Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe: Studies on Cultural Identity and Power (Cursor Mundi, 41) (English and French Edition) [Bilingual ed.] 9782503596280, 2503596282

Table of contents :
Front Matter
Ethnic Identities
Hans Hummer, Courtney M. Booker, and Dana M. Polanichka. Introduction
Ethnic Identities
Jean-Pierre Poly. Se dépouiller du vieil homme. Identités barbares dans l’empire romain tardif
Helmut Reimitz. Observing Peoples as Peoples. The Study of Ethnicity in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Herwig Wolfram. The King of the Nemítzioi and his Neighbours to the East
Inheritance and Identity
Edward M. Schoolman. Inheriting Identity and Constructing History in Medieval Ravenna
Sarah Whitten. Secundum Legem. Gender, Law, and Ethnicity in Early Medieval Southern Italian Documents
Hans Hummer. Kinship and Inheritance in Early Medieval Europe
Religious Identities
Carrie E. Beneš. The Blackbird, the Basilisk, and the Evicted Corpse. Sacralizing Landscape in Jacopo da Varagine’s Genoese Relic Treatises
Boris A. Todorov. Hagiographyas Political Theology. A Mid-Fourteenth-Century Case from Bulgaria
Dana M. Polanichka. The Crumbs of the Crumbs. Dhuoda and the Mid-Ninth-Century Carolingian Church
Geoffrey Koziol. Pragmatic Sanctions? The Peace of God and its Carolingian Antecedents
Legal and Political Identities
Warren Brown. Violence in Early Capetian v. Early Valois France. Same Behaviour, Different Ideas of Order?
Cosmin Popa-Gorjanu. Anti-Corruption Measures in the Legislation of Thirteenth-Century Hungary
Memories, Texts, and Identities
Maya Maskarinec. Invoking Gregory on the Caelian in Medieval Rome. A Study of an Inscription at SS. Giovanni e Paolo
John Eldevik. (Re)Visions of the World. Prester John in Twelfth-Century Bavaria
Courtney M. Booker. An Alleged Oratio of Boniface to Pippin in 751
Back Matter

Citation preview

Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe

CURSOR MUNDI Cursor Mundi is produced under the auspices of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Uni­ver­sity of California, Los Angeles.

Volume 41

General Director Chris Chism (English, UCLA) Managing Editor Allison McCann (CMRS, UCLA) Editorial Board Matthew Fisher (English, UCLA) Javier Patiño Loira (Spanish & Portuguese, UCLA) Peter Stacey (History, UCLA) Erica Weaver (English, UCLA) Bronwen Wilson (Art History, UCLA) Luke Yarbrough (Near Eastern Languages & Cultures, UCLA)

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.

Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe Studies on Cultural Identity and Power

Edited by

Courtney M. Booker, Hans Hummer, and Dana M. Polanichka

F

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

© 2022, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-2-503-59628-0 e-ISBN: 978-2-503-59629-7 DOI: 10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.125255 ISSN: 2034-1660 e-ISSN: 2565-943x Printed in the EU on acid-free paper. D/2022/0095/6

Table of Contents List of Illustrations

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Introduction Hans Hummer, Courtney M. Booker, and Dana M. Polanichka 9 Ethnic Identities Se dépouiller du vieil homme: Identités barbares dans l’empire romain tardif Jean-Pierre Poly 31 Observing Peoples as Peoples: The Study of Ethnicity in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages Helmut Reimitz 63 The King of the Nemítzioi and his Neighbours to the East Herwig Wolfram

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Inheritance and Identity Inheriting Identity and Constructing History in Medi­eval Ravenna Edward M. Schoolman 107 Secundum Legem: Gender, Law, and Ethnicity in Early Medi­eval Southern Italian Documents Sarah Whitten 129 Kinship and Inheritance in Early Medi­eval Europe Hans Hummer 151

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ta b l e of con ten ts

Religious Identities The Blackbird, the Basilisk, and the Evicted Corpse: Sacralizing Landscape in Jacopo da Varagine’s Genoese Relic Treatises Carrie E. Beneš 171 Hagio­graphy as Political Theo­logy: A Mid-Fourteenth-Century Case from Bulgaria Boris A. Todorov 191 The Crumbs of the Crumbs: Dhuoda and the Mid-Ninth-Century Carolingian Church Dana M. Polanichka 215 Legal and Political Identities Pragmatic Sanctions? The Peace of God and its Carolingian Antecedents Geoffrey Koziol 257 Violence in Early Capetian v. Early Valois France: Same Behaviour, Different Ideas of Order? Warren Brown 287 Anti-Corruption Measures in the Legislation of Thirteenth-Century Hungary Cosmin Popa-Gorjanu 307 Memories, Texts, and Identities Invoking Gregory on the Caelian in Medieval Rome: A Study of an Inscription at SS. Giovanni e Paolo Maya Maskarinec 335 (Re)Visions of the World: Prester John in Twelfth-Century Bavaria John Eldevik 357 An Alleged Oratio of Boniface to Pippin in 751 Courtney M. Booker 379 Indexes 421

List of Illustrations Figures Figure 1.1. Co­logne, Erzbischöfliche Diözesanund Dombibliothek, Cod. 166, fol. 140r. 

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Figure 1.2. Co­logne, Erzbischöfliche Diözesanund Dombibliothek, Cod. 166, fol. 22v. 

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Figure 8.1. Polyptych of Saint Syrus with blackbird and basilisk, central panel, attributed to Pier Francesco Sacchi, Genoa, church of San Siro. c. 1516.

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Figure 8.2. Map of late thirteenth-century Genoa. 

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Figure 8.3. Relief identifying the location of Syrus’s basilisk miracle, Genoa, Vico San Pietro della Porta. 1580.

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Figure 8.4. View of the north wall of the nave of San Lorenzo, with the early fourteenth-century bust of Janus on the arcade above and the chapel of St John the Baptist (c. 1450–1475), Genoa, cathedral of San Lorenzo. 

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Figure 14.1. Composite Inscription, SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Rome. c. eighth century/twelfth century (?).

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Figure 14.2. Incomplete Inscription, SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Rome. Twelfth century (?).

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Figure 14.3. Inscriptions, SS. Quattro Coronati, Rome. Twelfth century.

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Figure 14.4. Gregory Inscription, S. Paolo fuori le Mura, Rome. Seventh century.

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Figure 14.5. Gregory Inscription, St Peter’s, Rome. Eighth century.

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Figure 15.1. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 1001 (s. xii), fol. 30r.

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Figure 16.1. Rear fly-leaf, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Réserve des livres rares, Rés. L45.1 (= Pierre Pithou, Annalium et historiae Francorum ab anno Christi DCCVIII ad annum DCCCCXC scriptores coaetanei XII […] (Paris, 1588), Pithou’s personal copy).

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Figure 16.2. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Dupuy 1, fol. 8r.

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Figure 16.3. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 10303, p. 204.

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Figure 16.4. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 3910, fol. 2v.

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Figure 16.5. Detail, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Dupuy 1, fol. 8r.

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Figure 16.6. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, B 9 inf., fol. 131r.

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Tables Table 5.1. The appearance of ‘ex genere’ in charters from the 970s in Ravenna.

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Table 15.1. Twelfth-century (est.) witnesses to the Letter of Prester John.

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Table 15.2. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS n.a.l. 310; fol. ii+228+ii; s. xii; prov. Tegernsee Abbey.

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Table 15.3. London, British Library, MS Cotton Titus A XXVII (s. xiiex).

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Hans Hummer, Courtney M. Booker, and Dana M. Polanichka

Introduction This volume explores identity in its various manifestations throughout medi­eval Europe. It is guided by a medi­eval conception of identity that binds together the collection’s essays, provides its organizing principle, and links our investigations to the past we seek to understand. To be sure, undertaking such an exploration in a coherent fashion presents many challenges, in part because the meaning of identity for us can be so elastic and has in fact changed a great deal between now and the medi­eval past, whose denizens adhered to a much more static conception of identity. In modern academic studies, the concept of identity has become ubiquitous and therefore amorphous, but it essentially means how a person, group, or society sees, understands, and expresses itself. Understanding identities in the Middle Ages is particularly fraught for historians because the period is so remote from modern sensibilities. In an attempt to bridge this epistemo­logical chasm, historians have developed methods and theories for analysing the past and, ideally, illuminating its otherness while also drawing out its elusive, timeless dimensions. Many of these ‘tools’ of analysis, so to speak, such as diplomatics, palaeo­graphy, codico­logy, and — more generally — historicism, have been developed within the profession. They have also been ‘borrowed’ from other disciplines, such as literary criticism, gender theory, linguistics, and the social sciences, especially anthropo­logy, whose practitioners navigate through similar epistemo­logical pitfalls as they traverse wildly diverse onto­logical terrains. These analytic tools, inventions of another time, inevitably influence any examination of the past — the profession’s equivalent of the ‘observer effect’ in physics where the mere observation of subatomic particles changes their behaviour. Historians likewise alter the past the instant they research it, even as they seek to understand the past as much as possible ‘on its own terms’. The general response to this problem, for better or worse, has been a studied agnosticism: historians — especially those in North America — borrow eclectically and pragmatically, opportunistically and heuristically, from other fields, never quite committing to any particular approach, and blend them with their own expertise in the study of change. Historians thus apply what

Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe: Studies on Cultural Identity and Power, ed. by Courtney M. Booker, Hans Hummer, and Dana M. Polanichka, CURSOR 41, pp. 9–28 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022)        10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.127574

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seems useful for attaining, if never quite reaching, an accurate understanding of the past.1 The investigation of identity holds out the promise that an examination of how people in the past encountered and apprehended their world can bring us closer to their suppositions. Identity is the presumptive matrix that binds reality to perceptions of reality, and encompasses the ideo­logies that mediate behaviour and meaning. Consequently, it informs agency, practice, and textual hermeneutics, both shapes and reflects how individuals or groups expressly present themselves and their world, and contains implicit, unconscious assumptions that historians infer from patterns of thought, behaviour, and material culture. As broad as that conceptualization of identity might seem, happily for us identity has roots in medi­eval thought, presenting a valuable juxtaposition of onto­logical realms. The term ‘identity’ (identitas) first appeared in Latin in fourth-century Christo­logical debates. It was a translation of a Greek philosophical concept dating back to Plato, and developed by Neoplatonists, that expressed the similarities shared by seemingly different things. For Christians, the Trinity posed the ultimate puzzle of identity: How was one to speak of the oneness of a divinity manifest in three distinct persons? Did the deity possess a single identity, or did each of the persons?2 Marius Victorinus, a fourth-century rhetor and Neoplatonic philosopher, sized up the paradox of the identities of the Father and the Son in this way: Eadem est, non ipsa? Sed si istud, aut praeexsistente substantia duo, aut ab eadem, vel scissione aut emissione partis, eadem ipsa facta est. Sed neque scissione, neque deminutione filius natus est, sed perfectus pater et semper perfectus et semper pater, perfectus filius et semper perfectus, et ex aeterno et in aeternum filius. Quomodo igitur eadem? In duobus enim quae eadem? Sed pater et filius unum et qui pater pater, et qui filius filius et non idem pater et filius nec idem filius pater eius cuius filius est. Non ergo unum, si neque ipsa neque eadem est substantia. Relinquitur ergo modo quodam esse et ipsam et eandem. Non enim fas est dicere alterius esse substantiae patrem et filium. (Is there substantial identity, not individual identity? But if this is so, either they are two from a preexisting substance, or from the same substance, a substance identical in individuality is constituted either by division or separation of a part. But neither by division  1 Geary, ‘Visions of Medi­eval Studies’; Geary, ‘History, Theory, and Historians’; Geary, ‘The Uses of Archaeo­logical Sources’; Geary, ‘Comparative History and Social Scientific Theory’. On whether cultures can be productively deconstructed and analysed by way of conceptual tools that arise from the very epistemo­logical lineages they seek to probe, see Koziol, ‘The Dangers of Polemic’; Buc, ‘The Monster and the Critics’.  2 Geary, ‘Political Identity, Ethnic Identity, Genetic Identity’. See also on identity, Pohl, ‘Introduction: Ego Trouble?’; Bedos-Rezak, ‘Medi­eval Identity’.

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nor by diminishment was the Son born, but the Father is complete, both always complete and always Father; the Son is complete and always complete, and from eternity and unto eternity is he Son. How, therefore, are they identical? For what is there of identity in two? But the Father and Son are one, and the Father is Father, the Son is Son, and the Father is not the same one as the Son nor is the Son the same as the Father whose Son he is. Therefore, they are not one if they are neither identical as individuals nor identical in substance. It remains, therefore, that in some way there is both individuality and identity in substance. For it is not permitted to say that there is difference of substance between Father and Son.)3 As Victorinus observed, an identity might belong to an individual, or it might be a common substance belonging to two (or more) things, but not both. Fire and air, he says, differ in their qualities, yet as different parts of matter they are nonetheless identical in substance.4 Unlike persons of the Trinity, fire and air cannot at once have an individual identity and also be identical in substance. Neither can human beings. An intriguing early eighth-century continental manu­script of mostly rhetorical treatises illuminates with striking genealogical diagrams the aspects that were understood to make up the human person (persona).5 The codex, acquired by the cathedral library of Co­logne from the monastery of Lorsch in the mid-ninth century, includes texts by the late fourth-century rhetor Chirius Fortunatianus, by Augustine, and, perhaps not coincidentally, several by Marius Victorinus.6 Within Victorinus’s treatise on Cicero’s rhetorical work, a copyist drew a diagram to illustrate a discussion of nature, ‘the definition of ’ which, Victorinus claimed, ‘is difficult’. Victorinus nevertheless offered a ‘definition of nature according to Plato and other wise people’.7 The diagram at the bottom of the page distilled the essentials: it divides nature into ‘animate’ and ‘inanimate’ things. The animate are comprised of the ‘divine’ (presumably angels) and the ‘mortal’. Mortals consist of ‘human beings’ and ‘beasts’. From here the illuminator drew a line from ‘human beings’ to the individual expression of the species, the ‘person’ (persona), which is a composite of ‘soul’, ‘body’, and the ‘extrinsic’ (Figure 1.1).8

 3 Victorinus, Adversus Arium, i. 41, ed. by Henry, p. 310; trans. by Clark, Theo­logical Treatises, pp. 156–57. On the transmission of Marius Victorinus from North Africa to Italy, see Graham, ‘The Transmission of North African Texts to Europe’, p. 155.  4 Victorinus, Adversus Arium, i. 41, ed. by Henry, p. 308.  5 The significance of this manu­script is noted by Pohl, ‘Introduction: Ego Trouble?’, p. 18.  6 Co­logne, Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek, Cod. 166.  7 Co­logne, Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek, Cod. 166, fols 139v–140r. Cf. Victorinus, Explanatio in rhetoricam, i. 24, ed. by Halm, pp. 215–17.  8 Co­logne, Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek, Cod. 166, fol. 140r .

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Figure 1.1. Co­logne, Erzbischöfliche Diözesanund Dombibliothek, Cod. 166, fol. 140r.

Figure 1.2. Co­logne, Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek, Cod. 166, fol. 22v. Figures reproduced with permission of Co­logne, Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek.

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Earlier in the same manu­script, Chirius Fortunatianus’s treatise, and an accompanying diagram (Figure 1.2), reveal what those extrinsic modalities of a persona could consist of: Persona quot modis consideratur? viginti et uno. Nomine, ut Sapiens; natione, ut Graecus; patria, ut Atheniensis Lacedemonius; genere vel cognatione, ut nobilis et ignobilis; dignitate, ut vir fortis magnus; fortuna, ut dives pauper; corpore, ut validus longus; institutione vel educatione, quem ad modum institutus [et] eruditus; moribus, ut frugi luxuriosus, patiens inpatiens; victus, vel amictus, et bonae frugi luxuriosus, quomodo rem suam administret, quam consuetudine domesticae sit; adfectione equorum armorum canum; arte vel studio, ut medicus orator; condicione, ut servus, addictus; condicione alia, quae liberos spectat, ut nupta adoptivus abdicatus; habitu, ut nitido sordido obscuro; vultu, ut laeto tristi; incessu, ut cito tardo; oratione, ut gravi seditiosa; adfectu, ut laetitia ira, morbo debilitate. (A person may be considered in how many aspects? Twenty-one. According to: name, as Sapiens; nation, as Greek; homeland, as Athenian, Lacedaemonian; birth and relation, as noble and low-born; dignity, as a brave man, a great man; fortune, as rich, poor; body, as strong, tall; instruction and education, as to how he was trained and taught; mores, as frugal, extravagant, patient, impatient; way of living, of the manner of dressing, whether discreet or extravagant; how he administers his property; what the conduct of his homelife is; affectation, as horses, arms, dogs; skill or study, as doctor, orator; condition, as slave, bondservant; other circumstance, which has to do with his children, as married, adopted, disowned; habit, as fastidious, careless, unobtrusive; countenance, as happy, sad; gait, as quick, slow; speech, as sober, rash; temperament/constitution, as happy, prone to anger, sick, weak.)9 Notably, in the diagram the copyist passed over one of the aspects of victus, ‘the manner of dressing’, but made the other two aspects of victus — ‘how he administers his property; what the conduct of his homelife is’ — into their own distinct modalities, which strikingly appear as the ‘legs’ of the persona. The copyist did this to reach the stated twenty-one aspects presumably because he had omitted two of Fortunatianus’s original modalities: ‘sexu, ut masculus et femina; aetate, ut senex puer’ (sex, as man, woman; age, as old, young). Why this happened is unclear, but other early medi­eval manu­scripts, most notably a ninth-century manu­script now at Bern, repeat the modalities of sex and age,  9 Co­logne, Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek, Cod. 166, fols 22r–23r . Cf. Fortunatianus, Ars rhetorica, ii. 1, ed. by Montefusco, pp. 107–08; trans. modified from Brightbill, ‘The Ars rhetorica’, pp. 73–74.

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and offer as an aspect of victus, ‘the character of one’s friends, whether they are saving of their goods [or] extravagant’, instead of ‘the manner of dressing’.10 The identity of a person was thus informed by an amalgam of physical, behavioural, and social characteristics. A persona was comprised of outward appearance, affectations, sex, temperament, mores, and constitution, but was also formed by the ‘externalities’ of birth, ethnic and local origins, family and marital status, and profession. It was revealed in behaviour and refined by participation: how one comported oneself, in the friends one kept, and how one managed one’s affairs, especially as they related to property and household. It was shaped by one’s aptitudes, study, and rearing. In effect, identity was formed by the sum of personal, social, and cultural factors.11 Modern considerations of identity — at least among academics — are not so static, or so bounded by, and subordinated to, the persona, and thus would be viewed with deep suspicion and alarm by people in the Middle Ages; they would condemn those who are not necessarily what they seem and who do not develop over time in accordance with their ‘nature’.12 In our constructionist, nominalist, postmodern times, a person’s identity is understood as always incomplete, always mutable, and so enmeshed in discourses of power that it can never be neatly objectified and treated as autonomous.13 We would not insist in principle, for example, on a person’s birth as a fixed condition. Be that as it may, talk about identity we do — a lot, not coincidentally because the Western world has been roiled by civil rights and decolonization, and the consequent formation and reformation of personal, group, and national identities over the past seventy-five years. Identity, and the rhetorical parsing of it in the manu­scripts of Fortunatianus’s treatise, offers a useful conceptual bridge for spanning the onto­logical gulf that separates us from the insistent and direct realism embraced by the past,  10 As the modalities of sex and age are found in Fortunatianus’s direct model for his parsing of persona, Cicero, De inventione, i. 24, they also likely formed an original part of Fortunatianus’s text, but were omitted at some point along one line of the text’s transmission. It is unclear whether the scribe of the Co­logne manu­script used an exemplar that lacked the two modalities, or was himself the first to omit them. A roughly contemporary manu­script containing Fortunatianus’s text, BnF, MS lat. 7530, fol. 237bisr, also lacks the modalities of sex and age. In a copy of the Co­logne manu­script made at Lorsch in the first third of the ninth century, BAV, MS Vat. Pal. lat. 1588, fol. 12v, an interlinear annotation changed the stated number of modalities from twenty-one to nineteen, while on the following folio the erroneous modalities created from victus were erased from the diagram. Slightly later manu­scripts of Fortunatianus’s text, copied in the second half of the ninth century and tenth century, include sex and age after fortuna; see Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod. 363, fol. 147v (saec. ix2/2); Co­logny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 146, fols 10v–11r (saec. x). For a stemma depicting the relationships among the manu­scripts, see Fortunatianus, Ars rhetorica, ed. by Montefusco, p. 38.  11 See Dutton, ‘The Identification of Persons in Frankish Europe’; Cizek, ‘Der “Charakterismos”’. Cf. the early, comparative essay of Mauss, ‘Une catégorie de l’esprit humain’.  12 See Morrison, Tradition and Authority, pp. 3–33; Booker, ‘Hypocrisy, Performativity’.  13 Geary, ‘Political Identity, Ethnic Identity, Genetic Identity’, p. 37.

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where the examination of language was the key to identifying the deepest realities.14 Indeed, the manu­scripts’ conceptualization of the persona as partly a product of participation in, and subordination to, relationships, power, and regimes of order opens a way into that alien world, making it more accessible to us. That is, we share with the medi­eval past an obsessive concern with being and the participation in existence that shapes consciousness, meaning, and identity. With that shared concern in mind, this volume is organized loosely around traits of identity suggested in manu­scripts and explores their expression in a variety of contexts over the course of a millennium, spanning Roman Late Antiquity to the French Wars of Religion, with many places and times in between. A persona, according to our eighth-century guide, stems from a natio and a patria, so that each person is informed by what we would call ethnic and local identities. Recent academic interest in the formation of ethnic identities among the early peoples of Europe began with Reinhard Wenskus, whose work inspired Herwig Wolfram’s studies of the ethnogenesis of the Gothic peoples.15 Ethnogenesis studies revealed that barbarian identities were neither stable nor essential, but rather the products of constant development and change. Nevertheless, the approach tended to present the formation of a discrete people as the end point of a longer historical process. In 1983, the enterprise was galvanized and redirected with the proposal that ethnic identity could be profitably understood as a ‘situational construct’. That compelling claim, cited as an inspiration by several contributors to this volume, drew out what was implicit in the work of Wolfram and others, and recalibrated the research agenda by denaturalizing ethnicity, emphasizing its malleability, and showing how it could vary conditionally and over time.16 This intervention challenged the myths of nations created by political theorists in the modern era, who had essentialized late antique and early medi­eval ethnicities, considered the early peoples of Europe as the natural objects of state formation, and thereby fundamentally abused the past for their presentist purposes.17

 14 There are perhaps no better examples than Isidore of Seville’s Etymo­logies, where names signify what things are because of what they mean, and Hrabanus Maurus’s popular reworking of the Etymo­logies, De rerum naturis, which expounded on the ‘mystical signification of things’, i.e. the transcendent meaning of words. Isidore of Seville, Etymo­ logiae, ed. by Lindsay; Etymo­logies, trans. by Barney and others. Hrabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis appears as De universo libri viginti duo, in the PL, ed. by Migne; trans. by Throop, Hrabanus Maurus, De universo; together with the review by Contreni in The Medi­eval Review. See also Booker, ‘By Any Other Name?’. Cf. Geary, Language and Power.  15 Wenskus, Stammesbildung und Verfassung; Wolfram, History of the Goths.  16 Geary, ‘Ethnic Identity as a Situational Construct’; also, Reuter, ‘Whose Race, Whose Ethnicity?’. Cf. below the essays by Reimitz and Whitten.  17 Geary, The Myth of Nations; Geary, Women at the Beginning; Garipzanov, Geary, and Urbańczyk, eds, Franks, Northmen, and Slavs; Geary and Klaniczay, eds, Manufacturing Middle Ages.

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Investigations of late antique and early medi­eval ethnicity are still driven by present concerns, one among many being the current migrations of people to the developed world. An analogous dynamic played out as the Roman Empire attempted to integrate barbarian peoples into its army. The cemetery at Julia Concordia (forty kilometres north-east of Venice) reveals the fascinating interplay of barbarian identities and the dominant Roman culture, an acculturation that is visible in the burials at the level of soldiers and their families. While the Empire ultimately failed to absorb the new peoples, ethnic identities were nonetheless transformed by the gravity of Roman culture and its Christian religion.18 In effect, as memorably argued elsewhere, the barbarian world, and the post-Roman kingdoms that sprang from it, turned out to be ‘perhaps the greatest and most enduring creation of Roman political and military genius’.19 The crowd of peoples in the Roman ethno­graphic imaginarium, as well as in biblical historio­graphy, endured long after the Western Roman Empire and continued to evolve. In a world bereft of Roman hegemony, ethnicity became a ‘way of organizing or imagining a larger social whole (as a world divided among distinctive and analogous groups)’. The interplay of ethnicity and ethnic identity emerges clearly from the history of the Franks, as well as from the situational Frankish identities — social, religious, and political — that impressed themselves on early medi­eval Europe. There was no inherently consistent Frankish identity throughout the period; rather, early medi­eval people again and again transformed what it meant to be a Frank. In the sixth century, for instance, Gregory of Tours envisaged the Franks as one of many gentes in a world in which ‘all the people and peoples in Gaul were increasingly perceived as members of the Christian community, all living under the same God and the same heaven’. But in time, Frankish hegemony and exceptionalism demanded a new historio­graphical vision ‘in which the Merovingian kingdom and the Frankish community became part of a world that had always been divided among peoples’.20 This transformation in Frankish ethnic identity was largely an internal process, but identities were also generated by ‘the complex relations between the outer (foreign) nominations, or exonyms, and the inner (self) nominations, or endonyms, of peoples and nations’. The development is especially conspicuous in the varying designations for Germans — ‘Alemans’ for western Europe, ‘Swabians’ for Hungarians and some Slavic nations, and ‘Bavarians’ for yet others seeking to distinguish the east Frankish realm from the other

 18 See below, Poly, ‘Se dépouiller du vieil homme’. For the effects of Christianity on the trans­ formation of burial practices in the post-Roman world, see Effros, ‘Symbolic Expressions of Sanctity’.  19 Geary, Before France and Germany, p. vi.  20 See below, Reimitz, ‘Observing Peoples as Peoples’.

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Frankish kingdoms — in consequence of the political vicissitudes of the ninth and tenth centuries.21 Yet, while historians today have been drawn to the myriad dynamics at play in the continuous formation and reformation of ethnicity, such identities were powerful to early medi­eval copyists of Chirius Fortunatianus rather because they were held to be innate to the persona. As Isidore of Seville summarily observed, ‘natio comes from being born (nasci)’.22 Nor was ethnicity the only inborn identity: Fortunatianus, for example, added that one’s ‘birth and relations’ dictated whether one were noble or ignoble. Accordingly, in the Middle Ages, all of these aspects of a person — ethnicity, descent and kinship, and nobility — could be imagined as an inheritance. One can perceive this phenomenon in the territory around Ravenna, where ‘the families elevated or reestablished’ during the Ottonian and Salian periods adopted the idea of inherited Frankish status. ‘One of the reoccurring means of representing elite status and hereditary identity in the tenth century was the use of an “ethnogenic” label’, especially when a person claimed to have been ‘ex genere Francorum’ (of Frankish descent). Such inherited identity was true not only of arrivals from north of the Alps, but also among indigenous Italian families, who ethnicized political status so that they saw themselves as having arisen ‘ex genere consulis’ or ‘ex genere ducum’ (from a consular line, or from a line of dukes).23 Identity, inheritance, and legal ethnicity also often intersected with what the Co­logne manu­script left out of Fortunatianus’s original treatise, but which the Bern manu­script reproduced: ‘sex, as a man or woman’, or gender. The absence of sex as a modality in the Co­logne manu­script may reflect the copyist’s (i.e. a cleric’s) unease with gender, an erasure that effectively (intentionally?) made masculinity normative.24 This moment of ideo­logical erasure stands in contrast to the embeddedness of gender in so many spheres of medi­eval life, from Dhuoda’s dispensing of pastoral advice to her son to the circulation of property, especially in Italy where men and women frequently were co-transactors. It surely says something of the care with which women had to tread, that Dhuoda felt compelled to couch her ambivalence towards the clergy within vigorous emphasis on paternal authority.25 Nevertheless, in Ravenna women especially created ‘a shared local history’ in part through the

 21 See below, Wolfram, ‘The King of the Nemítzioi and his Neighbours to the East’. Also, Good, ‘Boniface in Bavaria’; Goldberg, ‘“More Devoted to the Equipment of Battle than the Splendor of Banquets”’.  22 Isidore of Seville, Etymo­logiae, ix. 2. 1, ed. by Lindsay; Etymo­logies, trans. by Barney and others, p. 192.  23 See below, Schoolman, ‘Inheriting Identity and Constructing History in Medi­eval Ravenna’.  24 Although recall that the copyist of the Co­logne manu­script also left out the modality of ‘age [aetate], as old, young’. On the ideo­logical erasing of women from medi­eval texts, see Geary, Women at the Beginning. On Carolingian monastic conceptions of age, see Garver, ‘The Influence of Monastic Ideals’; also, Garver, ‘Old Age and Women in the Carolingian World’.  25 See below, Polanichka, ‘The Crumbs of the Crumbs’.

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endowment of monasteries; and the memory of two in particular, ‘Ingelrada II and her mother, not their husbands or children, was what continued to resonate as part of the historical continuity in the shared history of the city’.26 In southern Italy during the ninth century, the identity of noble women, as can be adduced from landed transactions, was distinguished by the ownership of property under Lombard law. In contrast with men, ‘women regularly cited Lombard laws and Lombard legal traditions to show that their ownership and alienation of land followed the legal procedures’, suggesting that ‘gender played a central role in determining the expression of Lombard legal ethnicity’.27 Inheritance was also intrinsic to the two features understood by the copyist of the Co­logne manu­script as forming discrete parts of Fortunatianus’s twenty-one modalities of the persona: how a person ‘administers his property’ and ‘what the conduct of his homelife is’. An inheritance was the complex of property that a person possessed, cobbled together from acquisitions, from gifts, or from someone’s will; or it could be the portion of the property that parents handed down to their children. Because property was the basis of wealth and status, it played a crucial role as the material basis of identities. For that reason, property was not always bequeathed to children, but could be dispensed by testament in a number of directions to cultivate the multiplicity of bonds that informed a person’s identity: with children and spouses, with friends, and with religious institutions in the hope of the ultimate inheritance — salvation.28 How social identity and self-representation could be animated by property-holding emerges from the mid-eighth-century will of Abbo, a wealthy landowner in the mountainous areas to the east of the Rhône and in lower Provence. The testament illuminates an impressively wide network of lords, dependents, kinship, and ties to the monastery Abbo founded at Novalesa, and also reveals how his identity was bound to the great wealth he endowed to that monastery.29 We might be tempted to qualify the act as an expression of Abbo’s ‘religious identity’, even as we recognize that Chirius Fortunatianus did not include religion among a persona’s twenty-one modalities. Indeed, ‘religious identity’ would have been a distinction practically without a difference during his times since, onto­logically speaking, a medi­eval person’s identity was ultimately rooted in divine agency. Human souls were not, as Hrabanus Maurus explained, inseminated along with bodies by coitus: dicimus corpus tantum per coniugii copulam seminari. Creationem vero animæ solum creatorem nosse, Dei vero iudicio coagulari, et compingi atque formari: ac formato iam corpore animam creari et infundi, ut vivat in utero homo ex anima constans et corpore, et egrediatur vivus ex utero, plenus humana substantia.  26 See below, Schoolman, ‘Inheriting Identity and Constructing History in Medi­eval Ravenna’.  27 See below, Whitten, ‘Secundum Legem’.  28 See below, Hummer, ‘Kinship and Inheritance in Early Medi­eval Europe’.  29 Geary, Aristocracy in Provence.

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(we say that no more than the body is inseminated by conjugal coupling; that verily the Creator alone knows about the creation of the soul, that by the true judgement of God [the body] is coagulated, put together, and formed; and that, the body having been formed, the soul is created and infused, so that the human being, consisting of a body and a soul, is enlivened, and proceeds living from the womb, complete with human substance.)30 While the generous donations of Abbo and the pious sentiments of Hrabanus might reflect, in modern terms, their religious identities, it is difficult to ascertain whether they express widely shared sensibilities or merely the views of an educated elite, beneath which existed a popular culture distinct from formal Christianity. To penetrate the written word and probe the spaces among social reality, perception, and behaviour requires that historians ask shrewd, even unorthodox questions of ostensibly familiar sources and genres. The thefts of relics, for example, could be treated as a seemingly exotic subgenre of hagio­graphy, conveying strange stories of intra-ecclesiastical squabbles among monks, and of interest only to technical specialists. Yet, if one reads them from the wider perspectives of social status, values, and belief, and approaches them with the insights of French social history, the thefts wonderfully illuminate the formation and the contours of community identities that extended beyond the monastery walls, deep into medi­eval society. Whether the stolen relics were the authentic remains of a particular saint is irrelevant. The monks believed the relics were real, and those beliefs, as expressed in the narratives of thefts, shaped a monastery’s identity, status, and material wealth — and therefore the behaviour of its monks, pilgrims, and patrons.31 These stories of thefts also acted as arbiters of the institutions’ pasts, and themselves became part of a living tradition. We witness something similar in the ways that medi­eval people both sacralized the landscape to appropriate the physical environment into their cosmo­logy and drew upon hagio­graphical literature for political guidance. Relic treatises of later medi­eval Italy, for example, ‘demonstrate the crucial interrelatedness of text, object, and place in the construction of cultural meaning and collective identity’. In his Chronicle, Jacopo da Varagine, author of the wildly popular Golden Legend of saints, used ‘place and landscape to contextualize and authenticate the relics he discusses, while also seeking to unite his Genoese audience in a shared view of civic virtue’.32 Later medi­eval Bulgarians, lacking a literary tradition of instruction for princes (lay mirrors), adapted a vernacular hagio­graphy that was ‘addressed to powerful lay readers, most probably the tsar [ John

 30 Hrabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis, iv. 10, ed. by Migne, col. 98; trans. modified from Throop, Hrabanus Maurus, De universo, i, p. 96. See Leja, Embodying the Soul.  31 Geary, Furta Sacra; Geary, ‘Sacred Commodities’; Geary, ‘Bodies and their Values’. Also, Craig, ‘Fighting for Sacred Space’.  32 See below, Beneš, ‘The Blackbird, the Basilisk, and the Evicted Corpse’.

