The Source:
The Oxford World History of Empire, Volume Two, edited by Peter Fibiger Bang, C. A. Bayly, Walter Scheidel, Oxford University Press 2021
Excerpts: Chapter 17 ‘Charlemagne, the Carolingian Empire, and Its Successors’ by Rosamond McKitterick
The Creation of the Frankish Empire
When Charlemagne’s father Pippin III usurped the Frankish throne in 751 and deposed the last Merovingian king, he came into possession of a kingdom that was the most successful of Rome’s heirs among the barbarian successor states of the Roman Empire. Catholic since the conversion of Clovis, the first Merovingian king, at the turn of the fifth century, the Merovingian rulers had achieved a thorough synthesis of Frank and Roman within the Roman provinces of Gaul, with many Roman administrative and documentary practices retained, the church and the Christian faith firmly embedded within society, and bishops as important as counts in the governance of the kingdom.
Particular officials within the royal household exercised greater political influence than others in relation to the kings, and in the course of the seventh century it was especially the office of mayor of the palace that provided successive leaders of the Carolingian family—Pippin II, Charles Martel, and Pippin III—with the means first of all to dominate the Merovingian kings and kingdom in the late seventh and eighth centuries, and then for Pippin III eventually to make himself king.
The narrative sources emphasize the Carolingian mayors’ military prowess and their relationship with the church throughout their careers, and Charles Martel and Pippin appear to have set themselves the task of restoring the territory of the kingdom of the Franks to the greatest strength it had enjoyed under Merovingian rule.
When Pippin III died in 768 and handed on his newly won kingdom to his two sons Charles and Carloman, therefore, the Frankish realm occupied the whole of the former Roman provinces of Gallia, Germania, and Belgica. Under Charlemagne, sole ruler of the Franks after his brother’s death in 771, the kingdom expanded to embrace most of what we now include in western Europe, and incorporated former Roman territory as well as areas that had never known Roman rule.
It is essential to acknowledge that the territorial expansion under Charlemagne was not a grand strategic plan of conquest, but the result of what were initially and inevitably short-term political and diplomatic decisions. Only occasionally were particular political issues, such as the pope’s need for military support, recognized as opportunities to be seized. At the time there was, of course, no knowledge of what the consequences might turn out to be. It is only hindsight, for the most part since the late nineteenth century, that has imposed a heavy burden of significance on many of the political developments of this period. …
… With hindsight, the only intended Frankish conquest appears to have been the protracted series of campaigns, over more than three decades, against the Saxons. Summer after summer from 772 until 803, the military host was assembled and led against the peoples of Westphalia and then of the regions beyond the Weser and Elbe rivers. Even against the Saxons at the outset, however, Charlemagne may well simply have been dealing with Saxon raids, or mounting preemptive acts of occasional aggression. But the campaigns were subsequently presented, by Einhard as well as by later Saxon historians, as a determined conquest of the pagan Saxon people and their conversion to Christianity, which made the Saxons “one people” with the Franks.
The series of expeditions against the Saxons, as well as the incidents in relation to Lombards, Basques, Bretons, Danes, Avars, Obodrites, and Wilzi, cannot be simplified as the outcome of aggression or defense, for there does seem to be an ideological element involved as well. As we shall see later in this chapter, the strategy of Carolingian rule included a program of religious reform and the expansion of Christian culture.
With the establishment of Carolingian rule over the vast area east of the Rhine and north of the Danube, the limits of the Carolingian Empire were defined, and the end of expansion appears to have been a conscious decision. The diplomacy conducted with the peoples beyond his borders suggests that Charlemagne at least, and to some degree his successors, perceived these limits themselves, rather than their being imposed by the greater strength of some of the peoples on the periphery.
Certainly it is in terms of the territory created by Charlemagne that the inheritance and succession of subsequent kings is discussed. These kings, moreover, had to be legitimate adult male members of the Carolingian family. In 806, for example, Charlemagne himself made provision for the division of his realm between three of his sons: Charles the Younger, Pippin of Italy, and Louis the Pious, in which Charles was to inherit the greater part, including Saxony, while Pippin was to receive Italy and Bavaria and Louis was to retain the subkingdom of Aquitaine. Because Charles and Pippin predeceased their father, all these plans came to naught, and Louis alone succeeded to the kingship and the empire on his father’s death in 814. In his turn, Louis the Pious tried to determine the succession in the famous Ordinatio imperii of 817 by dividing his realm between his three sons, Lothar, Louis “the German,” and Pippin of Aquitaine. These plans too were foiled, both by the rivalry between the brothers and by another son, Charles the Bald, born six years after the Ordinatio imperii, to Louis the Pious and his second wife. On Louis’s death in 840, these fraternal rivalries came to a head, and the Frankish realm was divided again in 843 at the famous Treaty of Verdun between the surviving sons by Louis’s first wife—Lothar and Louis “the German”—and Charles the Bald.
