The coronation of Charles III in long term historical perspective

Its extraordinary to think of what's transpired in British royal history in the last year - a Platinum Jubilee (the first ever in British history and quite possibly the last), the funeral of a Queen and now a Coronation (the first in 70 years). And so far I haven't said anything about them here. But now, as a historian who is very much into the history of monarchy, religion and elite ritual, I feel like I should say something. My interest in such things is not exclusively historical. I am a quiet royalist - I support the British monarchy, but I'm not ostentatious or obsessive about it. You certainly wouldn't have found me camped out on the Mall this morning. I don't even have a favourite royal, and there's plenty of members of the royal family I dislike. I don't think they're perfect or beyond criticism. But I see our constitutional monarchy as infinitely better for the UK than a republic. And even as an agnostic I have no objection to having a head of state that (notionally) appointed by God to rule over us, just like I have no objection to the Church of England existing. 

Bit boring I know, but I don't want any journalists suing me for copyright. So I had to pick this.

But personal opinions aside, I think the coronation is very interesting from a historical perspective. Like the present monarchy itself, its a mixture of old and new. There are many elements of Charles' coronation that are new. One of the things I noticed when I was watching it on TV was the multi-faith element. There was a small Greek Orthodox choir singing, no doubt a nod to King Charles' late father, the Duke of Edinburgh. Charles was attended on not just by Anglican bishops but also by a Catholic cardinal, a Greek Orthodox bishop and representatives of the Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Sikh communities in the UK. This no doubt reflects two things. First is Charles' own desire to be seen not as Defender of the Faith but Defender of Faith. This is of course at odds with the very coronation oath he swore today, which has remained unchanged since 1689 when the Glorious Revolution made it a requirement for all future monarchs to uphold the Protestant faith. The second is the changing nature of British society has forced the monarchy to adapt with it. Its debatable how religious the British really were in the 1950s, and secularisation was undoubtedly already underway. About 3 million people out of a population of more than 41 million in England regularly took communion in an Anglican church, down by more than 500,000 from 1935. Other Protestant churches were also suffering decline, though Roman Catholics were more stable. But census data shows by far the majority of the population still identified as Christian when Queen Elizabeth II was crowned, even if most of them only attended church services irregularly. Cultural Anglican Christianity was very strong indeed i.e., in music Benjamin Britten, in art Graham Sutherland and Stanley Spencer, and in literature T.S Elliot and C.S Lewis. And though the first mosque in the UK had been built in Woking, Surrey, in 1889 there were no more than a few hundred Muslims, Hindus or Sikhs in the UK. Now, thanks to 70 years of post-imperial immigration and the changes that followed the cultural revolution of the 1960s, this is very different. Now, as of the 2021 census, only 46.2% of the population of England and Wales identify as Christian, a 13.1% drop from 2011. This makes it the first time in British history since the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons in the seventh century that less than 50% of the population has identified as Christian. And among those born after 1980, the percentage of Christians who are Roman Catholics in England and Wales is equal to or exceeds those who are Anglican Protestants, for the first time since the reign of Elizabeth I. And while Anglican church attendance has decline by 9% in the last decade, Pentecostal church attendance has gone up by 50% thanks, in large part, to Nigerian immigration. And now more than 37% of England and Wales' population have no religion, a rise of 12% from 2011. It has been for this third of population that the deeply religious nature of the coronation ceremony has been most controversial, indeed downright offensive to the sensibilities of some. And about 10% of the population of England and Wales identify as members of a non-Christian religion (approximately 6% Muslims, 2% Hindus and 2% Jews, Sikhs, Buddhists and other religions respectively). The remaining 6% of the UK population refused to say what their religious beliefs were. Having lived in southwest London all my life, I'm reminded of this religious diversity almost every day. So by including those multi-faith elements in Charles III's coronation, the monarchy was acknowledging that the UK in 2023 is not the Protestant Christian nation it still essentially was in 1953. 

The music likewise reflects change as well. I absolutely love Handel's Zadok the Priest, that's been a staple tune of all British royal coronations since the coronation of George II as king of Great Britain and Ireland in 1727. And I don't mind Elgar. But it was good to see Greek Orthodox acapella, a Gospel Choir and Andrew Lloyd Webber added to the mix for the first time ever. My mother also pointed out how a significant portion of the choristers in Westminster Abbey were female. This would not have been the case in 1953, as girls' choirs were not permitted by the Church of England until Salisbury Cathedral in 1991 took the progressive decision to allow them, allowing more opportunities for female musical talent to be recognised than had previously been available. 

Indeed, its fair to say that the monarchy, much as it tries to appear timeless and unchanging, really does change a lot both with each individual monarch, who has their own style of kingship/ queenship, and with the general direction of travel of British politics, society and culture. I won't go into every detail of the history of English/ British royal coronations in the last 1100 years. That would take forever, and the Church of England has produced a full historical  commentary on the coronation service. But what I will talk about is what I'm qualified to talk about as an early medievalist. Namely the aspects of English royal coronations that are still recognisable from how they were more than a thousand years ago.

Coronations haven't everywhere and always been a part of monarchy. While Egyptian pharaohs and the Biblical kings of Israel were crowned, coronations were never a part of "European" monarchical traditions until the later Roman Empire. In the late third century, after decades of constant mutinies in the legions, civil wars, assassinations and coups d'etat, the Roman emperors stopped pretending notion that the Republic was somehow still going, just under a different kind of management, were only princeps ("chief citizen"). It was from this point on they started to embrace a visibly royal style more similar to what had existed in the Near East for thousands of years, and indeed what we think of when we think of royalty today, and crowns were part of it. Emperor Aurelian (r.270 - 275) was the first to wear a diadem, and by the time of Constantine it had become part of the regalia - the symbolic objects a legitimate emperor needed to possess. The first Roman emperor to receive a "coronation" was Julian in 361 when, according to the soldier and historian Ammianus Marcellinus, the emperor was lifted by his troops up onto a shield and a diadem was set upon his head. After Christianity had become the state religion of the Roman Empire in 381, the ecclesiastical element started to feature, but only in the East - in the fifth century, Eastern Roman emperors began to be crowned by the patriarchs of Constantinople, but the pope did not do the same for their western counterparts. 

