Maguelonne as an adolescent in the 760s, which was in the territory of Count Aigulf of Maguelonne, a fellow Visigothic refugee in the service of the Carolingian king of the Franks, Pepin the Short, and the father of the great monastic reformer Benedict of Aniane (747 - 821). Theodulf became a very well-educated man - as we shall later see, his eloquence and knowledge of literary techniques were very good, and (as will be revealed in a future post) his knowledge of Virgil and Ovid was phenomenal. In 786, Theodulf made a trip to Rome, which inspired him to be committed to the cause of making literate education more widely available.  After his return, he wrote to many bishops and abbots, encouraging them to set up public schools. Theodulf would have no doubt been glowing inside, when, in 789, Charlemagne issued a royal edict called the General Admonition, where in clause 72 there is a line that says "and let schools be established in which boys may learn to read." This "Admonition" is one of the most memorable legacies of Charlemagne's kingship. Indeed, I've heard it said that French schoolchildren have traditionally remembered Charlemagne (whether they still do I cannot confirm) as "the guy who invented school."

Theodulf may have, in fact, been one of Charlemagne's advisers who helped suggest this edict. Yet putting such reforming legislation into practice required energetic men operating between the level of the court and that of the grassroots like Theodulf to pull it off. After Charlemagne appointed him bishop of Orleans in 798, Theodulf a significant part of his reformist efforst to the cause he'd always been passionate about - education. Chapter 20 of the episcopal statutes Theodulf issued for the priests of his diocese says:

Let the presbyters keep schools in the villages and hamlets, and if any of the faithful desires to entrust his small children to them to be taught their letters, let them not refuse to receive and teach them, but let them teach them with the greatest love, noticing what is written: "They, however, who shall be learned shall shine as the splendour of the firmament, and they who instruct many to righteousness shall shine as the stars forever and ever (Daniel 12:13)." When, therefore, they teach them, let them demand no fee for this instruction, nor take anything from them, except what the parents shall offer them freely through zeal for love."

(Source: "Theodulf of Orleans: Precepts for the priests of his diocese", edited and translated by Paul Edward Dutton in "Carolingian Civilization: A Reader", University of Toronto Press, 2009, p 110).

Theodulf of Orleans thus wanted instruction in reading and writing to be available to children of all social classes free of charge - rather, the reward that the teachers (who would all be priests) would receive would be the wisdom their students attained from becoming functionally literate. Theodulf's goals are are quite genuinely admirable, even if the ethos behind them (ensuring correct knowledge and practice of the Christian faith) may seem very distant to most of us living in twenty-first century Britain. And according to Rosamond McKitterick, we do have evidence to show that this episcopal statute was properly implemented and that similar projects were carried out by Theodulf's contemporaries elsewhere - the History of the Abbey of Saint Riquier, written in the eleventh century, recounts a liturgical procession held by Theodulf's contemporary, Angilbert of Saint-Riquier, which mentions boys of the lay school (presumably the type of elementary school in towns and villages mentioned by Theodulf) and of the abbey school participating. Theodulf also made a list of all the monastic schools (schools of the second type mentioned in the History of Saint-Riquier) in his diocese, which were open to "relatives of the clergy" though, as McKitterick suggests, this was not as socially-exclusive a category as one might think for a large cross-section of local society could claim to be "relatives of the clergy" (Rosamond McKitterick, "The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 751 - 987", Longman, 1983, p 146). 

As well as being a bishop and adviser to Charlemagne, Theodulf was also a missus dominicus - a type of itinerant provincial official (they would work in pairs, one a cleric, the other a layman) introduced by Charlemagne to supervise justice and local administration. This side of his career shall be explored in a subsequent post. As bishop, Theodulf built a splendid villa and oratory at Germigny-des-Pres, about a day's ride east of his episcopal seat at Orleans. It was designed by Odo of Metz, an Armenian by birth who was the architect of Charlemagne's famous palace at Aachen. Odo seems to have had knowledge of the first century Roman engineer Vitruvius' De Architectura, of which the earliest surviving manuscript copy dates to c.800 - yet another classical text that the Italian Renaissance did NOT rediscover. Construction begun after 806, not long after Odo had finished work on Aachen palace chapel. The villa itself, which unfortunately is no longer with us because it got destroyed by Viking raiders later in the ninth century, had elaborate fresco schemes of the Seven Liberal Arts (rhetoric, grammar, logic, mathematics, geometry, music and astronomy), the Four Seasons and the Mappa Mundi, and heated thermal baths. Yet the pagan Vikings for some reason decided that vandalising the oratory was too much even for them. Instead it would survive all the vicissitudes of the next millennium (the Hundred Years' War, the Wars of Religion, the French Revolution) only to get the treatment that would befall a lot of great French medieval monuments in the mid-nineteenth century - ignorant, overzealous and thoroughly botched "restoration." Indeed, much of the original interior decoration, including the furniture in white and coloured marble, the fabrics and the metalworks is lost forever thanks to the restoration work. But what does remain is very interesting. The internal structure of the building consists of many horseshoe arches, a prominent feature of Visigothic and Mozarabic (c.f. the famous eighth century Cordoba mosque/ cathedral) which is undoubtedly a nod to Theodulf's Spanish origins and the general plan may have been based on some exemplars from Spain, though potential Byzantine and Armenian influences have also been suggested - I get all this architectureal information from Kenneth J Conant, "Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture, 800 - 1200" (1959) pp 51 - 52. 