All these kings—Charles the Bald ruling the western region, Lothar ruling the “middle kingdom” from Frisia down to Rome, the northern part of which subsequently became known as Lotharingia, and Louis “the German” ruling the eastern region and Bavaria—had legitimate male heirs. Succession disputes between uncles, nephews, brothers, and cousins punctuated the politics of the next century, but the disputes about kings were nevertheless about which members of the same family to accept as ruler.
Whatever the internal divisions, the succession was perceived as a dynastic matter in a “political system focused on a particular definition of a ruling family” [ref.] in which the system itself was resilient enough to sustain weaker rulers as well as support stronger ones. The Ottonian rulers in Saxony and the Capetians in France emulated this strong sense of family succession, as well as inheriting the political system that supported it. …
Mastery of Space
Charlemagne maintained a political system that accommodated diversity and a plurality of political and religious centers across the huge extent of his territories. Despite becoming a favored residence toward the end of Charlemagne’s life, Aachen never functioned as a capital, nor did any other royal palace under Charlemagne’s successors, for the empire remained polycentric.
He developed aspects of the administration already in the process of formation under his father Pippin III, as well as making many innovations of his own. Thus he devoted a remarkable degree of effort to ensuring a strong communications network between the various centers and their hinterlands, in which written documents—letters, charters, and capitularies—played an essential role.
The single large assembly convened each year in a location determined by the king and announced in advance by means of letters sent throughout the kingdom, which was attended by lay and ecclesiastical magnates from across the entire realm. These annual assemblies were a prominent aspect of the royal topography of power.
Assemblies were obviously a means for the king to be informed about the affairs of the kingdom, but they were also occasions to hear and decide upon legal disputes, receive ambassadors, to determine new economic and administrative arrangements, and to decide how ecclesiastical concerns were to be addressed. …
… In 802, the assembly at Aachen, among other matters, made major reforms of the system of missi dominici or royal agents, insisted on the proper administration of justice, and required the re-administration of the oath of fidelity to the king from all freemen now that he had been made emperor.
The missi dominici in particular are a striking instance of the way in which ecclesiastical and lay magnates joined forces in the administration of the empire, for a bishop or abbot formed a pair with a count to act as imperial inspectors for the administration, especially of justice, and were assigned specific regions known as missatica.
Other capitularies, augmented by the charter evidence, offer information about counts and their responsibility for the overseeing of the mints and coinage production, as well as local justice and the maintenance of roads and bridges.
Local justice involved local freemen to assist with the process of hearing cases, and local notaries were employed by both lay notables and ecclesiastical institutions, to record disputes and keep records of legal transactions.
Marchiones or counts serving in border regions appear to have had special responsibilities for defense. Landholders generally, whether lay or ecclesiastical, were called on to send fully equipped and provisioned military contingents, calculated in relation to the size of their estates, most usually in the regular mustering of the host each spring. The king’s own estates, dispersed throughout the realm, were a major source of income. …
… The impact of Charlemagne’s own travel to these assemblies, as well as that of the secular and ecclesiastical magnates and their entourages who attended, can be understood in symbolic as well as practical terms. Their processional traversing of the realm to the meeting places decided upon each year provided a visible confirmation to all those living within the empire of the ruler and his leading men going about official business. …
… Institutionalized itinerant kingship only became a central element of the ruling method and administrative system of the [later] Ottonian kings and German emperors, in that the king’s presence was essential for the carrying out of royal business.
Charlemagne’s officials, on the other hand, conducted royal business on his behalf in his absence. It is this system which provided the overall structure of Carolingian government, even if later rulers relied more on their personal presence to enforce their authority than Charlemagne had ever seemed to need to do.
The creation of this vast realm, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean and North Sea to the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas and encompassing many of the greatest river systems in Europe, including the Rhine, upper reaches of the Danube, the Weser, and the Elbe, incorporated many new peoples and posed challenges for order and control quite apart from those of cohesion, identity, and a sense of belonging.