Coin of the Roman Emperor Aurelian, the first to possess a crown. Photo Credit: York Museums Trust Staff - This file has been provided by York Museums Trust as part of a GLAMwiki partnership.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47407397 

In the post-Roman kingdoms, it doesn't seem like coronations were much of a thing in the sixth and early seventh centuries. Kings were acclaimed and raised up onto a shield, just like Roman emperors had been before them, but they weren't crowned. Kings had other special markers of royalty. The Merovingian Frankish kings had their luxurious long hair and chariots drawn by oxen, and early Anglo-Saxon kings had royal helmets i.e., the helmet which may or may not have belonged to King Raedwald (d.628) of East Anglia at Sutton Hoo. But in Spain, the Visigoths started a new trend - the earliest Visigothic king who we know for sure was crowned was King Sisenand in 631. Then in 672, with the accession of King Wamba (r.672 - 680), the Visigoths started a new trend - the anointing of kings. This is a practice that was literally as old as the Bible. Indeed, Handel's Zadok the Priest we heard played today refers to none other than the anointing of Solomon as king of Israel. But after the fall of the ancient kingdom of Israel, anointing ceased to be a part of kingship anywhere in Europe or the Mediterranean until the Visigoths revived it. Or is that quite so. Around 700 AD, a monk called Adomnan of Iona described how St Columba had, back in the 560s, anointed a number of Irish kings. Anyway, whether we can call it a Visigothic or an Irish invention, anointing was a very new thing in the sixth and seventh century West, and other countries were slow to catch on. But it was highly significant all the same as it could be used to establish that a monarch's legitimacy, like that of Solomon as king of Israel, came directly from God. The origins of divine right begin here. Indeed in both 1953 and 2023, the anointing of Elizabeth II and Charles III respectively were deemed too sensitive to be shown on television.

The "Votive Crown" of King Recceswinth, made in Spain in the 650s. King Recceswinth wouldn't have worn it, it would have actually been used for decoration in a church. Photo credit: By Ángel M. Felicísimo from Mérida, España - Corona de, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51253204

But some votive crowns did end up being worn by kings. The "Iron Crown of Lombardy" was maxde as a votive crown sometime in the fourth of fifth centuries AD and was later donated by the Lombard Queen Theodelinda to Monza Cathedral in 628. But by the fourteenth century, it was being used to crown Holy Roman emperors as kings of Italy - the first documented one being Emperor Henry VII in 1311. It may well be the oldest surviving royal insignia in the entire history of European monarchy. Photo credit: By James Steakley - photographed in the Theodelinda Chapel of the cathedral of Monza, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5403306

Queen Bathsheba pleads with the elderly King David to have her son Solomon made his successor. Solomon is then promptly anointed by Zadok the Priest. From the Bible of Master Jean de Sy, made in 1372 for King Charles V of France. Now in the National Library of the Netherlands. Public Domain.

The people who really cemented anointing and coronations as a widespread feature of European monarchy that has endured to the present day are none other than my favourite people - the Carolingians. I've written here before about the coronation and anointing of Pippin the Short in 751 and his reanointing in 754, and I'm not going to do so again. Likewise, I won't revisit the coronation of Charlemagne. Indeed its generally thanks to the Carolingians that most of our western ideas of what king looks like really solidifed and became embedded - they pioneered the use of orbs and sceptres as well. While sadly we've got no film footage of Carolingian coronations, we have the second best alternative - detailed scripts and choreographies written by Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims (806 - 882). Hincmar wrote them for the West Frankish king Charles the Bald's coronation at Metz as king of Lotharingia in 869 following the death of nephew, King Lothar II. In total, Charles the Bald went through four coronations in his fifty-six years of life; that's one hell of a lot of coronations.

Hincmar describes how Charles the Bald was firstly blessed by the seven bishops present - Adventius of Metz, Arnuld of Toul, Hatto of Verdun, Franco of Tongeren, Hincmar of Laon (Hincmar's own nephew), Odo of Beauvais and Hincmar of Rheims himself. Then Hincmar said "May the Lord Crown you" and anointed Charles the Bald on his forehead with a chrism of holy oils. Then Hincmar gave more blessings before instructing his colleagues to set the crown of Lotharingia on Charles's head. After this Charles was given the sceptre before Hincmar gave the final blessing "May the Lord give you the will and power to do as He commands, so that going forward in the rule of the kingdom according to his will together with the palm of continuing victory you may attain the palm of eternal glory, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ." Finally, there was a mass and King Charles the Bald took communion bread and wine from the bishops, before Hincmar ended the service with a prayer for God to protect the new king and give his soul a place in Heaven.

A clear visualisation of Hincmar's idea of sacred kingship in the Metz Sacramentary, made in 869 - the same year as Charles' coronation. Indeed the king being crowned by God in this image may well be intended to be Charles the Bald. Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Latin 1141 F2v, Public Domain.

In all of the basic outlines of the service, the coronation service that Hincmar organised and performed for King Charles the Bald in 869 is not at all different to that which Justin Welby did for King Charles III in 2023. The Carolingian legacy undoubtedly lives on in the modern British monarchy, not least in that we have kings called Charles.

After the collapse of the Carolingian Empire, we see further moves towards royal coronations as we know them today. Widukind of Corvey gives us a detailed description of Otto the Great's coronation as King of Germany in 936. He describes how Otto was presented with the sword "with which you may chase out all adversaries of Christ, barbarians and bad Christians, by the divine authority handed down to you and by the power of all the empire of the Franks for the lasting peace of all Christians." Then Otto was given the bracelets and cloak and was told "these points falling to the ground will remind you with what zeal for the faith you should burn and how you ought to endure a preserving peace to the end." Next he was given the sceptre and staff and reminded of his kingly duty to protect all the churches, widows and orphans in the kingdom and to be merciful to all his subjects. the bishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier then anointed and crowned Otto the Great, and he sat on the throne of Charlemagne. The giving of the bracelets and the sword, which weren't part of Carolingian coronations and were thus fairly new to Otto the Great's coronation, are now part of British royal coronations, as we saw on television today. 

The last Ottonian king, Henry II (r.1002 - 1024), is presented with his sword and sceptre by two bishops whole being crowned by Christ in his personal sacramentary produced between 1002 and 1014. München BSB Clm 4456 Seite 33c. Public Domain.

How did these Continental ideas come to England. The answer is that Aethelstan, the first ruler of a united kingdom of England brought them over. Aethelstan had a lot of continental connections. His sister Eadgyth married none other than Otto the Great in 929. His other sister, Eadgifu, married King Charles III the Simple of West Francia, the grandson of Charles the Bald and namesake of our current king. And after Charles III was deposed and imprisoned following the battle of Soissons in 923, his son Louis IV went to live with his uncle, Aethelstan, in England. So Aethelstan knew a lot about continental kingship. Aethelstan therefore decided in 925 not to be acclaimed king and presented with the royal helmet but to be acclaimed, anointed and crowned as king, following continental practice. And this happened at Kingston-upon-Thames, bang in my local area. The first coronation we know about in detail, however, was that of his grandnephew Edgar the Peaceful at Bath in 973. It was Edgar's coronation that really set the ball rolling for later coronations, including that of our present king. The coronation thus really is the only aspect of the British monarchy where there's any meaningful continuity between its tenth century beginnings and the twenty-first century institution we know today. 

King Edgar on the frontispiece of the New Minster Charter, made in 966. 