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Alexander] himself ’ and ‘called upon philanthropy, charity, and piety as the necessary foundations of social cohesion and community welfare’.33 That religious culture shaped identities well beyond the clergy is evident already in early medi­eval sources, such as Dhuoda’s remarkable Handbook for her son. The manual not only reveals how religiosity shaped personal, parental, and spiritual identities, but also asserts that lay spiritual identities, though differing from clerical ones, bore equal access to spiritual wisdom. The Handbook also emphasizes how religious and political identities intersect through the text’s ambivalence towards a clerical body that stood silently by — or even participated in — the civil wars enveloping the Frankish empire.34 Indeed, political identities, according to conventional historio­graphy, only became more fraught in the wake of the Carolingian civil wars, as social and political order broke down in the decades around the year 1000, the period of the so-called ‘feudal revolution’. That narrative was substantially revised by a group of creative historians who shifted the focus from constituted royal order and examined instead how people during the period settled disputes. Deftly blending their work with insights from legal anthropo­logists, they rethought how societies generate order in the absence of state coercion, and showed that cultural and social structures, such as relics, community cohesion, family and kinship, peer pressure, compromise settlements, and friendship, provided horizontal and informal networks and mechanisms of order in a ‘stateless society’.35 In terms of identity, one might then see in this volatile context a transformation (whether compensatory or opportunistic) in the identities on which individuals relied in times of dispute — for example, de-emphasizing the modality of homeland or patria, in favour of others. Indeed, embedded in Fortunatianus’s understanding of a persona are many of the informal social phenomena identified in conflict resolution studies: dignity and honour, mores and habits of behaviour, social class and birth, family and kinship, and ‘the character of one’s friends’, whose support was vital in the constant positioning for leverage in disputes. These networks of support encompassed denizens of this world and the next: the threat of divine punishment from the saints, or inversely the punishment of unhelpful saints through ritual humiliation, could be invoked to enforce peace or garner support.36 Disputes, rather than being evidence of order’s absence, were — counterintuitively — generators of stability and consensus. Records from the period, often touted as showcasing medi­eval violence and disorder, were instead treated as rhetorically charged  33 See below, Todorov, ‘Hagio­graphy as Political Theo­logy’.  34 See below, Polanichka, ‘The Crumbs of the Crumbs’.  35 See the historio­graphical review by Brown and Górecki, ‘What Conflict Means’, touching on the contributions of Patrick Geary, Frederick Cheyette, William Miller, Stephen White, and the Davies-Fouracre group. See also Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor of St Peter; Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor; and below, Koziol, ‘Pragmatic Sanctions?’.  36 Geary, ‘Humiliation of Saints’.

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representations and beholden to the perspectives of participants. Reading against the grain, dispute resolution studies sought to probe the space in which could be understood the relationships and intersections among events, subjective perception and identity, and textuality. They helped reframe tenthand eleventh-century Europe — in particular, the area of south-central France long associated with the birth of ‘feudal society’ — as something more than a chaotic interlude between the Carolingian empire and the high medi­eval states. The emphasis on informal means of maintaining order, and the descriptive sources from which these insights were extracted, has prompted a re-examination of the prescriptive sources and a rethinking of the ideals of law and justice, as Europe transformed from the Carolingian kingdoms to the states of the high Middle Ages. Indeed, prescriptive texts are particularly rich sources for probing Europe’s changing identities during this period. Carolingian capitularies, or ad-hoc directives issued by Carolingian rulers, expressed ‘a ministerial ideal of earthly government, in which counts and bishops work together because they share in a royal ministry’, whose essential duty ‘is to rule the Christian people in a godly fashion’. The capitularies usually lacked the ‘specificity and concern for the local practice of disputing’ in the statutes of the post-Carolingian Peace and Truce of God, which necessarily focused upon the local. Moreover, the Peace was self-reinforcing, with oaths sworn among the participants to God as a matter of ‘self-help’, rather than to the ruler, as in Carolingian legislation.37 People of the period did not perceive violence as a breakdown in order; nor did Peace of God councils consider ‘the absence of effective kings as the root cause of the problems they sought to address’. Vengeance was understood to be a legitimate prosecution of grievances, albeit one that was bounded by norms and limits.38 As broader European political identities evolved, however, so too did people’s political identities and their valuation of the various aspects of their identities in times of conflict. When royal power was reconstituted in the high Middle Ages, ‘the Capetian kings not only accepted [self-help] associations’ that grew out of the Peace of God, ‘but relied on them’.39 By the late Middle Ages it became impossible to conceive of order without the king, so much so that people throughout western and eastern Europe expected kings to ensure peace and to root out corruption among the royal officials charged with enforcing the king’s justice.40 These shifts in the social order reveal yet another shift in peoples’ political identities — another transformation of, in Fortunatianus’s conception, a persona’s modality of homeland (patria), among others.  37  38  39  40

See below, Koziol, ‘Pragmatic Sanctions?’. See below, Brown, ‘Violence in Early Capetian v. Early Valois France’. Koziol, ‘Pragmatic Sanctions?’. Brown, ‘Violence in Early Capetian v. Early Valois France’; and below, Popa-Gorjanu, ‘AntiCorruption Measures in the Legislation of Thirteenth-Century Hungary’. Or at least a strong duke, as in the northern Slavic regions; see Markman, ‘Tactics of Manipulation’.

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Intertwined with identity, though not explicitly included among Fortunatianus’s twenty-one modalities, is memory, which in Augustinian thought was ‘the fundamental means by which one knows oneself’.41 A person’s identity is inseparable from how that person remembers, from the stories one tells oneself. Nor is that identity immutable, since memories are shaped and reshaped as people move through time. Something similar can be said of societies, whose understanding of the past is continually modified by new realities. Histories, for example, might be reworked, augmented, interpolated, or abbreviated as authors or copyists responded to transformative events or changed circumstances. Indeed, most historical documents, whether they be testaments, tales of thefts, ethnic origin stories, records of disputes, cartularies, or monastic confraternity books, are memorials of events, deeds, beliefs, and identities shaped by the memories of observers. In effect, Europeans created new identities, explicable in their shaping, augmentation, invention, and suppression of records, as they built a new world from the remains of the Carolingian realms, insisting sometimes that little had changed even as they altered the past to make it fit their present.42 Forgeries are particularly ripe for the investigation of memory and identity — of the way that texts shape, and are shaped by, personal, local, or regional identities. Property records were a constant temptation for the forging of claims during the Middle Ages. We can see an especially subtle version of this practice at the church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo in Rome. In the twelfth century, the clerics of the church elaborated an eighth-century inscription by which ‘to inscribe themselves into the late antique past of the Caelian Hill’: theirs was a shrewd attempt to connect with the authoritative memory of Pope Gregory the Great and thereby ‘defend the church’s property claims, at a time of tension or competition with its neighbour, the eminently Gregorian monastery of SS. Andrea e Gregorio’. The lapidary inscription, in its mosaic medium of stone, forcefully shows that ‘how one stores the past affects what is remembered’ — and how and why individuals, groups, and institutions recreate their past in order to assert particular identities in the present.43 The process of identity formation and memory in the Middle Ages is richly presented not only in monumental inscriptions, but also in the production and reception of texts in manu­scripts. A fascinating example is the striking Letter of Prester John, a putative Christian king in Asia and military ally against

 41 Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance, p. 17. Note that the Co­logne manu­script preserving Fortunatianus’s text also contains the pseudo-Augustinian work De rhetorica, which in its first chapter on ‘the duty of the orator’ (fol. 50v) states: ‘Cicero writes, in his first book about the orator, “I come now to memory, the storehouse for everything; if we do not use it to keep all we have thought of and put in order, then everything, no matter how familiar to the orator, will, as we know, perish”’.  42 Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance.  43 See below, Maskarinec, ‘Invoking Gregory on the Caelian in Medi­eval Rome’, here quoting Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance, p. 10.

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Muslims. The legend of Prester John, apparently developed by the court of Frederick Barbarossa as an adjunct of imperial propaganda, possibly to advance ‘claims of sovereignty over Italy and Rome’, circulated quickly and widely, as versions of the letter were copied, revised, and adapted. The manu­script tradition reveals that ‘Prester John would come to figure prominently in a number of literary and historical contexts’, thus serving ‘as a lens through which Europeans thought about, and remembered, Christianity’s apostolic legacy and global reach’. Using ‘a comprehensive, contextualized approach’ to the Letter, one thus finds within it ‘not “the medi­eval mind”, but a variety of minds’ that shed further light on the changing perspectives and identities of medi­eval people.44 The medi­eval past itself long remained important in Europe, shaping, and being shaped by, the identities of people into the early modern period and beyond. For example, the creation and legitimation of the Carolingian dynasty in 751 became the hub of ideo­logical struggles during the sixteenth-century Wars of Religion and connected debates on royal sovereignty. In 1573 a radicalized Huguenot and jurist, responding to the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, employed the Carolingian past to make a powerful case that the French monarchy long had been and still should be elective, not hereditary — only, in the wake of the sudden elevation of Huguenot Henry of Navarre as heir presumptive in 1584, to quickly revise that claim and support hereditary right. Using a forged, ‘Franco-gallican’ account of Pippin’s succession in 751, he crafted a legal-historical argument that disqualified any papal intervention in matters of French sovereignty and succession, matters that had suddenly assumed a great significance in the present. This particular affair demonstrates how a person’s identity and presentist concerns can interact with the past to bend memories in new directions. So too does it remind us of how history and identity are malleable, constantly changing with the press of time. As another early modern Carolingianesque forgery stated, Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis — ‘Everything is changing and so are we’.45 Mutability of identity, of history, of the historical profession were on the mind of the great medi­eval historian Georges Duby towards the end of his life, as he wrote an autobio­graphical account of his career, History Continues.46 As he modestly reflected both on his remarkable professional life and on the period of rich historio­graphical ferment with which it overlapped, Duby also took stock of the profession and its future. He had had a prodigious influence on the profession, and had contributed mightily to the modern understanding of the medi­eval past, but he seems to have known that his contributions were destined to fade. As the title indicates, the profession moves on — albeit in

 44 See below, Eldevik, ‘(Re)Visions of the World’, here quoting Geary, ‘Saints, Scholars, and Society’, p. 28.  45 See below, Booker, ‘An Alleged Oratio of Boniface to Pippin in 751’.  46 Duby, History Continues.

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directions shaped indelibly by him, by those he taught, and by the many he touched. Neither time nor the profession that writes about the past stands still. The following essays testify to that truism with fifteen articles that, in their exploration of identities, not only bear witness to a remarkable career, but hopefully serve as a reminder — or better, a provocation — that as historians ‘what we are doing matters terribly in our present and for our future’.47

 47 Booker, ‘Interview with Patrick J. Geary’, p. 18; and Shagrir and Hen, ‘A Prolonged View’.

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Works Cited Manu­scripts and Archival Sources Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod. 363; facsimile edition: Codex Bernensis 363, ed. by Hermann Hagen, Codices Graeci et Latini photo­graphice depicti, vol. ii (Lyon: A. W. Sijthoff, 1897) Co­logne, Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek, Cod. 166 Co­logny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 146 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 7530 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Pal. lat. 1588 Primary Sources Fortunatianus, Chirius, Consulti Fortunatiani Ars rhetorica, ed. by Lucia Calboli Montefusco (Bo­logna: Pàtron, 1979); trans. by Mary Alene Brightbill, ‘The Ars rhetorica of C. Chirius Fortunatianus, Rendered into English with Intro­ duction and Notes’ (unpublished master’s thesis, Cornell University, 1930) Hrabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis [titled De universo libri viginti duo], ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, Patro­logiae cursus completus: series latina, 111 (Paris: apud J.-P. Migne editorem, 1852), cols 9–614; trans. by Priscilla Throop, Hrabanus Maurus, De universo: The Peculiar Properties of Words and their Mystical Significance. The Complete English Translation, 2 vols (Charlotte, VT: Medi­evalMS, 2009) Isidore of Seville, Etymo­logiarum sive Originum Libri XX, ed. by W. M. Lindsay, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911); trans. by Stephen Barney and others, The Etymo­logies of Isidore of Seville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) Pseudo-Augustine, De rhetorica, ed. by J.-P. Migne, Patro­logiae cursus completus: series latina, 23 (Paris: apud J.-P. Migne editorem, 1841), cols 1439–48 Victorinus, Gaius Marius, Adversus Arium, in Traités théo­logiques sur la Trinité, vol. i, ed. by Paul Henry, Sources Chrétiennes, 68 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1960), pp. 188–602; trans. by Mary T. Clark, Theo­logical Treatises on the Trinity, Fathers of the Church, 69 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1981), pp. 89–303 —— , Explanatio in rhetoricam M. Tullii Ciceronis, in Rhetores Latini Minores ex codicibus maximum partem primum adhibitis, ed. by Carolus Halm (Leipzig: Teubner, 1863), pp. 155–304

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Secondary Works Bedos-Rezak, Brigitte Miriam, ‘Medi­eval Identity: A Sign and a Concept’, American Historical Review, 105 (2000), 1489–1533 Booker, Courtney M., ‘By Any Other Name? Charlemagne, Nomenclature, and Performativity’, in Charlemagne: Les temps, les espaces, les hommes. Construction et déconstruction d’un règne, ed. by Rolf Grosse and Michel Sot (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 409–26 —— , ‘Hypocrisy, Performativity, and the Carolingian Pursuit of Truth’, Early Medi­eval Europe, 26 (2018), 174–202 —— , ‘Interview with Patrick J. Geary’, Comitatus, 29 (1998), 1–20 Brown, Warren, and Piotr Górecki, ‘What Conflict Means: The Making of Medi­ eval Conflict Studies in the United States, 1970–2000’, in Conflict in Medi­eval Europe: Changing Perspectives on Society and Culture, ed. by Warren Brown and Piotr Górecki (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 1–35 Buc, Philippe, ‘The Monster and the Critics: A Ritual Reply’, Early Medi­eval Europe, 15 (2007), 441–52 Cizek, Alexandru, ‘Der “Charakterismos” in der Vita Adalhardi des Radbert von Corbie’, Rhetorica, 7 (1989), 185–204 Contreni, John J., Review of Priscilla Throop, Hrabanus Maurus, De universo: The Peculiar Properties of Words and their Mystical Significance. The Complete English Translation, 2 vols (Charlotte, VT: Medi­evalMS, 2009), in The Medi­eval Review, 10. 11. 03 Craig, Kate M., ‘Fighting for Sacred Space: Relic Mobility and Conflict in Tenth– Eleventh-Century France’, Viator, 48.1 (2017), 17–37 Duby, Georges, History Continues, trans. by Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994) Dutton, Paul E., ‘The Identification of Persons in Frankish Europe’, Early Medi­eval Europe, 26 (2018), 135–73 Effros, Bonnie, ‘Symbolic Expressions of Sanctity: Gertrude of Nivelles in the Context of Merovingian Mortuary Custom’, Viator, 27 (1996), 1–10 Garipzanov, Ildar H., Patrick J. Geary, and Przemysław Urbańczyk, eds, Franks, Northmen, and Slavs: Identities and State Formation in Early Medi­eval Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008) Garver, Valerie L., ‘The Influence of Monastic Ideals upon Carolingian Conceptions of Childhood’, in Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: The Results of a Paradigm Shift in the History of Mentality, ed. by Albrecht Classen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), pp. 67–85 —— , ‘Old Age and Women in the Carolingian World’, in Old Age in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Interdisciplinary Approaches to a Neglected Topic, ed. by Albrecht Classen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), pp. 121–41 Geary, Patrick J., Aristocracy in Provence: The Rhône Basin at the Dawn of the Carolingian Age (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985)

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—— , Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) —— , ‘Bodies and their Values in the Early Medi­eval West’, in The Construction of Value in the Ancient World, ed. by John K. Papadopoulos and Gary Urton (Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeo­logy Press/University of California Press, 2012), pp. 236–45 —— , ‘Comparative History and Social Scientific Theory’, in Writing History: Identity, Conflict, and Memory in the Middle Ages (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 2012), pp. 233–44 —— , ‘Ethnic Identity as a Situational Construct in the Early Middle Ages’, Mitteilungen der anthropo­logischen Gesellschaft in Wien, 113 (1983), 15–26 —— , Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978; rev. edn, 1990) —— , ‘History, Theory, and Historians’, Exemplaria, 7 (1995), 93–98 —— , ‘Humiliation of Saints’, in Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 95–115 —— , Language and Power in the Early Middle Ages (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2013) —— , The Myth of Nations: The Medi­eval Origins of Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002) —— , Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) —— , ‘Political Identity, Ethnic Identity, Genetic Identity: The Dangers of Conceptual Confusion’, in Neue Wege der Frühmittelalterforschung — Bilanz und Perspektiven, ed. by Walter Pohl, Maximilian Diesenberger, and Bernhard Zeller, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 22 (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2018), pp. 35–42 —— , ‘Sacred Commodities: The Circulation of Medi­eval Relics’, in Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 194–218 —— , ‘Saints, Scholars, and Society: The Elusive Goal’, in Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 9–29 —— , ‘The Uses of Archaeo­logical Sources for Religious and Cultural History’, in Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 30–45 —— , ‘Visions of Medi­eval Studies in North America’, in The Past and Future of Medi­eval Studies, ed. by John Van Engen (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), pp. 45–57 —— , Women at the Beginning: Origin Myths from the Amazons to the Virgin Mary (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006) Geary, Patrick J., and Gábor Klaniczay, eds, Manufacturing Middle Ages: Entangled History of Medi­evalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2013) Goldberg, Eric J., ‘“More Devoted to the Equipment of Battle than the Splendor of Banquets”: Frontier Kingship, Martial Ritual, and Early Knighthood at the Court of Louis the German’, Viator, 30 (1999), 41–78

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Good, Leanne M., ‘Boniface in Bavaria’, in A Companion to Boniface, ed. by Michel Aaij and Shannon Godlove (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 299–326 Graham, Stacey, ‘The Transmission of North African Texts to Europe in Late Antiquity’, in Medi­eval Manu­scripts, their Makers and Uses: A Special Issue of Viator in Honor of Richard and Mary Rouse (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 151–67 Koziol, Geoffrey, Begging Pardon and Favor: Ritual and Public Order in Early Medi­ eval France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992) —— , ‘The Dangers of Polemic: Is Ritual Still an Interesting Topic of Historical Study?’, Early Medi­eval Europe, 11 (2002), 367–88 Leja, Meg, Embodying the Soul: Medicine and Religion in Carolingian Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022) Markman, Kristina, ‘Tactics of Manipulation: A Revisionist Study of Gediminas and the Threat of Teutonic Invasion, 1315–1342’, Comitatus, 42 (2011), 115–34 Mauss, Marcel, ‘Une catégorie de l’esprit humain: La notion de personne, celle de “moi”’ (1938), trans. by W. D. Halls, in The Category of the Person: Anthropo­ logy, Philosophy, History, ed. by Michael Carrithers, Steven Collins, and Steven Lukes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 1–25 Morrison, Karl F., Tradition and Authority in the Western Church, 300–1140 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969) Pohl, Walter, ‘Introduction: Ego Trouble?’, in Ego Trouble: Authors and their Identities in the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Richard Corradini and others, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 15 (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), pp. 9–21 Reuter, Timothy, ‘Whose Race, Whose Ethnicity? Recent Medi­evalists’ Discussions of Identity’, in Medi­eval Polities and Modern Mentalities, ed. by Janet L. Nelson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 100–108 Rosenwein, Barbara, To Be the Neighbor of St Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny’s Property, 909–1049 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989) Shagrir, Iris, and Yitzhak Hen, ‘A Prolonged View on the Middle Ages — Interview with Professor Patrick Geary’, Historia: Journal of the Historical Society of Israel, 25 (2010), 5–24 Wenskus, Reinhard, Stammesbildung und Verfassung: Das Werden der früh­mittel­ alterlichen Gentes (Co­logne: Böhlau, 1961) Wolfram, Herwig, History of the Goths, trans. by Thomas J. Dunlap (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988)

Ethnic Identities

Jean-Pierre Poly

Se dépouiller du vieil homme Identités barbares dans l’empire romain tardif Par vos actes vous vous êtes dépouillés du vieil homme et vous avez revêtu le nouveau, celui qui s’achemine vers la vraie connaissance […]. Ainsi, il n’y a plus ni Hellène ni Juif, ni circoncis ni incirconcis, ni barbare ni Scythe, ni esclave ni libre, mais en tous le Christ tout entier. (Paul, Col. 3. 9–11) Notre époque s’inquiète des identités. Les institutions politiques sont en partie vidées de substance par un mouvement de l’histoire où quelques grandes compagnies accumulatrices — ‘la cupidité qui est une idolâtrie’ (Col. 3. 5) — surplombent la société. Les flux migratoires témoignent de la misère des jeunes Etats naguère dits ‘en voie de développement’. Les vieux Etats-nations gèrent leurs populations avec les ressources d’une fiscalité d’autant plus lourde qu’elle est saignée par l’optimisation fiscale et l’endettement consécutif. Des empires anciens ou en devenir tentent d’assurer leurs emprises concurrentes. D’où la dérive vers des identités fantasmées: à l’espoir d’une universalité des humains s’oppose le repli des mouvements démagogues. D’où aussi l’intérêt pour un autre bouleversement: la dislocation de l’Empire romain remplacé par des royaumes ‘romano-barbares’ où prédominèrent des aristocraties issues des nationes au sens ancien, des clans, des agrégats de parentés venus du reste de l’Europe s’établir dans l’empire. Mais l’empire était-il vraiment tombé, ne s’était-il pas simplement transformé et ce qui paraissait une chute n’était-il pas en fait un essor? On reconnaît l’emblématique ouvrage de Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, paru en 1971. Par une dérive de cette analyse, certains chercheurs en sont venus à se demander si les nationes avaient une culture propre ou si, presque aussitôt acculturées à la romanité tardive, elles n’avaient eu qu’un rôle superficiel dans un mouvement historique que résume le titre ‘les transformations du monde

Jean-Pierre Poly ([email protected]) is Emeritus professor at the Law School of Paris-Nanterre University (Legal History and Anthropo­logy Department), member of the Centre d’Histoire et Anthropo­logie du Droit, and resident member of the Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France. Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe: Studies on Cultural Identity and Power, ed. by Courtney M. Booker, Hans Hummer, and Dana M. Polanichka, CURSOR 41, pp. 31–62 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022)        10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.127575

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romain’.1 Plusieurs études estiment que les barbares, à présent chargés de défendre l’empire, étaient devenus de quasi-citoyens.2 Nul besoin de chercher une ou des cultures germaniques. A une telle orientation de la recherche, Herwig Wolfram a répondu: ‘Les Européens d’aujourd’hui ne doivent plus chercher à se créer des identités faites d’espoirs régressifs et de vagues images. Mais cela ne veut pas dire que nous devrions, ou que nous pouvons, oublier le passé […]. Nous devons connaître le passé germanique tout autant que l’histoire de l’empire pour accepter la continuité de l’Europe dans sa totalité’. En généralisant à l’histoire de toutes les sociétés gentilices, ce programme de recherche est encore devant nous. ‘Une nouvelle fois, comme au xixe siècle, l’histoire de ce qu’était l’Europe il y a plus d’un millénaire n’a rien d’une question académique’.3 Le rôle que joua dans le passage des nationes aux royaumes le groupe que les historiens de langue allemande appellent la noblesse militaire germano-­ romaine est connu, et la forte acculturation de cette noblesse à la romanité est indéniable. Elle n’était cependant pas le seul niveau social concerné par l’entrée dans l’empire. A la fin du quatrième siècle en Occident, une forte part de l’armée de marche s’était ‘barbarisée’, un mouvement étudié de façon  1 Geary, The Myth of Nations, entamait son ouvrage de 2002 par une remarquable introduction sur la crise de l’identité européenne. Aussi Pohl, ‘Introduction: Strategies of Distinction’, et à Le origini etniche dell’Europa. Esquisse de biblio­graphie in Kerneis, éd., Une histoire juridique de l’Occident, p. 192. Les synthèses actuelles divergent dans leur appréciation globale: Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, pp. 2–3; Heather, Empires and Barbarians, pp. 12–13; Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, p. 457; Charles-Edwards, After Rome, pp. 61–62. Avatars de l’administration dans les royaumes, Dumézil, Servir l’État barbare, p. 20. Droit et romanité populaires, Kerneis, éd., Une histoire juridique de l’Occident, p. 144. Spécificités barbares, Poly, ‘Leges barbarorum’, p. 196. Mise en cause des Traditionskerne, Goffart, ‘Does the Distant Past Impinge on the Invasion Age Germans?’, p. 21; Murray, ‘Reinhard Wenskus on Ethnogenesis’, p. 39; Gillett, ‘Was Ethnicity Politicized in the Earliest Medi­eval Kingdoms?’, p. 85; mise au point de Pohl, ‘Ethnicity, Theory and Tradition’, p. 221; Pohl, ‘Rome and the Barbarians’, p. 93. Mais Southern et Dixon, The Late Roman Army, p. 180, notent que les réfugiés de la grotte de l’Hortus, en Septimanie, ‘auraient accueilli avec ironie l’idée qu’ils faisaient l’expérience d’une transformation’.  2 Mathisen estime qu’il a pu y avoir une quasi-citoyenneté identique pour les officiers supérieurs et pour les soldats, ‘Peregrini, Barbari, and Cives Romani’, et Mathisen, ‘Provinciales, Gentiles and Marriage’, p. 140. Encore faut-il distinguer officiers supérieurs et soldats: le consulat des généraux implique certes la civitas romana, mais ce n’est pas le cas de la tenure des soldats, qui est un beneficium, non un dominium. Statut: dans le panégyrique de Constance, Panégyriques latins, iv. 21, éd. par Galletier, i, p. 99, lex ne renvoie pas au ius civile mais aux clauses d’un pactus, tandis que postliminium désigne un retour des déditices au statu quo ante. Conubium: Castagnino, ‘Creare una famiglia’, p. 124, constate son absence et note que l’interdit d’union passa dans le Code (infra note 41). Litige entre soldat et civil: si celui-ci est défendeur, le soldat va devant la justice civile, sauf dans les tractus militares; le juge militaire y a développé des procédures spéciales pour les barbares, Kerneis, ‘La justice militaire des populations barbares de l’Empire’, p. 107. Testament aux armées: exorbitant du droit commun, son usage est réservé par Théodoric aux seuls ‘barbares dont on est sûr qu’ils servent la res publica au palais ou à l’armée’, Edictum Theoderici, 32, éd. par Bluhme, p. 155.  3 Wolfram, The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples, p. 314; Geary, The Myth of Nations, p. 16.

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détaillée par Dietrich Hoffmann. Cette barbarisation de l’armée drainait le flux migratoire — invasions réprimées ou déportations — qui alimentait aussi la dépendance paysanne, un flux dont l’importance a été rappelée par Alessandro Barbero.4 Ce double mouvement n’a peut-être pas été estimé à sa pleine mesure faute de bien apercevoir l’espace institutionnel où il s’exerçait. Au milieu du siècle, sont créées ou renforcées des régions militaires (tractus militares) commandées par des duces relevant du généralissime (magister militiae). Des groupes barbares jusque alors répartis comme cultivateurs sur le territoire des cités sont réunis et établis sur des fundi limitrophi, des terres publiques, agri deserti ou domaines confisqués; les cantons ainsi barbarisés et militarisés sont administrés par des officiers délégués aux ‘commandements de lètes et gentils’ (praepositurae laetorum et gentilium). Pour solder les hommes, leurs officiers sont autorisés à percevoir directement l’impôt sur les exploitations alentour. De vastes espaces échappent ainsi à l’administration civile qui se restreint aux conseils municipaux administrateurs des cités. Dans les ‘prévôtés’, et non in barbarico, est désormais levé le gros des unités auxiliaires d’élite.5 Les soldats des nationes et leurs familles sont les vecteurs principaux de la barbarisation à la fois dans l’armée et dans les campagnes. C’est à leur niveau que se pose la question des identités ethniques et de la dialectique des acculturations. En Gaule du Nord les effectifs militaires n’étaient pas négligeables. Nous le montre la Notitia dignitatum omnium tam civilium quam militarium, un registre administratif de l’Empire. Le document est complexe: rédigé en 394, il fut ensuite ajusté à plusieurs reprises, et cela sans doute jusqu’au milieu du siècle suivant où on cessa de le tenir à jour.6 Dans les listes, la Notitia sépare les unités d’élite de la grand’garde (palatini) et les simples unités ‘de ligne’ (comitatenses). Parmi les palatini, elle prend soin de distinguer les unités dites legiones — les vexillations tirées des vieilles légions ou des cohortes auxiliaires provinciales devenues citoyennes depuis la constitution antonine — et celles dites auxilia, la distinction impliquant que dans ces derniers les soldats étaient

 4 Hoffmann, Das spätrömische Bewegungsheer, fondamental, discutable sur les dates de création des unités; Barbero, Barbari, exhaustif, discutable sur les lètes.  5 Dossier des lètes: Marotta, ‘Il problemo dei laeti’, p. 117; Marotta, ‘Militia e civitas tra iii e vi secolo d.C.’. Traités de fédérés: Migliario, ‘Foedus e foedera’, p. 9. Rôle de l’armée: Porena, ‘La posizione dell’elemento militare’, p. 221. Caractère militaire des premières ‘lois barbares’, Kerneis, ‘Rome et les barbares’, p. 103; Loschiavo, ‘A proposito di ius speciale e personalità del diritto’, p. 191. Praepositurae entre Leie et Meuse, Poly, ‘Laeti et gentiles’, p. 15; entre Seine et Couesnon, Poly, ‘Les Saxons du Bessin et leurs compagnons’, p. 26; en Grande-Bretagne, Poly, ‘La révolution de Bretagne’, p. 13.  6 Notitia dignitatum, éd. par Seeck; et La Notitia dignitatum, éd. par Faleiro, qui rappelle les études majeures, les datations (p. 43) et les analyses sur le Codex spirensis (p. 53). Maier, ‘The Giessen, Parma and Piacenza Codices’, p. 96; Maier, ‘The Barberinus and Munich Codices’, p. 960; Maier, ‘The Compilation Notitia dignitatum’, future édition avec biblio­graphie. Zuckermann, ‘Comtes et ducs en Egypte’, p. 137. Scharf, Der Dux Mogontiacensis und die Notitia Dignitatum, p. 309.

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non-citoyens. Les auxilia sont largement majoritaires dans la grand’garde. D’où l’exhortation d’un officier à l’auxilium des Petulantes lorsque en 360 Julien fut en butte aux menées de son oncle Constance: ‘Soldats, étrangers et citoyens, ne trahissez pas l’empereur’.7 Les étrangers, les barbares, venaient en premier. Mais dans les unités étaient-ils mêlés entre eux, toutes ‘nations’ confondues, où chaque unité avait-elle une identité ethnique propre? Certaines des unités auxiliaires sont désignées par un ethnonyme qui remonte à leur création. Les années passant, il n’est pas sûr qu’elles restent dans leur totalité composée de soldats de cette ethnie. Quelles que soient l’armée et l’époque, en attendant que les levées régulières puissent arriver d’une région de recrutement, les baisses d’effectifs légères sont tant bien que mal compensées. Mieux vaut donc poser la question un peu différemment: le recrutement de ces unités au quatrième siècle était-il ou non ethnique dans sa majorité? L’auxilium des Salii, par exemple, était-il recruté principalement chez des gens établis autour de Tongres et qui avaient conscience d’être ‘saliques’, ou ce nom était-il devenu une désignation sans rapport avec le recrutement? Dans l’armée impériale, officiers et sous-officiers, même barbares, étaient censés savoir lire et écrire le latin. Sur leurs tombes, les épitaphes commandées au graveur par leurs camarades ou leurs familles rappellent leur unité et parfois leur origine. Les historiens ont utilisé de telles inscriptions afin d’étudier le recrutement des troupes.8 Nous voudrions tenter de voir ce qu’il en était pour les unités auxiliaires, seules à porter des noms ethniques parce qu’au moins à leur origine constituées de barbares. Pour ce faire, nous proposons de réexaminer le cas du cimetière de la fabrique d’armes de la cité de Iulia Concordia en Frioul, un exemple qui peut s’accorder aux plus récentes recherches de Patrick Geary.9 Ce cimetière est célèbre par une quarantaine d’épitaphes militaires qui s’y trouvent. Dietrich Hoffmann, après les premières études du dix-neuvième siècle, les a éditées et commentées, montrant qu’elles devaient dater de 394 ou peu après et qu’elles étaient en rapport avec les listes d’effectifs de la Notitia dignitatum. Une fois lues les épitaphes du sepolcreto, nous les comparerons

 7 Ammien Marcellin, Histoires, xx. 4. 5–15, éd. par Galletier et autres, p. 25 et no 78, p. 166.  8 Le Bohec accepte l’ethnicité des unités au Bas-Empire mais rappelle que dans les anciennes légions ou cohortes auxiliaires, le recrutement était souvent local, L’armée romaine, p. 58. Elton, Warfare in Roman Europe, a tenté une approche quantitative.  9 Etude de deux cimetières, Geary et Veeramah, ‘Mapping European Population Movement’, p. 65. Inschriften von Concordia, éd. par Hoffmann; photos: Epi­graphic Database Heidelberg, Italia regio X, no 7199–7245 et 7250–56. Vannesse, La défense de l’Occident, p. 251; et Vannesse, ‘Les inscriptions militaires’, p. 119 (cf. infra note 24). Site: Cresci-Marrone, ‘Lo stanziamento militare’, p. 245; Vigonie et Di Filippo Balestrazzi, ‘Punte di freccia dell’area del teatro romano di Iulia Concordia’, p. 325; Di Filippo Balestrazzi, ‘Gli scavi di Concordia’, p. 157; Croce da Villa, ‘Recente scoperte archeo­logiche’, p. 177; Mazzoleni, ‘L’epigrafia cristiana di Concordia’, p. 75; Cantino-Wataghin et Micheletto, ‘Les villes éphémères’, p. 272. Nicasie, Twilight of Empire, p. 105, tente de tirer de l’onomastique un pourcentage des soldats barbares dans l’armée.

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à quelques autres inscriptions de la même époque concernant des officiers généraux d’origine germanique. Ces deux ensembles permettent d’évaluer la place des identités onomastiques dans l’armée à la fin de l’Empire tant au niveau des soldats barbares (I) qu’à celui de leurs chefs (II).