Such order and control depended far more on an extended administrative network, local officials, peripatetic royal agents, and an insistence on the maintenance of justice than on force and military presence.
Nevertheless, the role of the army in the maintenance of the early medieval empire needs to be considered in the light of the absence of a standing army organized by the state. Instead there was a system of organized military service with villages, estates, and their lords sending military contingents when summoned to do so by the ruler. …
… the Carolingian Empire seems one far more geared to peace [than war] …
… Charlemagne’s capitularies from the first decade of the ninth century about the mobilization of the army … are to be seen in a defensive rather than aggressive context, designed to protect the homeland should there be any invaders. …
… exemption from military service could be purchased. The army tax, or haribannus, formerly understood as a fine for non-performance of military service, appears to have been a customary levy to support the army from some individuals from whom military service was not expected, rather than a fine. … Anyone who failed to provide such a group, or failed to provide a soldier, had to pay a haribannus. In other words, one could either serve in person or pay the haribannus, but also some could serve by proxy in supporting one person in a group by equipping him. So, military obligation is presented as a personal obligation between a free Frank and the king, not as a tax, and it had to be settled in one form or another. … [Arms] training for the elites certainly appears to have been customary, and members of the elite might be called upon to fight. The army was conceivably a career, but there are few indications that a warrior would make war his sole occupation, nor that military leadership was the sole criterion for effective rule. … [Military] organization was geared toward the supply of small well-equipped contingents, and … the responsibility for organizing this military retinue/equipage/was the local landowner’s. A recurrent acknowledgment in the Frankish annals is the recruitment of the men of the many regions of the realm … conforming … to Carolingian regulations. …
… [In] the contemporary accounts of the defensive strategies against Viking and Magyar raids in the last few decades of the ninth century and the early tenth century, recourse to fighting was only one of a range of options pursued. Further, there is a strong ideology of peacemaking and the virtues of a peaceful king.
… There is … a remarkable paucity of archaeological evidence for fortifications across the entire territory. … Difficulties of identification have been exacerbated by the possibility of changing functions over time and the difference between private and public or state defense. From the archaeological evidence alone it is not possible to determine how many defensive structures were controlled by local magnates rather than the ruler. Some refuge sites, such as Unterregenbach in Kreis Schwabisch Hall, were effectively hill forts or circular enclosures and appear to have been created in the eighth or ninth century as protection against raiding. In the Ardennes, some prehistoric and Roman sites were reused from time to time in the early Middle Ages, presumably as refuges. …
… As a further indication of the maintenance of peace within the Carolingian Empire, the Carolingians constructed large palace complexes without major defensive structures. These palaces, built with rich materials and expert workmanship … were distributed right across the empire and functioned as both occasional residences for the ruler himself as he traveled within his realm, as well as, most probably, bases for the local royal lay or ecclesiastical royal officials. …
Imperial Unity
… [The] overall territorial coherence of the Carolingian realms after 843 should not be underestimated. It could even be described as a “dynastic commonwealth. …
… Contemporary perception … was that all [the] new kingdoms in western Europe [during the ninth and tenth centuries, examples given] remained part of a larger whole, at first under the control of members of the same [Carolingian extended] family, or at least thereafter connected with each other by marriage and strong diplomatic agreements. The narratives of the mid-ninth century place enormous emphasis on brotherly love, concord, and harmony. Family relations determined the course of political events. …
… [The surviving written narratives] reflect the orchestration of political action, in which communication, if not actual concord, between the members of the Carolingian dynasty was essential. No fewer than 70 meetings between 853 and 887 alone, quite apart from the variable configurations of the meetings between the brothers and their discussions, are recorded. The political rhetoric is insistent on the fraternal love of the rulers. The narratives and political reality alike, therefore, stress that it was a family who together ruled the various regions of the Carolingian Empire, within which the rivalries and the aristocratic interests associated with the various members of the family had to be accommodated. …
… Despite Nithard’s jaundiced conclusion [in one famous narrative] about how dissension and struggle abound, in contrast to the abundance and happiness of the reign of Charlemagne, his text as a whole nevertheless is not only a plea for unity, but also for his listeners and readers to understand how
“from this history everyone may gather how mad it is to neglect the common good and to follow only private and selfish desires”.