And that is the end of my potted history of the early medieval origins of British royal coronations. I hope you've enjoyed it. 

From the sources 14: conquest, conversion and what it meant to be a Christian in the eighth century

One version of Carolingian Christianity. The obverse side of Harrach ditpych, made as an ivory book cover for a gospel book by the so-called "Court School of Charlemagne" c.800. At the top we can see the four evangelists, on the middle right the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary, the middle left the Nativity, the botton right the Crucifixion and the bottom left Mary and Mary Magdelene visiting Jesus' tomb and finding it empty. So very focused on the Bible and the core of the Christian story in the gospels, fitting the profoundly religious ethos of Charlemagne's court. The reverse side (below) was carved in Visigothic Spain or Lombard Italy sometime between 700 and 750. It shows the apostles Peter and Paul, important symbols of the Institutional church. Photo credit: yours truly.

A very different side of early medieval Christianity is shown in this stone carving from the Cologne region in Western Germany. We don't know the date of it - it could have been made any time between 600 and 1050. We have no idea who made it either, but they were certainly much lower in social standing and prestige than the court of Charlemagne, hence the much cruder artistry. It shows Christ as a charismatic, superhero-like figure, taming the beasts during his 40 days in the wilderness. 

One of Charlemagne's greatest and most controversial achievements has got to the conquest of Saxony. Some of you might be asking, where's that? 

Basically, if we were to divide modern Germany into quarters, Saxony in the eighth century would very roughly correspond to the top left quarter. Indeed, for those of you who know your Cold War history, eighth century Saxony almost (but not exactly) corresponds to the British Zone of Occupation from 8th May 1945 - 1st January 1947. It was also the ancestral homeland of the Angles and Saxons who came over to Britain in the fifth century. 

An early twentieth century map of Old Saxony. Credit: By Gustav Droysen - General Historical Hand Atlas, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2465783. Compare to the map of the British Occupation Zone in post-WW2 Germany (below).

Credit: By User:52 Pickup - Based on map data of the IEG-Maps project (Andreas Kunz, B. Johnen and Joachim Robert Moeschl: University of Mainz) - www.ieg-maps.uni-mainz.de., CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4951565

This was a heavily forested region of Northern Germany that had never known Roman rule. It had no cities or roads. And it knew very little of "government." The Continental Saxons had no kings or written laws. They were basically lots of different independent tribes who, so far as we can tell, all spoke Old Low German. Each tribe was ruled by an ealdorman, who had the power to raze the villages of anyone who opposed his authority though we know little else about them. The Saxon social hierarchy was divided into three groups - the nobles (edhilingi), free peasants (frilingi) and slaves (lazzi).  In times of great external threat, they would all come together under the leadership of temporary war-leaders that are called duces in the Latin sources. The instinctive English translation of this word is "dukes", but that is misleading. Representatives from all the Saxon tribes and all three castes met in annual assemblies at a place called Marklo, where they confirmed their unwritten tribal customary laws, settled disputes and made decisions about whether or  to go to war. So while the Continental Saxons were generally quite primitive, they didn't lack political organisation altogether either. And most importantly of all, they were Germanic pagans, who worshipped Odin, Thor, Tyr, Frey, Freyja and a whole host of more local deities. 

Here are the Merseburg charms, a short list of spells and prayers written in Old High German verse from pre-Christian Saxony preserved on a flyleaf a ninth century sacramentary, inserted there by a monk of the monastery of Fulda sometime before 1000 AD. It was discovered at Merseburg Cathedral Library in 1841 by Georg Waitz, a titan of medieval academic history, and was studied extensively by Jakob Grimm of Brothers Grimm's Fairy Tales fame. This is one of the very few pieces of evidence, written or material, we have for what the religion of the Pagan Continental Saxons actually was like. It raises so many questions as well. Why would a Saxon monk include vernacular pagan charms, no doubt ones recited by his ancestors, in a book of hymns and rituals written in Latin for use in Christian church services? Credit: By Unknown scribe - https://archive.thulb.uni-jena.de/korax/rsc/viewer/Korax_derivate_00002549/VDS_Ms%20Cod%20I%20136_088.tif, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78257477

Why was it such a big achievement for Charlemagne to conquer Saxony? Its not hard to see the answer. There was no central government to negotiate surrender with, no capital to lay siege to and no head of state to kill or take prisoner. The contrast here with Charlemagne's conquest of the Lombard kingdom in Italy in 774 or the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 couldn't be more obvious. Basically, as the primary sources make incredibly clear, the conquest couldn't succeed until every last Saxon tribe, indeed every last free Saxon male, submitted to Charlemagne. The lack of roads and cities it even more difficult, to the point the Franks had to try and create the infrastructure (fortified towns, canals etc) from scratch in order to conquer Saxony. 

What's more, it was totally unprecedented. The Romans had completely given up trying to conquer Germany in 17 AD, setting the frontier at the strategic chokepoints provided by the rivers Rhine and Danube. Contrary to German nationalist mythmaking, this was not because of Arminius (a.k.a Hermann the German) butchering Varus and the Roman legions at the Teutoburger Wald. Indeed, Augustus' grandson Germanicus Julius Caesar had led expeditions to avenge Varus and punish the Germanic tribes in 15 AD. However, the more time Germanicus spent in Germania, the more he realised that the conquest simply wasn't worth it. Compared to Gaul or even southern Britain, Germany was just too poor and underdeveloped and its people were just too resistant to the idea of Roman rule, so that it would be a lot of hassle for too little gain.

The Merovingians (481 - 751) had managed to bring much of central and southern Germany into their Frankish kingdom, and slowly Christianise it with the help of Irish and Anglo-Saxon missionaries. But with Saxony, the most they were ever able to do was, every couple of generations, defeat the Saxons decisively in battle, ravage as much of their territory as they could and force them to pay tribute in herds of cattle. Meanwhile, the Saxons regularly raided over the rivers Main and Rhine into Frankish territory and sometimes took sides in internal political struggles in the Frankish kingdom. Thus when the Carolingians took over, it seemed politically advisable to neutralise the Saxon threat. Moreover, an important part of the Carolingians' image as kings involved them being enthusiastic defenders and promoters of Christianity, and by the mid-eighth century peaceful attempts at converting northern Germany were getting nowhere. Charlemagne needed to take a different approach to the Saxons from his Merovingian predecessors, or even from his grandfather and father - namely wholesale systematic conquest. 