The oratory at Germigny des Pres, 806 (exterior)

The interior with the wonderful horseshoe arches

What's perhaps most notable about the oratory is that in its apse it contains one of only two (the other being the dome of Aachen palace chapel) surviving examples of early medieval (sixth to tenth century) mosaics from anywhere north of the Alps. The mosaic depicts two angels bringing down the Ark of the Covenant, something that rarely appears in early medieval art (what the significance of that might have been will be explored in another post), and below it is a Latin inscription in gold lettering, written by Theodulf himself, requesting that any visitors who gaze upon this mosaic pray for his soul.

Theodulf's Ark of the Covenant mosaic

After Charlemagne's death, Theodulf's career would take a turn for the worse. Emperor Louis the Pious, Charlemagne's son and successor, faced the threat of rebellion in 817 - 818 from his nephew, Bernard of Italy, who wanted to rule Lombardy as his own independent kingdom. Louis the Pious quickly defeated Bernard and had him blinded and sent to a monastery, with Bernard dying shortly afterwards (we don't know the gruesome details but Bernard likely didn't get the medical attention he urgently needed after being mutilated). In the wake of Bernard's conspiracy, Louis proceeded to purge the court of all courtiers  he suspected of disloyalty/ trying to obstruct his authority, and Theodulf's name was on the list. Theodulf was deposed from his bishopric and imprisoned in a monastery near Angers. Though he was released in 820, he would never reclaim his bishopric and died, most likely on his way to Orleans, in 821.

Theodulf therefore had multiple legacies, but where his talents shone most of all, and what concerns us most today, is in his literary legacy. Theodulf was a very accomplished poet and many of his poems survive for us today. Discussing all his poems would be too long for this post, and some will be discussed in future ones, so I thought I'd give you a selection of his short poems. They show him as a legendary wit, who could be ferociously provocative and deliver a scathing mockery of fellow courtiers to discredit them in the eyes of the Carolingian king-emperor and his court, but who could also be humorous in a much warmer and more light-hearted way. Above all, he reminds us that early medieval people were not the one dimensional figures we can sometimes be misled into thinking of them as.

Poem 1: About the Folly of Hypocrites and Fools who will not be swayed from their Depravity by Sound Exhortation

Neither wit nor wisdom corrects the hypocrite and the fool,

Teaching can not overcome the fool, nor wit the hypocrite,

It is worthless to apply learning to the fool's brain,

The more you teach him, the stupider he becomes.

Likewise, if anyone tries to wash a rough brick,

The more he washes, the dirtier he makes it.

How do fine words help, when there is no good will,

Why would one sow seeds among thorny weeds?

Why would one pour golden honey into a foul pond, 

Why would one mix olive oil with excrement?

What use is a lyre, if it is played by a long-eared ass,

Or a trumpet, if it be blown skilfully for a horned bull?

As much as the vision of the blind man improves with the rising sun,

So too does the intelligence of the fool after good advice.

Poetry can accomplish much, but not everything,

Though both profane and sacred literature say that it can.

It is said that Circe transformed the friends of Ulysses

into various wild beasts through her skilful songs.

While poetry can accomplish much, it can not heal mange,

Nor can its gentle murmur cure one of worms.

As poetry is of no help to one who has a hernia,

And while they are sung the whole exercise is useless,

So that work will be useless to you, you infamous hypocrite, 

If you attempt to slip in something good.