The entire text is a portrait of troubles within a coherent political system to the maintenance of which all the protagonists were essentially committed. …
… Nithard manipulated the variable language [Romance, German, Latin] of the [ruling group] oaths to stress unity not disunity, harmony not contention, and linguistic difference and accomplishment on the part of the kings as an outward sign of cultural dexterity. The narrative can be read as a corroboration of the great strength of the empire. It emphasizes … shared rule over a disparate empire.
Cultural Networks of Empire
… [The] strength of Latin culture and learning, and of the Roman cultural inheritance within the Carolingian Empire [was] actively promoted by Charlemagne … This promotion of Latin learning and culture was more than a zeal for education and intellectual activity. The underlying aim can be summarized by the word correctio, in which the emphasis on correct language, correct texts, proper conduct, rigorous ecclesiastical discipline, religious reform, artistic creation, and intellectual endeavor were all to be combined in service of the Christian faith.
As the realm expanded well beyond the bounds of the former Roman Empire in the west, so Latin culture was introduced into new territories as bishoprics… and monasteries … Some of these … became major centers of learning in the later Carolingian and Ottonian period. Many of these centers were linked by personal associations and institutional connections, quite apart from the extensive exchange of texts and books… [The texts show] an extraordinary effort to preserve the learning of antiquity and the early Middle Ages … coupled with equally remarkable creativity in the range of new texts produced on all the subjects comprising the seven liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, music, astronomy, arithmetic, and geometry, as well as theology, biblical exegesis, philosophy, geography, poetry, and medicine. In art and architecture there is the same potent mixture of emulation and innovation to be observed, from the mosaics and marble of the palace chapel at Aachen and the rich illuminations, elegant scripts, and ornamented … books [and] frescoes [and inscribed epitaphs] … The web of learning stretched right across the empire …
… This common Latin culture, grounded in the works of classical antiquity, the Latin Bible, the Latin writing of the church fathers, the early medieval writers from Italy, Spain, Gaul, North Africa, and the British Isles, Latin translations of Greek texts from the East, and the host of authors from the Carolingian period, was expanded as Frankish rule and Christianity extended ever further east and north. In due course, the Latin culture and educational and intellectual traditions consolidated in the Carolingian period embraced not just the medieval empire within western Europe … but also Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary.
This Latin culture and learning, held in common by the peoples and institutions of the entire region, has proved the most enduring legacy of the medieval empire to the Western world. Yet there were other unifying elements, not least the concept of empire and the imperial title …
Imperial Title and the Legacy of Rome
… [One] distinctive aspect of the medieval empire was the relationship with the papacy and Italy, however much this relationship changed as individual emperors and popes attempted to define it.
… During the reign of Louis the Pious [813–840] a highly sophisticated understanding of empire and the political and symbolic importance of imperial unity developed. The Ordinatio imperii of 817 granted Louis’ eldest son the title of co-emperor, and envisaged the emperor acting as both king with full royal authority in his own regnum or portion of the empire, while being simultaneously overlord over all his similarly autonomous royal brothers in the other Carolingian sub-kingdoms. Even more significantly, Lothar’s own kingdom included Italy. Once the imperial title had been conferred, however, the Franks were also quick to capitalize on the symbolic resonances of the empire and the imperial title, though the realization of its theoretical possibilities was a cumulative and slow process. It is generally accepted that the full expression of the medieval empire was the achievement of the theorists of the German Empire under the Staufen rulers in the twelfth century.
The Italian connection and obligation of protection of the see of St. Peter remained a fundamental element of the office of emperor, just as the actual territory of Italy and control thereof was also crucial. The imperial title became an honor for the ruler of Italy, or at least those who aspired to political control in Italy, and was a prize that many popes were able to offer members of the Carolingian family in an attempt to secure political support …
… The most crucial shift in the relationship between pope and emperor from the end of the tenth century was the strengthening of the imperial controlling role in papal appointments and the election of a succession of popes, both Germans and Romans, who were imperial candidates. …
Conclusion: A Christian Empire
What distinguished the medieval empire from the ancient empires of which it was a successor? It is a commonplace that the term is derived within the European tradition from the Latin imperium (rule, sphere of control) rather than a defined territorial unit.
Modern definitions of empire based on nineteenth- and twentieth-century manifestations of a territorially extensive polity that assumes … a relationship between a dominant group and a subordinate and necessarily foreign power are of limited utility.