As I said earlier, and this was something that Charlemagne's biographer Einhard and every historian after him remarked on, the task wasn't easy. The conquest of Saxony took 32 years (772 - 804) as a result of constant rebellion, truce-breaking and resistance to Christianisation on the part of the Saxons. Charlemagne had to respond to this with severe brutality. The most infamous incident was at Verden in 782 where the Frankish sources say that 4,500 Saxon prisoners of war were slaughtered at Charlemagne's orders. Einhard also claims that Charlemagne deported ten thousand rebels from Saxony and forced them to live elsewhere in Gaul and Germany. Its perhaps no surprise that the Saxon wars have provoked a lot of unease in modern times. The massacre at Verden would definitely be considered a war crime today, and certainly reveals a dark, ruthless streak to Charlemagne's leadership. He had of course shown such a streak on a few other occasions. Let's not forget this was the very same Frankish king who divorced his first wife (the Lombard princess Desiderata) then waged war against her father, defeated and humiliated him. He also may or may not have murdered his nephews, Richard III style. Yet I think anyone who claims the conquest of Saxony amounts to a "genocide" is taking it too far. Much like with the comparable case of Oliver Cromwell at Drogheda and Wexford in 1649 (I recently taught this to my Year 8s), some perspective is needed. As Charlemagne saw it, he was punishing oath-breakers, not exterminating an inferior race. Indeed, much of the Saxon nobility converted and became part of the post-conquest ruling class, and the Carolingians allowed the Saxon language and tribal customary laws to survive. And the Merseburg Charms I showed you earlier show the process of Christianisation was in truth a lot more complex than conversion at the point of a sword (more about that later). 

It has also made German nationalists question whether they should see Charlemagne as a German national hero. Notably, the Nazi Party in their early days in the power condemned Charlemagne as a French imperialist under the influence of  who heartlessly slaughtered the racially pure Aryan Saxons. Indeed, at a Nazi rally in 1934, 4,500 torches were lit in memory of the Saxons slain in Verden, and 4,500 memorial stones were erected for them as well. The pro-Nazi playwright and pseudoarchaeologist Edmund Kiss imagined Charlemagne torturing the Saxon war-leader Widukind into converting to Christianity by having blonde haired, blue-eyed Saxon maidens raped by dusky Jews and Moors. As always, these sauerkraut-flavoured fascists with a passion for ancient Hindu symbols and goose-stepping made monstrous distortions of German history to further their own genocidal white supremacist ideology. 

The Sachsenhain: the Nazi memorial to the Saxons slain by Charlemagne in 782. Its truly disturbing to think that the massacre of 4,500 Germanic warriors more than a thousand years earlier was seen by Hitler's supporters as an act of inhuman cruelty, but when they went on to engage in the industrial mass-murder of millions of Jews, communists, homosexuals, disabled people, Slavs etc less than a decade later it was seen as the right course of actiom.

The consequences of the Conquest of Saxony were huge. Within three generations of the conquest, the Saxons had been completely converted to Christianity and a network of bishoprics and monasteries had been established all over the region. The Saxon aristocracy had become much wealthier and more powerful, and gained much more landowning rights vis a vis the free peasantry. Then in the tenth century, the Carolingians were replaced in the lands east of the Rhine by a new dynasty of kings and emperors who themselves hailed from Saxony and claimed descent in the maternal line from Widukind himself - the Ottonians (919 - 1024). And in the High and Late Middle Ages, Saxony was part of the heartlands of Western Christendom, producing missionaries, Teutonic crusader knights and Hanseatic merchants. Finally in the sixteenth century, it would give birth to Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation.

Other than through violence, how was this transformation achieved? Fortunately for us, like with a lot of other events in Carolingian history, the conquest and Christianisation of Saxony has generated quite a lot of primary sources by early medieval standards. The one that follows is a Capitulary (royal legislative directive) that Charlemagne issued for the Saxon territories. The date is uncertain. Traditionally it has been dated to 785, when Widukind submitted to Charlemagne and accepted baptism, resulting in a seven year lull in hostilities between Franks and Saxons. But recently, Yitzchak Hen, Robert Flierman and Ingrid Rembold have suggested that it was more likely written a decade later, in 794 or 795. 

The dating does make a significant difference. If it was written in 785, then it would have come from a victorious Frankish king, still in his prime, confidently asserting his authority over the conquered Saxons. But if it was written in 794 or 795, then it would have come from a stressed-out, middle-aged ruler who had just been through the fourth (and last) great crisis in his reign. In 792, Charlemagne's own eldest son, Pippin the Hunchback (768 - 811), had plotted with a group of Frankish nobles to assassinate him and usurp the throne. The conspiracy was foiled, and most of the conspirators were executed, though Charlemagne was merciful to his own son - he had him tonsured and imprisoned in a monastery instead. In the same year, the Saxons revolted, Gaul was hit by a devastating famine, Arabs and Slavs invaded the southern and eastern frontiers and war had begun with Avar Khaganate in Hungary. To add to this, a new heresy called Adoptionism was spreading into the Pyrenees from Spain. Charlemagne therefore needed to make a statement about his authority and what direction the regime was going to go now. This he did at the Council of Frankfurt in 794, where Charlemagne condemned both Adoptionism and the worship of images supported by the Greek Church as heresies, fixed grain prices and reformed the coinage. All of this basically showed that he was a good orthodox Christian king who cared for the physical and spiritual welfare of his people. He then embarked on his final military campaign in Saxony. 

Its in this context that I think Charlemagne's Capitulary for the Saxon Territories makes the most sense. It would made a good muscular statement of his power and authority as a Christian ruler in a time of crisis/ post-crisis. We've seen other examples of how Carolingian rulers used legislation to this effect, such as the Edict of Pitres (864) issued by Charlemagne's grandson, Charles the Bald. We might not have to go as far as the late Patrick Wormald in seeing most early medieval royal law-making as really being an exercise in propaganda. But there is some merit in this kind of view, considering that there's always a gap between what the law says and what society does. That gap was going to be even bigger in the Carolingian Empire, which possessed only a skeletal government bureaucracy and lacked standing armies, police forces or even professional lawyers and judges (north of the Alps anyway). And Wormald was undoubtedly right to think that laws, first and foremost, reflect the mindsets of the people who make them.

The Capitulary for the Saxon Territories basically lays out the laws by which Saxony will be governed once it is conquered. It prescribes the death penalty for 11 different crimes and transgressions, probably more than any other single legislative act in early medieval history, that some historians have called it the "Terror Capitulary." But what makes the Capitulary so interesting to me, is that it tells us so much about what being a Christian meant to Charlemagne and his advisers as they made one final push to convert the pagan Saxons. 

(All of the following source quotations are taken from Paul Edward Dutton, Carolingian Civilisation: A Reader (Second Edition), Toronto University Press (2009), pp 66 - 69)

Chapter 4: If anyone, out of contempt for Christianity, shall have despised the holy Lenten fast and shall have eaten flesh, let him be punished by death. But nevertheless, let it be taken into consideration by a priest, lest by chance anyone from necessity has been led to eat flesh. 

Chapter 6: If anyone deceived by the Devil shall have believed, after the manner of the pagans, that any man or woman is a witch and eats men, and on this account shall have burned the person, or shall have given the person's flesh for others to eat, or shall have eaten it himself, let him be punished by a capital sentence.