The wise king, [Christ], has said many things about this, 

And by way of example I shall set down one:

"Though a stupid man be crushed in a mortar like a grain

Of Wheat, his indolence will not leave him (Proverbs 27:22)."

Thus the words of our Lord; now let me set down what

The rural folk often say so wisely about this kind of thing:

"You cannot by practice or by punishment make an owl into a hawk

That will attack cranes with its talons."

Nor can a vulture take up your place, falcon,

Because it is slow, given to gluttony, and ponderous in flight.

The hypocrite does not desire to learn good things, but only bad,

Do you want to know why? He is [also] a fool.

Being worse than Judas, he wants to seem better than you, [Saint] Peter;

Fate covers over many evils with a false dress.

He thinks small things to be important, and many evil things to be nothing: 

While he wants to deceive others, the fool deceives himself.

(Source of translation: Carolingian Civilisation: A Reader (Second Edition), edited by Paul Edward Dutton, University of Toronto Press, 2009, pp 103 - 104)

Theodulf wrote this savage poem to discredit some anonymous courtier, presumably a fellow poet, at the court of Charlemagne, though his description of the hypocrite and fool could neatly fit Boris Johnson, whose first rate education has definitely not improved him intellectually or morally and who has, in deceiving others, verily deceived himself.

Poem Number Two: Wide Wibod

Perhaps big-boned Wibod, our hero, may hear this poem,

And shake his thick head three or four times,

And gazing fiercely try to frighten with a look and a mutter,

And overwhelm me with his threats, even though I am not there.

If, however, the king in all his majesty should summon him,

Wibod would go with faltering step and knocking knees.

And his huge gut would go before him and his chest:

He would resemble Vulcan in his feet, Jove in his voice.

(Source of Translation: Carolingian Civilisation, p 106)

Before you start thinking "we need another Theodulf do justice to lampooning our current sorry lot of politicians", lets maybe consider the poem's significance. There has been much discussion by medieval and early modern historians about the concept of honour. Today we often think of honour as a quiet sense that one's conduct is principled, virtuous, self-sacrificing and guileless, though we might also say "its an honour" after having been treated like a VIP/ been in the presence of a VIP. The medieval and renaissance definition of honour was both and neither. Richard Kaeuper, an expert on (mainly Anglo-French) chivalry in the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, following the approach of the eminent social anthropologist Julian Pitt-Rivers (1919 - 2001) laid out in his classic field study of Andalusian peasants in the 1950s, argues that honour was a social attribute first and foremost - it was about having your desired place in the "pecking order" recognised and given the respect and admiration due, and needing to vigorously defend it, by violence if necessary, from any attempt to slight or besmirch it (Idem, "Medieval Chivalry", Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp 40 - 42). Mervyn James, a historian specialising in the aristocracy of Tudor and Stuart England, takes much the same approach in "English Politics and the Concept of Honour, 1485 - 1642" (reprinted in Idem, "Society, Politics and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England", Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp 308 - 415) takes much the same approach. Both recognise the nuances, complexities and tensions that have to be made to this model when handling the late medieval and early modern sources - did honour come primarily from lineage, rank and social background, or from virtue and meritorious deeds. Both also argue that it could indeed entail values and behaviours that we can admire - loyalty, honesty and courage even in the face of great adversity and risk of death, and a strong degree of self-consciousness and determination, perhaps even leading to self-criticism and improvement. But they also agree at heart with Pitt-Rivers that "the ultimate vindication of honour lies in physical violence" through the vendetta or the duel.

Now you might be thinking - do these discussions of late medieval and early modern masculinity and aristocratic culture really matter to the Carolingianist? The answer is that Carolingianists are very divided on this question. Some think that such touchy notions of personal honour (and the culture of violent self-help that came with it) were already rife in eighth and ninth century Francia, its just that our sources, which are much fewer in number than for the twelfth to seventeenth centuries anyway, are in some kind of conspiracy of silence about it, either because of their genres, audiences, political and moral agendas or a combination thereof. They'll also argue that there's evidence of it from earlier sources. The ninth book of the Histories of Bishop Gregory of Tours (535 - 594) describes a sixth century Frankish aristocrat, Chramnesind, who goes to a feast at the house of his former enemy Sichar, who has murdered one of Chramnesind's relatives, and after Sichar drunkenly boasts at the feast about doing this, Chramnesind evocatively says "if I avenge not the death of my kinsman, I deserve to lose the name of man, and to be called a weak woman" and so proceeds to put the candles out before slicing into Sichar's head with his dagger. The Salic law, issued at the beginning of the sixth century, prescribes financial compensation for insults, which many take to mean that if compensation was not paid to the victim it would be in their rights to retaliate with violence. And then of course, if you want to play that venerable yet dubious game, there's the authority of Tacitus and his description of the ancient Germans to fall back on. Historians who take this view are also likely to take a very pessimistic view of the Carolingian monarchy and its ability to control violence and rein in the power of (in their view) a largely independent Frankish aristocracy, so that even a ruler like Charlemagne had to tread carefully. 