Certainly belonging to an empire, and one’s legal status within it, means that the territorial entity needs to be seen from the perspective of both the emperor and rulers, as well as from that of the citizens or subjects. Yet that belonging, concomitant sense of identity and their implications have another crucial dimension, usefully highlighted when the Emperor Louis II [reign 844–875], “by order of Divine Providence, Emperor Augustus of the Romans” in 871 robustly refuted any suggestions on the part of the Byzantine emperor, “our well-beloved spiritual brother Basil, very glorious and pious emperor of the new Rome,” that a western emperor was inappropriate, claiming:
“it was the decision of God which caused us to assume the government of the people and of the city [of Rome], as well as the defence and exaltation of the mother of all the churches, who conferred authority, first as kings and then as emperors, on the first princes of our dynasty. . . Just as, by virtue of our faith in Christ, we belong to the race of Abraham . . . so we have received the government of the Roman empire by virtue of our right thinking and our orthodoxy. The Greeks on the other hand, because of the cacodoxy, that is to say their heretical opinions or wrong thinking, have ceased to be emperors of the Romans; indeed, not only did they abandon the city and seat of empire but, losing Roman nationality and even the Latin language, they established their capital in another city and transformed entirely the nationality and language of the empire.”
Louis II, king of Italy and emperor of the Romans [date uncertain]
Louis II’s claims that he and his Carolingian predecessors were the true heirs of Rome, as well as chosen by God, also articulate the two most distinctive elements of Charlemagne’s empire and its crucial augmentation of Roman imperial ideals and historical precedent, namely, the Christian orthodoxy of the Western Empire and its maintenance of Latin culture.
Time and again, in response to the dispute over icons in Byzantium [MH summary: e.g. refuting heresies, proposing theologically correct emendations, insisting on the catholic interpretations, rejecting theories of double predestination, affirming their loyalty to Rome, fostering devotion to Roman saints, and encouraging the observance of the papally approved collection of canon law…] the Franks had demonstrated their orthodoxy and loyal conformity with Roman practice.
Let us return to Charlemagne …
… As we have seen, the conquest and control of the geographical extent of Charlemagne’s empire was accompanied by an extraordinarily coherent effort to promote the Christian faith and a composite Greco-Roman, Judean, and Christian learned tradition. Indeed, it was Christian Latin culture and the Christian religion which made Charlemagne’s empire cohere. Thus the world map depicted on Charlemagne’s silver table [discussed earlier as representations of the world surrounded by seas and extending from Britain to Babylon] in particular could be taken to symbolize the ruler’s control of time and knowledge as well as space.
The Carolingian Empire was not a consequence of straightforward aggressive expansion or opportunistic defense, but was energized by a strong ideological and religious fervor. The overall strategy of Carolingian rule and the driving force behind the expansion was religious reform and the expansion of Christian Latin culture. The Christian faith, manifest in the building of churches, the imposition of ecclesiastical institutions, Christian ritual, the insertion of Christian morality into social relations, the uncompromising insistence on doctrinal orthodoxy, the teaching of correct Latin and Christian education, and the definition and dissemination of a canon of texts representing the range of human knowledge bound this disparate realm together.
The Christian faith provided the medieval empire with an essential unity as well as its ideological underpinning. Alongside the secular magnates, bishops and abbots played a fundamental role as government officials and administrators.
Empires and empire building are often seen as the outcome of military expansionism and conquest in which economic interests and political ambitions are uppermost. This chapter has suggested that the reality of the creation of an empire is also more often driven, in relation to the early medieval empire at least, by more than any mere wish to expand territory and impose political power over further groups of people. The promotion of a single language, Latin, and a single religion, Christianity, both secured within Christian learning and an intellectual and educational tradition that itself rested on the Greco-Roman and Judaean inheritance, was a part of an overall strategy of control. As part of this strategy, ideology was perceived and used as the dominant ingredient of the glue to make this great empire stick together, expressed through the media of culture, religion, law, and written texts. A European identity was forged in this early medieval empire which proved resilient enough to endure throughout the many political changes of the coming centuries.
[END of chapter]
Rather than repeat the book cover I offer a beautiful painting by Juan de la Abadía el Viejo [fl. 1470–1498]. It obviously postdates the period covered in the above exhibit by Rosamond McKitterick. But it serves to indicate the longevity of the theological debates which sadly absorbed so much of the time and energy of ruling elites in the Middle Ages. The subject appears to refer to the theory of ‘double predestination’ — the stultifying claim that God predestines some people to hell and others to heaven — which apparently was accepted in Byzantium but rejected by the Carolingians.
Saint Michael Weighing Souls, by Juan de la Abadía [date: 1480-1495]