Chapter 8: If anyone of the race of Saxons hereafter concealed among them shall have wished to hide himself unbaptised, and shall have scorned to come to baptism and shall have wished to remain a pagan, let him be punished by death. 

Chapter 9: If anyone shall have sacrificed a man to the devil, and after the manner of the pagans shall have presented himself as a victim to the demons, let him be punished by death.

Chapter 15: Concerning the lesser chapters all have consented. To each church let the parishioners present a house and two mansi of land. And for each one hundred and twenty men, noble and free, and likewise liti, let them give to the same church a man-servant and a maid-servant.

Chapter 16: And this has been pleasing, Christ being propituous, that whencesoever any receipts shall have come into the treasury, either for the breach of peace or for any penalty of any kind, and in all income pertaining to the king, a tithe shall be rendered to the churches and priests.

Chapter 17: Likewise, in accordance with the mandate of God, we command that all shall give a tithe of their property and labour to the churches and priests; let the nobles as well as the free men, and likewise the liti, according to that which God shall have given to each Christian, return a part to God.

Chapter 18: That on the Lord's day no meetings and public judicial assemblages shall be held, unless perchance in a case of great necessity or when war compels it, but all shall go to church to hear the word of God, and shall be free for prayers and good works. Likewise, also on special festivals they shall devote themselves to God and to the services of the church and shall refrain from secular assemblies. 

Chapter 19: Likewise, it has been pleasing to insert in these decrees that all infants shall be baptised within a year; and we have decreed this, that if anyone shall have despised to bring his infant to baptism within the course of a year, without the advice or permission of the priest, if he is a noble he shall pay 120 solidi to the treasury, if a freeman 60, if a litus 30.

Chapter 21: If any man should have made a vow at springs or trees or groves, or shall have made any offering after the manner of the heathen and shall have taken a repast in honour of the demons, if he shall be a noble [he shall pay] 60 solidi, if a free man 30, if a litus 15. If, indeed, they have not the means of paying at once, they shall be given into the service of the church until the solidi are paid.

Chapter 22: We command that the bodies of Saxon Christians shall be carried to the church cemeteries and not to the mounds of the pagans.

Chapter 23: We have ordered that diviners and soothsayers shall be handed over to the churches and priests. 

From these chapters from the Capitulary I've shared with you we can see the following patterns in what made one a Christian, according to Carolingians:

1. Baptism is absolutely essential to making someone a Christian, and therefore everyone over the age of 1 year old must be baptised or face consequences.
2. Christians must fast during Lent, attend Church on Sundays and celebrate Christian holy days by not working or attending any kind of public meeting other than religious services. 
3. Christians do not make human sacrifices, pray in sacred groves or bodies of water, burn witches or consult fortune-tellers - these superstitions make you a relapsed pagan in need of punishment.
4. Christians must be buried in churchyards. 
5. Christians must live in a parish community and provide for their local priest, including by compulsory payment of the tithe.

All the ways in which it defines being a Christian are either through external acts i.e. getting baptised, going to Church on Sunday, fasting in Lent etc, or negative i.e. not making human sacrifices. Nowhere in the legislation does it talk about what Christian ideas and teachings the Saxons should know, other than they shouldn't be believing in certain pagan superstitions like polytheism, nature worship cannibalistic witches or fortune-telling. The bit about witches is worth re-iterating since it corrects the misconception that early medieval Christians burned witches - on the contrary, they saw witch-burning as a pagan superstition be outlawed! In these senses, being a Christian in eighth century Saxony was very different to being a Christian in twenty-first century Britain. If you asked someone nowadays what makes someone a Christian, the first things they would talk about would be believing that Jesus is God and following the teachings of the Bible. And its well known in the modern West that there are plenty of people who are baptised, have church weddings and funerals, attend the occasional Sunday service and celebrate Christmas and Easter, but do not consider themselves Christians because they don't "believe" in Christianity. 

A lot of this apparent weirdness can be attributed to the fact that this a piece of government legislation was issued in a region that was still in the process of being converted to Christianity. Certainly, no one in eighth century Gaul, Italy or Anglo-Saxon England, regions where everyone had "converted" to Christianity by 700, was concerned about human sacrifices. But there were lots of condemnations of "pagan" customs and superstitions i.e. the Anglo-Saxon monk and missionary Saint Boniface complained in the 740s that people were celebrating the New Year in the "pagan fashion" by singing, dancing and feasting outside St Peter's Basilica in Rome. We've also seen before how Agobard of Lyon condemned belief in weather magic, popular among the Burgundian peasantry, as unchristian. Boniface and Agobard were of course extreme puritans by the standards of the day and the people they were condemning would have likely seen nothing "pagan" about their own activities. But it does go to show that even in the areas that were already long since converted, Christianity was still being defined, and it was very much the Carolingian dynasty's mission to make sure everyone was following "correct" Christianity.

Its also in the period 700 - 900 that in Gaul, Italy and Anglo-Saxon England we get lots of legislation mandating infant baptism and observing Christian fasts and holy days. Carolingian Saxony was, however, unusual in making church attendance compulsory. The King of Mercia and his bishops at the Council of Clovesho in 747 simply said that all people should be allowed to attend church on Sundays. Likewise, the Capitulary for the Saxon Territories, is unusual in legally enforcing Christian burial for all. While most churches elsewhere in western Europe had graveyards by 900, there was no legal requirement that worshippers be buried in them. That was the decision of individuals and their families. Most Frankish and Anglo-Saxon bishops only required their flocks to receive communion bread and wine three times a year. Its also in this period that the practice of confessing your sins to a priest, originating in sixth century Ireland, became widespread and mandatory across Western Europe. Meanwhile, Frankish and Anglo-Saxon churchmen were prescribing religious penances for all kinds of crimes and misdemeanours, and were getting creative with all kinds of public religious rituas. Finally, it was in this period that a parish system was being established - most villages in Gaul and Italy had a local church, though Germany and Anglo-Saxon England lagged behind.

So in many ways the Capitulary for the Saxon Territories reflects the general flavour of eighth century Christianity for most ordinary lay people. It was all about what you did in public and how you belonged to and participated in a community through various festivals, rituals and obligations. But what you actually believed deep inside didn't come into it very much.

Oh, and as a final bonus, here is a link to Charlemagne's own verified descendant, Christopher Lee, singing in a death metal band about the massacre at Verden in 782.   

Most of you will know that Christopher Lee over the course of his very long theatrical career played a vampire, a Bond villain, a wizard, a Sith Lord and a dentist. But a blessed few know that he played Charlemagne too. 