Others would argue that Carolingian society had moved on from the norms of first century AD Germania and even sixth century Merovingian Gaul, and that the culture of touchy personal honour and violent self-help epitomised in later medieval and renaissance chivalry is not part of an unbroken line of continuity reaching back to the heroic ethos of the ancient Germans, but fundamentally a product of post-Carolingian (tenth and eleventh century) developments. They would also argue that the Carolingian aristocracy primarily derived its power from government office and royal service, and that strong kings like Pepin the Short (r.751 - 768), Charlemagne (r.768 - 814) and  Louis the Pious (r.814 - 840) could make, break, reward and punish individual aristocrats through their vastly superior powers of patronage and coercion without much difficulty. 

Its the latter position which I take, and the Wide Wibod poem would appear to support it. While Theodulf speaks of Wibod, a prominent aristocrat and count, getting enraged and threatening him to the point that he might "overwhelm me", it doesn't appear to be the case that he's actually afraid of getting beaten up by Wibod or his retinue. Its also apparent from the poem that Wibod is a royal servant who humbly obliges to his royal master's wishes without question, knowing that to incur his displeasure is bad for his position by being proud and insolent. Above all, the poem implicitly presupposes a culture in which its socially acceptable not to use violence against those who insult you. Rachel Stone, an expert on Carolingian court culture and masculinity, has argued along similar lines regarding Carolingian court poetry, and more broadly, using a range of different evidence, that touchy aristocratic honour and honour based violence was largely absent, or at least successfully reined in, under Charlemagne and his immediate successors and that Charlemagne was able to build new hierarchies at court based on competitive merit and good Christian behaviour. 

Poem 3: About a stolen horse

Often cleverness supplies what strength cannot,
And often he who lacks power makes up for it with skill.
Listen to how a soldier using his brains recovered a horse,
Which was stolen in a military camp.
Sad over the loss of the horse, he yelled at the crossroads:
"Whoever has my horse should return it immediately.
Or I will be forced, because of this, to do
What my father once did while he was in Rome."
This statement frightened everyone, and the thief, being afraid
Of what would happen to him and the people, let the horse go.
When the owner regained his horse, he was extremely happy;
Those who had been afraid before, now congratulated him.
Then they asked him what he would have done if the horse had not been returned,
Or rather what his father had once done in Rome.
He answered, "My poor father tied the bridle and saddle
Together with his own neck and so weighed down by things, off he walked.
With nothing now to prod, he [still] wore spurs on his heels.
Thus once a rider, my father returned a walker.
You may believe me. I would have sadly done the same,
Had my horse not been returned to me [at once]."

(Source of translation: Carolingian Civilisation, pp 104 - 105)

All I can really say about this one is that Theodulf's wisdom and comedic genius shines through this triumph of simplicity Anyone who thinks Medieval Latin poetry is boring, trite, derivative or all about arcane and aetherial religious stuff should have their perceptions well and truly altered by this. In order to not like this, you'd have to be well and truly prejudiced against medieval culture for no good reason other than that its, well, from the Middle Ages and therefore must be second rate to anything the ancient or the early modern world produced - kind of like how the great German romantic Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe on his Italian tour of 1786 spent ten minutes in the great Gothic cathedral at Assisi, decorated by the frescoes of the legendary Trecento master Giotto di Bondone himself, yet spent hours staring at a church that incorporated the front of the old temple of Hercules (spoiler alert: the next post will be all about Hercules and the Carolingians).

Poem 4: Sign above a bar

May he who once changed water into the benefit of wine,
And he who made the likeness of water into wine.
Bless our cups with his kind touch,
And may he let us have a delightful day. 

(Source of translation: Carolingian Civilisation, p 105)

This short witty poem, which plays around somewhat with metaphysical concepts in the first two lines, is absolutely golden. As someone who does bartending, I wish we could have this poem put up above the bar - rather than the highly misleading "Apothecary" sign that makes everyone think, wrongly, that our pub was once a Victorian medicine shop.