I – Les anciens combattants de la Rivière Froide Avant d’étudier les épitaphes des soldats inhumés à Concordia, il faut comprendre pourquoi elles apparaissent groupées non loin des murs d’une petite cité au nord-est de l’Italie. En 1873, au sud de l’actuelle ville de Porto Gruaro, des ouvriers qui creusaient la rive du Limene pour extraire du sable découvrirent plus d’une centaines de coffres de pierre qu’une inondation ancienne avait recouverts de limon. C’était, on s’en aperçut bientôt, un petit cimetière établi à part des grandes zones d’inhumation. Les inscriptions révélèrent qu’il abritait non seulement un groupe de défunts locaux liés à une fabrique militaire ainsi que quelques marchands syriens, mais aussi un nombre inhabituel de soldats décédés. Observons d’abord le site et ses états successifs avant de lire les épitaphes des défunts militaires. Au début du troisième siècle, le sénat municipal de la cité de Concordia avait donné un terrain situé à un mille à l’est de la ville, sur la route d’Aquilée, pour édifier le tombeau d’un patron remarquable, un homo novus revenu au pays: les décurions des trois ailes de cavalerie qu’il avait commandées en Rhétie y firent graver son cursus. D’autres tombes, peut-être celles de ses parents et de ses clients, se groupèrent autour de la sienne, formant un petit cimetière particulier.10 Passée la crise du siècle, avec ses destructions et ses confiscations, le sol fut arasé au-dessus des tombes anciennes, une large allée sépara une partie nord et une partie sud du sepolcreto, et parmi les arbres, à ciel ouvert, on déposa au fil des générations de lourds coffres funéraires à peu près tous identiques. Sur une paroi latérale, des graveurs maladroits et quasi illettrés — fraer pour frater, eoviivm pour equitum, semtor pour senator — inscrivaient de brèves épitaphes. Elles mentionnaient l’identité du défunt, l’achat du sarcophage et une peine à l’encontre de ceux qui voudraient le piller ou l’usurper. En 362 le gouverneur de Vénétie et d’Istrie, Vetulenius Praenestinus, fit placer une inscription à l’entrée du cimetière pour remercier le préfet du prétoire, l’excellentissime Claudius Mamertinus. L’année précédente, Julien avait été proclamé empereur. Marchant contre son oncle Constance, il avait feint de faire campagne contre les Alamans puis il était passé par Augsburg, Vérone, Aquilée et la Save en traversant les Alpes, ‘des fleuves et des monts

 10 Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. v.2, no 8660 et 8659, p. 1051; ainsi les Cicrii: Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. v.2, no 8685–88 et 8988b, pp. 1055–56; Cicrius Ursus est au niveau supérieur.

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quasi-inconnus’, pour surgir à l’improviste sur le moyen Danube. Mamertin, alors comte des largesses sacrées, avait préparé la route de l’armée et les lignes de communication, fait réparer les voies, contenu les eaux des marais, très envahissantes sur la côte du Frioul, et disposé des relais de poste (mansiones). Arrivé à Constantinople, Julien le récompensa en le nommant préfet du prétoire d’Italie et consul.11 Le comte des largesses, outre la maîtrise des caisses et des ateliers monétaires, veillait à la paye des soldats, à la fabrication de leurs tuniques et manteaux, et à une partie des charrois publics (bastagae), ici faits par les déditices souabes de la plaine du Pô.12 Entre les relais trottaient les archers à cheval sarmates chargés de la poste et de la gendarmerie des routes. Du Piémont au Frioul, il n’y avait pas moins de quinze de leurs commandements (aussi des praepositurae), assurant la levée d’autant d’unités cataphractaires, une division (moira) au Nord-ouest, une division au Nord-est, une demi-division au Sud.13 Ces Sarmates d’Italie devaient avoir pour origine une partie des trois cent mille réfugiés d’Outre-Danube qu’en 324 Constantin avait accueillis dans l’Empire. Le chiffre, approximatif, correspondait à trente unités de mille hommes avec leurs familles, une moitié installée dans les Balkans, l’autre en Italie.14 A la bataille, ces cavaliers avaient besoin de flèches, et de beaucoup. Ils accablaient l’ennemi de loin sous des tirs incessants puis ils chargeaient pour venir décocher leur volée de près, avec au retour de la charge ‘la flèche du Parthe’. Chaque homme avait une vingtaine de traits dans son carquois. Réduite à cette ressource, une division de deux mille cavaliers pouvait tirer quarante mille flèches. Mais avant l’assaut, une préparation de dix minutes de tir ‘en grêle’ à la cadence modérée de deux volées de trois flèches chaque minute nécessitait quelques cent vingt mille flèches. Les chariots de l’armée emportaient plusieurs tonnes de ‘gerbes’ de vingt-quatre flèches. A Concordia, l’administration impériale avait installé une fabrique de flèches.15 La production s’y faisait probablement en trois étapes: la fourniture

 11 Jones, Martindale, et Morris, éds, The Prosopo­graphy of the Later Roman Empire, i, p. 540. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. v.2, no 8658, p. 1051; Codex Theodosianus [ci-dessous CTh.] 8. 5. 12, éd. par Mommsen et Meyer, p. 378; CTh. 8. 4. 11, éd. par Mommsen et Meyer, pp. 369–70.  12 Ammien Marcellin, Histoires, xxviii. 5. 15, éd. par Galletier et autres, p. 186. Les bastagarii avaient le statut de militaires, Jones, The Later Roman Empire, ii, p. 834.  13 Sannazaro, ‘Lo stanziamento di Sarmatae gentiles’, p. 75.  14 Effectif de trois cent mille Sarmates installés par Constantin en Thrace et en Italie, Barbero, Barbari, p. 115, qui met en doute le chiffre mais fait le lien avec les praepositurae italienne. On estime aujourd’hui le nombre des unités à partir du chiffre de la population alors qu’à l’époque, l’estimation avait dû se faire à l’inverse, du chiffre des unités intégrées par l’armée à celui de la population; gentiles parce qu’accueillis par foedus. Ammien Marcellin, Histoires, xvii. 12. 12–13, éd. par Galletier et autres, p. 72, montre plutôt des déplacements de population au nord du Danube que des déportations dans l’empire.  15 Notitia dignitatum, Oc. ix. 24, 28, 26, éd. par Seeck, p. 145; les arcs étaient faits à Pavie, les cottes de maille ou d’écaille à Mantoue.

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par les paysans du bois d’aulne des marais et des plumes d’oie; la fabrication en atelier par des fabri, avec le redressement des fûts, la forge des pointes, l’assemblage et l’empennage; la vérification de la qualité et la mise en dépôt par les militaires.16 L’éloge du préfet Mamertin inaugurait sans doute la nouvelle destination du sepolcreto; restauré devenu celui de la fabrique. Au fil des années, y reposèrent un praefectus, ancien centenier, les sergents qui l’avaient secondé (biarchi fabricenses), un notarius qui écrivait la paperasse et, pour la sécurité, quelques vétérans tel Aurelius Aurelianus ou Flavius Calladinus qui mourut ‘âgé de quatre-vingts ans, il a servi à la fabrique’. S’ajoutèrent à eux des civils, les artisans — l’un d’eux dira qu’il a acheté son sarcophage ‘par son probre travail’ (de bropio labore) — et quelques épouses ou veuves. Un allogène, Maître Baicca, pourrait avoir porté un sobriquet iranien, peut-être *Bay-i kah, ‘Prix de la tige’; était-ce l’officier sarmate qui vérifiait la qualité des flèches?17 D’autres défunts militaires rejoignirent ceux de la fabrique. Il fallait assurer la remonte en inspectant et en achetant les chevaux des marais de la Polesina, des bêtes de la vieille race italienne qu’on dit aujourd’hui mêlée, rhétique et iranienne. Le responsable de cette tâche eut son épitaphe: ‘A Flavius Victor, centurion ducenaire, chef de bureau des écuries impériales, qui a vécu soixante-deux ans et servi quatorze ans sous l’empereur, son épouse Aurelia Maura à son très cher conjoint’.18 Reposèrent aussi dans le sepolcreto deux ex-membres retraités du bureau du préfet d’Illyrie, le centenier Saturninus mis en bière par son entourage venu d’Horrea (Margi), une fabrique d’écu en Dacie de la Rive, et le chef de bureau (principalis) Numerianus qui venait de la cité de Mursa.19 En 401, 406, et 408 arrivent du Danube les bandes d’Alaric et de Radagaise, et le cimetière, trop exposé, n’est plus utilisé. Le calme revenu, il reçoit de nouveaux occupants, des Syriens, typiques de cette époque. Ils ont laissé une douzaine d’épitaphes, la quasi-totalité en grec, dont deux sont datées de l’ère séleucide, en 409/10 et en 426/27. Sauf un citoyen d’Epiphanie (Hamath), tous viennent de la cité d’Apamée (Qala’at al-Madhiq) où se trouvait une colonia Concordia. Ils se disent ‘nouveaux baptisés’, peut-être parce qu’ils étaient auparavant nestoriens. Ce sont des marchands: les parents de l’un  16 Fabricae: Jones, The Later Roman Empire, i, p. 66, ii, p. 834.  17 Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. v.2, no 8721, p. 1060; 8749, 8754, 8757, p. 1063; 8724, p. 1061; 8742, p. 1062; 8748, 8756, 8763, 8765, 8767, 8769 (alienigenae), 8772 (chrétien), 8774, 8726, 8735, 8736, 8746, pp. 1063–65; 8988c, 8988a, p. 1097; fragments, 8777–81, p. 1065; 8988c (Baicca), p. 1097.  18 Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. v.1, no 1880, p. 180. Un si long service ne peut avoir eu lieu que sous Constantin. Si le défunt l’a cessé à la mort de l’empereur en 337 et s’il avait commencé à servir vers vingt ans comme à l’habitude, il est mort vers 365.  19 Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. v.1, no 1880, p. 180. Inschriften von Concordia, éd. par Hoff­mann, no 38 et 39, pp. 56–57; Notitia dignitatum, Or. xi. 39, éd. par Seeck, p. 33. Tous deux pour­raient avoir suivi en Italie le préfet Flavius Florentius, disgrâcié à l’avènement de Julien en 361.

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d’eux font préciser dans l’amende pour viol de sépulture la parité or/argent.20 On peut supposer que le stockage des flèches et leur acheminement ont été abandonnés par l’administration et que les marchands ont pris le relais. L’établissement des Syriens fut de courte durée. En 452 Attila détruit Aquilée et ravage le pays alentour. Le sepolcreto (cimetière) est quasi-abandonné, les tombes y sont rares, une désaffection d’autant plus notable que la cité se maintenait tant bien que mal. En 589, il y eut un grand diluvium qui se prolongea dans les décennies suivantes par d’autres inondations comme en témoignent les niveaux alluviaux dans la cathédrale. Les eaux en crue bousculent les coffres du cimetière désaffecté, déjà brisés et pillés, et les font disparaître sous les alluvions, conservant ainsi le site. La chrono­logie du sepolcreto au quatrième siècle est donc la suivante: il a été ouvert vers 362, peu après qu’ait été mise en place la fabrica; la région est ravagée en 401–408; les marchands syriens le réutilisent vers 409/10; il est quasi-abandonné en 452. Il a donc été le lieu d’inhumation des gens de la fabrique entre 362 et 401/08, une quarantaine d’années. A en juger par le nombre de tombes, il y avait près d’un décès par an en moyenne ce qui suppose, pour un taux brut de mortalité de 2%, un groupe d’une cinquantaine de vivants. Nous sommes dans la société provinciale. De nombreux défunts ont des noms gréco-romains et plusieurs sarcophages sont gravées du chrisme. Les membres du personnel militaire portent le nomen Flavius qui marque une citoyenneté relativement récente, tandis que le personnel civil ou les épouses ont d’autres nomina, signe d’une citoyenneté plus ancienne.21 Tout cela est banal. Mais à la fin du siècle, la routine du sepolcreto de la fabrique est troublée. Le cinq septembre de l’an 394, aux portes du Frioul, sur les bords de la Rivière Froide, la Vipava, dans la bora qui soufflait ce jour-là en tempête, l’armée d’Occident et celle d’Orient s’affrontent. Le généralissime franc Arbogast, lassé d’un prince incapable, avait fait empereur son ami le rhéteur gaulois Eugène. Son armée est écrasée par le nouvel empereur d’Orient, l’Espagnol Flavius Theodosius. Après la bataille, l’état-major cantonna un temps les soldats dans la dixième région, Vénétie-Istrie, dont la capitale était Aquilée. Il fallait inspecter les unités, regarnir les effectifs, breveter de nouveaux officiers, licencier les vieux soldats et les blessés réformés. Vétérans et invalides furent répartis dans les cités de la région et la Colonia Julia Concordia reçut son contingent d’émérites. À chacun fut assigné un hôte chargé de l’héberger, le système de l’hospitalité.22 Les blessés étaient soignés par un médecin dépêché sur les lieux, ‘Flavius Aristos, fidèle chef-médecin’, qui finit là sa carrière, inhumé dans le cimetière auprès de ses

 20 ‘20 sous d’or ou 50 onces d’argent’, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. v.2, no 8734, p. 1062.  21 Emilius, Claudius, Aurelius, Valerius ou, connus localement, Iunius, Vetius, Coccius, Cusius, Enius.  22 Inschriften von Concordia, éd. par Hoffmann, no 2, le soldat a fait héritier son hôte, il est enterré par lui.

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anciens patients, avec sa femme Aurelia Veneria.23 Au fil des ans, les émérites décédèrent: trente-sept nouveaux coffres vinrent ainsi s’ajouter à ceux de la fabrique que la mortalité habituelle y faisait bon an mal an déposer; trois autres défunts furent inhumés aux environs chez leurs hôtes.24 Sur une tombe le graveur a porté la date — le consulat d’Arcadius et d’Honorius en 394 ou 396 — marquant peut-être ainsi un premier décès. Les autres suivirent dans un laps de temps assez court puisque le cimetière a été abandonné une dizaine d’années après. Pour dix-huit des trente-huit décédés, l’épitaphe indique l’âge et parfois le temps de service. Six seulement, les invalides, avaient moins de trente-cinq ans à leur décès. Dix autres ont de trente-huit à soixante ans, soit une vingtaine d’années de service ou plus, et deux sont qualifiés de vétérans. La plupart de ceux dont la stèle ne mentionne pas l’âge sont officiers: un tribun, des centeniers de premier, deuxième ou troisième rang, deux instructeurs; il est peu probable qu’ils soient jeunes. Le reste est formé de sergents (biarchi) et de quelques soldats de première classe (semissales) ou de seconde. Les épitaphes qui se terminent par une amende due au fisc pour violation de sépulture sont particulièrement fréquentes. Trois y ajoutent l’ablation des mains et deux la peine capitale.25 Plus que d’autres, les soldats, étrangers à la région, craignent que leurs tombes ne soient pas respectées. Pour l’entretien, faute de parents et d’amis locaux, certains s’en remettent à leur hôte, d’autres ‘aux vétérans’ — leurs camarades encore vivants — d’autre, chrétiens, au clergé de Concordia. Les épitaphes mentionnent les unités auxquelles avaient appartenu les défunts: une schola de la garde, six unités de cavaleries, dont trois de nom germanique, et pour l’infanterie trois legiones, dont une palatine, et douze auxilia, germaniques ou celtiques avec un auxilium syrien. Le groupe de Concordia n’était sûrement pas le seul dans la région. D’autres émérites,

 23 Hôte: Inschriften von Concordia, éd. par Hoffmann, no 10; archiater: Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. v.2, no 8741, p. 1062; CTh. 8. 3. 8, éd. par Mommsen et Meyer, p. 742.  24 Vannesse, ‘Les inscriptions militaires’, p. 119 (supra note 9), rappelant les trente-sept épitaphes d’Hoffmann (Inschriften von Concordia, éd. par Hoffmann, no 2, inscription retrouvée à 7 km au SW) et les trente-huit de Lettich, en compte quarante-quatre (avec Turanius, un soldat des Joviani, enterré sur un domaine à Levada, L’Année épi­graphique, 2005 (2002), no 538, p. 190, et un praepositus des scutaires, no 539, p. 191), incluant deux vétérans et un tribun sans indication d’unité, tous de la fabrique (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. v.2, no 8724 et 8749, pp. 1061, 1062; Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres, éd. par Diehl, no 436, p. 95), que nous omettons de même que le princeps stabuli (supra note 17).  25 Edit de Constance en 349 (CTh. 9. 17. 1–2, éd. par Mommsen et Meyer, pp. 463–64): une amende de vingt livres pour viol de sépulture, souvent lié à la réutilisation des matériaux, remplace la peine ‘de sang’; amende réduite en 356 par Julien à dix livres (CTh. 9. 17. 3, éd. par Mommsen et Meyer, p. 464). A Concordia, amendes variables, la peine de mort est demandée deux fois, l’ablation de la main une fois. Seston, ‘Le rescrit d’Auguste’, p. 205; Rebillard, ‘Violation de sépulture et impiété’, p. 65.

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blessés ou vétérans, durent être répartis ailleurs, là où se trouvaient des administrations.26 Toutes les unités ou presque mentionnées à Concordia étaient en tête de liste dans la Notitia dignitatum où elles constituaient environ le sixième de la grande armée réunifiée de 394. Les soldats mentionnés dans les épitaphes du cimetière de la fabrique sont les rescapés de la Rivière Froide, cette partie des militaires démobilisés à Concordia: une cinquantaine.27 Leurs noms forment un échantillon onomastique bien identifié: celui des émérites de l’armée de marche à la fin du quatrième siècle. Nous pouvons à présent lire en connaissance de cause les épitaphes militaires. Elles donnent quarante noms de défunts, auxquels on peut ajouter ceux de camarades ou parents et ceux de trois épouses, ce qui donne cinquante-deux noms. Un quart des unités auxquelles appartenaient les défunts sont des auxilia, des régiments barbares, ceux qui perdirent le plus de monde dans la bataille comme le notent les textes. Nous entrevoyons la culture des soldats qui servaient dans ces unités ‘ethniques’ de deux façons: par leur onomastique, que nous pouvons comparer à celle des soldats appartenant aux unités de citoyens, et par une de leurs épitaphes qui montre leur conscience identitaire. On note dès l’abord que plus des trois-quarts des défunts portent le gentilice Flavius. Il indique une citoyenneté conférée par un empereur au quatrième siècle puisque le patronyme, ici celui de la deuxième maison flavienne, a été repris par Valentinien et par Théodose. Le port du nom impérial est une marque indéniable de citoyenneté. Le prendre sans don impérial serait lèse-Majesté. Certains soldats pourtant ne le portent pas: un seul d’entre eux sert dans une unité romaine et son épitaphe grecque, fort courte, est d’un style poétique qui a pu faire omettre le nom; les autres servent dans une unité auxiliaire, trois des décédés, l’époux soldat d’une défunte lui-même mort à la bataille, des frères, un fils, trois épouses. Ainsi par exemple, aucun des trois frères toujours vivants du défunt Flavius Sauma des Brachiati ne porte le gentilice Flavius. L’échantillon étant ce qu’il est, il est probable que le gentilice Flavius et la citoyenneté qui allait avec ont été accordés par Théodose à des vétérans et à quelques blessés exemplaires en même temps que leur honesta missio. Deux inscriptions mentionnent, outre l’unité du défunt, la qualité de protector domesticus: en plus de la citoyenneté, ces deux hommes ont reçu le titre qui leur donnait, à eux et à leurs familles, le statut d’un garde du corps honoraire. Considérons les autres noms. On voit que sur les cinquante-deux noms de l’échantillon, vingt-six sont latins, vingt-deux germaniques et quatre autres non-latins — un nom grec, un hébreu, un éventuel celtique, et un quatrième porté par un officier de la Prima Martia Victrix, Flavius Ziper, commandant

 26 Par exemple d’autres fabriques, Notitia dignitatum, Oc. ix. 25–26 ou xi. 49, éd. par Seeck, pp. 145, 150.  27 Aucun des vivants ne se retrouve parmi les décédés du sepolcreto; les émérites vivants sont morts après sa fermeture.

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la quatrième centaine. A vingt-sept ans Flavius Ziper avait servi huit ans et il était déjà officier. La plus forte amende indiquée sur les épitaphes l’est sur la sienne. Les deux collègues qui l’inhument, son successeur le quatrième centenier Vitalis (quartocerius) et le maître d’armes Maximianus, se disent ses convicani ce qui laisse penser qu’ils étaient campagnards. Il est probable que Flavius Ziper était un noble illyrien, citoyen romain mais fier de son nom indigène.28 Ce cas mis à part, on voit que tous les membres des unités légionnaires portent des noms latins, sauf un, chez les Armigeri, qui porte le nom germanique de Flavius Fandigils, *FandGisl, ‘Hôte Trouvé’. Promu protector, il a pu recevoir la citoyenneté quand il était encore en exercice et passer dans une ‘légion’, une troupe citoyenne.29 Inversement tous les noms germaniques, sauf celui-là, sont portés dans les unités germaniques. Dans deux seulement d’entre elles, les Batavi et les Mattiaci depuis longtemps intégrés à l’armée, quelques soldats portent des noms latins.30 Les noms germaniques peuvent être divisés en deux groupes, les noms proprement dits et les surnoms. Les noms sont classiques, à deux radicaux: ainsi Fandigisl que nous venons de rencontrer, ou Marcarid tribun des Jovii, probables Alamans.31 De même un sergent (biarchus) des Brachiati se nomme Alagild, *AeleGield, ‘Sacrifie à Aelle (l’Adopté)’, et le garde (domesticus) Alatanc est *AeleThanc, ‘Remercie Aelle’.32 Chez les Mattiaci, Agustus, plutôt qu’une forme déformée du nom impérial, qu’on aurait écrit correctement, pourrait être un *AGost, ‘Esprit du Fleuve’, de même le Batave Abruna, *ABryne, ‘Feu du Fleuve’. Le première classe Mattiaque Am

io, *EamEoh, est ‘Cheval

 28 Inschriften von Concordia, éd. par Hoffmann, no 17, p. 39. Cap(ut) + delta avec keraia mal lu zeta. La Ia Martia était en Valérie, au sud de Visegrad, au coude du Danube, Notitia dignitatum, Oc. ix, 32, éd. par Seeck, p. 145; L’Année épi­graphique, 2003 (2000), no 1223, p. 459. Le nom pourrait être l’équivalent de l’albanais Ziparë, ‘Premier (du) Noir’, une possible épithète du corbeau. Le nom était porté en 318–320 par le gouverneur de la Basse-Egypte orientale, avec le nomen de Valerius qui suppose une citoyenneté constantinienne ( Jones, Martindale, et Morris, éds, The Prosopo­graphy of the Later Roman Empire, i, p. 533, qui donne ensuite le Flavius Ziper de Concordia, mal lu Ziperga). Les unités de cavalerie illyriennes sont nombreuses en Orient. Les deux hommes pourraient venir d’un même clan dont ils auraient pris le nom comme cognomen.  29 Inschriften von Concordia, éd. par Hoffmann, no 11, pp. 33–34.  30 Inschriften von Concordia, éd. par Hoffmann, no 17, 18, 20, 28, pp. 41, 45. C’était déjà le cas chez les anciens lètes rhénans, Derks, ‘Ethnic Identity in the Roman Frontier’, p. 239.  31 CTh. 9. 42. 18, éd. par Mommsen et Meyer, p. 515: un Marcharide, proscrit (en 392? d’où son inhumation parmi des soldats en 394?), avait laissé des dépôts à des provinciaux en Afrique; un interrogatoire poussé (quaestio) le révéla (après la révolte de 398?) et en juillet 401, l’empereur Honorius ordonna que ces dépôts soient versés au fisc (CTh. 9. 42. 18, éd. par Mommsen et Meyer, p. 515). L’auxilium des Jovii est l’unité alamane qui soutint Constantin lors de sa proclamation à York, d’où la victoire sur leur écu.  32 Inschriften von Concordia, éd. par Hoffmann, no 30, p. 46; no 32, p. 47; Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. v.2, no 8738, p. 1062. Jones, Martindale, et Morris, éds, The Prosopo­graphy of the Later Roman Empire, i, p. 324 et p. 542.

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de l’Oncle (maternel)’; chez les Bataves Launio, *LoanEoh, est ‘Cheval du Don’; Vassio, *WaestEoh est ‘Cheval de l’Ouest’; chez les Bructères *AnEoh est ‘Cheval de l’Un’ (Wodan). L’Hérule Silvimar, *Sel WihMaer, est ‘Glorieux du Sanctuaire’ (Wimer/Guimer), le hearh qu’avaient jadis gardé les siens, avec la précision Sel, ‘la Chance’, un surnom qui devait le distinguer d’un homonyme.33 Hariso ou Sindila, chez les Hérules, sont des hypocoristiques connus. Le second est une forme germanique orientale et il y avait des Hérules aussi bien à l’Est, en Silésie, qu’au Nord, en Jylland. Un senator des Brachiati porte un nom de sippe, *Eowing, ‘Issu de l’If ’.34 Les surnoms sont des sobriquets portés par des soldats de plus humble origine: un sergent des Brachiati est *(W)Odisc, ‘L’Enragé’, la rage du berserk; un centenier des Bataves est Fasta, *FaestTà, ‘Raide-Verge’, son bâton de commandement, ou quelque autre.35 Dans des unités bilingues, les surnoms sont parfois latins: un autre sergent des Brachiati porte le surnom de Sauma, ‘La Charge’, une vraie bête de somme; il n’en est pas moins germanique puisqu’il a un frère qui se nomme Viax, *WihAxe, ‘Hache au Saint’, l’arme mythique de Thor. Le soldat des Bataves Carpilio, ‘Petit Carpe’, ou le vétéran des Mattiaques Dassiolus, ‘Petit Dace’, deux unités de l’armée praesentalis d’Orient, pourraient avoir reçu leurs surnoms en raison de l’origine de mères danubiennes, prisonnières de guerre affranchies.36 L’existence des sobriquets germaniques confirme qu’on parlait encore des langues germaniques dans les auxilia et qu’on les utilisait pour plaisanter. A la fin du quatrième siècle les soldats des auxilia germaniques inhumés à Concordia, à en juger par leur anthroponymie, étaient tous de cette origine. A l’encontre de cette constatation, on a invoqué une longue et remarquable épitaphe latine trouvée à Nakolea en Anatolie: In perpetvo seqvlo seqvritatis post omnia Fl[avio) Aemiliano dvc(enario) e | nvmervm Io[……] corn[……] sen[iorvm]. Vixit annos XLVII, militavit | stvpendia XXVII, natvs in Dacia civitate Fla[via] Singedonvm… Memoria qven | fecervnt Aelianvs et Aelivs filii ipsivs… Dominorvm nostrorvm Constantii Avgvsti | VIII et Ivliani consvlatvs (trois chrismes). (A Flavius Aemilianus, ducenarius de l’unité des Io(viani) Corn(acenses) sen(iores), dans le siècle éternel de la sécurité, après tout ça. Il a vécu quarante-sept ans, servi pour la solde vingt-sept, né en Dacie à la cité

 33 Inschriften von Concordia, éd. par Hoffmann, no 25 et 26, p. 44; no 16 et 30, pp. 39, 46; no 15 et 26, pp. 38, 44; no 14 et 23, pp. 37, 43.  34 Inschriften von Concordia, éd. par Hoffmann, no 23 et 24, p. 43; no 11, pp. 33–34.  35 Inschriften von Concordia, éd. par Hoffmann, no 10 et 12, pp. 33, 34–35; dans le cas de Fastà, on peut aussi envisager un double-sens graveleux.  36 Inschriften von Concordia, éd. par Hoffmann, no 11 et 19, pp. 33–34, 41; no 15 et 27, pp. 34, 44–45. Notitia dignitatum, Oc. v. 49 et 53, éd. par Seeck, p. 13.

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flavienne de Singedunum… Monument qu’ont fait ses fils Aelianus et Aelius… Consulat de nos seigneurs l’auguste Constance et Julien.)37 Emilien, mort en 356, était né en 309 dans le diocèse de Dacie, en Première Mésie, dans la cité de Singidunum (Belgrade). Les chrismes indiquent la tombe d’un chrétien. C’était un Romain non un barbare. En 329, il avait été enrôlé. Son unité n’est pas l’auxilium des Cornuti, comme on l’a pensé, un auxilium germanique; c’est la legio des Ioviani, une des unités créées par Dioclétien, sans doute la Quinta Iovia de Pannonie inférieure qui ne compte dans la Notitia dignitatum que trois cohortes quingentariae au lieu de quatre comme la Prima Iovia de Scythie. Pour la distinguer des trois autres cette cohorte avait été nommée d’après sa garnison Cornacensis, de Cornacum (Sotin). En 320–324, elle dut combattre contre l’armée de Licinius et être récompensée par l’accession au palatinat. Les fils d’Emilien utilisent l’épithète qu’elle avait encore quand leur père l’avait rejointe. Vint le règne de Constant, l’empereur danubien. Pour mettre la main sur la part de son frère Constantin II, il avait besoin de troupes. C’est sans doute lui qui procéda en 337–340 au doublement en seniores et iuniores des Ioviani et d’autres cohortes. Après son assassinat en 350, la sanglante bataille de Mursa en 351, l’exécution de l’usurpateur Magnence en 353 et celle du général Silvanus en 355 — ‘après tout ça’ comme le dit l’épitaphe — Constance dut transférer en Orient les seniores ainsi qu’il fit pour d’autres Illyriens. Emilien, en décédant, trouva dans l’éternité la sécurité qui lui avait fait défaut durant la vie. Les seniores revinrent en Occident en 364 lors du partage des troupes entre Valentinien et Valens, les iuniores restant en Orient. Le texte montre non pas un nom romain dans une unité barbare, mais le recrutement d’un citoyen romain du Danube dans la legio palatina des Ioviani. Lui et ses fils portent des noms romains ce qui n’a rien d’étonnant. Revenons à Concordia. L’ethnicité onomastique des autres unités auxiliaires, en nombre plus restreint, est par suite moins nette, sauf chez les Regii. La défunte Flavia Optata était la veuve, r(elicta) u(xor), du soldat Jude, de l’unité des Royaux d’Homs, l’ancienne garde des Sohaimi recrutée chez les Bédouins de la frontière syrienne.38 Juda/Yehuda est un nom hébreu, très répandu dans la religion juive mais aussi chez les chrétiens arabes de Syrie

 37 Nakolea (Seyitgazi, Eskisehir, Turquie), Drew-Bear, ‘A Fourth-Century Latin Soldier’s Epitaph’. Drew-Bear a songé à des Io(vii) Corn(uti), hypothèse généralement acceptée, mais Iovii et Cornuti sont distincts dans la Notitia Dignitatum.  38 Flavia Optata mil[itis] de num[ero] Regi[orum] emes[enorum] Iude r[elicta] u[xor]. Inschriften von Concordia, éd. par Hoffmann, no 36, p. 50, donne les lectures antérieures, rappelle l’existence d’un numerus Hemesenorum et développe Iud[a]e[o]ru[m]; il est plus simple de lire le nom d’homme Juda. Speidel, ‘Raising New Units for the Late Roman Army’, p. 170, lit emit sibi de re viri. Dans la Notitia Dignitatum, l’unité est classée auxilium en Orient (Notitia dignitatum, Or. vi. 49, éd. par Seeck, p. 17) mais rangée parmi les legiones comitatenses en Occident (Notitia dignitatum, Oc. v. 229, éd. par Seeck, p. 125). Sur la famille royale, Sullivan, ‘The Dynasty of Emesa’, p. 198.

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à cause de leur évangélisateur, Jude alias Thadée ou Addai.39 Le soldat Jude était apparemment mort à la bataille de la Vipava, il n’avait donc pas reçu la citoyenneté et le nom impérial Flavius. Un soldat des Hiberi caucasiens, dont l’épitaphe prend soin de préciser que l’unité, de création récente, est un auxilium palatinum, porte un nom grec, Dioclès, celui qu’avait porté l’empereur Dioclétien. C’est aussi celui d’un martyr d’Istrie, et le nom est vraisemblablement issu de la même prédication qui, nous allons le voir, avait converti le Goth *Treowsta. Trois autres auxilia, les Leones, les Sagittarii nervii et les Latovii sont des unités celtiques venues de Grande-Bretagne. Leurs défunts portent des noms apparemment latins, ainsi Ma(n)suetus; mais ce nom pourrait être la latinisation d’un nom celte, comme Virgile l’était de Fergil, puisqu’on le retrouve chez l’évangélisateur ‘scot’ d’un légendaire ‘roi Leon’, reflet des Leones bretons en Toulois, et chez un évêque des Bretons au sixième siècle.40 Outre Optata, les épouses mentionnées, celles de soldats germaniques, ont aussi des noms germaniques: Suandacca, *Swandecca, ‘Abrite au Cygne’, qui évoque l’habit de plume des ondines, et Gunthia, *GunthThea, ‘Servante du Combat’, un nom de walkyrie. Les défunts avaient donc eu des femmes de même langue qu’eux. On sait qu’une constitution de Valentinien interdit le mariage entre barbares et provinciaux sous peine de mort. On peut certes supposer qu’il y avait eu là une mesure de circonstance, mais sa reproduction dans le Code impérial montre qu’elle était devenue de règle.41 Chez les soldats, elle confortait l’endogamie. Elle ne concernait évidemment pas les mariages entre des officiers généraux devenus citoyens et des nobles romaines accordées par l’empereur.

 39 Cf. parmi les Epitres catholiques celle de Jude, ‘serviteur de Jésus Christ, frère de Jacques, aux aimés de Dieu’.  40 Sagittarii nervii, auxilium en Gaule (Notitia dignitatum, Oc. v. 170 et 211, éd. par Seeck, pp. 122, 124, proches des Leones, infra), issu des unités locales ‘en avant (du mur)’ (areani, Kerneis, Les Celtiques, p. 213), d’abord auxiliaires de deux cohortes du Mur d’Hadrien (Notitia dignitatum, Oc. xl. 52 et 54, éd. par Seeck, p. 212) devenues citoyennes après la constitution antonine. Latavi/Latini (Notitia dignitatum, Oc. v. 194–95, éd. par Seeck, p. 123, cf. leur écu, Oc. v. 46–47, p. 117, près des Sabini/Sab(r)ini de la Severn; Latavienses Oc. xxxvi. 4, p. 202), Irlandais du Pays de Galles (Kerneis, Les Celtiques, p. 220), *LiatUi/Liatain ‘Enfants/Ceux de la Grise’, l’aigle de Gwern Abwy en Dyfed, Mabinogi, trad. par Lambert, p. 153 (merci de cette indication à Soazick Kerneis). Leones (Notitia dignitatum, Oc. v. 171–72, éd. par Seeck, p. 122) déjà recrutés par Caracalla (Kerneis, Les Celtiques, pp. 124, 150, 157). Mansuetus de Toul, Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux, iii, p. 62, possible liste conciliaire trévire (en 386?), p. 32; Vita S. Mansueti brevior, 2 (relatu maiorum didicimus), p. 636; Vita Mansueti prolixior, 2, 6, 9, 11, pp. 639–41; un Mansuetus episcopus Britannorum au concile de Tours en 461, Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux, ii, p. 247. Mansuetus de Senlis, après un Regulus/Rieul/Riwal, Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux, iii, p. 117, homonymes à Meaux, Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux, ii, p. 472, deux évêchés proches d’une Goëlle. *ManSu(G)ueth, Bon Combat du Cheval?  41 CTh. 3. 13. 1, éd. par Mommsen et Meyer, p. 155; Inschriften von Concordia, éd. par Hoffmann, no 19 et 23, pp. 41, 43. Castagnino, ‘Creare una famiglia’, p. 125; Poly, ‘Leges barbarorum’, p. 203. Contra, Mathisen, ‘Peregrini, Barbari, and Cives Romani’.