References:

Paul Edward Dutton, Carolingian Civilisation: A Reader (Second Edition), Toronto University Press (2009), pp 66 - 69

Patrick Wormald, Legal Culture in the Early Medieval West, Hambledon Continuum (1998)

Paul Fouracre, Frankish Gaul to 814, in Rosamond McKitterick (ed), The New Cambridge Medieval History Volume 2: 700 - 900, Cambridge University Press (2008), pp 85 - 109

Julia Smith, Religion and Lay Society, in Rosamond McKitterick (ed), The New Cambridge Medieval History Volume 2: 700 - 900, Cambridge University Press (2008), pp 654 - 678

Ingrid Rembold, 'Quasi  una  gens: Saxony and the Frankish world,c. 772–888', History Compass 15 (2018), pp 1 - 14 

Einhard and Notker the Stammerer, Two Lives of Charlemagne, edited and translated by David Ganz, Penguin Classics (2008)

William the Conqueror and Henry IV of Germany Part 1 – why compare them?

 

William the Conqueror and Henry IV of Germany Part 1 – why compare them?

In this series of posts, I’m going to do something really quite exciting and unconventional. I’m going to compare William the Conqueror (1027 – 1087) and Henry IV of Germany (1050 – 1106). Why is this such a radical idea? After all, both of these eleventh century rulers were each other’s contemporaries, though William was of an older generation. Both rulers of course knew of each other, which wouldn’t be true if I was attempting a comparison between William the Conqueror and the Seljuk Turkish sultan Alp Arslan (d.1072) or between Henry IV of Germany and the Song Chinese emperor Yingzong (r.1067 – 1085).

Indeed, both had quite strong reputations in each other’s kingdoms, and chroniclers in each kingdom followed the other kingdom’s affairs with great interest. William of Poitiers, the Conqueror’s chief propagandist, claimed in 1075 that when William the Conqueror was planning his invasion of England, he sent embassies to the court of King Henry IV to secure his support as well as to the court of Pope Alexander II, though importantly not that of William’s notional liege lord King Philip of France. Its of course unlikely that the embassy happened, given that William of Poitiers, a highly articulate yet unreliable narrative historian, is our only source for it. But the fact that William of Poitiers would make the claim at all in a work intended to praise the Conqueror to high heaven, indicates just how esteemed Emperor Henry IV was in England and Normandy, as he was everywhere else in Western Christendom – the German king-emperor was the most important monarch of them all. Likewise, from the German side, Bruno of Magdeburg, writing in 1082, claimed that in 1074 when King Henry IV was facing a full-scale rebellion against his rule in the duchy of Saxony, he requested that William the Conqueror send military support. William then curtly replied that he had claimed his kingdom by violent conquest, and that if he left it alone for too long there would be rebellions. Bruno might have simply been relying on gossip, but it does show (and we know this from other German chroniclers too) that the Norman Conquest of England was much talked about in Germany – perhaps Henry IV wanted to the Normans to harry his own rebellious North.

Map of the German Empire in the eleventh century. By Holy Roman Empire 1000 map-fr.svg: Sémhurderivative work: OwenBlacker | Discussion - Holy Roman Empire 1000 map-fr.svg, originally based on HRR 10Jh.jpg (2005)., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16239633

Indeed, even if diplomacy was quite tenuous between England/ Normandy and the German Empire at this time, they would later be joined at the hip when William the Conqueror’s granddaughter, Matilda (1102 – 1167), married Henry IV’s son, Henry V (1086 – 1125). Some people easily look over this, but Matilda did not have the title of empress for nothing, and she wasn’t happy that for her second marriage she had to settle for a mere French count, Geoffrey of Anjou. Had Henry V lived for 20 more years, then the “Anarchy” would have taken a much more interesting turn with Swabian and Bavarian knights causing mayhem in the Home Counties and the Midlands. Perhaps we would have had German kings of England five and half centuries before we actually did, the Hundred Years’ War would have been completely avoided and Shakespeare would have written plays about kings called Otto and Conrad as well as, of course, Henry.

Perhaps most importantly of all, both rulers are remembered as highly significant in their respective countries. Their reigns are seen as turning points, indeed the pivotal moment, in English and German medieval history respectively – everything before them is inevitably seen in their shadow, and everything afterwards flows from them. What the Battle of Hastings in 1066 is to the English, Henry IV’s penance at Canossa in 1077 is to the Germans – they’re the dates that every schoolchild knows (or at least is supposed to know) and which you should never set your credit card PIN number to. If you ask the average educated English person to name five memorable medieval kings, William the Conqueror will almost certainly be one of them, and if you said the same to the average educated German, they’d probably name Henry IV. And the period they lived in was one of genuine cataclysmic change in both of their countries, which was driven by many of the same forces – the rise of knights, the proliferation of castles, a whole umbrella of economic and social changes and of course the growing power and authority of the papacy. So why have they normally been studied in isolation from each other?

You see, medieval political history has traditionally been written on national lines. English historians of medieval politics focus on England, German historians of medieval politics on Germany, French historians on France and so on. From the nineteenth century through to after WW2 this was very much the established way of doing things, though since the 1970s that has changed. Notably though, there are a lot more British and American historians of medieval Germany than there are German historians of medieval England. Nonetheless, this still means there’s traditionally been the presumption that Medieval English and medieval German history have very little to do with each other.

 Still, national traditions of scholarship leave a long shadow. As a result, until a few generations ago historical scholarship on Medieval English politics was shaped by the question that preoccupied the Victorians: why did a powerful and centralised national monarchy that gave birth to the common law, Parliament and ultimately Great Britain and the British Empire emerge. Meanwhile, German historians, like their predecessors in the Imperial and Weimar eras, still return to the opposite question: why did the German emperors increasingly lose control so that Germany ended up a loose confederation of squabbling principalities, suffered the tragedies of the Thirty Years’ War and Napoleonic occupation and was only unified in 1871 by the iron will of Bismarck. The Norman Conquest and the Penance of Canossa respectively have traditionally been identified as key turning points for both. 

What makes all of these traditional scholarly preoccupations important is that English historians have since the nineteenth century traditionally focused on the state, the law, bureaucracies, court cases and constitutional matters, and many still do. Since the 1950s and even more so since 1990, however, there has been a widespread interest among political historians of early and high medieval England in the social side of politics. There’s been a lot of work on lordship (personal power over people of lesser status), patronage networks, family relationships, aristocratic identity and stuff like that.