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Inversement le concubinage d’un Romain avec une barbare était toléré. En décembre 423, à Florence, le domesticus Faustinien fit faire une stèle pour une défunte de trente-quatre ans qu’il qualifie de ‘citoyenne alamane’. Peut-être était-elle née dans une des familles alamanes qu’en 377 le maître de la cavalerie Théodose avait déportées comme tributaires sur les rives du Pô; elle n’était donc ni romaine, ni esclave. C’était, dit Faustinien, ‘son aimante conjointe’ (amans coniux), il n’emploie pas épouse (uxor), et précise qu’il était ‘son compagnon’ (conpar). Il n’y a pas de legitimum matrimonium: Vsi (début du nom de la femme?) [nexa ann…]I, m[ensibus] VI, | civis alamana, vixit annis XXXIIII, | recessit in pace die II nonas dec[embris] | Mariniano et Asclipiodoto cons[vlibus] | Fl[avivs] Favstinianvs v[ir] d[evotvs] dom[es]t[icvs] conpar eivs | hvnc titvlvm amant[i] coniug[i] f[ieri] f[ecit] | (trois chrismes).42 (Usi(garda?), unie durant… ans 6 mois, citoyenne alamane, elle a vécu 34 ans; elle est décédée en paix le 4 décembre, sous le consulat de Marinien et Asclepiodote. Flavius Faustinien, homme fidèle, officier-garde, son compagnon, a fait faire cette inscription pour son aimante conjointe.) Faustinien, officier-garde du corps et certainement citoyen, aimait beaucoup sa compagne. Il ne la considérait pas moins comme ‘citoyenne alamane’ et elle portait un nom germanique. Les noms ne sont pas la seule marque identitaire livrée par les épitaphes du sepolcreto. L’une d’elles montre que les soldats barbares avaient conscience de leur ethnicité. C’est celle d’un centurion des Brachiati surnommé Andia, *AnDeah, ‘Bon de l’Unique (Woden)’. Deux camarades se sont chargés d’acheter son sarcophage avec son argent. Ils font graver son épitaphe avec le souhait Feliciter! Bien que tous deux soient Flavii, devenus citoyens avec leur honesta missio, ils entendent rappeler leur ethnie germanique. Le premier est ‘Flavius Servilio Trywsta, des Goths’. Etant donnée l’ancienneté des Brachiati dans l’armée d’Occident, l’unité n’a pu être recrutée chez les Goths. *Treowsta, la forme orientale de ‘Très fidèle’, est devenu chrétien après son recrutement ou son éméritat puisqu’il porte avant son nom germanique le nom d’un des martyrs d’Istrie, Servilio, un compagnon du martyr Dioclès que nous avons rencontré.43 D’où la recommandation de sa tombe ‘à la sainte église de Concordia’. L’homme a mentionné son ethnie précisément parce que l’unité n’était pas gothique; issu des Goths venus à Théodose, il a dû venir renforcer une unité affaiblie où il était minoritaire, éprouvant dès lors le désir de rappeler  42 Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. xi.1, no 1731, p. 323. De même Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. v.1, no 1628, p. 153, précise qu’un homme a vécu 10 ans cum compare, dite aussi sa coniux. Sur les Alamans du Pô, supra note 12.  43 Tomea, ‘L’agiografia dell’Italia settentrionale’, p. 99.

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son origine. Du coup, son collègue centenier, lui aussi promu citoyen, *IilLae (‘Chevelure de Hérisson’?), n’a pas voulu être en reste: il a fait ajouter à son nom un qualificatif ethnique assez large pour équilibrer celui des Goths, Teuta, ‘des Teutons’, les Géants de l’Union, origine normale pour une unité levée chez les clans du nord-ouest de la Germanie.44 Ni la citoyenneté romaine ni le christianisme n’avaient fait oublier leur origine ethnique aux deux hommes. Les artisans de la fabrique, plébéiens mais Romains tout de même, se méfiaient de leurs voisins barbares: sur un de leurs propres sarcophage, ils firent en sorte que la clause d’amende pour viol de sépulture sorte de la routine en ajoutant que le délit pourrait être le fait d’alienigenae.45 Les auxiliaires barbares restaient des étrangers, d’où peut-être la séparation du cimetière en deux parties. A un niveau social plus élevé, la situation était bien entendu différente.

II — Commandements romains et noblesse germanique Que les généraux d’origine barbare aient été romanisés, on s’en convainc aisément en regardant le diptyque d’ivoire commémorant l’accès de Flavius Stilicon au commandement suprême de l’armée peu avant 393. Vêtu et coiffé à la mode de la haute société romaine, il s’appuie sur l’écu à écailles — métonymie du dragon trop païen — celui de la scola des gentiles, orné de la double imago impériale, Théodose et son fils aîné Arcadius, le cadet Honorius n’ayant été nommé auguste qu’en 393.46 D’autres témoignages donnent cependant une idée un peu différente de l’identité des grands officiers, ainsi quatre inscriptions qui concernent des membres de l’aristocratie militaire. La première, qui vient de Trèves, date du règne de Gratien, quand les Francs étaient encore fidèles à la Rome impériale et chrétienne. Les trois autres, contemporaines des épitaphes des soldats de Concordia, laissent apparaître la divergence qui s’établissait entre les officiers et cette romanité. A la fin du quatrième siècle, la ville de Trèves avait été une capitale, à la fois résidence impériale et siège de la préfecture des Gaules. Pour les vivants, elle avait des palais, des églises, un forum, des entrepôts, un amphithéâtre  44 Inschriften von Concordia, éd. par Hoffmann, no 14, p. 37: Flavii Servilio Trausta Guta e(t) Iila Teuta, feliciter. (Fl)avio Andiae centenario numeri Bracchiatorum col(legae) optimo arcam… comparavimus, quem (capulu)m commendamus sancte aeclesiae Conco(r)diensium; Bosworth et Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary donne la forme iil pour igil, ‘hérisson’, et lae ‘chevelure’; la forme Teuta, *TehEota, gén.plur., forme courte du nom des Teutoni, cf. Eotas/Iotas, ‘les Jutes’, forme longue Eotenas; le comparavimus montre qu’il s’agit bien de deux personnages; Hoffmann lit quem arcam, avec barbarisme, Inschriften von Concordia, éd. par Hoffmann, p. 37.  45 Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. v.2, no 8769, p. 1064.  46 Jullian, ‘Le diptyque de Stilicon au trésor de Monza’, p. 5, n’identifie pas l’écu et la double imago impériale où il voit celle de Séréna et de son fils. La taille du fils qui se tient à côté de sa mère et de son père indique à peu près son âge, 7/8 ans, soit 391/92. Stilicon a dû recevoir le commandement de l’unité dont il porte l’écu.

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devenu forteresse. Aux morts, elle offrait le repos dans deux cimetières, l’un au Sud, autour de Saint-Eucher plus tard Saint-Matthias, l’autre au Nord, autour de Saint Paulin et de Saint-Maximin. De celui-ci restent 235 épitaphes, dont une cinquantaine datent de la fin du quatrième siècle, une centaine du cinquième et le reste des sixième et septième.47 La dévotion à Maximin et Paulin a été installée par l’évêque Félix (383–398), un disciple de saint Martin. Il est peu probable que les tombes chrétiennes soient antérieures à cette date, les premières ayant sans doute été dans le cimetière Sud, près de Saint-Eucher. De Saint-Maximin vient un rectangle de marbre de vingt-deux centimètres par quarante-huit. Comme d’autres épitaphes trévires de ce temps, c’est le remploi d’une ancienne plaque retaillée. De tels marbres étaient soit scellés à l’intérieur des arcosolia aménagés dans les parois d’une voûte funéraire, soit intégrés au couvercle de pierre d’un sarcophage. Celui-ci porte cette inscription: (chrisme) Hic reqvies data, Hloderici membra, sepv[l]crvm, Qui c.a.p.v.s in nomero vicarii nomine(m) svm[p]sit, Fvit in pvpvlo gratvs et in svo genere pr[i]mvs, Cvi vxor nobilis pro amore tetolvm fie[ri] ivssit Qvi vixit in saecvlo annvs plvs menvs [X]L, Cvi deposicio fvit in saecvlo VII ka[l avg]vstas48 En dessous de ces lignes, la figuration d’animaux symboliques du christianisme déjà manifesté par le chrisme initial: deux poissons différents l’un de l’autre, dont le premier est étrangement tordu, et deux oiseaux également différents, tous quatre gravés de façon beaucoup moins élégante que sur les autres épitaphes. L’épitaphe de Hlodric a été datée ‘après 400’ sans raisons bien solides. Les divers éditeurs des épitaphes trévires considèrent pourtant que l’existence de titres romains suppose le quatrième siècle. Or il y a ici un numerus commandé par un vicarius, le délégué de l’officier qui, lui, était commissionné par brevet impérial.49 Etrangement, alors que l’épitaphe est écrite dans un latin parlé (tetolum, nomero, pupulo, menus) mais à peu près correct, elle contiendrait un barbarisme inusité, capus pour caput. Tout aussi étrangement, elle ne mentionnerait pas le nom du numerus. Ces deux anomalies sont liées: dans l’inscription, comme  47 Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. xiii.1.2, pp. 585, 596; Recueil des inscriptions chrétiennes, éd. par Gauthier, pp. 20, 30; datations exceptionnelles dans les épitaphes des marchands syriens en 383 (prise de pouvoir par Maxime?) et 409 (restauration après le pillage de 408?); monnaies de la seconde moitié du ive siècle. Sur Trèves: Gauthier, L’évangélisation des pays de la Moselle; Ewig, Trier im Merowingerreich; Wightman, Roman Trier and the Treveri; Anton, Trier im frühen Mittelalter.  48 Plaque brisée, la cassure verticale emporte une lettre à chaque ligne et quatre à la dernière. Recueil des inscriptions chrétiennes, éd. par Gauthier, p. 354, qui date l’épitaphe des viie–viiie siècles, à cause du nom germanique et des vulgarismes; Jones, Martindale, et Morris, éds, The Prosopo­graphy of the Later Roman Empire, ii, p. 566, des ve–vie siècles; Riese, Das Rheinische Germanien, p. 136, à cause du grade, la considérait comme antique.  49 Sur ces vicarii, Jones, The Later Roman Empire, i, pp. 643, 675.

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il est d’usage, les mots sont écrits à la suite sans intervalles ni ponctuation, sauf une sorte de tilde chassant ornemental en fin des lignes deux, trois, et cinq, ainsi mises à la longueur des autres. On ne peut donc distinguer matériellement les abréviations. Si le nom de l’unité n’est pas mentionné c’est parce qu’il venait de l’être dans la succession des lettres C.A.P. V.S, abréviations usuelles qu’il faut lire, pensons-nous, c(entenarius) A(ugusti) p(rotectorum), v(ir) s(pectabilis).50 D’où la traduction: Repos ici donné, les membres de Hlodric, une sépulture, lui qui, centenier des gardes de l’empereur, vir spectabilis, prit en plus dans l’unité le titre de lieutenant. Au peuple il fut cher et dans sa race le premier. Sa noble épouse par amour manda qu’on lui fit l’inscription. Il vécut dans le siècle à peu près quarante ans. Dans le siècle son inhumation fut le 26 juillet. L’inhumation à Trèves de l’officier commandant les gardes suppose la présence d’un empereur, en 328–350 ou en 367–383. Le fait que l’officier soit barbare mais chrétien et l’écriture indiquent plutôt la seconde période. L’empereur Gratien résida à Trèves jusqu’en 378 avant de partir combattre en Orient, de retourner en Italie en 380–381, puis d’aller livrer bataille près de Paris peu avant son assassinat le 25 août 383.51 Un texte nous montre que si le successeur de Gratien, Valentinien II, vivait à Vienne, le comte des domestiques était encore à Trèves aux côtés du généralissime Arbogast, ce quasi-empereur. C’est seulement après 394 que le siège du pouvoir fut transféré à Milan, puis à Ravenne.52 Le défunt n’avait pas été le chef de l’unité, il l’avait commandée par intérim en tant que vicarius. Sans doute à ce titre avait-il été fait vir spectabilis, le comes domesticorum en titre étant un rang au-dessus, vir illustris. On s’explique qu’à la fin du siècle celui-ci ait eu besoin d’un lieutenant: c’était le Franc Ricimer, dépêché par Gratien en Orient en 377. Lorsque l’empereur, cette même année, fit campagne contre les Alamans, il nomma au commandement des gardes un roi des Francs, Mallobaude, probable vicarius puisque Ricimer était toujours comte des domestiques en août 378.53 Quand Gratien revint à l’Ouest en 381, Ricimer resta avec Théodose et en 383 il fut promu magister militum en Orient. Entre temps le commandement des gardes du corps avait été confié  50 Il n’y a pas d’exemple pour p = protectores, mais la lettre a été utilisée pour p(annoniorum) et pour p(artica), Capelli, Dizionario di abbreviature, pp. 440, 429, 487, 513; Lassère, Manuel d’épi­graphie romaine, ii, pp. 1066, 1061, 1097. Aucune des quatre lignes ne paraît scandée.  51 Demougeot, La formation de l’Europe, ii, p. 126; Recueil des inscriptions chrétiennes, éd. par Gauthier, p. 59.  52 Recueil des inscriptions chrétiennes, éd. par Gauthier, pp. 1–130. De la même époque, ou peut-être un peu avant puisqu’elles sont à St-Eucher, datent les épitaphes d’autres gardes du corps, celle du chrétien Flavius Gabso, ex-tribun, protector domesticus ou celle de Hariulf fils du prince burgonde *HanHawald, inhumé par son oncle Reutilo, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. xiii.1, no 3681, 3682, p. 596.  53 Jones, Martindale, et Morris, éds, The Prosopo­graphy of the Later Roman Empire, i, pp. 539 et 765.

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à l’un des centeniers, Hlodric, un prince franc comme Mallobaude. Après la défaite de Gratien, l’usurpateur Maxime ramena l’armée à Trèves tandis que l’empereur prenait la fuite avant d’être assassiné à Lyon le 25 août 383. Hlodric a donc été commandant par intérim de la garde durant les années 381–383. S’il a été inhumé un 26 juillet à Trèves, ce doit être en 383, peu après la défaite de Gratien. On s’explique que le modèle de l’inscription remis au graveur ait abrégé le titre conféré par un Auguste dont mieux valait ne plus rappeler la mémoire. Le commandement de la garde du corps n’était pas donné à la légère, même pour un intérim. Hlodric était, dit l’épitaphe, ‘cher au peuple’, ce populus étant le peuple romain; la confiance envers les Francs ‘amis des Romains’ est typique de la seconde moitié du quatrième siècle, avant les assauts du siècle suivant.54 Les gens de Hlodric considéraient qu’il était ‘premier dans sa race’, son genus, sa nation/parenté germanique. Pour eux, le défunt était, autant ou plus qu’un officier romain, un prince germanique dont le nom évoquait un parent célèbre. Lors de la bataille de Mursa en 351, un officier franc porteur d’un nom latin, Silvanus, qui commandait la schola des Instructeurs, avait abandonné l’usurpateur Magnence pour se rallier à Constance, le dernier des fils de Constantin. L’empereur le récompensa en le nommant magister militum de Gaule.55 En 355, l’entourage impérial, toujours prêt à soupçonner des complots, pensa que le nouveau généralissime aspirait au pouvoir suprême. Seuls protestèrent quelques officiers francs ses amis. Instruit de la menace et sans soutien des clans outre-Rhin, Silvanus se laissa acclamer empereur par ses soldats, une proclamation qui marque l’influence des barbares, devenus indispensables.56 Silvanus n’était pas le seul nom du prétendant. Il avait aussi un nom germanique et se nommait Cludio, hypocoristique d’un nom bâti avec le radical Hlùd-. En 353 il était ‘encore assez jeune’ (adulescentior), il n’avait donc pas dépassé la trentaine mais il en était proche car on voit mal un général en chef de vingt ans. Il avait un fils qui fut épargné par Constance.57 Ce pourrait être Hlodric. Trait encore rare parmi les officiers germaniques, Hlodric était chrétien comme l’avait été Silvanus C(h)ludio. La périphrase ‘le premier dans sa race’ conviendrait pour un parent d’empereur, particularité glorieuse mais

 54 Ammien Marcellin, Histoires, xv. 5. 6, éd. par Galletier et autres, p. 118; Zosime, Histoire, iv. 33. 2, éd. par Paschoud, p. 296. Richomer: Demougeot, La formation de l’Europe, ii, p. 121; prises de Trèves, Demougeot, La formation de l’Europe, ii, pp. 484–86; Recueil des inscriptions chrétiennes, éd. par Gauthier, p. 125.  55 Scola armaturarum; armatura, ‘l’armement’, par extension ‘le maniement d’armes’ et ceux qui le font faire, désignant ainsi les instructeurs (campidoctores), ici ceux de la garde répartie en scholae.  56 Jones, Martindale, et Morris, éds, The Prosopo­graphy of the Later Roman Empire, i, p. 840. Poly, ‘Le dernier des Meroingas’, p. 353.  57 Jones, Martindale, et Morris, éds, The Prosopo­graphy of the Later Roman Empire, i, p. 840.

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que là encore, il valait mieux ne rappeler qu’avec discrétion. Si Hlodric est fils de Cludio-Silvanus, il put accéder au grade de centenier quand Gratien arriva au pouvoir en 375, recevoir la lieutenance des gardes du corps en 381 et décéder vers sa quarantième année en juillet 383.58 Son titre montre qu’il était citoyen romain, classé dans la noblesse de fonction, mais à la différence de son parent, il portait son nom germanique. Après la mort de Gratien, la carrière des Francs de l’Etat-major allait être fort compromise. Le règne de Maxime vit la faveur des troupes bretonnes et maures, et le nouveau maître de l’Empire entreprit la liquidation des officiers généraux francs: Mérobaude, qui avait abandonné Gratien, se suicida, Vallia fut étranglé et un anonyme fut brûlé à Chalon, sans doute en tentant de se défendre dans un bâtiment.59 Sous de tels auspices, on comprend que la veuve de Hlodric ait préféré quitter Trèves avec sa progéniture et se réfugier dans les cantons volontiers dissidents des Bouches du Rhin. Une génération après HlodRic, un Chlodio/*HlodEoh ‘de haute naissance’ demeurait là lorsque Constantin III, qui avait besoin d’alliés, traita avec les Francs. Chlodio prit Cambrai et le pays jusqu’à la Somme avant d’être battu par Aetius à Hélesmes en 432.60 Les aïeux de Clovis/*HlodWig, comme l’avait rappelé Rémi de Reims, avaient gouverné la province de Belgique pour l’Empire. Bonitus et Silvanus avaient porté des noms latins, mais leurs descendants reprirent les noms bâtis sur le radical lignager Hlùd, Bruyant, qui désignait le dieu Donner/ Tonnerre, et sa parèdre la dea Hlùd(D)ana des autels rhénans. Les troupes restaient germaniques de coutume et de langue et même si leurs officiers généraux étaient citoyens et nobles impériaux, ils ne pouvaient se permettre d’abandonner la culture des leurs. Après l’élimination de l’usurpateur Maxime par Arbogast, les Francs revinrent au pouvoir et de nouveaux officiers généraux furent nommés. Avec cette génération s’esquisse le divorce entre la Rome impériale et ce groupe. Le changement de personnel et d’orientation religieuse et politique est révélé par une inscription monumentale à Co­logne. Un temple situé sur l’emplacement ultérieur des églises paroissiales Saint-Pierre et Sainte Cécile avait été détruit sous Gratien, après la constitution de Thessalonique en 380.61 Il fut restauré sous le bref règne d’Eugène, lors du retour du paganisme en 392/94, sur l’ordre du magister militum Arbogast pris à la demande d’un comes domesticorum:

 58 Dans Notitia dignitatum, Or. xv, Oc. xiii, éd. par Seeck, pp. 39, 157, les planches portent les inscriptions domestici equitum, domestici peditum, ‘gardes (tirés) de la cavalerie, (tirés) de l’infanterie’; on imagine mal qu’une partie des gardes du corps ait suivi l’empereur à cheval et l’autre à pied.  59 Mort de Gratien, Zosime, Histoire, éd. par Paschoud, p. 415 no 172; Panégyriques latins, xii. 28. 4, éd. par Galletier, iii, p. 95.  60 Les seconds radicaux de MallRih et MallBod, amis de Silvanus-*HlùdEoh, renvoient à la suite HlùdRih-HlùdEoh-HlùdBod de la généalogie de Saint-Gall.  61 Cf. à Trèves la destruction de l’Altbachtal, Wightman, Roman Trier and the Treveri, p. 230.

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[Dominis] et imperatoribvs nost[ris] [Teodo]sio et Arcadio et Fl.Evgenio [aedem v]i conlapsam ivssv viri cl[arissimi] [Arboa]stis comitis et instantia v[iri] c[onsularis] [Frigridi? co]mitis domesticorvm et [prodi]gvs ex integro opere facivn [dam cvra]vit magister pr(ivatae] Aelivs62 (Sous nos seigneurs et empereurs Theodosius et Arcadius, et Flavius Eugenius, sur l’ordre du vir clarissimus le comte Arbogast et à la demande du vir consularis (Freirid?) comte des domestiques, le maître des comptes privés Aelius, généreux, s’est occupé de rebâtir complètement ce temple écroulé par violence.) Le comes (rei militaris) vir clarissimus sous l’empereur Eugène est Arbogast. Le nom du comes domesticorum qui l’a sollicité est précédé du titre de vir consularis, donné aux gouverneurs de province, il faut donc qu’il ait été un militaire ayant rempli une charge civile, ce qui n’est pas encore fréquent. Ce pourrait être le Frigeridus dux provinciae Valeriae qui avait gouverné cette province pannonienne en 375. Il devint général en 376, mais Gratien le rappela en Valérie. Il réussit alors à remporter une victoire sur des bandes gotiques et taïfales.63 Il avait servi avec l’ancien comes domesticorum Ricmer et la sympathie qu’Ammien Marcellin lui manifeste pourrait indiquer qu’il était païen. Il est possible qu’il ait repris du service avec Arbogast.64 L’identification est suggérée par la présence au cinquième siècle sur la liste épiscopale de Tongres d’un évêque Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus. Le praenomen de l’évêque indique qu’il a été baptisé à l’âge adulte, et son nomen est celui d’un général de Valens contemporain du premier Frigeridus qui avait un temps collaboré avec lui.65 Le magister pr(ivatae rationis) Aelius, un

 62 De Admiranda sacra, éd. par Gelenius, p. 408, ‘dans le mur de l’église paroissiale St Pierre, au Sud dans le cimetière, est inséré un morceau de marbre antique’; Inscriptiones antiquae totius orbis romani, éd. par Gruter, p. 192 (avec facsimile); Epigrammato­graphie, éd. par von Hüpsch, i, no 32, p. 11; Codex inscriptionum romanarum Rheni, éd. par Steiner, i, no 860, p. 111, ligne 1: et en un seul signe; ligne 3, I parfois lu T; ligne 4, à Strasbourg sur des tuiles, l’évêque homonyme est noté Arboastis; t = et.  63 Demougeot, La formation de l’Europe, ii, pp. 126 et 194; Recueil des inscriptions chrétiennes, éd. par Gauthier, p. 59.  64 Jones, Martindale, et Morris, éds, The Prosopo­graphy of the Later Roman Empire, i, p. 373. Dans la Notitia dignitatum, la Valérie, créée dès 296 par division de la Pannonie, est enclavée dans le diocèse d’Illyrie et rattachée à celui d’Italie, alors même qu’elle ne le confronte pas (Notitia dignitatum, Oc. ix. 4, ii. 25, ii. 28–32, éd. par Seeck, pp. 163, 109). Il n’y a plus d’administrateur civil et la province a été rattachée pour ordre au vicaire d’Italie.  65 Grégoire de Tours, Libri historiarum, ii. 8–9, éd. par Krusch et Levison, pp. 50–57, mentionne Renatus Frigeridus et Sulpicius Alexander; la liste épiscopale de Tongres a Renatus et Sulpicius, Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux, iii, p. 187. Un Frigeridus tribunus, racheté et non serf, est mentionné dans le testament de Remi de Reims, Rouche, Clovis, p. 501.

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chef-comptable du trésor, porte un nom trop commun pour être aisément identifié.66 Avaient aussi été commissionnés Cariatto, parent probable d’un barbare homonyme dont Julien avait favorisé la carrière, et Sirus, tous deux envoyés en 388 dans la province de Germanie supérieure à la place de Nannin, fidèle de Maxime. Cariatto était dux à Mayence où son parent avait été comes utriusque Germaniae, Sirus devait être comes argentoratensis, à Strasbourg.67 Il fut sans doute inhumé à Trèves, dans une tombe chrétienne: [Sirvs? exc]omite h[ic in pace] [qviesci]t qvi vix[it annos] (quadragen)ta mens(es novem) A (deux colombes) Ω [hvic Pr]incipia co[nivx et] [filivs tit]vlvm inno[centi] [parenti pos]vervn[t maeste] La lacune sur la plaque suppose un nom très court, soit celui du comes Sirus, soit un hypocoristique, à cette époque souvent un nom barbare. D’où la traduction: (Sirus?) ex-comte, ici repose en paix, il vécut quarante ans et neuf mois. Principia son épouse et son fils ont posé avec tristesse cette épitaphe à leur parent innocent. L’innocence des jeunes défunts est souvent mentionnée, mais s’agissant d’un officier de quarante ans, le mot doit avoir son emploi pénal. L’ex-comte, bien qu’innocent, aurait été démis de ses fonctions et exécuté lors du changement de régime après la défaite d’Arbogast en 394.68

 66 Notitia dignitatum, Or. xiii. 15, éd. par Seeck, p. 36, subordonné du comes sacrarum largitionum; il y a des fonctionnaires locaux de ce type, ainsi les magistri privatae d’Afrique 320 et 321 (CTh. 10. 1. 4, 11. 19. 1, éd. par Mommsen et Meyer, pp. 527, 606).  67 Jones, Martindale, et Morris, éds, The Prosopo­graphy of the Later Roman Empire, i, p. 845. Le nom Cariatho subsistera en Gaule du Sud, avec un évêque de Valence, et un gouverneur sous le préfet Libère en 529, ainsi qu’un spatarius du roi Gontran, évêque de Genève en 584–585, Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux, i, pp. 218 et 223. Le nom de Sirus Tricci f(ilius) a été porté en Norique, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. iii.1.2, no 5096, p. 624; celui de Sira l’a été par une noble persane chrétienne, martyr en 558, Passio Sanctae Sirae; dans ce cas, plutôt que surus, ‘syrien/–ne’ ce pourrait être se–r’y, ‘Trois Trésors’, Sirus étant se–rwz, ‘Trois qui Brillent’.  68 Centralmuseum rheinländischer Inschriften, éd. par Lersch, iii, no 59, p. 38. Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule, éd. par Le Blant, no 283 = pl. 27, no 165. Le nom n’avait que quatre ou cinq caractères. La restitution excomite, proposée par Lersch. Jones, Martindale, et Morris, éds, The Prosopo­graphy of the Later Roman Empire, i, p. 845 voient en Sirus un magister militum; ce pourrait être plutôt le comes Argentoratensis (Notitia dignitatum, Oc. xxvii, éd. par Seeck, p. 179). In fine environ six lettres, maeste ou dolore dans les épitaphes trévires.

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Le dernier témoignage, souvent incomplètement cité, est une épitaphe qui se trouve aujourd’hui au Musée National à Budapest. Elle distingue explicitement le statut militaire et le fait d’être Franc: Francvs ego cives, miles romanvs in armis, Egregia virtvte tvli bello mea dextera sem[p]er. (Moi, citoyen franc, soldat romain sous les armes, Toujours j’ai pris avec un beau courage mes chances à la guerre.)69 Il s’agit d’un distique élégiaque. Souvent incomplètement cité, on a parfois supposé qu’il décrivait la condition létique: qui d’autre qu’un lète voudrait se dire Franc? Or la pierre qui porte l’inscription n’est pas une humble stèle, c’est le linteau ouvragé d’un mausolée qui, à en juger par ce reste, devait être superbe. Elle a été trouvée durant l’hiver 1835/1836 aux moulins de Budapest où on avait longtemps transformé en farine les blés d’Europe centrale. Dès 1832 le comte Istvan Szechenyi — dans sa jeunesse capitaine au Ier Ulhan, blessé à Arcis sur Aube en 1814, puis économiste et réformateur — avait projeté la construction d’un pont sur le Danube: l’ouvrage, le fameux pont des chaînes, allait joindre la forteresse de Buda à la ville de Pest. Il fallut détruire une partie des moulins sur la rive gauche qui appartenait à l’archiduc résidant alors au palais de Buda. En 1844, lui et son fils aîné firent don de l’inscription au musée national fondé par Ferenc Szechenyi, le père d’Istvan. La double fidélité du défunt de jadis à l’Empire et à son propre peuple ne pouvait que plaire. Le mausolée s’était vraisemblablement dressé au pied de la citadelle, entre le fleuve et le grand camp militaire d’Aquincum. Le style fouillé de l’ornementation invite à le dater du troisième siècle. L’inscription en revanche est maladroite et précipitée, avec l’oubli du p de semper. Elle a dû être gravée sur le linteau lors d’une réutilisation du monument. Sur la face inférieure du linteau a été gravé de façon assez fruste le buste d’un officier supérieur avec son manteau militaire attaché sur l’épaule droite par une grande fibule, produit des ateliers impériaux. Ce type de fibule, comme celle que porte Stilicon sur son diptyque, est au quatrième siècle l’insigne d’un haut commandement. Il est curieux que le nom du défunt n’ait pas été mentionné dans l’épitaphe, alors que c’est le propre de telles inscriptions, et on ne peut dès lors manquer d’évoquer à nouveau la bataille de la Rivière Froide. Battu, le généralissime Arbogast réussit à échapper aux vainqueurs avec sa suite et fit route durant deux jours avant de se suicider. Avait-il tenté de gagner

 69 Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. iii.1.1, no 3576, p. 453; Nagy, Lapidarium, no 193, p. 162, avec photo et une traduction discutable. Francus cives peut surprendre, mais cf. ici no 42 et Germani cives avec la précision Tuihanti (de Twente) dans un cuneus Frisiorum dès 222–35; Roman Inscriptions of Britain, no 1593 et 1594. Mathisen, ‘Peregrini, Barbari, and Cives Romani’, p. 1036, cite le début du texte. Kerneis, ‘Francus ciuis, miles Romanus’, p. 377, l’envisage dans son entier.

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les garnisons du Danube, et ses fidèles, achevant le voyage, l’inhumèrent-ils dans un ancien mausolée d’Aquincum sur lequel on grava l’épitaphe anonyme? Les textes du temps notent qu’Arbogast était un Franc transrhénan, fils probable d’un roi germanique. Le caractère anonyme de l’inscription comme sa brièveté conviendraient à un officier très estimé mais considéré comme régicide.70 Sans doute le mausolée fut-il détruit quand Théodose reprit la garnison en main, les pierres étant volontairement remployées dans le quai. Les princes francs de la fin du quatrième siècle se targuaient d’être populaires auprès des Romains et ils étaient fiers de leurs charges militaires, mais ces charges étaient-elles une marque de leur romanisation, ou signifiaient-elles plutôt que l’empereur, à cause de l’incomplète intégration des barbares à l’aristocratie d’Empire, pensait pouvoir compter sur leur fidélité? Une liste des comites domesticorum au quatrième siècle permet de voir que les neuf premiers noms sont latins (avec un Alaman), à l’exception d’un Dagalaif. Viennent ensuite des officiers francs, puis à nouveau des noms latins, certains portés par des citoyens romains, sauf deux barbares, Allobichus et le Goth Athaulf.71 Les Francs s’étaient révélés trop dangereux. C’est leur noblesse germanique qui valait aux officiers supérieurs l’attachement des troupes ethniques. A la différence de Bonitus ou de Silvanus, ni Hlodric, ni Freirid, ni Arbogast ne se souciaient de porter un nom romain. Le titre de Hlodric et son christianisme n’empêchaient pas les siens d’avoir des sorcières, utilisatrices des chaudrons à bière qu’on entrevoit dans la première loi salique. Et lorsque plus d’un siècle plus tard le roi Clothaire fils de Clovis tiendra le plaid général à Arras, on y brassera ‘la bière des païens, consacrée selon le rite des gentils’.72 L’épitaphe de l’officier inhumé à Aquincum, si c’est bien celle d’Arbogast, est révélatrice d’une évolution. L’affirmation de son identité franque s’accompagne de la reconnaissance de la romanité militaire, et on sait quel prestige l’activité guerrière avait parmi les gentiles. La langue dans laquelle les siens disent son refus d’une pleine et entière romanité n’en est pas moins le latin, et qui plus est scandé, la tombe où ils ont tenté d’abriter ses restes était un mausolée antique, le terme même par lequel ils expriment son identité est romain. Mais les sentiments qu’ils lui prêtent sont ceux qu’affectionnent les barbares. Là où l’épitaphe d’un Romain aurait prétendu à l’indifférence stoïque envers l’inconstante fortuna ou bien, s’il était chrétien, au repos et à la sécurité de

 70 Zosime, Histoire, iv. 33. 2, éd. par Paschoud, p. 296; Jones, Martindale, et Morris, éds, The Prosopo­graphy of the Later Roman Empire, i, p. 95. S’il s’agit de l’épitaphe d’Arbogast le rebelle, la trouvaille était une ironie de l’histoire: quatre ans après, le musée était le point de départ de la révolte magyare contre l’empire autrichien. Ironies analogues, Geary, The Myth of Nations, p. 11.  71 Emion, ‘Des soldats de l’armée romaine tardive’; le commandement des deux sections (ex-cavaliers et ex-piétons) semble fusionné.  72 Pactus legis Salicae, lxiv. 1, éd. par Eckhardt, p. 230; Poly, ‘Leges barbarorum’, pp. 207, 219. Vita Vedasti, 7, éd. par Krusch, p. 410, ‘Paganis […] gentile ritu sacrificata’.

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la paix éternelle, celle de l’officier franc retint qu’il avait toujours pris ses chances, ses ‘droites’ (dextra), le coup de poignet de la main qui jette les dés. Pour un guerrier germanique, vivre c’était lacan, ‘jouer’ aux dés, au ballon, à la lutte, à la danse, jouer de la harpe ou jouer du couteau, se battre, ‘aller comme le fait une embarcation sur les vagues, comme le fait un oiseau dans son vol, comme les flammes font’.73 L’inscription d’Aquincum nous montre ce que pouvait être la mixité culturelle: l’officier défunt était devenu un soldat romain, mais il gardait les vertus d’un ‘barbare’. Est-ce cela qui fit de lui un révolté? C’est en tout cas ce qu’avaient retenu de lui ses fidèles. *** Les épitaphes de Concordia sont issues de la confrontation à la culture et à l’écrit latins des groupes ethniques intégrés dans l’armée impériale. Malgré leur forme romaine, elles laissent apparaître les traits spécifiques d’une population — les soldats barbares et leurs familles, laeti-déditices ou gentiles-alliés inégaux — quantitativement non négligeable étant donné la faible démo­graphie de l’époque et la concentration des ‘praepositurae’ dans les régions de frontière.74 Les rois germaniques, condottieri du cinquième siècle, allaient achever ce mouvement dans les provinces restées civiles. Le premier Moyen Age ne fut pas seulement la continuation d’une romanité impériale irriguée de christianisme. Malgré l’ascension sociale de leurs chefs, les soldats barbares des tractus et leurs familles, Germains, Bretons, Sarmates, Alains, Parthes, Maures, gardaient leurs noms, une conscience ethnique et des coutumes tant bien que mal adaptées à leur nouvelle situation. Les tenures militaires et les impôts dus par les civils voisins allaient lentement les transformer en hobereaux campagnards. Aux temps dits barbares, l’empire se disloqua parce que, face à son impopularité, à sa lourdeur, à ses échecs, s’établirent des compromis entre la romanité populaire et les cultures des communautés gentilices, une tendance qu’observait, dans les années quarante du cinquième siècle, Salvien, un Trévire réfugié à Marseille.75 Trois siècles allaient passer avant qu’une rudimentaire renovatio imperii fasse ressurgir en Europe occidentale l’idée d’un pouvoir universel au demeurant guère effectif.76 Il fallut quatre siècles encore pour que se diffuse à nouveau un ius commune romain en même temps que se développaient les villes où les officiers royaux rédigeaient à leur façon des coutumes souvent oubliées. L’Europe des nations commençait. Le barbare avait disparu mais l’homme nouveau espéré par Paul peinait toujours à être.

 73 Définition lyrique de Bosworth et Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, pp. 603–04. Geary, Before France and Germany, p. 79, note l’influence romaine que marque l’emploi du mot civis.  74 Poly, ‘Laeti et gentiles’, p. 15.  75 Salvian, De gubernatione dei, v. 5. 21–23, éd. par Halm, p. 59; Geary, The Myth of Nations, p. 137. Salvien était le porte-parole des Lériniens, parmi lesquels ses anciens élèves devenus évêques, diplomates dans leurs propos mais de même opinion.  76 Comme le montra Fichtenau, The Carolingian Empire.

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ABSTRACT As globalization increases, people are preoccupied by collective identities, be they roots or phantasms, hence the interest in another time of crisis, the dismemberment of the Roman Empire, and the birth of kingdoms. It needed all of Peter Brown’s brilliance to show how a transforming Western Roman world nonetheless maintained continuity with the Roman past, as was indeed the case in the East. True, the Western gentiles had become Romanized, but to what extent? This study proposes to look at some inscriptions around the year 394 at two social levels: the forty non-commissioned officers and soldiers in the Concordia cemetery in northern Italy; and four general officers in Trier, the military capital of Gaul. However Romanized they might have been, it seems they were also conscious of not being completely Roman.

Références Sources Primaires Ammien Marcellin, Histoires, éd. par Edouard Galletier et autres (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1968–1999) L’Année épi­graphique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2003, 2005) Centralmuseum rheinländischer Inschriften, éd. par Laurenz Lersch, 3 vols (Bonn: T. Habicht, 1839–1842) Codex inscriptionum romanarum Rheni, éd. par Johann Steiner, 2 vols (Darmstadt: Verlag des Verfassers, 1837) Codex Theodosianus: Theodosiani libri XVI cum constitutionibus Sirmondianis et leges novellae ad Theodosianum pertinentes, éd. par Theodor Mommsen et Paul Meyer, 2 vols (Berlin: Weidmann, 1954) Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, iii: Inscriptiones Asiae, provinciarum Europae Graecarum, Illyrici Latinae, éd. par Theodor Mommsen, Otto Hirschfeld, et Alfred von Domaszewski, 5 vols (Berlin: G. Reimerum, 1873–1902) Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, v: Inscriptiones Galliae Cisalpinae latinae Berolini, éd. par Theodor Mommsen, 2 vols (Berlin: G. Reimerum, 1877) Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, xi: Inscriptiones Aemiliae, Etruriae, Umbriae Latinae, éd. par Eugen Bormann, 2 vols (Berlin: G. Reimerum, 1888–1926) Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, xiii: Inscriptiones trium Galliarum et Germaniarum Latinae, éd. par Otto Hirschfeld et autres, 9 vols (Berlin: G. Reimerum, 1899–1943) De Admiranda sacra et civili magnitudine Coloniae Claudiae Agrippinensis Augustae Ubiorum urbis, éd. par Aegidius Gelenius (Co­logne: Kalckhoven, 1645) Edictum Theoderici, éd. par Friedrich Bluhme, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Legum sectio, 5 (Hanover: Hahn, 1889), pp. 145–70

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Epigrammato­graphie oder Sammlung von Inschriften der ältern, mittlern und neueren Zeiten der niederdeutschen Provinzen, darunter die mehreren ungedruckt sind, éd. par Adolf von Hüpsch, 2 vols (Co­logne: Haas und Sohn, 1801) Epi­graphic Database Heidelberg [accédé 12 May 2021] Grégoire de Tours, Libri historiarum X, éd. par Bruno Krusch et Wilhelm Levison, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, 1.1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1951) Inschriften von Concordia, éd. par Dietrich Hoffmann, dans ‘Die spätrömischen Soldatengrabschriften von Concordia’, Museum Helveticum, 20 (1963), 27–57 Inscriptiones antiquae totius orbis romani: In absolutissimum corpus redactae olim auspciis Iosephi Scaligeri et Marci Velseri, éd. par Janus Gruter (Amsterdam: Excudit Franciscus Halma, 1707) Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres, éd. par Ernest Diehl (Berlin: Weidmann, 1925) Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule antérieures au huitième siècle, éd. par Edmond Le Blant (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1856) Mabinogi, Kulhwch et Olwen, trad. par Pierre-Yves Lambert, Les Quatre Branches du Mabinogi et autres contes gallois du Moyen Age (Paris: Gallimard, 1993) Notitia dignitatum, éd. par Otto Seeck, Notitia dignitatum: Accedunt Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae et latercula provinciarum (Berlin: Weidmann, 1876; reprint Frankfurt: Minerva, 1962) La Notitia dignitatum: Nueva edición crítica y comentario histórico, éd. par C. Neira Faleiro (Madrid: Editorial CSIC Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2005) Pactus legis Salicae, éd. par Karl August Eckhardt, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Legum sectio 1, Legum nationum Germanicarum, 4.1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1962) Panégyriques latins, éd. par Edouard Galletier, 3 vols (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1949–1955) Passio Sanctae Sirae, Acta Sanctorum, Maii, vol. iv (Paris: Victor Palm, 1868), pp. 170–82 Recueil des inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule antérieures à la renaissance carolingienne, I: Première Belgique, éd. par Nancy Gauthier (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1975) Riese, Alexander, Das Rheinische Germanien in den antiken Inschriften (Leipzig: Teubner, 1914) Roman Inscriptions of Britain: [accédé 16 May 2021] Salvian, De gubernatione dei libri VIII, éd. par Karl Halm, in Salviani presbyteri Massiliensis libri qui supersunt, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Auctores Antiquissimi, 1.1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1878), pp. 1–108; aussi dans Oeuvres, vol. ii, éd. par G. Laguarrigue (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1975) Vita Mansueti prolixior, Acta Sanctorum, Sept., vol. i (Paris: Victor Palm, 1868), pp. 637–45

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Duchesne, Louis, Fastes épiscopaux de l’ancienne Gaule, 3 vols (Paris: Thaurin – Fontemoing – De Boccard, 1907–1915) Dumézil, Bruno, Servir l’État barbare dans la Gaule franque (Paris: Tallandier, 2013) Elton, Hugh, Warfare in Roman Europe, ad 350–425 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) Emion, Maxime, ‘Des soldats de l’armée romaine tardive: Les protectores (iiie–vie s. ap. JC)’, II Prosopo­graphie (doctoral dissertation, Normandie Université, 2017) [accédé 12 May 2021] Ewig, Eugen, Trier im Merowingerreich (Trier: Paulinus, 1954) Fichtenau, Heinrich, The Carolingian Empire: The Age of Charlemagne, trad. par Peter Munz (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957) Gauthier, Nancy, L’évangélisation des pays de la Moselle: La province romaine de Première Belgique entre Antiquité et Moyen âge, iiie–viiie siècles (Paris: De Boccard, 1980) Geary, Patrick, Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) —— , The Myth of Nations: The Medi­eval Origins of Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002) Geary, Patrick J., et Krishna Veeramah, ‘Mapping European Population Movement through Genomic Research’, Medi­eval Worlds, 4 (2016), 65–78 Gillett, Andrew, ‘Was Ethnicity Politicized in the Earliest Medi­eval Kingdoms?’, dans On Barbarian Identity: Critical Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages, éd. par Andrew Gillett (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), pp. 85–121 Goffart, Walter, ‘Does the Distant Past Impinge on the Invasion Age Germans?’, dans On Barbarian Identity: Critical Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages, éd. par Andrew Gillett (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), pp. 21–37 Halsall, Guy, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376–568 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) Heather, Peter, Empires and Barbarians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) Hoffmann, Dietrich, Das spätrömische Bewegungsheer und die Notitia dignitatum, 2 vols, Epi­graphische Studien, 7 (Düsseldorf: Rheinland-Verlag, 1969–1970) Jones, A. H. M., The Later Roman Empire, 284–602, 2 vols (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986) Jones, A. H. M., John Robert Martindale, et John Morris, éds, The Prosopo­graphy of the Later Roman Empire, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971–1992) Jullian, Camille, ‘Le diptyque de Stilicon au trésor de Monza’, Mélanges d’archéo­ logie et d’histoire, 2 (1882), 5–35 Kerneis, Soazick, Les Celtiques: Servitude et grandeur des auxiliaires bretons dans l’Empire romain (Clermont: Presses universitaires de la Faculté de droit de Clermont-Ferrand, 1998) —— , ‘Francus ciuis, miles Romanus: Les barbares de l’Empire dans le Code Théodosien’, dans Droit, religion et société dans le Code Théodosien, Troisièmes Journées d’Etude sur le Code Théodosien, Neuchâtel, 15–17 février 2007, éd. par

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Jean-Jacques Aubert and Philippe Blanchard (Genève: Université de Neuchâtel, 2009), pp. 377–99 —— , éd., Une histoire juridique de l’Occident iiie–ixe siècles: Le droit et la loi, Nouvelle Clio (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2018) —— , ‘La justice militaire des populations barbares de l’Empire: Les premières applications de l’ordalie’, dans L’esercito romano e l’alba dell’Europa, éd. par Simona Tarozzi et Gisella Bassanelli Sommariva, Collana Ravenna Capitale (Ravenna: Maggioli Editore, 2020), pp. 101–13 —— , ‘Rome et les barbares: Aux origines de la personnalité des lois’, dans Civitas, Iura, Arma: Organizzazioni militari, istituzioni giuridiche e strutture sociali alle origini dell’Europa (secc. iii–viii), éd. par Fabio Botta et Luca Loschiavo (Lecce: Grifo, 2015), pp. 103–16 Lassère, Jean-Marie, Manuel d’épi­graphie romaine, 2 vols (Paris: Picard, 2005) Le Bohec, Yan, L’armée romaine sous le Bas-Empire (Paris: Picard, 2006) Loschiavo, Luca, ‘A proposito di ius speciale e personalità del diritto: Ius militare e leges barbarorum’, dans L’esercito romano e l’alba dell’Europa, éd. par Simona Tarozzi et Gisella Bassanelli Sommariva, Collana Ravenna Capitale (Ravenna: Maggioli Editore, 2020), pp. 185–211 Maier, Ingo, ‘The Barberinus and Munich Codices of the Notitia Dignitatum omnium’, Latomus, 28 (1969), 960–1032 —— , ‘The Compilation Notitia dignitatum’ [accédé 12 mai 2021] —— , ‘The Giessen, Parma and Piacenza Codices of the Notitia Dignitatum with Some Related Texts’, Latomus, 27 (1968), 96–141 Marotta, Valerio, ‘Militia e civitas tra iii e vi secolo d.C.’, dans L’esercito romano e l’alba dell’Europa, éd. par Simona Tarozzi et Gisella Bassanelli Sommariva, Collana Ravenna Capitale (Ravenna: Maggioli Editore, 2020), pp. 65–100 —— , ‘Il problemo dei laeti: Fonti e storiografia’, dans Civitas, Iura, Arma: Organizzazioni militari, istituzioni giuridiche e strutture sociali alle origini dell’Europa (secc. iii–viii), éd. par Fabio Bott and Luca Loschiavo (Lecce: Grifo, 2015), pp. 117–57 Mathisen, Ralph, ‘Peregrini, Barbari, and Cives Romani: Concepts of Citizenship and the Legal Identity of Barbarians in the Later Roman Empire’, American Historical Review, 111 (2006), 1011–40 —— , ‘Provinciales, Gentiles and Marriage between Romans and Barbarians in the Late Roman Empire’, Journal of Roman Studies, 99 (2009), 140–55 Mazzoleni, Danilo, ‘L’epigrafia cristiana di Concordia’, Antichita altoadriatiche, 31 (1987), 75–91 Migliario, Elvira, ‘Foedus e foedera: Dal tardoantico all’età imperiale’, dans L’esercito romano e l’alba dell’Europa, éd. par Simona Tarozzi et Gisella Bassanelli Sommariva, Collana Ravenna Capitale (Ravenna: Maggioli Editore, 2020), pp. 1–14 Murray, Alexander Callander, ‘Reinhard Wenskus on Ethnogenesis, Ethnicity, and the Origin of the Franks’, dans On Barbarian Identity: Critical Approaches to

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Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages, éd. par Andrew Gillett (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), pp. 39–68 Nagy, Mihály, Lapidarium: Guide to the Archaeo­logical Exhibitions in the Hungarian National Museum (Budapest: Hungarian National Museum, 2012) Nicasie, Martijn, Twilight of Empire: The Roman Army from the Reign of Diocletian until the Battle of Adrianople (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1998) Pohl, Walter, ‘Ethnicity, Theory and Tradition: A Response’, dans On Barbarian Identity: Critical Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages, éd. par Andrew Gillett (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), pp. 221–39 —— , ‘Introduction: Strategies of Distinction’, dans Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300–800, éd. par Walter Pohl et Helmut Reimitz (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 1–17 —— , Le origini etniche dell’Europa: Barbari e romani tra antichità e Medioevo (Roma: Viella, 2000) —— , ‘Rome and the Barbarians in the Fifth Century’, L’Antiquité Tardive, 16 (2008), 93–101 Poly, Jean-Pierre, ‘Le dernier des Meroingas ou la parenté du premier roi de France’, Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 74 (1996), 353–96 —— , ‘Laeti et gentiles: Les établissements militaires de la Gaule romaine’, dans L’esercito romano e l’alba dell’Europa, éd. par Simona Tarozzi et Gisella Bassanelli Sommariva, Collana Ravenna Capitale (Ravenna: Maggioli Editore, 2020), pp. 15–40 —— , ‘Leges barbarorum: La création des lois des nations’, dans Une histoire juridique de l’Occident iiie–ixe siècles: Le droit et la loi, éd. par Soazick Kerneis, Nouvelle Clio (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2018), pp. 187–247 —— , ‘La révolution de Bretagne: Du De Excidio Britanniae au Tribal Hidage, les débuts de l’Angleterre’, dans La culture judiciaire anglaise au Moyen Age, éd. par Yves Mausen, vol. i (Paris: Mare et Martin, 2017), pp. 13–73 —— , ‘Les Saxons du Bessin et leurs compagnons: Ethnies et acculturation en Gaule du Nord au début du Moyen Age’, dans La Normandie, terre de traditions juridiques, éd. par Gilduin Davy et Yves Mausen (Rouen: Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2016), pp. 26–87 Porena, Pierfrancesco, ‘La posizione dell’elemento militare nell’impero romano ed i regni romanobarbarici’, dans Civitas, Iura, Arma: Organizzazioni militari, istituzioni giuridiche e strutture sociali alle origini dell’Europa (secc. iii–viii), éd. par Fabio Botta et Luca Loschiavo (Lecce: Grifo, 2015), pp. 221–57 Rebillard, Éric, ‘Violation de sépulture et impiété dans l’Antiquité tardive’, dans Impies et païens entre Antiquité et Moyen Age, éd. par Lionel Mary et Michel Sot (Paris: Picard, 2002), pp. 65–80 Rouche, Michel, Clovis (Paris: Fayard, 1996) Sannazaro, Marco, ‘Lo stanziamento di Sarmatae gentiles’, dans Milano capitale del’impero romano (286–402 d.c.), éd. par Ermano Arslan et Gemma Sena Chiesa (Milano: Silvana Editoriale, 1990), p. 75

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Scharf, Ralf, Der Dux Mogontiacensis und die Notitia Dignitatum: Eine Studie zur Spatantiken Grenzverteidigung, Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, 50 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005) Seston, William, ‘Le rescrit d’Auguste dit de Nazareth’, Revue des Études Anciennes, 35 (1933), 205–12 Southern, Pat, et Karen Dixon, The Late Roman Army (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996) Speidel, Michael, ‘Raising New Units for the Late Roman Army: “Auxilia Palatina”’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 50 (1996), 163–70 Sullivan, Richard, ‘The Dynasty of Emesa’, dans Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, éd. par Hildegard Temporini et Wolfgang Haase, pt II, vol. viii (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1978), pp. 198–219 Tomea, Paolo, ‘L’agiografia dell’Italia settentrionale (950–1130)’, dans Hagio­ graphies: Histoire internationale de la littérature hagio­graphique latine et vernaculaire en Occident des origines à 1550, éd. par Guy Philippart, Corpus Christianorum, Hagio­graphies, 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), pp. 99–178 Vannesse, Michel, La défense de l’Occident pendant l’Antiquité tardive: Recherches géo–stratégiques sur l’Italie de 284 à 410 ap. JC (Bruxelles: Latomus, 2010) —— , ‘Les inscriptions militaires tardives de Iulia Concordia: Un nouveau décompte’, Latomus, 70 (2011), 119–21 Vigonie, Alberto, et Elena Di Filippo Balestrazzi, ‘Punte di freccia dell’area del teatro romano di Iulia Concordia’, Aquileia nostra, 80 (2000), 325–47 Wickham, Chris, Framing the Early Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) Wightman, Edith, Roman Trier and the Treveri (London: Hart Davis, 1970) Wolfram, Herwig, The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples, trad. par Thomas Dunlap (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) Zuckermann, Constantin, ‘Comtes et ducs en Egypte autour de l’an 400 et la date de la Notitia Dignitatum Orientis’, L’Antiquité Tardive, 6 (1998), 137–47

Helmut Reimitz

Observing Peoples as Peoples The Study of Ethnicity in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Patrick Geary has shaped the study of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages in many ways. The essays in this volume reflect the wide influence and the diverse directions and inspirations that he has provided for many students and colleagues in the field during the last five decades. In this contribution, I would like to go back in time a bit and highlight Geary’s important impact on studies of ethnogenesis and ethnicity and in particular on the continuing work on the history of identity and ethnicity in Vienna, which has been labelled as the ‘Vienna School’.1 Of course, everyone knows the Myth of Nations,2 but much earlier (long before the scholars in Vienna became the Vienna school), in 1983, Geary published an article in the Mitteilungen der anthropo­logischen Gesellschaft in Wien titled ‘Ethnic Identity as a Situational Construct’, which played an important role in shaping the agenda of people working on ethnic identities and ethnicities in the following decades.3 The article presented a complex and, for many students of early medi­eval ethnicity, a very important intervention. Casual readers superficially interpreted the title as dismissing the seriousness of ethnicity, because to emphasize the situational nature of ethnic identifications was to highlight their arbitrary nature. But the message was not that ethnicity was insignificant. Geary rather suggested that its situationality was precisely what made it so significant. Ethnic identities were formed in discursive and social Spielräume — in cultural playing fields — that defined their shape and gave them meaning. It was a Foucauldian move some time before Foucault became widely read among historians (which was probably one reason why it was so easy to misinterpret the argument of the article). If Foucault’s inaugural lecture at the Collège de  1 For the historio­graphy, see now Pohl, ‘Von der Ethnogenese zur Identitätsforschung’.  2 Geary, The Myth of Nations.  3 Geary, ‘Ethnic Identity as a Situational Construct’.

Helmut Reimitz ([email protected]) is Professor of History and Director of the Program in Medi­eval Studies at Princeton University. Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe: Studies on Cultural Identity and Power, ed. by Courtney M. Booker, Hans Hummer, and Dana M. Polanichka, CURSOR 41, pp. 63–82 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022)        10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.127576

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France had been better known, many more people might have seen or sensed the inspiration of Foucault’s remarks on chance. Here, Foucault clarified that if we acknowledged chance or coincidence — aléa — as a factor in history, we would also have to define its possibilities and conditions.4 In similar ways, Geary suggested in his article that scholars should study ethnicity as a situational construct in order to explore the specific conditions and ideas that gave rise to it — not as a single moment, but as a series of successive incidents and interpretations. And because ethnicity was not a fixed entity but rather a culturally contingent process, there was always the possibility of various outcomes. Historians therefore needed to query even the most seemingly straightforward elements of ethnicity, including asking whether a collective name that they had assumed to be an ethnonym was actually an ethnonym.5 Some colleagues and students in Vienna quickly understood the potential of such an approach. For a long time, Geary’s article was essential reading on the topic and served as a stimulus for discussion when someone (like myself) began their studies in the Vienna laboratory. It took, however, quite some time to put these ideas into scholarly practice. Their further development also implied the need to explore the relational nature of ethnic identities and to try to understand how ethnic discourse was inflected by the interaction with other categories of identification.6 It seemed to be necessary to start working with a wider and much more varied source base than the one that had hitherto been explored in the study of ethnicity and to include systematically exegesis, patristic texts, homilies, pedagogical texts, or hagio­graphical literature.7 We also began to explore the construction of identities more comprehensively and systematically, not only in different texts and genres, but also in the rewriting and rearrangement of these texts in their manu­script transmission (and here another book of Geary played an important role as a source of inspiration, his Phantoms of Remembrance).8 This direction not only provided us with more possibilities to study the great variety of situations and the many ways in which ethnicity was employed and constructed. It also gave us the opportunity to evaluate the potential of social identities and identifications over time, and to study the changing salience of ‘situational constructs’ from the composition

 4 Foucault, L’ordre du discours, pp. 57–58.  5 Geary, ‘Ethnic Identity as a Situational Construct’, pp. 25–26.  6 For the distinction between ethnic identity and ethnicity, see below, pp. 66–67.  7 Some results have been published in Pohl and Heydemann, eds, Strategies of Identification; Pohl and Heydemann, eds, Post-Roman Transitions; Pohl and others, eds, Transformations of Romanness. See also the publications of further large projects carried out in Vienna in the last decade on ‘Social Cohesion, Identity and Religion in Europe, 400–1200’ at and ‘Visions of Communities: Comparative Approaches to Ethnicity, Region and Empire in Christianity, Islam and Buddhism’ at .  8 Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance.

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of texts to their transmission in the various extant versions, arrangements, and rearrangements of texts. The work on, and the experience with, this wider source base played an important role in confronting one of the main methodo­logical challenges that was also already addressed in Geary’s article: namely, when an ethnonym is actually an ethnonym or, in other words, how to identify an ethnic identity, and how to distinguish it from other forms of collective identity. As is well known, the name of the Franks, for instance, could be linked to many different forms of social identity in the extant sources from Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. It was used not only as an ethnonym but also as an identification of one or more legal groups, a social class, an army, and even of a specific religious or Christian community.9 In its interaction and sometimes even competition with other forms of social identity, ethnicity might well be a particularly complex phenomenon. As Walter Pohl put it: Most identities […] have a decisive point of reference outside the group: the city, the land, the state, the army, a religious creed. Symbolic strategies of identification attach themselves to these figures that represent the common denominator, the defining feature of the community. In ethnicity, by contrast, the principle of distinction and the symbolical essence of the community is thought to lie in the human group itself. […] Ethnicity is a very powerful mode of construction of communities, but also a precarious one because the evanescent mystique of the ethnic community has to be made evident in everyday life.10 The mystique of evanescence and imperfection explains not only the power and attraction of ethnic identities but also why ethnic identifications always tend to overlap with or build upon other social and macro-social mappings such as political, territorial, racial, tribal, religious, and other categorizations. Hence, we hardly find ethnicity in its ‘pure’ form in our sources.11 This also confronts us with the challenge to develop a fine, differentiated, and at the same time sharp termino­logical and methodo­logical instrumentarium to distinguish an ethnic identity from other forms of social identity. This, in turn, is crucial not only for the identification of an ethnic imagination in our historical sources; it is also crucial for the historicization of ethnicity and ethnic identities. Only with a fine and sharp distinction of ethnicity from other forms of social categorization are we able to study the interaction between these different forms of identification, and the respective salience of one form of social identity such as ethnicity within the categorical infrastructures in the late antique and early medi­eval West.  9 See my study on the history of Frankish identity: Reimitz, History, Frankish Identity, with further references therein, in particular to the studies of Hans-Werner Goetz, Ian Wood, Eugen Ewig, and David Frye.  10 Pohl, ‘Introduction — Strategies of Identification’, p. 25.  11 Pohl, ‘Introduction — Strategies of Identification’, p. 25.

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For the project of studying the history of ethnicity in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, we also took stock of the insights of Rogers Brubaker. In his study on Ethnicity without Groups, Brubaker offered a definition of ethnicity that goes beyond ‘groupism’, as Brubaker called the tendency to take discrete, sharply differentiated, internally homogeneous, and externally bounded groups as ‘basic constituents of social life and fundamental units of social analysis’.12 He suggested thinking about the historical or present reality of ethnicity, race, and nationhood in a different way: Understanding the reality of race, for example, does not require us to posit the existence of races. […] Similarly, the reality of ethnicity and nationhood — and the overriding power of ethnic and national identifications in some settings — does not depend on the existence of ethnic groups or nations as substantial groups or entities.13 Such a move beyond groupness avoids defining ethnicity with a certain set of features or characteristics that serve to categorize a collective as an ethnic group (such as language, custom, law, shared origins, etc.). To go beyond groupness means we should work rather with a definition of ethnicity as ‘a perspective on the world’, as a view of the world that imagines the social world as divided among distinctive and analogous groups that are defined by a seemingly or notionally natural bond (be it kinship, blood-relatedness, genealogies, a shared origin or past, and so forth). In order to work with such an approach in history, it seems helpful to operate with an analytical distinction between ethnicity and ethnic identity. While ethnicity is defined as the way of organizing or imagining a larger social whole (as a world divided among distinctive and analogous groups), an ethnic identity is the application of this world view to a specific group.14 The distinction not only helps to analyse and historicize both aspects of ethnic processes. It is also crucial to study how the history of both aspects is shaped by the dynamic relationship between the observation of an ethnic identity and the imagination of the larger social whole to which it belonged. We can observe how a group such as the Goths, Saxons, Angles, or Franks is identified, described, or became the subject of a narrative as an ethnic group, but also how these observations and narratives with their various and sometimes different observations and categorizations shaped the discourse on ethnicity. Moreover, the distinction between ethnic identity and ethnicity also reminds us that what we assume to be an ethnonym is not always just an ethnonym. As already mentioned, in late antique and early medi­eval sources the name of the Franks, Lombards, Saxons, and Angles could be and were indeed linked

 12 Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups, pp. 2–4.  13 Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups, pp. 11–12.  14 See Reimitz, History, Frankish Identity, pp. 7–8; and Pohl, ‘Introduction — Strategies of Identification’, pp. 24–27.

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to many other social imaginations of the world. These identifications can be observed equally as religious groups, legal groups, classes, or races; they can be integrated into a dichotomy of dividing the world along more binary categorizations such as civilization and its barbarian opposite, or religious categorizations such as Christian and pagan, orthodox and heterodox, and so on. Hence, exploring the dynamic relationship between ethnicity and ethnic identities is not only crucial to the identification of an ethnic identity in our sources; it is also key to understanding how ethnicity and ethnic identities came to be inflected by other forms of social identities, and vice versa. This may sound quite abstract and modern. Nevertheless, we should not underestimate our late antique and early medi­eval colleagues. Even though they used a different termino­logy, they still regarded identity politics as an important issue. Below, I will try to illustrate with a few examples how early medi­eval historians and scholars were well aware of the significance of ethnic identity as a social and political category, as well as its complexity as a category of analysis.15 One good example for reflections on ethnicity as a tool to perceive the social world and its changes in the transformation of the Roman world stems from the massive encyclopaedia that Isidore of Seville wrote in the first decades of the seventh century in Visigothic Iberia. It was a twenty-volume encyclopaedia entitled Etymo­logiae sive Origines. Therein, Isidore used separate entries to explain the origins — and hence the meaning — of significant terms.16 In his ninth book, ‘De linguis, gentibus, regnis, militia, civibus affinitatibus’ (On languages, nations, reigns, the military, citizens, and family relationships), Isidore also provided his readers with a definition of gens. In doing so, Isidore did not use a catalogue of criteria of what defines a gens as a gens. Instead, he developed a more structural approach:17 Gens est multitudo ab uno principio orta, sive ab alia natione secundum propriam collectionem distincta, ut Graeciae, Asiae. […] Gens autem appellata propter generationes familiarum, id est a gignendo, sicut natio a nascendo. (A gens is a number of people sharing a single origin or distinguished from another natio in accordance with its own grouping as the ones of Greece or Asia Minor. […] Gens is also so called on account of the generations of families, that is, from begetting, just as the word natio derives from being born.)18  15 For concepts like ethnicity, nation, race, etc., as both categories of social analysis and categories of social and political practice at the same time, see Brubaker and Cooper, ‘Beyond Identity’, pp. 4–6.  16 Isidore of Seville, Etymo­logiae, ed. by Lindsay; Etymo­logies, trans. by Barney and others.  17 For the passage, see Pohl, ‘Introduction — Strategies of Identification’, p. 21, who also discusses the biblical background of Isidore’s reflections.  18 Isidore of Seville, Etymo­logiae, ix. 2, ed. by Lindsay. The English translation follows

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The definition may remind us of Rogers Brubaker’s approach to ethnicity as the imagination of a number of distinctive and analogous groups that are perceived as naturally constituted.19 And Isidore does define the gentes as one way to perceive and organize humanity among other categorizations he discusses in his ninth book of the Etymo­logies. As much as Isidore collected ancient wisdom in his encyclopaedia — already Isidore’s pupil Braulio described his teacher’s project as an effort to ‘restore the monumental fabric of the Ancients’ (ad restauranda antiquorum monumenta)20 — Isidore’s definition of gens seems to represent a rather post-Roman approach. Isidore’s source for the definition of gens has not been identified so far, and it might well have been a definition of ethnicity that he created to respond to the fundamental changes after the end of the Western Roman Empire. It was important to find a definition of a gens that was different from older, well-established, but outdated Roman perceptions of gentes, or a world of gentes, as the feature of the barbarian world, as opposed to the civilized Roman imperial world.21 In his Etymo­logies, Isidore not only restored the ‘monumental fabric of the Ancients’; he also adapted it to a world that was ruled by the kings of the gens Gothorum. The kings of this gens had only recently converted to Catholic Christianity, and Isidore provided them and others in the kingdom with a dignified place in a post-Roman world of Christian peoples. Hence in Isidore’s enumeration of the peoples of the contemporary world, the Romans were one of these.22 Isidore’s encyclopaedia did not only reflect a post-Roman imagination of the social world. As Jamie Wood has shown, such a reorganization also played a great part in his historical works, in which Isidore promoted the gens Gothorum as the legitimate successors of the Romans in Spain.23 But for Isidore it was not the social and political integration of the gens Gothorum that concerned him most. As the most enthusiastic episcopal advisor of the Visigothic kings, he wished to create a new common social and political vision of their own true Christian commonwealth in a ‘thinly disguised competition with the “kingdom of the Greeks” — the self-styled “Holy Commonwealth” of East Rome’.24 In this context, the redefinition of what it meant to be and to belong to a gens helped accommodate the autonomy of the various and increasingly confident post-Roman societies in the former western provinces.25 Etymo­logies, trans. by Barney and others, p. 192.  19 Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups, pp. 7–20.  20 Braulio of Saragossa, ‘Renotatio librorum domini Isidori’, ed. by Martín, p. 262; Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom, pp. 364–68.  21 See Pohl and Heydemann, eds, Post-Roman Transitions, particularly the introduction by Pohl; also, Geary, ‘Barbarians and Ethnicity’.  22 Isidore of Seville, Etymo­logiae, ix. 2, ed. by Lindsay.  23 Wood, The Politics of Identity; Wood, ‘Religiones and gentes’; and see the excellent study of Merrills, History and Geo­graphy. On the history of ethnicity in the Visigothic kingdom, see Buchberger, Shifting Ethnic Identities in Spain and Gaul.  24 Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom, p. 366.  25 For ‘encyclopedias and autonomy in seventh-century Europe’, see Brown, The Rise of

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This function of ethnicity played an important role for the history of ethnicity elsewhere in the post-Roman West too, not least in the Frankish kingdoms.26 However, not every bishop in the Frankish world embraced ethnicity in the same way as Isidore did. About a generation before Isidore, the bishop and historian Gregory of Tours regarded an ethnic view of the world as a disturbing distraction from a vision of community that defined its bonds and structure exclusively by (Gregory’s views on) orthodox Christianity. As many excellent studies on Gregory of Tours’s Histories have shown, the promotion of a Christian vision of community for the Merovingian kingdoms was certainly one of the most important goals for his historio­graphical project.27 Gregory seems to have found this particularly important in the last decades of the sixth century. He obviously felt that after the establishment of the Merovingian kingdom as one of the most powerful successor states of the Western Roman Empire,28 its rulers and elites needed to be reminded that the creation of a new social and political framework was a unique window of opportunity for the creation of a truly Christian kingdom.29 However, Gregory was well aware that there were other social visions to order and organize his post-Roman world. In one of the few more explicitly exegetical passages in the first book of Gregory’s Histories, these concerns might have triggered a longer comment on how to understand the Israelites’ Crossing of the Red Sea properly. Gregory opened — probably not surprisingly — his Histories with a brief sketch of biblical history, and ended his first book with the advent of his saintly predecessor as bishop of Tours, Saint Martin, in Gaul.30 In order to introduce Martin, his sketch of biblical history had to be brief. All the more striking is the considerable length of his commentary on the Crossing of the Red Sea in this first book. It was for Gregory an important moment in the history of the chosen people, as he saw the Crossing of the Red Sea as the archetype of Christian baptism — as the tipum nostri baptismatis.31 Because of the significance of this biblical event, Gregory felt that he had to argue at greater length against widely held views that the different tribes of Israel had gone through the Red Sea in separate groups and that the sea (or God) had opened up various pathways to accommodate them. Although the passage does indeed mention that the Israelites crossed the Red Sea

Western Christendom, pp. 364–68. For the enormous success of Isidore’s historio­graphical and encyclopaedic works, see Etymo­logies, trans. by Barney and others, pp. 23–26; Chiesa, ‘Isidorus Hispalensis’; Bischoff, ‘Die europäische Verbreitung’.  26 See Reimitz, History, Frankish Identity.  27 See, for instance, Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours; Goffart, Narrators of Barbarian History; Brown, ‘Gregory of Tours: Introduction’; and cf. now the contributions and biblio­graphy in Murray, ed., A Companion to Gregory of Tours.  28 Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, pp. 55–101.  29 Brown, For the Ransom of the Soul, pp. 149–79.  30 On the first book, see Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours, pp. 127–32.  31 Gregory of Tours, Libri historiarum, i. 10, ed. by Krusch and Levison, p. 13.