 On the German side of things, historians increasingly from the 1920s onwards and overwhelmingly so since the end of WW2, have generally ignored the study of medieval government and administration (the Verfassungsgeschichte that was much more fashionable in the Imperial period) in favour of a way of looking at medieval politics that focuses on the personal relationships between the king/ emperor and the political community – ties of lordship, patronage, family and friendship. A successful medieval king wasn’t one who issued laws that dictated how things were to be run across the country, taxed his subjects rigorously, punished criminals with harsh justice and generally worked to increase the power of the central government and the bureaucracy against the nobility and other vested local interests. Rather, as German medievalists have tended to see it, a successful medieval king was one who worked hard to get all the nobles on the same page as him and be on as friendly terms with them as possible, play by the time-honoured “rules of the game” (to use Gerd Althoff’s phrase) of kingship and generally act like the just and gracious lord of his people. Kings who succeeded in all this could then achieve lots of stuff by bring the nobility of the kingdom/ empire together in royal assemblies and armies. German historiography also stresses the importance of ritual and symbolic actions in how this consensus was built up between kings and aristocrats, such as displays of anger, the shedding of tears, kneeling or prostrating oneself to ask for forgiveness, bringing in holy relics to court gatherings or army musters, seating plans at assemblies and feasts and the like. And yet people talk about "gesture politics" like its a new thing!

What this means is that, in more than just a literal sense, English and German historians speak a very different language when it comes to discussing medieval politics. As a result, it seems like the two political systems of England and Germany in the middle ages were profoundly different and cannot be understood in each other’s terms, making any kind of meaningful comparison impossible. And on the surface of it, its easy to see this as just a natural state of affairs because the actual content they work on is very different. Lets turn to the two rulers we’re comparing. William the Conqueror was able to defeat and kill a rival contender for the throne, Harold Godwinson, in one decisive battle on 14 October 1066, and just over two months later he had seized control of the effective capital of England (London) and with it the machinery of government and was crowned king. Then over the next five years, he was able to completely subdue the whole country by force and replace the majority of its ruling class with foreigners loyal to him. By contrast, Henry IV faced betrayals, rebellions and civil war for almost all his reign and temporarily lost all authority over his kingdom when in 1076 the Pope released his subjects from their oaths of loyalty to him. This he could only regain if he approached the pope as a humble penitent begging for forgiveness. The sources are also hugely different. For example the most famous document from Norman England is of course the Domesday Book – a government survey of (almost) his entire kingdom that records land ownership, economic activities, wealth, tax assessment and the (adult male) population. Likewise there are lots of writs and charters and other administrative records surviving from Norman England. There are plenty of detailed narrative histories for the Anglo-Norman period - Orderic Vitalis, William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon - but they're counterbalanced by these administrative records. Meanwhile, Henry IV’s Germany is very different. While poor in administrative records it is rich in chronicles, many of them written by historians hostile to Henry IV like Bruno of Merseburg and Lamprecht of Hersfeld. These provide lots of "thick description" of rituals, assemblies and battles, but have little to say about the workings of government. Thus, in contrast to the Anglo-Norman case, they do so much more to colour how historians view the workings of politics in the period.

Thankfully, over the last fifty years, some historians, almost all of them English and most of them specialising in Continental European medieval history (though also including some intrepid and outgoing Anglo-Saxonists) have tried hard to bridge the scholarly great divide and challenge the insularity and historiographical navel-gazing of English and German medievalists alike. To give a short list of them (in chronological order) they include Karl Leyser, Timothy Reuter, Janet Nelson, Sarah Foot, Catherine Cubitt, Simon MacLean, Charles Insley and Levi Roach. There’s been a lot of work recently on the importance of just the kind of ritual and symbolic communication stuff that German medievalists like Gerd Althoff focus on, in relation to late Anglo-Saxon England, though Anglo-Normanists have been slower to follow up on this trend. Indeed its frankly bizarre that its taken so long for English medievalists to see the importance of demonstrative behaviour and symbolism in medieval kingship. After all one of the most famous episodes in English medieval history opens with a king throwing a tantrum and ends with the same king making a humble pilgrimage to Canterbury and being whipped bloody by monks to apologise to the archbishop whose death resulted from his anger. The whole saga of Henry II and Thomas Becket makes a great deal more sense if you have in mind Henry IV at Canossa in 1077, or from an even earlier time Emperor Otto III in 1000 making a pilgrimage to Gniezno to visit the tomb of the martyred Adalbert of Prague and greeting Duke Boleslaw the Brave of Poland in the humble garb of a penitent. And Anglo-Normanists have tried to look at the Norman Conquest in a more pan-European perspective as well, as exemplified by work from people like David Bates, Robert Bartlett, Stephen Baxter and (again) Levi Roach.

Canterbury 1174, when even the most old school historians finally realise that the politics of Norman and Angevin England weren't a ritual free-zone after all

But enough of the historiographical detour. In my view, William the Conqueror and Henry IV, while they mostly don’t match up, nonetheless make a really stimulating comparison for thinking about how eleventh century kingship worked (both through similarities and differences), the momentous changes going on all over Europe and how events almost a thousand years ago can still be so resonant and controversial today. In subsequent posts we’ll be exploring both rulers’ childhoods, how they presented themselves as rulers and faced challenges to their authority and how their reigns were shaped by broader forces of change.

Sources cited

Primary

William of Poitiers, The Gesta Guillelmi, edited and translated by Marjorie Chibnall, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1998)

Secondary

Gerd Althoff, Family, Friends and Followers: Political and Social Bonds in Early Medieval Europe, 500 – 1200, translated by Christopher Carroll, Cambridge University Press (2009)

Elisabeth Van Houts, ‘The Norman Conquest through European eyes’, English Historical Review 110 (1995)

Charles Insley, “‘Ottonians with pipe rolls?’ Political culture and performance in the kingdom of the English, c.900 – 1050’”, History 102 (2017)

On this day in history 3: following in your grandfather's footsteps

 And so we're back again with another Carolingian imperial coronation, one which followed almost exactly 75 years after the one we looked at last time and one which was very much meant to replicate it. And this post concerns probably my favourite Carolingian monarch of them all, Charles the Bald. 

On this day in 875, King Charles the Bald of West Francia was crowned Western Roman Emperor at Rome by Pope John VIII, having been crowned King of Italy and received the imperial regalia at the Italian capital, Pavia. On 12th August 875, Charles' nephew, Louis II, the king of Italy and the Western Roman Emperor, had died aged 50. His only child was a daughter, Ermengard. With the death of Louis II, the branch of the Carolingian family descended from Charles' elder brother, Lothar I (795 - 855), became extinct. This was a crucial step in the "great-thinning out" (as I call it) of the Carolingian dynasty. In 862, there had been five Carolingian monarchs (six if we include the usurper Pippin II in Aquitaine), each with the potential to start their own royal line in their respective kingdoms - there's also a seventh branch of the Carolingian family, the counts of Vermandois (descended from Charlemagne's middle son, Pippin of Italy) but we don't talk about them. By 875, it had already narrowed down to two - the West Frankish branch descended from Charles the Bald and the East Frankish branch descended from Charles' middle brother, King Louis the German of East Francia. By 911, there would be just the one branch, Charles the Bald's branch, which would continue to rule in West Francia, with some interruptions, all the way up to its termination in 987 - again, the Vermandois branch survived into the eleventh century and indeed beyond (they're also the female-line ancestors of William the Conqueror and all English monarchs since 1066, not to mention a huge chunk of the British aristocracy), but for the last time no one talks about them!