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in divisiones, Gregory fiercely rejected these interpretations as an incorrect literal reading of the biblical text. The orthodox Christian community was one Christian community. The Crossing of the Red Sea as the prefiguration of Christian baptism should thus be imagined as the procession of one group under one cloud. Finally, Gregory also quotes the Apostle Paul, who forcefully emphasized that all Israelites walked beneath the cloud and were all baptized: ‘Omnes patres nostri sub nube fuerunt et omnes in Moysen baptizati sunt in nube et in mare’ (Our fathers were all under the cloud and all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea).32 Gregory does not give us any names for scholars or exegetical authorities who had commented on the passage. But as Gerda Heydemann has shown, Gregory’s older and at least equally distinguished contemporary in southern Italy, Cassiodorus, discussed this passage at greater length, too.33 Cassiodorus, however, did not reflect on it in his historical work, but rather in his exegetical treatises. And here we learn that the interpretation of the passage that Gregory found so disturbing seems to have indeed been quite common at the time. Cassiodorus refers to the Fathers of the Church in general, and their opinion that the Israelites went through the Red Sea divided into twelve groups, which also corresponded to the number of their tribes. Cassiodorus suggests, like Gregory, that this be understood in a spiritual sense, that there are different ways to become a good Christian. However, Cassiodorus does not want to distinguish between Christians according to different preconditions of their Christianity. He rather proposes to understand the episode as a gloss on eternal life, which not all Christians can pass into equally and by one way. The differences between Cassiodorus and Gregory seem small, but they become more obvious if one keeps in mind that Cassiodorus did indeed use his exegetical work to reflect on how a world of various gentes could fit into a new Christian political geo­graphy in the second half of the sixth century.34 This was exactly what Gregory of Tours did not want. In his Histories, social and political boundaries are insignificant compared to the religious and Christian order of the world that should be defined by a constant striving for salvation.35 We can observe Gregory working to integrate such a view of the world particularly well in Book ii of the Histories. It starts with what is for Gregory a surprisingly ethnic view of Gaul. Gaul after the death of Saint Martin was indeed inhabited and even ruled by peoples.36 It was — like in the days of Caesar — divided into three parts dominated by the Romans north of

 32 Gregory of Tours, Libri historiarum, i. 10, ed. by Krusch and Levison, p. 13; see also Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours, pp. 128–29.  33 See Heydemann, ‘Biblical Israel and the Christian Gentes’, pp. 101–44; and her forthcoming mono­graph on the Expositio Psalmorum of Cassiodorus: Exegese, Rhetorik und politische Gemeinschaft im Zeitalter Justinians.  34 Heydemann, ‘Biblical Israel and the Christian Gentes’.  35 Brown, ‘From Amator Patriae to Amator Pauperum and Back Again’.  36 Gregory of Tours, Libri historiarum, ii. 9, ed. by Krusch and Levison, p. 58.

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the Loire, the Goths south of the river, and the Burgundians in the south-east, while the Franks lived in the region along the Rhine. These peoples are labelled as gentes, and they not only structure the social and political topo­graphy of Gaul in the fifth century, but they also appear repeatedly and prominently as agents in his Histories.37 In the course of the second book, however, and even more so after its end, Gregory subjects these gentes and also the term gens itself to a transformative process. Both gentes and gens came to be increasingly absorbed into the Christian topo­graphy of Gaul. While ethnonyms significantly take a backseat in his narrative from the beginning of Book iii, Gregory also begins to explore the meaning of gens and employs it in many different ways. The term is used to describe families or dynasties, or military contingents, such as those from the cities of Bourges, Saintes, and Perigieux. He sometimes employs the term in a conservative way to describe more generally a world other than his own, be it in the sense of the barbarians or the non-Christian or pagan world. But the increasing ambiguity of the term is also part of a process in which gentes, including the Frankish people, are less and less the main agents of the story. They do not make history anymore. In Gregory’s Histories all the people and peoples in Gaul were increasingly perceived as members of the Christian community, all living under the same God and the same heaven.38 Gregory’s Histories were quite successful. As the manu­script transmission shows, it circulated quickly and widely in the Merovingian kingdoms. It is extant in an unusually high number of Merovingian manu­scripts (five) and in a further manu­script copied probably in northern Italy in the second half of the eighth century.39 These Merovingian manu­scripts, however, transmit heavily redacted versions of Gregory’s Histories, omitting the last four books, ending their narrative with the death of Chilperic I in 584, as well as completely reworking Gregory’s narrative by removing certain chapters from the first six books. At first glance, the compilers seem to have mainly excluded stories concerning bishops, clerics, and churches. Consequently, the genesis of the six-book version and its subsequent success has often been explained in terms of a deliberate effort to erase or reduce clerical and ecclesiastical content. According to such an interpretation, the six-book recension appealed to an audience who wanted to read a history of the Franks and their kings, rather than a narrative driven by a Christian world view.40 However, comparing the Merovingian six-book version with Gregory’s text shows that at no point in

 37 Reimitz, History, Frankish Identity, pp. 55–56.  38 For a longer discussion, see Reimitz, History, Frankish Identity, pp. 65–73.  39 Heinzelmann and Bourgain, ‘L’œuvre de Grégoire de Tours’, pp. 282–83; Bourgain, ‘Gregorius Turonensis ep.’; Reimitz, ‘The Early Medi­eval Editions of Gregory of Tours’. On some new observations regarding some of the manu­scripts, cf. now, Licht, Die Halbunziale, pp. 320–23, 331 (BnF, MS lat. 17654); pp. 333–36 (BnF, MS lat. 17655); pp. 305–07 (Cambrai, Bibl. mun., MS M 684 (624)).  40 This was already suggested by Ruinart, ‘In Novam Editionem’. For more nuanced approaches in

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the manu­script tradition of the six-book recension are the Franks or their kings given a firmer place in the regnum than Gregory had originally allowed them.41 As discussed at greater length elsewhere, later editors did not work against Gregory’s vision of community, but tried to build on it and adapt it to the changed circumstances of the seventh and eighth centuries.42 The success of Gregory’s history as a historical authority and model, however, is not only attested in the wide distribution of the Histories themselves. It is also well documented in responses to, and even debates with, Gregory in later histories. The oldest extant version of the Chronicle of Fredegar, whose anonymous compilers included excerpts of the Merovingian six-book version of Gregory’s Histories into their chain of chronicles, dates from approximately two generations after Gregory’s death.43 It was organized as its own book and presented as a ‘liber quod est scarpsum de chronica Gregorii episcopi’ (book that is excerpted from the chronicle of bishop Gregory).44 The chronicle also refers to Gregory in the pro­logue to its independent continuation of the narrative. The author had tried to summarize as efficiently as he could the works of earlier historians. However, when mentioning the excerpts from Gregory’s Histories, the chronicler also admits that he had continued to complement Gregory’s narrative through written or oral sources about the deeds of the kings and the wars of the peoples.45 I have studied at greater length elsewhere how the compilers changed the role of the Franks and the meaning of Frankish identity in their rewriting.46 The compilers did not only change the role and meaning of the Franks in their history. They also changed the social imagination of the world to which the Franks belonged and presented a view of their post-Roman world as a world divided among peoples. In order to do so, they also reworked other historical sources. They embedded Gregory’s excerpt into a ‘chain of chronicles’ that started with a version of the Liber generationis of Hippolytus of Rome, which presents a comprehensive list of rulers, prophets, kings, popes, and not least the peoples of the world.47 After the end of the Liber generationis, the compilers

the same direction, cf., however, the newer and more differentiated discussions in Goffart, ‘From Historiae to Historia Francorum and Back Again’; but cf. Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours, p. 191.  41 Reimitz, History, Frankish Identity, pp. 133–40.  42 Reimitz, History, Frankish Identity, pp. 140–59; and see the important study on social visions in hagio­graphical discourse by Kreiner, The Social Life of Hagio­graphy.  43 Wood, ‘Fredegar’s Fables’; Collins, Die Fredegar-Chroniken; Fischer, ‘Rewriting History’; and see the upcoming study of Fischer, Die Fredegar-Chronik, for a comprehensive study of the sources of the Fredegar-Chronicle. I should like to thank Andreas Fischer for letting me read and use his important study in advance of its publication.  44 Fredegar, Chronicae, iii, ed. by Krusch, p. 89.  45 Fredegar, Chronicae, iv, pro­logue, ed. by Krusch, p. 123; cf. Lake, ‘Rethinking Fredegar’s Pro­logue’.  46 Reimitz, History, Frankish Identity, pp. 166–74, with further literature.  47 For the term ‘chain of chronicles’, see Wood, ‘The “Chain of Chronicles”’; Burgess and Kulikowski, Mosaics of Time; but cf. Wood, ‘Universal Chronicles’; and McKitterick, Perceptions of the Past.

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added a few lists and genealogies of their own and continued their history with the chronicle of Jerome, which they also comprehensively reworked. After the continuation of Jerome’s chronicle by Hydatius and a short section for which no source has been identified so far follows the rewriting of Gregory’s Histories ending with the death of Chilperic I in 584. Then they added as a new book their own account of the history from 584 to the 640s. For the creation of a different social texture in the history of the FredegarChronicle, the choice of genre played an important role.48 While Gregory oriented himself towards the model of a church history, the compilers of the Fredegar-Chronicle employed the model of the Christian world chronicle, which had become a very influential historio­graphical model in the Latin West after the translation and continuation of Eusebius’s Greek world chronicle by Jerome at the end of the fourth century.49 Eusebius and Jerome presented a historical view of the world that was organized in parallel columns, each of which outlined the histories of different empires, kingdoms, and peoples — the Assyrians, the Medes, the Hebrews, the Athenians, the Romans, the Macedonians, and so forth. The compilers of the seventh-century chronicle built on this structure to continue it into their own times and thus presented their readers with a history of kingdoms and peoples from the beginning to their own times — a history in which the Merovingian kingdom and the Frankish community became part of a world that had always been divided among peoples. Like in Isidore, the Romans are presented as belonging to that world as a once-powerful kingdom and people as well. But neither their power nor their rule had changed the basic social structuring of this world as a world of peoples.50 It would be interesting to see what the Merovingian chroniclers would have done with Gregory’s comments on the biblical story of the Crossing of the Red Sea. However, the excerpts from Gregory in the Fredegar-Chronicle start only with Book ii of the Histories. Gregory’s biblical exegetical dispositio of the first book is completely left out. Instead, the chroniclers started their history with another Liber to provide an overview of the biblical past, namely a version of the Liber generationis, which is the title given to the Latin version of the Greek chronicle of Hippolytus of Rome.51 This Liber generationis provided its readers with comprehensive lists through which the history of the world

 48 For a longer discussion, see Reimitz, ‘Genre and Identity’.  49 See now McMahon, ‘Polemics in Translation’; Burgess and Kulikowski, Mosaics of Time, pp. 119–31; and see also Grafton and Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book, pp. 133–77.  50 For the corresponding reforms of the social, legal, and political order of the Merovingian kingdoms in the seventh century, see Esders and Reimitz, ‘The Remaking of Citizenship’.  51 See Caspar, Die älteste römische Bischofsliste, on the dynamic character of Hippolytus’s original, esp. pp. 92–101; for a reconstruction of parts of it, pp. 206–08; for an edition of two versions of the Latin translation in a synoptic presentation, see Chronica minora, ed. by Mommsen, pp. 89–138.

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fanned out in a plurality of kingdoms, their kings, prophets, bishops, church fathers, popes, and not least peoples — gentes.52 Thus, the compilers of the chronicle articulated a very different imagining of the social world from the one of Gregory’s Histories. As briefly discussed above, the bishop of Tours presented biblical history as a prefiguration of a Christian world that was organized along the distinctions between Christianity and paganism, orthodoxy and heresy. Starting its narrative with the Liber generationis, the Fredegar-Chronicle provided its readers with a different order of the world. From the divisio terrae among Noah’s sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, it leads to a ‘declaratio gentium, quae ex quibus factae sint’ (a list of peoples that were their descendants). In the enumeration of the seventy-two peoples and languages — gentes and linguae — that were scattered across the world after the construction of the tower of Babel,53 the Fredegar-Chronicle’s version includes Trojans, Macedonians, Frigians, and Romans. They appear in a comprehensive list of gentes who are treated as the progeny of Noah’s son Japheth. Following that one is another detailed list, which traces the terrae of these gentes from Amazonia to the British Isles. Taken together, these lists unfolded a history of pluralities that also helped to accommodate an ethnic pluralism from ancient history to the Merovingian present. This is even made explicit before the start of the independent narrative of the Fredegar-Chronicle. In the pro­logue to this independent part, its author mentions that he had tried as best as he could to follow Eusebius and Jerome by reconstructing the histories of the individual peoples (singularum gentium).54 To conclude, the debate and reflections that I have briefly discussed in this article were not only about the importance or unimportance of the Frankish or Gothic identity. They also concerned the imagination of the larger social whole to which the Franks or Goths belonged, and what the role of different world views such as a Christian world view or an ethnic view of the world should be in organizing one’s society. I hope that the contrast between Gregory of Tours and the Fredegar-Chronicle, which I have tried to outline briefly, has helped to illustrate the spectrum of possibilities in the quickly and constantly changing world after the end of the Western Roman Empire. And it may also have shown that the promotion of different social orders of the world took place in competition with each other. Authors and readers were well aware of a range of alternative world views. Including this meta-level of observation in our studies is not only crucial to identifying when a socionym is actually linked to an ethnic imagination of the world (or another social imagination); it is, to my mind, also key for a historical approach to identities as open-ended  52 For a detailed study of the Liber generationis and its integration into the Fredegarian chain of chronicles, see Fischer, Die Fredegar-Chronik.  53 See Borst, Der Turmbau von Babel; and cf. the forthcoming study of Minets, The Slow Fall of Babel.  54 Fredegar, Chronicae, iv, pro­logue, ed. by Krusch, p. 123; see Lake, ‘Rethinking Fredegar’s Pro­logue’, with further literature.

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processes or discourses in exploring how these imaginations are shaped and reshaped over time by situational constructs in which they are employed. Gregory’s discussion of the Crossing of the Red Sea clearly showed that he was aware of the alternatives, and that it was not just a debate between him and some people who might have been less concerned about the end of the world than Gregory. These were questions that were debated among some of the top intellectuals of the post-Roman West such as Cassiodorus or Isidore, members of the monastic communities and the ecclesiasiastical and secular elites who stood behind the composition and transmission of the FredegarChronicle. We have only begun to historicize ethnic identity and ethnicity more systematically and comprehensively. With my studies of the history of Frankish identity as a lens into a Western history of ethnicity after the end of the Western Roman Empire, I hope to provide a new baseline through the writing and rewriting of histories from the sixth to the ninth centuries. But this study is only one among many new interventions in the history of identities in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, such as hagio­graphical and exegetical reflections on ethnicity and ethnic identities,55 the history of other prominent early medi­eval ‘peoples’,56 the interaction of ethnic identities with other forms of social identities such as Christian identity,57 or the history and salience of other forms of social identities such as family and kinship,58 or gender.59 This constantly growing body of new insights provides us with an ever-fuller panorama of possibilities for the history of identities in late antique and medi­eval history. And it is also crucial to evaluate the respective prominence of certain social imaginations, their changing salience, and how those shifts affected the relationship of ethnic identities with religious, social, legal, or racializing conceptualizations of the social world.60 A lot of work still

 55 See, e.g., Kreiner, The Social Life of Hagio­graphy; Kreiner, ‘Romanness in Merovingian Hagio­ graphy’; Heydemann, ‘People(s) of God?’; Heydemann, ‘Biblical Israel and the Christian Gentes’, and her forthcoming study on Cassiodorus’s Expositio Psalmorum: Exegese, Rhetorik und politische Gemeinschaft im Zeitalter Justinians.  56 See Flierman, Saxon Identities; Broome, ‘Pagans, Rebels and Merovingians’; and Broome’s forthcoming The Carolingian Conquest of Frisia and Frisia’s integration into the Carolingian world; Buchberger, Shifting Ethnic Identities in Spain and Gaul; Stadermann, Gothus; Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 455–98.  57 See, for instance, Maskarinec, City of Saints; Rembold, Conquest and Christianization; Dörler, ‘The Liber Historiae Francorum’; Pohl and Heydemann, eds, Post-Roman Transitions; Rebillard, Christians and their Many Identities.  58 Hummer, Visions of Kinship; Schoolman, ‘Vir Clarissimus and Roman Titles’; Schoolman, ‘Nobility, Aristocracy, and Status’; Whitten, ‘Franks, Greeks, and Saracens’; and see the contributions of Hummer, Whitten, and Maskarinec in this volume.  59 See the contribution of Sarah Whitten in this volume and her ‘Franks, Greeks, and Saracens’; Cooper, The Fall of the Roman Household; Brubaker and Smith, eds, Gender in the Early Medi­eval World. For differences of ethnic and racial discourse in the period, see Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 482–88. For the Byzantine Empire, see now Betancourt, Byzantine Intersectionality; Kaldellis, Romanland, but cf. Stouraitis, ‘Reinventing Roman Ethnicity’.  60 For the intersection of ethnicity with other forms of identity in the early Middle Ages, see

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needs to be done — not only on the historical study of ethnicity in the Latin West, but also on a comparison of this Western history of ethnicity with the history of ethnicities in other cultures and regions of the world, where different discursive, social, and political constellations might have engendered different situational constructs and forms of ethnicity. What are the implications of such a discursive approach to ethnicity for the study of material culture and the archaeo­logical evidence?61 What are the possibilities and, in some cases more importantly, the limits of new scientific approaches and techno­logies such as genomic research in this field?62 When Patrick Geary published his 1983 article on ‘Ethnic Identity as a Situational Construct’, some of the most prominent scholars working on national or ethnic identities in European and Western history such as Eric Hobsbawm and Ernst Gellner believed that national, ethnic, and racial prejudices were passing phenomena. Unfortunately, yet perhaps unsurprisingly, they were wrong. Ethnic, national, and racial thinking have become increasingly salient and instrumentalized in social and political discourse over the last two decades. It is now even more important to explore the historical possibilities and conditions of their occurrence and to sidestep their seeming familiarity in order to analyse their theoretical and practical contexts63 from the ancient past to the present.

Pohl, ‘Introduction — Strategies of Identification’. On the question of how race-thinking inflected the history of ethnicity in the early Middle Ages, and how to conceptualize the overlaps and differences of ethnic and racial discourse in the period, some recent interventions are Lopez-Jantzen, ‘Between Empires’; Lumbley, ‘The “Dark Welsh”’; and the forthcoming articles by Chazelle, ‘Bede, Pope Gregory the Great, and the Modern Construction of English Whiteness’, and Ganz, ‘The Sadalberga Psalter and the Ethiopian Face’.  61 For a discussion, see the essays in Pohl and Mehofer, eds, Archaeo­logy of Identity — Archäo­logie der Identität; Von Rummel, ‘The Fading Power of Images’; and Von Rummel, ‘Unrömische Römer und römische Barbaren’, with further references.  62 See now, Geary, Die Herausforderungen und Gefahren.  63 Cf. Foucault, L’usage des plaisirs, p. 9.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Braulio of Saragossa, ‘Renotatio librorum domini Isidori’, in La renotatio librorum domini Isidori de Braulio de Zaragoza: Introducción, edición crítica y traducción, ed. by José Carlos Martín, 2nd rev. and aug. edn, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 113B (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 259–64 Chronica minora saec. iv., v., vi., vii., vol. i, ed. by Theodor Mommsen, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Auctores antiquissimi, 9 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1892) Fredegar, Chronicarum quae dicuntur Fredegarii Scholastici libri IV, ed. by Bruno Krusch, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1888), pp. 1–193 Gregory of Tours, Gregorii Turonensis Opera, i: Libri historiarum X, ed. by Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, 1.1, rev. edn (Hanover: Hahn, 1951) Isidore of Seville, Etymo­logiarum sive Originum Libri XX, ed. by W. M. Lindsay, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911); The Etymo­logies of Isidore of Seville, ed. and trans. by Stephen A. Barney and others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) Secondary Works Austrian Academy of Sciences, ‘SCIRE: Social Cohesion, Identity and Religion in Europe, 400–1200’ [accessed 21 May 2021] Betancourt, Roland, Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender and Race in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020) Bischoff, Bernhard, ‘Die europäische Verbreitung der Werke Isidors von Sevilla’, in Mittelalterliche Studien, vol. i (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1966), pp. 171–94 Borst, Arno, Der Turmbau von Babel: Geschichte der Meinungen über den Ursprung und Vielfalt der Sprachen und Völker, 4 vols (Munich: Deutscher TaschenbuchVerlag, 1995) Bourgain, Pascal, ‘Gregorius Turonensis ep.’, in La trasmissione dei testi latini del medioevo / Medi­eval Texts and their Transmission, ed. by Paolo Chiesa and Lucia Castaldi, TETRA, 2 (Florence: Tavarnuzze, 2005), pp. 152–61 Broome, Richard, The Carolingian Conquest of Frisia and its Integration into the Carolingian World, forthcoming —— , ‘Pagans, Rebels and Merovingians: Otherness in the Early Carolingian World’, in The Resources of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Rosamond McKitterick, Clemens Gantner, and Sven Meeder (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 155–71 Brown, Peter, For the Ransom of the Soul: Wealth and the Afterlife in Western Christianity from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015)

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—— , ‘From Amator Patriae to Amator Pauperum and Back Again’, in Cultures in Motion, ed. by Daniel T. Rodgers, Bhavani Raman, and Helmut Reimitz (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), pp. 87–106 —— , ‘Gregory of Tours: Introduction’, in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. by Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 1–28 —— , The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, 200–1000 ad, 10th anniv. edn (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013) Brubaker, Leslie, and Julia M. H. Smith, eds, Gender in the Early Medi­eval World, 300–900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) Brubaker, Rogers, Ethnicity without Groups (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004) Brubaker, Rogers, and Frederick Cooper, ‘Beyond Identity’, Theory and Society, 29.1 (2000), 1–47 Buchberger, Erica, Shifting Ethnic Identities in Spain and Gaul, 500–700: From Romans to Goths and Franks (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017) Burgess, Richard W., and Michael Kulikowski, Mosaics of Time: The Latin Chronicle Traditions from the First Century bc to the Sixth Century ad, i: Historical Introduction to the Chronicle Genre from its Origins to the High Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) Caspar, Erich, Die älteste römische Bischofsliste: Kritische Studien zum Formproblem des Eusebianischen Kanons und sowie zur Geschichte der ältesten Bischofslisten und ihrer Entstehung aus apolstolischen Sukzessionsreihen (Berlin: Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft für Politik und Geschichte, 1926) Chazelle, Celia, ‘Bede, Pope Gregory the Great, and the Modern Construction of English Whiteness’, forthcoming Chiesa, Paolo, ‘Isidorus Hispalensis’, in La trasmissione dei testi latini del medioevo / Medi­eval Texts and their Transmission, ed. by Paolo Chiesa and Lucia Castaldi, TETRA, 2 (Florence: Tavarnuzze, 2005), pp. 274–432 Collins, Rogers, Die Fredegar-Chroniken, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Studien und Texte, 44 (Hanover: Hahn, 2007) Cooper, Kate, The Fall of the Roman Household (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) Dörler, Philipp, ‘The Liber Historiae Francorum — A Model for a New Frankish Self–Confidence’, Networks and Neighbours, 1 (2013), 23–43 Esders, Stefan, and Helmut Reimitz, ‘The Remaking of Citizenship in Post-Roman Gaul’, in Civic Identity and Civic Participation in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Els Rose and Cedric Brélaz (forthcoming) Fischer, Andreas, Die Fredegar-Chronik: Komposition und Kontextualisierung, forthcoming —— , ‘Rewriting History: Fredegar’s Perspective on the Mediterranean’, in Western Perspectives on the Mediterranean: Cultural Transfer in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, 400–800 ad, ed. by Andreas Fischer and Ian N. Wood (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 55–76 Flierman, Robert, Saxon Identities, 150–900 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017)

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Foucault, Michel, L’ordre du discours: Leçon inaugurale au Collège de France prononcée le 2 décembre 1970 (Paris: Gallimard, 1971) —— , L’usage des plaisirs: Histoire de la sexualité, vol. ii (Paris: Gallimard, 1984) Ganz, David, ‘The Sadalberga Psalter and the Ethiopian Face’, forthcoming Geary, Patrick, ‘Barbarians and Ethnicity’, in Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World, ed. by Glen W. Bowersock, Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 106–29 —— , ‘Ethnic Identity as a Situational Construct in the Early Middle Ages’, Mitteilungen der anthropo­logischen Gesellschaft in Wien, 113 (1983), 15–26 —— , Die Herausforderungen und Gefahren der Integration von Genomdaten in der Erforschung der frühmittelalterlichen Geschichte, Das Mittelalterliche Jahrtausend, 7 (Göttingen: Wallenstein Verlag, 2020) —— , The Myth of Nations: The Medi­eval Origins of Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002) —— , Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) Goffart, Walter, ‘From Historiae to Historia Francorum and Back Again: Aspects of the Textual History of Gregory of Tours’, in Religion, Culture and Society in the Early Middle Ages: Studies in Honor of Richard E. Sullivan, ed. by Thomas F. X. Noble and John J. Contreni (Kalamazoo: Medi­eval Institute Publications, 1987), pp. 55–76 —— , Narrators of Barbarian History (ad 550–800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede and Paul the Deacon, 2nd edn (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005) Grafton, Anthony, and Megan Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008) Halsall, Guy, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376–568 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) Heinzelmann, Martin, Gregory of Tours: History and Society in the Sixth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) Heinzelmann, Martin, and Pascal Bourgain, ‘L’œuvre de Grégoire de Tours: La diffusion des manuscrits’, in Grégoire de Tours et l’espace gaulois, ed. by Nancy Gauthier and Henri Galinié, Supplement à la Revue Archéo­logique du Centre de la France, 13 (Tours: La Simarre, 1997), pp. 273–317 Heydemann, Gerda, ‘Biblical Israel and the Christian Gentes: Social Metaphors and Concepts of Community in Cassiodorus’ Expositio psalmorum’, in Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medi­eval Europe, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 98–141 —— , Exegese, Rhetorik und politische Gemeinschaft im Zeitalter Justinians: Der Psalmenkommentar des Cassiodor, forthcoming —— , ‘People(s) of God? Biblical Exegesis and the Language of Community in Late Antique and Early Medi­eval Europe’, in Meanings of Community across

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Medi­eval Eurasia, ed. by Erik Hovden, Christina Lutter, and Walter Pohl (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 27–60 Hummer, Hans, Visions of Kinship in Medi­eval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) Kaldellis, Anthony, Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019) Kreiner, Jamie, ‘Romanness in Merovingian Hagio­graphy: A Case Study in Class and Political Culture’, in Transformations of Romanness: Early Medi­eval Regions and Identities, ed. by Walter Pohl and others, Millennium Studies, 71 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), pp. 309–24 —— , The Social Life of Hagio­graphy in the Merovingian Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) Lake, Justin, ‘Rethinking Fredegar’s Pro­logue’, Journal of Medi­eval Latin, 25 (2015), 1–27 Licht, Tino, Die Halbunziale: Schriftkultur im Zeitalter der ersten lateinischen Minuskel (iii.–ix. Jahrhundert) (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 2018) Lopez-Jantzen, Nicole, ‘Between Empires: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages’, Literature Compass, 16.9–10 (2019), 1–12, [accessed 21 May 2021] Lumbley, Coral, ‘The “Dark Welsh”: Color, Race, and Alterity in the Matter of Medi­eval Wales’, Literature Compass, 16.9–10 (2019), 1–19, [accessed 21 May 2021] Maskarinec, Maya, City of Saints: Rebuilding Rome in the Early Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) McKitterick, Rosamond, Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006) McMahon, Madeline, ‘Polemics in Translation: Jerome’s Fashioning of History in the Chronicle’, in Historio­graphy of Identity, i: Ancient and Christian Models, ed. by Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), pp. 219–45 Merrills, Andrew H., History and Geo­graphy in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) Minets, Yuliya, The Slow Fall of Babel: Conceptualization of Languages, Linguistic Diversity and History in Late Ancient Christianity, forthcoming Murray, Alexander Callander, ed., A Companion to Gregory of Tours, Brill’s Companion to the Christian Tradition, 63 (Leiden: Brill, 2016) Pohl, Walter, ‘Introduction — Strategies of Identification: A Methodo­logical Profile’, in Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medi­eval Europe, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 1–64 ——, ‘Von der Ethnogenese zur Identitätsforschung’, in Neue Wege der Frühmittelalterforschung — Bilanz und Perspektiven, ed. by Walter Pohl, Maximilian Diesenberger, and Bernhard Zeller, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 22 (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2018), pp. 9–34 Pohl, Walter, and Gerda Heydemann, eds, Post-Roman Transitions: Christians and Barbarians in Post-Roman Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013)

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—— , eds, Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medi­eval Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) Pohl, Walter, and Mathias Mehofer, eds, Archaeo­logy of Identity — Archäo­logie der Identität, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 17 (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010) Pohl, Walter, and others, eds, Transformations of Romanness: Early Medi­eval Regions and Identities, Millennium Studies, 71 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018) Rebillard, Éric, Christians and their Many Identities in Late Antiquity: North Africa 200–450 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012) Reimitz, Helmut, ‘The Early Medi­eval Editions of Gregory of Tours’, in A Companion to Gregory of Tours, ed. by Alexander Callander Murray, Brill’s Companion to the Christian Tradition, 63 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 519–65 —— , ‘Genre and Identity in Merovingian Historio­graphy’, in Historio­graphy of Identity, ii: Post-Roman Multiplicity and New Political Identities, ed. by Gerda Heydemann and Helmut Reimitz (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 161–211 —— , History, Frankish Identity, and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, 550–850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) Rembold, Ingrid, Conquest and Christianization: Saxony and the Carolingian World, 772–888 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017) Ruinart, Thierry, ‘In Novam Editionem Sancti Gregorii Episcopi Turonensis’, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, Patro­logiae cursus completus: series latina, 71 (Paris: Garnier, 1879), cols 9–114 Schoolman, Edward M., ‘Nobility, Aristocracy, and Status in Early Medi­eval Ravenna’, in Ravenna: Its Role in Earlier Medi­eval Change and Exchange, ed.  by Judith Herrin and Jinty Nelson (London: University of London Press, 2016), pp. 211–38 —— , ‘Vir Clarissimus and Roman Titles in the Early Middle Ages: Survival and Con­ tinuity in Ravenna and the Latin West’, Medi­eval Prosopo­graphy, 32 (2017), 1–39 Stadermann, Christian, Gothus: Konstruktion und Rezeption von Gotenbildern in narrativen Schriften des merowingischen Gallien (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2017) Stouraitis, Yannis, ‘Reinventing Roman Ethnicity in High and Late Medi­eval Byantium’, Medi­eval Worlds, 5 (2017), 170–97; doi: 10.1553/medi­evalworlds_ no5_2017s70 Universität Wien, Institut für Geschichte, ‘Visions of Communities: Comparative Approaches to Ethnicity, Region and Empire in Christianity, Islam and Buddhism’, [accessed 21 May 2021] Von Rummel, Philipp, ‘The Fading Power of Images: Romans, Barbarians, and the Uses of a Dichotomy in Early Medi­eval Archaeo­logy’, in Post-Roman Transitions: Christians and Barbarians in Post-Roman Europe, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 365–406 —— , ‘Unrömische Römer und römische Barbaren: Die Fluidität vermeintlich präziser Leitbegriffe der Forschung zum spätantiken Gallien’, in Gallien in Spätantike und frühem Mittelalter: Kulturgeschichte einer Region, ed. by Stefan Diefenbach and Gernot M. Müller, Millennium Studien, 43 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), pp. 277–93

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Whitten, Sarah, ‘Franks, Greeks, and Saracens: Violence, Empire, and Religion in Early Medi­eval Southern Italy’, Early Medi­eval Europe, 27 (2019), 251–78 Wood, Ian N., ‘The “Chain of Chronicles” in London BL 16974’, in Zwischen Niederschrift und Wiederschrift: Historio­graphie und Hagio­graphie im Spannungsfeld von Edition und Kompendienüberlieferung, ed. by Richard Corradini and Maximilian Diesenberger, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 15 (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), pp. 67–78 —— , ‘Fredegar’s Fables’, in Historio­graphie im frühen Mittelalter, ed. by Anton Scharer and Georg Scheibelreiter (Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1994), pp. 359–66 —— , The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450–751 (London: Routledge, 1994) —— , ‘Universal Chronicles in the Early Medi­eval West’, Medi­eval Worlds, 1 (2015), 47–60 Wood, Jamie, The Politics of Identity in Visigothic Spain: Religion, Power and the Histories of Isidore of Seville, Brill’s Series on the Early Middle Ages, 21 (Leiden: Brill, 2012) —— , ‘Religiones and gentes in Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maiora’, in Post-Roman Transitions: Christians and Barbarians in Post-Roman Europe, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 125–68

Herwig Wolfram

The King of the Nemítzioi and his Neighbours to the East Between 963 and 969 the Book of Ceremonies was put together from notes left behind by the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (913–959) and his helpers. Chapter II, 48 contains the protocols that the imperial chancery obviously used for correspondence with foreign kings. The mention of the size and weight of the golden bulls that sealed those documents proves the official character of the chapter. The protocol, or superscriptio, consists of the invocatio, the intitulatio of the emperor, and the inscriptio, or address, of the recipient. The last protocols that can be dated were written shortly after 945, but there are also much older pieces.1 Among the western addressees, the current king of Saxony is mentioned first, followed by his predecessor (?), the ‘ῥὴξ Βαϊούρη’ (king of Waïoúri, i.e. Bavaria), with one of * Soon after my book Die Geburt Mitteleuropas: Geschichte Österreichs vor seiner Entstehung, 378–907 had appeared, Janet L. Nelson reviewed it in the English Historical Review, and later personally urged its translation into English. For several reasons, this never happened, nor did the following books Grenzen und Räume: Geschichte Österreichs von seiner Entstehung, 378–907 and Salzburg, Bayern, Österreich: Die Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum und die Quellen ihrer Zeit find translators. Therefore, the author is glad to contribute some particular aspects of this extensive topic (e.g. compaternitas, Nemítzioi, i.e. Bavarians/Eastern Franks and not Germans, Arnulf of Carinthia, and the importance of the Bulgarians for the history of the Eastern Bavarian Marches) to this antho­logy. I especially wish to thank Professor Patrick J. Geary, who in many magisterial publications, and especially in his Myth of Nations, does a marvellous job of helping the reader to understand the other world of early medi­eval peoples. I also thank Professors Walter Pohl, in Vienna, Peter Schreiner, in Munich/Co­logne, and Peter Štih, in Ljubljana, as well as Bernhard Zeller and Peter Fraundorfer, both in Vienna, for their vital support. Without their help I would have been lost in my Salzburg eremos. Last but not least I wish to thank Professors Ian Wood, in Leeds, and Anton Scharer, in Vienna, for considerably improving the English of this paper.  1 Constantine Porphyrogennetos, De ceremoniis, 48, ed. by Reiske, i, pp. 686–92. I wish to thank Otto Kresten, in Vienna, for his detailed information in a letter from 26 March 2019, which substantially improved Wolfram, Salzburg, Bayern, Österreich, pp. 59–61 with no. 300. See also Hunger, Die hochsprachliche profane Literatur, i, pp. 364–67; and Treitinger, Die oströmische Kaiser- und Reichsidee, p. 190 with nn. 132–34.



Herwig Wolfram ([email protected]), is Professor emeritus of Medi­ eval History and Historical Auxiliary Sciences and Director emeritus of the Austrian Institute for Historical Research at University of Vienna. Dean of Faculty 1981–1983. Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe: Studies on Cultural Identity and Power, ed. by Courtney M. Booker, Hans Hummer, and Dana M. Polanichka, CURSOR 41, pp. 83–103 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022)        10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.127577

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the rare additions: ‘ἔστιν δε αὔτη ἡ χω΄ρα οἱ λεγόμενοι Νεμίτζιοι’ (But this is the country called the Nemítzioi).2 The ethnonym Νεμίτζιοι, that is, Nemcy, is unique in an official Bavarian context. A short linguistic and chrono­logical discussion might be useful for better understanding the unique line attached to the address, and thereby setting up an examination of the ninth-century ethno-politics that generated labels for east Frankish peoples. The Greek name of Bavaria is indeclinable, as Evangelos K. Chrysos, in Athens, and Johannes Koder, in Vienna, kindly confirmed, and had to be explained to the contemporary audience, which suggests that around 950 the address for the king of Bavaria had been out of use for a considerable period of time. This observation goes well together with the information by František V. Mareš (1922–1994) that the schwa sound ι in Νεμίτζιοι disappeared after the ninth century, thus producing Nemcy at the end. To be sure, the Vita Clementis of about 1100 still has the Moravians use the name Νεμιτζοὶ for barbarian warriors. But this source draws extensively upon material of the ninth century.3 Well known are the complex relations between the outer (foreign) nominations, or exonyms, and the inner (self) nominations, or endonyms, of peoples and nations. These relations are especially manifold when it comes to the Germans. Their self-designation derives from the word theodiscus, that is, ‘pertaining to a (the) Germanic speaking (originally pagan) people(s)’, which in the ninth century also meant Bavarian, and after having changed from the exonym to the endonym, it became the ethnonym deutsch only around the year 1000.4 But for the western Europeans, the Germans are still Alemans; for the British, Russians, and Greeks, the Germanic peoples of yesteryear; for the Hungarians and some Slavic nations, the Swabians. From the eleventh century, the ethnonym Nemcy, that is, ‘the mute ones’, has been the common Slavonic connotation for the Germans. However, in the language of the Sorbish minority south-east of Berlin, the name for Germany is Bawory, that is, Bavarian countries.5 This incomplete series of examples clearly shows that the names of a current nation have their origins in a time when this nation did not yet exist. In the case of the Germans, two types of names were instrumental in shaping their nation: the names of peoples like Alemans and the names of characteristic features like ‘the mute ones’. Werner Ohnsorge believed that the last legation to the king of Bavaria had been sent many years before the middle of the tenth century, so it then seemed necessary by the time of Constantine Porphyrogennetos to explain the name of Bavaria, even if in an ‘inexact’, incorrect, way. In the eleventh century, the Byzantine foreign office started using the ethnonym  2 Constantine Porphyrogennetos, De ceremoniis, 48, ed. by Reiske, i, p. 689, lines 5–6; Wolfram, Salzburg, Bayern, Österreich, p. 60 with no. 302.  3 Vita Clementis, xiii. 41, ed. by Bartoňková and Večerka, p. 206; cf. Vita Methodii, 5, ed. by Bartoňková and Večerka, pp. 123–25.  4 See Wolfram, Gotische Studien, pp. 260–62, and Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, pp. 322–23.  5 Wolfram, Gotische Studien, p. 260 with n. 88.

The K in g o f t h e N em ít z io i an d h i s   N ei ghb o u rs to the East

Nemcy to distinguish the Germans from the Φράγγοι, the French.6 But there were no Germans in the middle of the tenth century, let alone in the ninth century. So there is no doubt that the explanation is ‘exact’, and the king of Bavaria, the king of Waïoúri, was also the king of the Nemcy, the kralЬ nĕmečъ skymЬ ljudemЬ, and vice versa.7 But what did Bavaria mean in this context? Before answering this question, another question has first to be dealt with: From where and how did this Slavonic name travel to Constantinople? The Vita Methodii was written probably by a man with a Moravian background soon after the saint’s death in the spring of 885. The author speaks of nĕmЬčЬskyja popy (Bavarian bishops and/or priests), who came iz NĕmЬcЬ (from Bavaria) to evangelize in Moravia.8 After Methodios’s death, his disciples, the holy Kliment and his brethren, had to leave Moravia and sought refuge in the Bulgarian khanate.9 If the Bulgarians were not already Slavs, they were about to become so. From the synod of Preslav 893, Old Church Slavonic was the ‘official language of Church and State’. Before then, the Bulgarian chancery had been using Greek for some time.10 The influence of the Moravian mission had furthered not only the Christianization, but also the Slavization, of the Bulgarians, who also took over the political termino­logy of the refugees and more or less unwillingly transmitted it to Byzantium. The Byzantine Empire stood under permanent and heavy pressure from Bulgarian forces. Consequently, the Byzantine government had great interest in finding out which powers in the rear of the khanate could be used as allies against the Bulgarians.11 Needless to say, the rulers of those bodies politic had to be addressed properly in order to get in touch and stay on good terms with them. After the middle of the ninth century, there were two options available: first, there were the Moravians. It is quite possible that in 863 the majority of the imperial consistorium voted in favour of a positive response to Prince Rastislav’s request for ‘teachers and a bishop’,12 because Michael III’s counsellors considered

 6 Ohnsorge, ‘Drei Deperdita der byzantinischen Kaiserkanzlei’, p. 247.  7 Wolfram, Salzburg, Bayern, Österreich, pp. 59–66; and Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, pp. 322–23.  8 Vita Methodii, 5, 10, ed. by Bartoňková and Večerka, pp. 124, 132. That the Vita Methodii was written soon after 885, see Hannick, ‘Die byzantinischen Missionen’, p. 285.  9 Dvornik, Byzantine Missions among the Slavs, pp. 126–30, and 245–48. Cf. below note 22: the epitheton ornans for Khan Boris.  10 See e.g. Annales Fuldenses, aa. 845, 852, ed. by Kurze, pp, 35, 42; and Annales Bertiniani, a. 853, ed. by Waitz, p. 43: Bulgari sociatis sibi Sclavis. Wolfram, Salzburg, Bayern, Österreich, p. 99. On the language of the Bulgarian chancery, see Hannick, ‘Die byzantinischen Missionen’, pp. 301–13; and on the synod of Preslav 893, see Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, p. 177.  11 Ostrogorsky, Geschichte des byzantinischen Staates, pp. 191–93. Cf. Annales Fuldenses: Continuatio Ratisbonensis, a. 896, ed. by Kurze, as to the first Byzantine-Hungarian coalition against the Bulgarians.  12 Hannick, ‘Die byzantinischen Missionen’, pp. 290–92. Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum, ed. by Wolfram, p. 24 with n. 47.

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the Moravians the natural enemies of the Bulgarians.13 Much stronger than the Moravians were the Nemítzioi, the people of Bavaria. This was, however, a kingdom that for contemporaries, who somehow belonged to the Greek orbit, could also stand for the whole of Francia orientalis. The south-Italian Longobard Erchempert, who closed his Historiola in 888, called Louis the German’s East Frankish kingdom simply Bavaria.14 So there is little doubt that the entry in the Book of Ceremonies referred to Bavaria in the first place but also meant the East Frankish kingdom as a whole. Whether these Nemítzioi, these ‘Bavarians’, fought the Bulgarians or were on good terms with them, one could take advantage of their military strength or diplomatic mediation. In 814–817, Bavaria proper and its plaga orientalis, its Eastern Marches, which Charlemagne had already organized as praefecturae or missatica,15 became a kingdom in its own right and remained a regnum within the Francia orientalis even after 833, when Louis the German became king of this entire Frankish kingdom, which mainly lay east of the River Rhine.16 Since the external borders of the regnum Baiuvariorum properly speaking were as far from Aachen as from Constantinople, in this instance it might make sense to shift the meridian of the late Carolingian Frankish-Bavarian statehood from the Rhine over the Inn to the Sava, Drava, and Morava Rivers. Here the traveller would be stranded at the extreme limits of the Frankish empire,17 and at the same time have arrived in, or at least near, the centre of another world.18 In fact, Pope Hadrian II (867–872) was recognized here,19 but literature and official documents were mostly written either in Greek or in the Old Church Slavonic that had recently become a literary language, and besides the divine service was held in Latin, Greek, and Old Church Slavonic.20 The reckoning of the year followed the Greek custom and started with the creation of the world in 5508 bc. The author of the Brevis vita of the holy brothers Konstantinos and Methodios describes Methodios as active in Moravia in the years 6393–5508 (that is, 885), and during the era of four rulers.21 First, the Moravian prince Zwentibald I (r. 871–894) is mentioned, then the Greek emperor Basileios I (r. 867–886), followed by the khan of the

 13 Cf. Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, pp. 253–54, 259.  14 Erchempert, Historia, 11, 19, ed. by Pertz and Waitz pp. 239, 241. I wish to thank Walter Pohl for having provided me with this information. Cf. Wattenbach, Levison, and Löwe, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen, pp. 437–39.  15 Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum, ed. by Wolfram, pp. 166–81. Wolfram, Salzburg, Bayern, Österreich, pp. 175–92.  16 Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, pp. 160–63. Wolfram, Intitulatio II, pp. 105–12.  17 Canon Hludowici regis, c. 11, ed. by Boretius and Krause, p. 189.  18 See Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, pp. 315–21; and Wolfram, Salzburg, Bayern, Österreich, pp. 87–100.  19 Cf. Wood, The Missionary Life, pp. 174–76.  20 Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, pp. 264–66. Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, p. 177.  21 As to the reckoning after the era of rulers, see Fichtenau, Beiträge zur Mediävistik, iii, pp. 186–285.

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Bulgarians Boris I/Michael, ‘by God destined’ (r. 852–889), and finally the last place takes an anonymous king of the nĕmečъ skymЬ ljudemЬ.22 Scholars of different languages translate this passage as ‘king of the Germans’, which is simply wrong, as Germans did not come into being before the year 1000, and the Short Life was written in the late 880s.23 So we have to read it as ‘king of the Bavarian-Frankish people’. Besides, many scholars interpolate the name of Charles III, the Fat (r. 876–887), into the text, obviously only because the given counting after the creation of the world results in the year 885, when Charles was still, sort of, ruler.24 In fact, the given dates and the time of Methodios in Moravia do match these to some extent, and the author correctly recognized the decisive political players of that time and area, which was vital for the success of almost any early medi­eval conversion, as Patrick Geary has clearly shown.25 An examination of the activities of the four rulers mentioned in the late ninth-century Brevis vita can illuminate the historical contingencies that gave rise to early ethnonyms for Germans in central and south-eastern Europe.

Zwentibald I (r. 871–894) In the year 822, the Frankish sources mention the Moravians for the first, and the Avars for the last, time.26 In the ninth century, the Moravians were the only Slavs subject to the former Avar Empire who achieved a fully fledged ethnogenesis, developing an ethnic name of their own and creating their own body politic. Nevertheless, the Carolingians based their claims to Moravia on their victory over the Avars. They considered the Moravian realm part of Bavaria or East Francia. Consequently, they attempted to treat Moravia as a tributary principality for which they at least had the right to appoint the rulers. In reality, the Moravians provided shelter for fugitives and supported their enemies’ enemies. If around 850 a noble Frank’s wife ran off with her lover, the couple found protection in Moravia.27 When a Bavarian nobleman captured Arnulf of Carinthia’s illegitimate daughter and married her, he sought refuge in Moravia, hoping that the affair would be forgotten after

 22 Brevis vita ss. Constantini et Methodii, ed. by Bartoňková and Večerka, p. 166. The omission of the royal name might serve for dating the Short Life after 885 and before 888, when Arnulf of Carinthia was already ‘king of the Bavarians’.  23 See Grivec and Tomšič, eds, Constantinus et Methodius, p. 31, and above notes 2–7.  24 See Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, pp. 259 and 318. As to the interpolation, cf., e.g., Brevis vita ss. Constantini et Methodii, ed. by Bartoňková and Večerka, p. 166 nn. 13 and 17, or Grivec and Tomšič, eds, Constantinus et Methodius, p. 30 with n. 1.  25 Geary, ‘The Meaning of Religion and Conversion’.  26 Annales regni Francorum, a. 822, ed. by Kurze, p. 159. On ‘Zwentibald’, see also Wolfram, ‘The Moravian Realm’, and Wolfram, ‘The Bavarian Mission to Pannonia’.  27 Canon Hludowici regis, c. 11, ed. by Boretius and Krause, p. 189.

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a time.28 In 899, a rebel was captured by Emperor Arnulf and was meant to be deported to Regensburg to stand trial. On the way there, he escaped and fled to Moravia.29 So the Moravians fought for their total independence by all means military, ecclesiastical, and diplomatic. The best known and by far most important action occurred in 863, as two Moravian princes, Rastislav and his nephew Zwentibald, made their ‘call for teachers and a bishop’ to Byzantium to establish an independent Moravian Church.30 Mojmir I (c. 830–846) and Rastislav (846–870) were the first-known Moravian duces.31 They were able to secure and expand their dominion, despite some heavy attacks from their Frankish-Bavarian neighbours. Both princes personally failed, but their realm survived.32 Considering both the written evidence and the well-known archaeo­logical finds, one would assume that the Moravian realm had its centres near the name-giving river Morava, probably in Mikulčice and Staré Město, and in Slovak Nitra/Neutra.33 Carloman, the eldest son of Louis the German, was nominated prefect of the Bavarian Eastern Marches in 856–857 and charged with enforcing Frankish-Bavarian sovereignty over the Moravians. In 858, his father ordered him to wage war against Rastislav. Instead, the two became allies, so that Rastislav had a free hand for the better part of the decade.34 Louis the German attacked Rastislav no earlier than 864 and besieged him in the castle of Dovina (Puella). Wherever we place this ‘Girl Castle’ — in Slovak Devín, near the mouth of the Morava, on the Leiserberg in Lower Austria, or in Děvičky/ Maidenburg, in the South Moravian Pavlov Hills — Louis was satisfied with taking some hostages and a renewed oath of loyalty.35 At that time, the brothers Konstantinos and Methodios already had evangelized in Moravia, vigorously supported by Rastislav. This activity and the latter’s increased bid for political independence led to dissension with Carloman, who sought a military solution to this problem. East Frankish and Bavarian armies attacked Moravia in 869–870 and provided the chance to Rastislav’s nephew Zwentibald I, the lord of Nitra/ Neutra, to change sides, become Carloman’s feudal vassal, and remain with his wife, Suuentizizna, in Bavaria for some time. There he served as godfather  28 Annales Fuldenses: Continuatio Ratisbonensis, a. 893, ed. by Kurze, p. 122.  29 Annales Fuldenses: Continuationes Altahenses, a. 899, ed. by Kurze, pp. 132–33.  30 Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, pp. 259–67; and Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum, ed. by Wolfram, pp. 18–25. Cf. Vavřínek, ‘The Puzzle of the Cyrillo-Methodian Mission’.  31 For very good reasons, Timothy Reuter did not translate the ethnic function dux in his Annals of Fulda. Cf. Wolfram, Salzburg, Bayern, Österreich, pp. 165–72.  32 Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, pp. 315–17.  33 Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, pp. 240–53. Cf. Pohl, The Avars, p. 351 with n. 52; and Pohl, Die Awaren, p. 195.  34 Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, pp. 251–57. Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, p. 168.  35 Annales Fuldenses, aa. 863, 864, ed. by Kurze, pp. 56–57, 62. Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, p. 316. Concerning the interpretation of these ‘Girl Castles’ as ‘Cities of the Amazons’, see Wolfram, Gotische Studien, p. 238.

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to Carloman’s grandson and Arnulf ’s son Zwentibold in 870. It is the oldest known naming after a godfather in the Western church and followed the Byzantine practice.36 In 864, the Bulgarian khan Boris I was baptized and took the Christian name of his godfather Michael III (r. 842–867).37 This emperor, who had sent Konstantinos and Methodios to Moravia in 863, often acted as godfather for the children of his followers.38 The link of compaternitas had political consequences and in particular established familiaritas between Zwentibald and Arnulf. The latter had succeeded his father, Carloman, as prefect of the Eastern Marches in 876 at the latest. Regino of Prum explained that Arnulf ceded Bohemia to Zwentibald in 890 because of this familiaritas.39 But there is an incident that might allow a different view, too. Between 882 and 884, Zwentibald waged a devastating war, first, against the noble family of the Wilhelmines in what is now the Tullnerfeld north of the Danube and, later on, against Arnulf ’s Pannonia, considerable parts of which the Moravians occupied for quite some time. The Wilhelmines had left everything behind, sought refuge with Arnulf in Pannonia, and became his vassals. The Moravian prince, however, blamed them for having caused a Bulgarian invasion of Moravia in the previous year and urged that Arnulf dissolve his bonds with them and send them away. Arnulf refused, since he obviously considered one’s obligations as lord higher in significance than the compaternitas, and the war went on.40 In the year 870, Zwentibald betrayed his uncle Rastislav, captured him, and handed him over to Carloman, who had him transported to Regensburg. There, Louis the German sentenced him to be blinded. Rastislav’s downfall opened his country to Carloman. Never before (or after) did Frankish-Bavarian troops conquer so many fortresses in Moravia. The king’s son even captured the prince’s treasure. However, when Carloman and his Wilhelmine allies tried to eliminate Zwentibald and convert the Moravian realm into FrankishBavarian counties, they had crossed the line. Zwentibald had to be released from (honourable) captivity, and his reign over the whole Moravian realm was famously restored. In the meantime, the Bavarian and East Frankish armies suffered defeat after defeat until 874, when Louis the German and Carloman held a meeting at Forchheim. There, Zwentibald’s envoy, the priest John of Venice, arrived to propose peace terms and met with success. The situation

 36 Mitterauer, Ahnen und Heilige, pp. 311–14; Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum, ed. by Wolfram, p. 294 with n. 133.  37 Dvornik, Byzantine Missions among the Slavs, p. 127. Mitterauer, Ahnen und Heilige, p. 129.  38 Lübke, Fremde im östlichen Europa, p. 286.  39 Regino of Prum, Chronica, a. 890, ed. by Kurze, p. 134; Böhmer and Mühlbacher, Regesta Imperii, n. 1485 b; Annales Fuldenses, a. 874, ed. by Kurze, pp. 92–93. Cf. Althoff, ‘Zur Bedeutung der Bündnisse’, pp. 14–15. Angenendt, Kaiserherrschaft und Königstaufe, pp. 121–26 (pactum compaternitatis).  40 Annales Fuldenses: Continuatio Ratisbonensis, a. 884, ed. by Kurze, pp. 111–13. Cf. Annales Fuldenses: Continuatio Ratisbonensis, a. 892, ed. by Kurze, p. 121.

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from before 870 was restored: Moravia, despite the oath of loyalty sworn by John acting on behalf of Zwentibald, only theoretically became a dependent principality, but in practice its freedom of action was not limited. Now Zwentibald had enough time to successfully consolidate his dominion. The prince allied himself with Margrave Arbo, Arnulf ’s antagonist in the Eastern Marches; defeated the sons of Wilhelm and Engelschalk in 882–884; and ransacked wide areas of Carolingian Pannonia east of the River Rába. In 885, but still before Methodios’s death, the Vistula principality, with its presumable centre at Wawel (Cracow), probably recognized Moravian sovereignty. Still in 884, a peace treaty was concluded between Charles the Fat and Zwentibald I near Tulln. ‘According to tradition’ the Moravian prince became the emperor’s feudal vassal. This ceremony legalized his territorial gains and proved his special position to the whole world. Some months later, Arnulf had to follow suit. In 890, he surrendered his claims to Bohemia in favour of the Moravian dux.41 The Bavarians hated Zwentibald because he could not be captured for good and was able to fight back. Moreover, he used every defeat and failure for his own benefit, and he guided the Moravian realm to the height of its power. To be sure, the term ‘Great Moravian Realm’ is neither contemporary nor even recorded, though the Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogennetos mentioned Great Moravia, Μεγάλη Μοραβία, in his De administrando imperio. The author followed the ancient geo­graphical termino­logy where ‘great’, when attributed to the name of a people, place, or country, meant either ‘older’ or ‘foreign’, whereas ‘lesser’ or ‘minor’ stood for ‘belonging to us’, especially in the case of the Roman Empire. One may consider Roman Asia Minor in contrast to the continent of Asia, or the Roman provinces Germaniae as opposed to Germania Magna between the Rhine and Vistula Rivers.42 Zwentibald I was the first and last Moravian ruler whose character and personality is known in some detail, although the information is mainly provided by his enemies. Since a barbarian did not owe to foreigners any kind of truth or loyalty, Zwentibald was naturally, as required by traditional moralizing ethno­graphy, insidious and deceitful. He betrayed his own uncle as well as the Frankish-Bavarian rulers to whom he had seemingly subordinated himself and his realm. But even Methodios’s disciples despised him, since he sided with the Latin clergy. In 880, he urged the pope to ordain his protégé, the Aleman Wiching, as bishop of Nitra, who gave his nominal superior Archbishop Methodios a hard time.43 Therefore, according to Methodios’s disciples, Zwentibald’s religion was a corrupted Christianity and heretical. They said that a barbarian like him did not have the intellectual capacity  41 As to Annales Fuldenses: Continuatio Ratisbonensis, a. 884, ed. by Kurze, p. 113, and Regino of Prum, Chronica, a. 890, ed. by Kurze, p. 134, see Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, pp. 317–21.  42 Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum, ed. by Wolfram, pp. 307–08. Wolfram, Salzburg, Bayern, Österreich, pp. 87–100.  43 Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, pp. 264–66. Dvornik, Byzantine Missions among the Slavs, pp. 167–70. As to Wiching, see Fleckenstein, Die Hofkapelle, i, p. 204.

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to understand Christo­logical problems, let alone solve them. When they introduced a problem of theirs to Zwentibald, ‘the dux could understand hardly a part of what he was told, since he was totally unable to understand any divine issue; he had been — according to the barbarian custom — brought up like an insensate animal, and, as said before, he had lost all his intellectual abilities due to impure lust’.44 Zwentibald admitted his ignorance and wanted to solve the dispute in a ‘sportsmanlike’ way: he promised victory to the side that would be the first to step forward and swear to tell the truth. In fact, according to the criteria of his time, this Moravian was a very successful prince. He extended his rule over what is now Moravia, Bohemia, Slovakia, southern Poland, northern Hungary, and north-eastern Lower Austria. His realm consisted, however, of a chain of tributary principalities that could be depicted as a continuous area only by a modern carto­grapher. Zwentibald as well as his predecessor owned a royal treasure, gaza regia. The prince’s executive staff included many foreigners and deserters from the Frankish kingdoms, even a Venetian presbyter. In 900, the Salzburg archbishop Thietmar tried to answer to a justified reproach criticizing the East Frankish king Arnulf for having summoned Hungarian horsemen against Zwentibald in 892 and claimed that the Moravians had received Hungarian peoples much earlier. Among Zwentibald’s warriors in 882 archers were mentioned who were probably already Hungarians. Historical sources mention many Moravian castles that stayed impregnable as long as their defenders knew for what and for whom they fought. Rastislav’s sole tactic was to withdraw into those fortifications, there to outlast Frankish-Bavarian attacks and to assault enemies on their way back. Instead, Zwentibald went on the offensive. This dark record of mutual brutality did and still does easily hide that Zwentibald became Arnulf`s son`s godfather in 870 and probably helped Arnulf to become king in fall 887 as he might have already supported Arnulf ’s father Carloman in Italy in 877.45 Prominent Moravians had once had good horses and first-rate weapons, as illustrated by a tragicomic story that, in the manner of Smetana’s ‘The Bartered Bride’, could be called ‘The Bartered Bride’s Wedding Party’. Moravian warriors who were to pick up a Bohemian princess and accompany her to the Moravian bridegroom ended up involved in an ambush that their Bohemian future brothers-in-law had prepared against the Bavarians. There the Moravians were attacked by the Bavarians, and in a stampede they left their equipment behind. The Bavarians captured no fewer than 644 horses with halters and saddles and the same number of shields (which were probably attached to the saddles). Needless to say, the complete equipment also included a spear and

 44 Vita Clementis, 10–11, ed. by Bartoňková and Večerka, pp. 200–202. Cf. Vita Clementis, 5, ed. by Bartoňková and Večerka, pp. 189–91. See also Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, p. 319.  45 Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, pp. 318–20. As to Annales Fuldenses, aa. 877, 887, ed. by Kurze, pp. 90, 105–06, see MacLean, Kingship and Politics, p. 193 with n. 137. Cf. Dopsch, ‘Arnolf und der Südosten’, p. 167 with n. 78.

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a sword — the sword was either of Moravian or (in spite of the Carolingian embargo) Frankish-Bavarian origin.46 Zwentibald I died in 894. In his last years he was still able to successfully resist a Frankish-Bulgarian coalition. He was the first, but also the last, Moravian prince to be succeeded by his own sons. Zwentibald evidently foresaw the looming danger of a fratricidal war. Even his contemporaries knew that he urged his sons to stay together and keep peace with each other, which, however, was to no avail. The downfall of Rastislav’s and Zwentibald’s creation could not be halted.47

Basileios I (r. 867–886) The Byzantine emperor Basileios I was of very low origins and came from the area around Edirne/Adrianople. He managed to make it to the top by entering the imperial comitatus where he soon rose to become one of the closest followers of Michael III, married the emperor’s mistress, and plotted his benefactor’s violent death.48 Despite these horrible beginnings, Basileios continued his predecessor’s policy with regard to the mission to the Slavs and, in particular, supported Methodios, to whom he gave a triumphal reception in Constantinople in the winter of 882–883.49 In 872 as well as 873, Basileios sent high-ranking envoys with gifts and letters to Louis the German, who received them in Regensburg and returned them honourably.50 But none of Louis’s sons are known to have received Byzantine legations nor sent envoys to Constantinople. Only Leon VI, the son more likely of Michael III than of his successor Basileios I, renewed the relations with the ‘king of Bavaria’, who by then was already Arnulf of Carinthia (r. 887–899). In 894 and 896, Byzantine envoys again showed up in Regensburg, that is to say, at a time when Byzantium was subject to heavy warfare with the Bulgarians. Constantinople even enlisted Hungarian horsemen, who in 896 attacked the enemies in the rear. In turn, the Bulgarians pushed the Pechenegs to attack the Hungarians so that they could overcome both the Byzantines and their nomad allies. Since both sides suffered heavy losses, they were all prepared to conclude a peace treaty.51 As the Annales Fuldenses (Continuatio Ratisbonensis) give a detailed description of the Bulgarian Pyrrhic victory, it is highly probable

 46 As to Annales Fuldenses, a. 871, ed. by Kurze, pp. 74–75, see Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, p. 320 with n. 233.  47 Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, pp. 318 and 320.  48 Lübke, Fremde im östlichen Europa, p. 286.  49 Ostrogorsky, Geschichte des byzantinischen Staates, pp. 193–96. Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, p. 265 with n. 308.  50 Annales Fuldenses, aa. 872 and 873, ed. by Kurze, pp. 75, 81.  51 Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, pp. 178–79; and Ostrogorsky, Geschichte des byzantinischen Staates, pp. 212–16.

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that the second legation of 896 informed Arnulf and his entourage about the events, whereas the first of 894 might simply have asked for help. The ‘king of Bavaria’ had himself used Hungarian warbands against the Moravians already in 892, but seemed to have learned his lesson. In fact, he concluded a peace treaty with the Moravians, increased the security measures at the Pannonian front, and reorganized it.52

Boris I/Michael (r. 852–889) The Bulgarians appeared on the European scene already at the end of the fifth century.53 The Ostrogothic king Theoderic the Great (451–526) was praised for having wounded a Bulgarian khan in a duel.54 A Visigothic commander of Septimania called Bulgar warned a Frankish bishop against an Avar invasion in 610–612.55 After the Avar-Slavic siege of Constantinople had ended in disaster in 626, several peoples deserted from the Avar Empire, rebelled, or left it for good. In 631–632, about nine thousand Bulgarians asked the Bavarians for asylum, first with success, but then the Frankish king Dagobert I (r. 623–639) ordered that they be all killed. Whether and to what extent the Bavarians obeyed the order or not, a Bulgarian group and their prince Alciocus, ‘Six Arrows’, sought refuge with the Alpine Slavs,56 stayed there for a generation, and finally settled in Longobard Benevento.57 The Bulgarians then disappeared again from the Frankish-Bavarian horizon, in spite of the shaping of a strong Bulgarian khanate on the Lower Danube.58 Around 800, however, the Carolingians discovered that their easy victory over the decaying Avar Empire opened a Pandora’s box, and behind these conquered peoples another strong power, the Bulgarians, appeared on the scene. As long as Charlemagne lived, this new-old people did not cause any major trouble. Instead, the Frankish king took advantage of the Bulgarians, who unintentionally accelerated the Byzantine recognition of his emperorship. In 810, Charlemagne resigned his rights over Venice and the coastal area to Byzantium, while Emperor Nikephoros I seemed to have been prepared to  52 Annales Fuldenses: Continuatio Ratisbonensis, aa. 894, 896, ed. by Kurze, pp. 125, 129–30.  53 Geary, The Myth of Nations, p. 149; Ziemann, Vom Wandervolk zur Grossmacht, pp. 345–412; and Gjuzelev, Forschungen zur Geschichte Bulgariens, pp. 28–31.  54 As to Ennodius, Panegyricus dictus clementissimo regi Theoderico, c. 5 (19), ed. by Vogel, p. 205, see Wolfram, Die Goten, p. 480 n. 15; and Ziemann, Vom Wandervolk zur Grossmacht, p. 45.  55 Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, p. 79.  56 Fredegar, Chronicae, iv. 72, ed. by Krusch, p. 157. Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, p. 79.  57 Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, v. 29, ed. by Bethmann and Waitz, p. 154. Pohl, The Avars, pp. 318–23 and 372–76; and Pohl, Die Awaren, pp. 268–70 and 308–12. See also Wolfram, Salzburg, Bayern, Österreich, pp. 44–45 with nn. 169–73; and Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, pp. 80–81.  58 Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, esp. pp. 79–81; and Ziemann, Vom Wandervolk zur Grossmacht, esp. pp. 161–80.