Now, like when King Lothar II of Lotharingia died, also childless (save for an illegitimate son, Hugh of Alsace) in 869, Louis II's uncles immediately pounced and tried to get first dibs on his kingdom and the imperial title. Charles managed to win the race and so he was crowned King of Italy and Western Roman Emperor on this day in 875.

In a way, this was the fulfilment of Charles' lifelong ambition. Though Charles, unlike his three elder brothers, had never personally known his grandfather, the Emperor Charlemagne (d. 814), he did grow up with him as a role model. In 829, when Charles was eight, one of his father's court poets and leading advisers, Walahfrid Strabo, wrote in his poem "Concerning the vision of Tetricus":

Happy the line that continues with such a grandson: grant Christ that he will follow in deeds whom he follows in name, in deed, in character, nature, life, virtue and triumphs, in peace, faith, piety, intellect, speech and dignity. In doctrine, judgement, result and in loyal offspring.

Janet Nelson has suggested in her 1992 biography of Charles the Bald, still the definitive work on the Carolingian monarch 30 years on, that Einhard's "Life of Charlemagne" was used as a mirror for princes in the 830s to provide the teenaged Charles with an education in political theory. Certainly, Charles had read Einhard's "Life of Charlemagne", as he quoted directly from it in a letter that he himself composed for Pope John VIII, shortly before his death in 877 at the age of 56. And all throughout his life, his courtiers were always trying to measure him up to Einhard's portrayal of Charlemagne as neo-Roman Emperor in the mould of Augustus Caesar, Vespasian and Titus.

This can also be nicely illustrated by comparing Charles to his middle brother, Louis the German (806 - 876). While the East Frankish king issued no legislation and kept his administration simple, he excelled in diplomacy and warfare, especially on his long eastern frontier with the Slavic realms extending all the way from the Baltic to the Adriatic. He was also very good at managing his sons, extended family and aristocracy, and never faced serious challenges to his rule from any of them in his 33 year long reign in East Francia. He also ruled much of his realm with a very light touch - he rarely set foot in the roadless, densely forested and still semi-pagan and tribal region of Saxony, but when he did in 852 he held public judicial assemblies (placita in the Latin sources) and his subjects eagerly petitioned him for dispute resolution and favours. Charles the Bald, on the other hand, was the opposite - the first twenty years of his reign in West Francia saw him experience revolts from both his sons, his extended family (his nephew Pippin II) and his aristocrats, and he wasn't all that militarily successful against the Vikings and Bretons and his East Frankish relatives. But Charles had a near-boundless vision. His legislation testifies to it - the Edict of Pitres in 864, which I've talked about here before, was the most lengthy and ambitious single piece of legislation any Western European ruler ever issued between the fifth and the thirteenth centuries. The Carolingian project of governmental reform and centralisation probably peaked under him - the coinage was very successfully reformed and put under tighter control, the foundations for a new system of national taxation (the first Francia had known since the old Roman tax system decayed in the seventh century), military service was extended to most of the free male population and missi continued to investigate the localities to ensure public justice was running smoothly and enquire into corruption and abuses with more vigour than ever. Royal assemblies, probably the most important institution of Carolingian government, were also at their grandest in his reign - Charles the Bald and his main adviser, Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims (806 - 882) were absolutely obsessed with ritual. Charles was also a real intellectual, who had extensively studied law, theology and Roman history since childhood, and during his reign the Carolingian project of expanding education and literacy and the influence of intellectuals at court continued to thrive.

The image below, from the Psalter of Charles the Bald, produced c.869 by an artist in Charles' Palace School, nicely illustrates how this had always been Charles' great ambition. It shows Charles enthroned and dressed in an ankle-length tunic and chlamys like a contemporary Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Emperor. He has a crown on his head (a symbol of kingship since Biblical Israel) and he carries the orb and sceptre, symbols of rulership that seem to have developed under the Carolingians in the late eighth and ninth centuries, symbolising his authority over the world granted to him by God. He also sits underneath a canopy in the classical Roman architectural style. The inscription in Latin, written in the square capitals used for monumental inscriptions in ancient Rome (as the Carolingians would have known very well), reads:

When Charles the Great presides with his crown on, he is similar in honour to Josiah and the equal of Theodosius.

Ca. 869 AD. BnF, Manuscrits, Latin 1152 fol. 3v, École du Palais de Charles le Chauve, Wikipedia Commons

Thus Charles the Bald is consciously being compared to three of his personal heroes here - the seventh century BC Old Testament King Josiah of Judah, a great reformer of Judaism who compiled the books of the Torah together; the Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius I or II, the former being the one who made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire and the latter being the one who codified Roman law into the Theodosian Code which Charles the Bald cites regularly in the Edict of Pitres; and the third being his grandfather Charlemagne.

Indeed, at the month-long Synod of Ponthion in June 876, Charles the Bald would come dressed in the traditional Frankish costume of knee length tunic, cloak and leggings at the start, but by the end was dressed exactly how he is in that image - in the East Roman imperial costume and with a crown. His wife, Queen Richildis, was then given her coronation as Empress. This was done to make it real to the West Franks that Charles was now Emperor. The image below, from the San Paolo Bible, nicely illustrates how he would have appeared.

By Benedictine workshop, probably in the Reims region. - Bible of San Paolo fuori le Mura, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7590481. I would translate the inscription if it wasn't too damn faded. But its a masterpiece of Carolingian art all the same, especially rich in its use of colour and decorative patterns.

Finally, Charles also had a splendid throne made for his coronation. It survives in the Vatican museum, and is richly decorated with carved ivories. Below you can see the throne itself, and individual panels from it. They depict episodes from the labours of Hercules, including Hercules wrestling the Nemean lion and cleaning out the stable of Diomedes. This is demonstrative of how Charles and his court absolutely adored classical literature and mythology, and how Charles saw parallels between his own triumphs and tribulations as king and emperor and those of the greatest of the Greek heroes. But it may also be a warning, perhaps even influenced by Theodulf's poem we looked at earlier this year, against the dangers of pride and trusting too much in your own abilities rather than in God to give you success, which Hercules exemplified. Indeed, Charles himself was guilty of this on many occasions, as his attempt to reunify the entire Carolingian Empire by conquering East Francia ended disastrously at the battle of Andernach on 8 October 876. His imperial glory was also fleeting too, as he enjoyed it for only two years before his death in 877. 

Photo credit: Helen Gittos https://twitter.com/Helen_Gittos/status/1398695600854536193/photo/1

Bibliography:

David Ganz, "Introduction" in Einhard and Notker the Stammerer, Two Lives of Charlemagne, edited and translated by David Ganz, Penguin Classics (2008)

Janet Nelson, Charles the Bald, Longman (1992)

Chris Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 - 1000, Penguin (2009)