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recognize Charlemagne as emperor. But in 811, Khan Krum won the battle on the Ticha River, and the Byzantines suffered a heavy defeat and lost their emperor. Frankish envoys, who at this time stayed in Constantinople, brought the news of the disaster and the name of the Bulgarians back home with them. In 812, they were followed by Byzantine envoys who, on the orders of Emperor Michael I (r. 811–813), came to Aachen and recognized Charlemagne as emperor according to Byzantine rites.59 In 814, Louis the Pious inherited the Bulgarian situation from his father without being well informed about it. In 824, an embassy of Khan Omurtag (814–831) arrived in Bavaria, probably with letters written in Greek,60 and wished to negotiate a peace treaty. This offer took the Western emperor and his entourage by utter surprise. Nobody knew what to think of this or of the envoys, whose like had never been seen before in the Frankish empire. At least Louis the Pious ordered Machelm to join the envoys on their way back home.61 This Bavarian nobleman with a prestigious name had to find out more about the Bulgarians. In fact, Khan Omurtag’s initiative made perfect sense. In 818, the Timočani, a Slavic people on the Timok, a right-hand tributary to the Danube in what is now Serbia, left the khanate. They finally joined Liudewit of Siscia/Sisak, whose rebellion against the Frankish empire was suppressed in 823. The Praedenecenti or Danubian Abodrites on the left-hand bank wanted to follow the Timočani in 824. At the Frankish imperial court, their envoys met another Bulgarian legation, who urged the return of the refugees.62 The Franks did not take the Bulgarians seriously enough or change their attitude despite more Bulgarian envoys showing up in the next couple of years. Finally, in 826, Omurtag lost his temper and gave the Western emperor an ultimatum on whether to agree on a ‘border’, rather a zone of influence, between the khanate and the Frankish empire, or war. Louis the Pious still did not believe that any danger was just around the corner, and the two prefects of the Eastern Marches, Gerold II and Balderic, encouraged their lord’s indolence by belittling the Bulgarian threat. In 827, Bulgarian warriors came up the Drava River by ship and replaced the Slavic elite with their own people. In the next year, the young Bavarian king Louis the German hit back. In 829, it was the Bulgarians’ turn, and they repeated their invasion of 827. Consequently, the Bavarian-Bulgarian tensions lingered until 832, when a formal peace treaty was concluded, which obviously established stable zones of influence between

 59 As to Annales regni Francorum, aa. 810–812, ed. by Kurze, pp. 133–34, 136, see the survey by Schwarz, ‘Die Südostgrenze des Karolingerreiches’, esp. p. 12; and Ziemann, Vom Wandervolk zur Grossmacht, pp. 247–57. See also Goldberg, Struggle for Empire, pp. 48–49.  60 Hannick, ‘Die byzantinischen Missionen’, pp. 302 and 311.  61 As to Annales regni Francorum, a. 824, ed. by Kurze, p. 164, see Schwarz, ‘Die Südostgrenze des Karolingerreiches’, p. 13, and Störmer, Früher Adel, i, p. 105, and ii, p. 398 (Machelm).  62 Annales regni Francorum, a. 824, ed. by Kurze, pp. 165–66. Pohl, The Avars, p. 394; and Pohl, Die Awaren, p. 327. Ziemann, Vom Wandervolk zur Grossmacht, pp. 312–14. Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, pp. 241–46, 247.

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the two powers. Even the flight of the former dux of Nitra Priwina and his people from Bavarian territory to Bulgaria and his return sometime after 833 did not disturb the agreement that was renewed in 852.63 It was no more than a hiccup that in 853 the West Frankish king Charles the Bald bribed Bulgarians to attack Bavaria, which ‘with God’s help’ failed.64 From the 860s, the Bavarian-Bulgarian rivalry was replaced by cooperation and coalition. Khan Boris/Michael tried to establish a Bulgarian Church independent of Constantinople and sought Western support. The Christianization of the former steppe nomads began pretty much at the same time that Konstantinos and Methodios set out for their mission to Moravia. This principality was about to become a powerful body politic and therefore the common target for the former enemies. Probably in 863 rather than 864, Boris travelled to Tulln, either the still-existing Lower Austrian town or the right-hand tributary to the Danube, in order to meet King Louis the German. Again both sides wanted to conclude a lasting peace treaty, and they discussed the looming war against the Moravians and the preparations for the khan’s baptism.65 Probably during the joint offensive against the Moravians in 864, the Bulgarians were attacked from the rear by the Byzantines. Boris had to give in, was baptized in Constantinople according to the Eastern rites, and took the name of his godfather, Michael III.66 Despite this backlash, Boris/ Michael did not stop looking in both directions. In 866, he sent ambassadors to Regensburg and asked Louis the German for ‘appropriate preachers of the Christian religion’.67 Likewise, the coalition against the Moravians lasted too. In 883, the Wilhelmines, Arnulf ’s feudal vassals, incited the Bulgarians to attack Zwentibald’s realm.68 In 892, King Arnulf sent envoys to renew the peace and to ask the Bulgarians to stop any salt trade with the Moravians. The Frankish ambassadors could not use the regular Danube route, since Zwentibald blocked it. So they went down the Odra and the Ku(l)pa Rivers to the Sava River, where they embarked and continued their trip to Bulgaria by ship. In the following year, Arnulf invaded Moravia again, but there is no mention of Bulgarian help.69  63 Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, pp. 157–59, 166. See Annales regni Francorum, aa. 827–29, ed. by Kurze, pp. 173, 174, 176–77; and Annales Fuldenses, aa. 845, 852, ed. by Kurze, pp. 35, 42. Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum, c. 10, ed. by Wolfram, pp. 73–75, and 174–76.  64 Annales Bertiniani, a. 853, ed. by Waitz, p. 43. Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, pp. 165–66.  65 Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, p. 431 n. 244. Cf. below, note 70 (fiscus).  66 Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, pp. 167–68, and Mitterauer, Ahnen und Heilige, p. 129 with n. 17. Cf. Dvornik, Byzantine Missions among the Slavs, p. 192 with n. 1.  67 Annales Fuldenses, a. 866, ed. by Kurze, p. 65; cf. Regino of Prum, Chronica, a. 868, ed. by Kurze, pp. 95–96. Ziemann, Vom Wandervolk zur Grossmacht, pp. 389–90. As to Louis the German`s reaction, see Löwe, ‘Ermenrich von Passau’. See also the important comparative study by Mayr-Harting, ‘The Conversion to Christianity’.  68 Annales Fuldenses: Continuatio Ratisbonensis, a. 884, ed. by Kurze, p. 112.  69 Annales Fuldenses: Continuatio Ratisbonensis, aa. 892, 893, ed. by Kurze, pp. 121–22. Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, pp. 256–59.

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King of Waïoúri: Charles the Fat (r. 876/82–887) or Arnulf of Carinthia (r. 876/87–899)? It was only after the death of his elder brother Louis the Younger in 882 that Charles the Fat became king of Bavaria, too. In this capacity, he tried to establish good relations with Zwentibald, who helped him reinstate Arbo as margrave of the three Danube counties. In 884, Charles the Fat, who had been emperor since 881, met Zwentibald at the Little Tulln River,70 concluded another mock peace treaty with the Moravian ruler without having been at war with him, and became his lord. Likewise, Brazlavo, the dux of Siscia/Sisak, attended the meeting and also swore the oath of allegiance to the Frankish king. That was all Charles the Fat cared for in the Eastern Marches in 884. He left his unloved nephew Arnulf alone to face all the new and old problems and continued his symbolic policy in Italy.71 There is no mention that Charles the Fat exchanged embassies with either Byzantium or the Bulgarians. So in and soon after 885, the author of the Short Life was at a loss for the name of the real kralЬ nĕmečъ skymЬ ljudemЬ and left it out.72 Instead, Arnulf of Carinthia took after his grandfather Louis the German and at the end of 887 became a real king of Franco-Bavaria, including its Eastern Marches. His surname of ‘Carinthia’ is as much of an anachronism as that of his grandfather’s ‘the German’, since both names did not yet exist in the ninth century.73 All the same, posterity was not completely wrong by coining those epithets. Already contemporaries called Louis the German’s East Frankish kingdom by the ancient geo­graphical term Germania, since it lay mainly east of the Rhine River.74 To be sure, Carantania, where Arnulf spent most of his youth and early manhood, is not Carinthia, but its former region was the most important part of Carantania.75 Arnulf was born around 850; his parents, who did not live together in a legitimate marriage, were the short-reigning Bavarian king Carloman (r. 876–880) and the noblewoman Liutswind, who probably belonged to the mighty family of the Liutpoldings.76 Quite a while after Arnulf ’s death, Regino of Prum claimed that he was named after the founder of the Carolingian dynasty, Arnulf of Metz.77 Another

 70 Cf. MacLean, Kingship and Politics, pp. 134–44, and Wolfram, Salzburg, Bayern, Österreich, pp. 118–19, 310–11. Annales Fuldenses: Continuatio Ratisbonensis, a. 884, ed. by Kurze, p. 113: The Tulln area was the only known royal fiscus in the Bavarian Eastern Marches: see Diplomata Ludowici Germanici, 96, ed. by Kehr, p. 139.  71 Annales Fuldenses: Continuatio Ratisbonensis, a. 884, ed. by Kurze, p. 113.  72 See above, notes 22–24.  73 Cf. Dopsch, ‘Arnolf und der Südosten’, pp. 144–54.  74 Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, p. 323.  75 Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum, ed. by Wolfram, pp. 120–25.  76 Dopsch, ‘Arnolf und der Südosten’, pp. 150–51; and Kasten, ‘Chancen und Schicksale’, pp. 18, 49–52.  77 Regino of Prum, Chronica, a. 880, ed. by Kurze, p. 116.

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illegitimate Arnulf was Louis the Pious’s son, count of Sens.78 At first it seemed that Arnulf of Carinthia had to be satisfied with being count of Carantania and dux of Carolingian Pannonia. His uncles Louis the Younger and Charles the Fat were prepared to guarantee the dominion that his father, Carloman, gave to Arnulf in 876 at the latest, but blocked all his attempts to lay claim to Bavaria itself. Charles the Fat, however, could not avoid the fact that the Bavarians he enlisted for his war against the Northmen considered Arnulf their princeps and were sure after the disaster of Asselt in 882 that this man was the last living Carolingian who really counted.79 At the end of the year 887, Arnulf deposed Charles the Fat and succeeded him as East Frankish king with his power still based in Bavaria and its Eastern Marches.80 Thus Constantinople again became interested in this new powerful Bavarian king. The last Greek envoys had been received by Louis the German in Regensburg in 872 and 873.81 Now Arnulf was the addressee of high-ranking Byzantine ambassadors, who in 894 and 896 might have presented letters addressed to the ‘king of Waïoúri’ that were sealed with two solidi bulls.82 Again the Bulgarian question was on the agenda. Arnulf had renewed the old peace with the khanate in 892,83 and in 896 a Byzantine-Bulgarian war ended with both sides completely exhausted.84 Arnulf died at the end of the year 899,85 the Hungarians became a Europe-wide problem, and Constantinople forgot Bavaria and its ‘king’, the more so as it was Saxony that now stood for the whole East Frankish kingdom. Instead, the Western memory of Arnulf survived, if ambivalently. He was the one who had committed ‘an enormous crime’ by bringing the Hungarians to Europe. In fact, it was Zwentibald I who first used Hungarian archers against the Bavarians.86 On the other hand, Arnulf was the great victor over the Northmen near Leuven on the Dyle in 891.87 But the chroniclers overlooked  78 Schieffer, Die Karolinger, p. 144.  79 Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, pp. 165 and 257–59. Annales Fuldenses: Continuatio Ratisbonensis, a. 882, ed. by Kurze, pp. 107–08.  80 Schmid, ‘Arnolf, Bayern und Regensburg’, pp. 194–206.  81 Annales Fuldenses, aa. 872, 873, ed. by Kurze, pp. 75, 81.  82 Annales Fuldenses: Continuatio Ratisbonensis, aa. 894, 896, ed. by Kurze, pp. 125, 130. See above, notes 1–3.  83 Annales Fuldenses: Continuatio Ratisbonensis, a. 892, ed. by Kurze, pp. 121–22.  84 Annales Fuldenses: Continuatio Ratisbonensis, a. 896, ed. by Kurze, pp. 129–30.  85 Böhmer and Mühlbacher, Regesta Imperii, n. 1955 b. Cf. e.g. Annales Fuldenses: Continuationes Altahenses, a. 900, ed. by Kurze, pp. 134–35.  86 Liudprand, ‘Antapodosis’, i. 36, ed. by Becker, p. 27. Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum, ed. by Wolfram, pp. 240–43. Dopsch, ‘Arnolf und der Südosten’, pp. 173–83. Pohl, The Avars, p. 392, followed a hint of Max Diesenberger, in Vienna, and corrected the view that Annales Bertiniani, a. 862, ed. by Waitz, p. 60, already mentions Hungarians attacking the East Frankish kingdom. Instead, these ‘Hunnish peoples’ were Bulgarians. Cf. above, note 64.  87 Annales Fuldenses: Continuatio Ratisbonensis, a. 891, ed. by Kurze, pp. 119–20. Regino of Prum, Chronica, aa. 890, 891, ed. by Kurze, pp. 134–35, 137–38. As to Arnulf`s afterlife, see e.g. Otto of Freising, Chronica sive Historia, vi. 7–13, ed. by Hofmeister, pp. 269–73.

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Arnulf ’s real importance. His policy of the ‘Small Space’ had a future and was especially to the benefit of Bavaria and its Eastern Marches. He was supported by the family of his mother, the head of which was the dux Boemorum and Margrave Liutpold, a man of almost princely significance.88 Consequently, Liutpold’s son Arnulf (r. 907–937) became the first high medi­eval duke of the Bavarians. He ‘was descended from emperors and kings’, and obviously named after Arnulf of Carinthia.89 The duke of the Bavarians was the first, and for a long time only, Western prince who was able to conquer Hungarian raiders. He was lord over both bishops and counts such that his Bavarian realm was taken for a regnum Teutonicorum.90 And Arnulf was ‘by the grace of God’ also the lord of Bavaria’s ‘neighbouring regions’,91 one of which had been called Ostarrîchi ‘in the vernacular’, ‘since ancient times’ before Austria’s beginnings.92

 88 See especially, Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum, ed. by Wolfram, p. 286.  89 Reindel, Die bayerischen Luitpoldinger, p. 112 n. 56.  90 Wolfram, ‘Bavaria in the Tenth and Early Eleventh Centuries’, pp. 301–03. Little wonder that Johannes Fried once raised the question if the king of Waïoúri could have been the Bavarian duke Arnulf (r. 907–937): see Wolfram, Salzburg, Bayern, Österreich, p. 60 n. 303. As to the term regnum Teutonicorum in this context, see Wolfram, Gotische Studien, pp. 260–61.  91 Wolfram, Salzburg, Bayern, Österreich, pp. 386–91.  92 Wolfram, Salzburg, Bayern, Österreich, pp. 84–86. Diplomata Ottonis III, 232, ed. by Sickel, p. 647: ‘vulgari vocabulo’.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Annales Bertiniani, ed. by Georg Waitz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum, 5 (Hanover: Hahn, 1883) Annales Fuldenses, ed. by Friedrich Kurze, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum, 7 (Hanover: Hahn, 1891) Annales Fuldenses: Continuatio Ratisbonensis, ed. by Friedrich Kurze, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum, 7 (Hanover: Hahn, 1891), pp. 107–31 Annales Fuldenses: Continuationes Altahenses, ed. by Friedrich Kurze, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum, 7 (Hanover: Hahn, 1891), pp. 131–35 Annales regni Francorum, ed. by Friedrich Kurze, Monumenta Germaniae Histo­rica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum, 6 (Hanover: Hahn, 1895) Brevis vita ss. Constantini et Methodii, ed. by Dagmar Bartoňková and Radoslav Večerka, Magnae Moraviae fontes historici, ii: Textus bio­graphici, hagio­graphici, liturgici, 2nd rev. edn (Praha: Univ. J. E. Purkyně, 2010), pp. 164–66 Canon Hludowici regis, ed. by Alfred Boretius and Victor Krause, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Capitularia regum Francorum, 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1897), pp. 185–91 Constantine Porphyrogennetos, De ceremoniis aulae Byzantinae libri duo, ed. by Johann Jakob Reiske, 2 vols (Bonn: Impensis Ed. Weberi, 1829–1830) Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum: Das Weißbuch der Salzburger Kirche über die erfolgreiche Mission in Karantanien und Pannonien, ed. by Herwig Wolfram, 2nd and 3rd rev. edn (Ljubljana: Hermagoras, 2012/13) Diplomata Ludowici Germanici, ed. by Paul Kehr, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Diplomata regum Germaniae ex stirpe Karolinorum, 1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1934), pp. 1–234 Diplomata Ottonis III., ed. by Theodore Sickel, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Diplomata regum et imperatorum Germaniae, 2.2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1893) Ennodius, Panegyricus dictus clementissimo regi Theoderico, in Magni Felicis Ennodi Opera, ed. by Friedrich Vogel, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Auctores Antiquissimi, 7 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1885), pp. 203–14 Erchempert, Historia Langobardorum Beneventanorum, ed. by Georg H. Pertz and Georg Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum (Hanover: Hahn, 1878), pp. 234–64 Fredegar, Chronicarum quae dicuntur Fredegarii Scholastici libri IV, ed. by Bruno Krusch, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1888), pp. 1–193 Liudprand, ‘Antapodosis’, in Liudprandi Opera, ed. by Joseph Becker, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum, 41 (Hanover: Hahn, 1915), pp. 1–158

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Otto of Freising, Chronica sive Historia de duabus civitatibus, ed. by Adolf Hof­ meister, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum, 45 (Hanover: Hahn, 1912), pp. 1–457 Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Ludwig Bethmann and Georg Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum (Hanover: Hahn, 1878), pp. 45–187 Regino of Prum, Chronica, ed. by Friedrich Kurze, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum, 50 (Hanover: Hahn, 1890) Vita Clementis, ed. by Dagmar Bartoňková and Radoslav Večerka, Magnae Moraviae fontes historici, ii: Textus bio­graphici, hagio­graphici, liturgici, 2nd rev. edn (Praha: Univ. J. E. Purkyně, 2010), pp. 179–209 Vita Methodii, ed. by Dagmar Bartoňková and Radoslav Večerka, Magnae Moraviae fontes historici, ii: Textus bio­graphici, hagio­graphici, liturgici, 2nd rev. edn (Praha: Univ. J. E. Purkyně, 2010), pp. 114–40 Secondary Works Althoff, Gerd, ‘Zur Bedeutung der Bündnisse Svatopluks von Mähren mi Franken’, in Symposium Methodianum: Beiträge der Internationalen Tagung in Regensburg 17–24. 4. 1985 zum Gedenken an den 1000. Todestag des hl. Method, ed. by Klaus Trost, Ekkehard Völkl, and Erwin Wedel, Selecta Slavica, 13 (Neuried: Hieronymus, 1998), pp. 13–21 Angenendt, Arnold, Kaiserherrschaft und Königstaufe, Arbeiten zur Frühmittelalterforschung, 15 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1984) Böhmer, Johann Friedrich, and Engelbert Mühlbacher, Regesta Imperii, i: Die Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter den Karolingern, 751–918, 2nd edn (Innsbruck: Verlag der Wagner’schen Universitätis-Buchhandlung, 1908) Curta, Florin, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–1250 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) Dopsch, Heinz, ‘Arnolf und der Südosten — Karantanien, Mähren, Ungarn’, in Kaiser Arnolf: Das ostfränkische Reich am Ende des 9. Jahrhunderts, Regensburger Kolloquium 9.–11.12.1999, ed. by Franz Fuchs and Peter Schmid, Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte, Beiheft 19 (Munich: Beck, 2002), pp. 143–86 Dvornik, Francis, Byzantine Missions among the Slavs (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1970) Fichtenau, Henrich, Beiträge zur Mediävistik, 3 vols (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1986) Fleckenstein, Josef, Die Hofkapelle der deutschen Könige, Schriften der MGH, 16.1 and 2 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1959) Geary, Patrick J., ‘The Meaning of Religion and Conversion in the Early Middle Ages’, in Writing History: Identity, Conflict, and Memory in the Middle Ages (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 2012), pp. 33–43 —— , The Myth of Nations: The Medi­eval Origins of Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002)

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Gjuzelev, Vassil, Forschungen zur Geschichte Bulgariens im Mittelalter, Miscellanea Bulgarica, 3 (Vienna: Bulgarisches Forschungsinstitut in Österreich, 1986) Goldberg, Eric, Struggle for Empire: Kingship and Conflict under Louis the German, 817–76 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006) Grivec, Franciscus, and Franciscus Tomšič, eds, Constantinus et Methodius Thessalonicenses, Fontes, Radovi Staroslavenskog Instituta, Knjiga, 4 (Zagreb: Staroslavenski Inst., 1960) Hannick, Christian, ‘Die byzantinischen Missionen’, in Die Kirche des frühen Mittelalters, ed. by Knut Schäferdiek, Kirchengeschichte als Missionsgeschichte, 2.1 (Munich: Christian Kaiser Verlag, 1978), pp. 279–359 Hunger, Herbert, Die hochsprachliche profane Literatur der Byzantiner, Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, 12.5, 2 vols (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1978) Kasten, Brigitte, ‘Chancen und Schicksale “unehelicher” Karolinger im 9. Jahrhundert’, in Kaiser Arnold: Das ostfränkische Reich am Ende des 9. Jahrhunderts, Regensburger Kolloquium 9.–11.12.1999, ed. by Franz Fuchs and Peter Schmid, Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte, Beiheft 19 (Munich: Beck, 2002), pp. 17–52 Löwe, Heinz, ‘Ermenrich von Passau, Gegner des Methodius: Versuch eines Persönlichkeitsbildes’, in Salzburg und die Slawenmission zum 1100: Todestag des hl. Methodius, ed. by Heinz Dopsch (Salzburg: Gesellschaft für Salzburger Landeskunde, 1986), pp. 221–41 Lübke, Christian, Fremde im östlichen Europa: Von Gesellschaften ohne Staat zu verstaatlichten Gesellschaften (9.–11. Jahrhundert), Ostmitteleuropa in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, 23 (Co­logne: Böhlau Verlag, 2001) MacLean, Simon, Kingship and Politics in the Late Ninth Century: Charles the Fat and the End of the Carolingian Empire, Cambridge Studies in Medi­eval Life and Thought, 4th series, 57 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) Mayr-Harting, Henry, ‘The Conversion to Christianity: The Bulgarians and the Anglo-Saxons’, in Religion and Society in the Medi­eval West, 600–1200: Selected Studies (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 1–29 Mitterauer, Michael, Ahnen und Heilige: Namengebung in der europäischen Geschichte (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1993) Nelson, Janet L., ‘Review: Wolfram, Herwig, Die Geburt Mitteleuropas: Geschichte Österreichs vor seiner Entstehung, 378–907’, English Historical Review, 106 (1991), 430 Ohnsorge, Werner, ‘Drei Deperdita der byzantinischen Kaiserkanzlei und die Frankenadressen im Zeremonienbuch des Konstantinos Porphyrogennetos’, in Abendland und Byzanz: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Geschichte der byzantinischabendländischen Beziehungen und des Kaisertums, ed. by Werner Ohnsorge (Darmstadt: H. Gentner, 1958), pp. 227–54 Ostrogorsky, Georg, Geschichte des byzantinischen Staates, Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, 12.1.2, 3rd edn (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1953) Pohl, Walter, The Avars: A Steppe Empire in Central Europe, 567–822 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018) —— , Die Awaren: Ein Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa 567–822 n. Chr., 3rd edn (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1998)

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Reindel, Kurt, Die bayerischen Luitpoldinger, 893–989: Sammlung und Erläuterung der Quellen, Quellen und Erörterung zur bayerischen Geschichte, n.s., 11 (Munich: Beck, 1953) Schieffer, Rudolf, Die Karolinger, 4th edn, Urban-Taschenbücher, 411 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2006) Schmid, Peter, ‘Arnolf, Bayern und Regensburg’, in Kaiser Arnold: Das ostfränkische Reich am Ende des 9. Jahrhunderts, Regensburger Kolloquium 9.–11.12.1999, ed. by Franz Fuchs and Peter Schmid, Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte, Beiheft 19 (Munich: Beck, 2002), pp. 187–220 Schwarz, Andreas, ‘Die Südostgrenze des Karolingerreiches und die ersten Kontakte zwischen dem Ostfränkischen Reich und den Bulgaren in der ersten Hälfte des 9. Jahrhunderts’, in Problemat istok-zapad: Istoričeska Perspektiva, ed. by Tamara Stoilova and others (Sofia: Paradigma, 2003), pp. 9–16 Störmer, Wilhelm, Früher Adel: Studien zur politischen Führungsschicht im fränkischdeutschen Reich vom 8. bis 11. Jahrhundert, Mono­graphien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 6, 2 vols (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1973) Treitinger, Otto, Die oströmische Kaiser- und Reichsidee nach ihrer Gestaltung im höfischen Zeremoniell, 2nd edn (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1946) Vavřínek, Vladimír, ‘The Puzzle of the Cyrillo-Methodian Mission’, Byzantinoslavica, 75 (2017), 70–98 Wattenbach, Wilhelm, Wilhelm Levison, and Heinz Löwe, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter Vorzeit und Karolinger, vol. iv (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1963) Wolfram, Herwig, ‘Bavaria in the Tenth and Early Eleventh Centuries’, in The New Cambridge Medi­eval History, iii: c. 900–c. 1024, ed. by Timothy Reuter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 293–309 —— , ‘The Bavarian Mission to Pannonia in the 9th Century’, in The Cyril and Methodius Mission and Europe, ed. by Pavel Kouřil (Brno: The Institute of Archaeo­logy of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 2015), pp. 28–33 —— , Die Geburt Mitteleuropas: Geschichte Österreichs vor seiner Entstehung, 378–907 (Berlin: Siedler, 1987) —— , Die Goten: Von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des 6. Jahrhunderts. Entwurf einer historischen Ethno­graphie, 5th edn (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2009) —— , Gotische Studien: Volk und Herrschaft im frühen Mittelalter (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2005) —— , Grenzen und Räume: Geschichte Österreichs von seiner Entstehung, 378–907 (Vienna: Ueberreuter, 1995; 2nd edn, 2003) —— , Intitulatio II: Lateinische Herrscher- und Fürstentitel im neunten und zehnten Jahrhundert, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, suppl. 24 (Vienna: Hermann Böhlau, 1973) —— , ‘The Moravian Realm and the Bavarian (Eastern) March’, in Great Moravia and the Beginnings of Christianity, ed. by Pavel Kouřil (Brno: The Institute

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of Archaeo­logy of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 2014), pp. 155–59 —— , Salzburg, Bayern, Österreich: Die Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum und die Quellen ihrer Zeit, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, suppl. 31 (Vienna: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1995) Wood, Ian, The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe, 400–1050 (Harlow: Longman, 2001) Ziemann, Daniel, Vom Wandervolk zur Grossmacht: Die Entstehung der Bulgaren im frühen Mittelalter, 7.–9. Jahrhundert, Kölner historische Abhandlungen, 43 (Co­logne: Böhlau, 2007)

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Inheritance and Identity

Edward M. School m an

Inheriting Identity and Constructing History in Medi­eval Ravenna Introduction and Context The early medi­eval documentation of the development and position of the urban elites of Ravenna is perhaps one of the most complete for medi­eval Italy. Through textual and documentary evidence, the contours of the composition of the local elite, their persistence and change, can be traced through dramatic political shifts. Sources like Cassiodorus’s Variae illuminate some of the dynamics of the elites of the city when it served as the capital for the Gothic kingdom, and surviving contemporary papyri documents offer glimpses into the changing administrative and financial roles of new arrivals in the succeeding Byzantine exarchate based in Ravenna. Further still, following the settlement of the Lombards in Italy, Ravenna became the central location for those who served in various local military units, maintained an independent set of notarial and scribal practices directly descended from late Roman legal traditions, and witnessed the rise in secular power of its bishops.1 Given Ravenna’s especially long Late Antiquity, from the fifth century to the middle of the eighth century, and the wealth of its surviving monuments, documents, and manu­scripts (which are significantly richer in this period than in neighbouring regions, such as Tuscany), it is no surprise that its history has been thoroughly studied.2 What remains for the later Carolingian and Ottonian periods, the mid-ninth through eleventh centuries, is only now being critically examined through fresh and comprehensive approaches. Studies of documents from outside of Ravenna that supply much-needed

 1 For an overview of research on the urban elites of late antique and early medi­eval Ravenna, see Brown, ‘The Church of Ravenna’; Pietri, ‘Les aristocraties de Ravenne’; Brown, ‘L’aristocrazia di Ravenna’; Schoolman, ‘Local Networks and Witness Subscriptions’; Schoolman, ‘Nobility, Aristocracy, and Status’.  2 Although substantially silent through Late Antiquity, sources that provide the contexts about local rural and urban elites from Tuscany dramatically increase in the eighth century: Cortese, L’aristocrazia toscana.

Edward M. Schoolman ([email protected]) is Associate Professor of Medi­eval History at University of Nevada-Reno. Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe: Studies on Cultural Identity and Power, ed. by Courtney M. Booker, Hans Hummer, and Dana M. Polanichka, CURSOR 41, pp. 107–128 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022)        10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.127578

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insight, such as the papal letters investigated by Maddalena Betti, have revealed episcopal efforts at regulating marriage (and by extension behaviours) among local elites.3 The excavations at the monastery of Saint Severus outside of Ravenna’s former harbour city of Classe, performed under the direction of Andrea Augenti, point to the continued wealth and importance of the city’s monastic institutions into the Ottonian age.4 These studies, and research by other scholars with interests in the history of the city in its Byzantine and post-Byzantine iterations, such as Enrico Cirelli, Thomas Brown, Veronica West-Harling, Salvatore Cosentino, Deborah Deliyannis, and Judith Herrin, have all ventured to clarify various aspects of Ravenna’s history in a period when its political prominence had diminished but its cultural, geo­graphic, and historical situation remained important to its own sense of place, and was projected far beyond it.5 The contribution of this study to the history of Ravenna is to articulate the ways in which the city’s local elites expressed aspects of their heredity and status in documentary sources from the period beginning in 850 and extending into the early eleventh century, roughly contemporary to the late Carolingian age through the end of the Ottonian dynasty, and the reflections of the period’s history in later local accounts. In particular, two features related to Ravenna’s urban elites are captured: first, the development of an ‘ethnogenic’ identity in Ravenna’s ‘new’ aristocracy, and second, the reconstruction of the past and the memory of elite women and their local activities between documentary and literary sources. The dominant sources for these phenomena are the surviving charters created for the church of Ravenna and a few smaller monasteries under its purview, charters that number more than three hundred for this period.6 While these records of legal exchanges represent the closest sources to the self- and group-applied identities of Ravenna’s urban elites, and in particular self-representations about status, the literary sources ultimately complicate how we interpret Ravenna’s local elites, especially when their history is revisited over an extended period of time. An overview of the history of Ravenna’s elites in the periods leading up to the ninth century can be summarized as follows: the development of the military administration in the seventh century based in Ravenna evolved into a landed aristocracy that maintained a figurative notion of its military origins into the early decades of the ninth century, when the major families of Ravenna styled themselves with the titles of dux (of which there were

 3 Betti, ‘Incestuous Marriages’.  4 Augenti and others, ‘Il monastero di San Severo a Classe’.  5 Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity; Brown, ‘The Background of Byzantine Relations with Italy’; Brown, ‘Culture and Society in Ottonian Ravenna’; West-Harling, ‘Proclaiming Power in the City’; Herrin, Ravenna.  6 These have been edited primarily by Ruggero Benericetti, although volume ii of the eleventh-century charters was edited by Massimo Ronchini.

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many simultaneously) and magister militum.7 Like their compatriots in predominantly Lombard territories, they followed conservative patterns of buying, selling, and contesting land, establishing and supporting monastic institutions, and, in periods of political uncertainty, donating land to the church and leasing it back on favourable terms. Given that the entirety of the surviving charters includes the church of Ravenna (or monasteries under its sway) in some way, it is not surprising that we see that particular party as central to these efforts. Beginning in the 840s, Ravenna’s elites took on a special position in Italy, as they and their patrimony had survived intact and unaltered while the efforts of the Carolingians to establish noble Frankish families in Italy by undermining Lombards was well underway.8 Ravenna was not untouched, however, as Franks begin to appear as witnesses and recipients of land in leases and other exchanges in the second half of the ninth century, and the first intermarriages between what might be described as ‘local’ Ravennati and ‘foreign’ Franks become apparent in the documents.9 These new families played an outsized role in the final decades of the ninth century, especially after the archbishop of Ravenna began to enforce strict interpretations on incestuous marriages (or at least those with close degrees of consanguinity). In one case that specifically involved the dux Deusdedit, the archbishop Romanus (878–888) noted that he had prosecuted a large number of couples for their apparent endogamic unions. Betti has argued that in these instances the intention was more than just to uphold a specific version of canon law and reiterate episcopal authority during a time of political uncertainty. Rather, these efforts served to ‘establish political, patrimonial and marital relations with the representatives of the Frankish aristocracy. Probably, the archbishop’s aim was to establish a profitable network of alliances with the leading exponents of the Frankish aristocracy of the Regnum through families who were also mainly large leaseholders of the church of Ravenna’.10 One of the aftereffects of this reform was that, by the tenth century, individuals appeared in the charters from Ravenna who not only bore what are clearly Frankish names, but more importantly described themselves as ‘ex genere francorum’ in the documentation of legal agreements to which they were parties or attested as witnesses. Another effect is that Ravenna, once quite separate from the rest of the kingdom of Italy (at least politically and

 7 Schoolman, ‘Vir Clarissimus and Roman Titles’, p. 22.  8 This was a process that took more than fifty years, beginning with the aftermath of 774 when the ‘Lombard ruling class was gradually removed from public positions; their places were taken by members of the Frankish, Alemannic and Burgundian aristocracy who had come in with the Carolingian conquest’, and extending through 834 when partisans of Lothar followed him to Italy. Delogu, ‘Lombard and Carolingian Italy’, p. 306.  9 Cosentino, ‘Antoponimia, politica e società’, pp. 180–81; Schoolman, ‘Nobility, Aristocracy, and Status’, pp. 223–28.  10 Betti, ‘Incestuous Marriages’, p. 471.

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likely culturally), became embroiled in the factional rivalries that followed the political fissures caused by rival claimants to the throne. By the middle of the tenth century, these issues had come to the fore, but the arrival of Otto I and the eventual deposition of Berenger II restored some of the political stability, though at a steep cost: a few of the most important and wealthy families who had supported rivals of Otto and his proxy in Ravenna, the long-serving archbishop Peter of Bo­logna (927–971), disappeared or were removed from the city, while a number of other families were ‘recast’ and elevated to fill political vacuums. The experiences in Ravenna were not unique, but the city lacked the internal ‘fighting among major aristocratic factions, at least not in the tenth century’, visible elsewhere as in Venice.11 Contemporary to these developments among Ravenna’s elites, the second half of the tenth century witnessed movements to reform Ravenna’s monasteries, notably through the efforts of Romuald of Camaldoli, an indication of both social and political change.12 While Otto I, II, and III frequently used Ravenna as a staging area for other activities in Italy, and because it may have been a symbol for their imperial aspirations, the city regained an elevated status. This was reflected in the foreign (and primarily German) archbishops appointed to Ravenna in the eleventh century and who continued to exercise the majority of the political authority in the city.13 In this political environment, the families elevated or re-established in the middle of the tenth century remained the primary recipients of episcopal favour. One example would be the Traversari, who would go on to become one of the most important noble families in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, eventually for a time claiming the office of podestà, the secular ruler of the commune, by heredity. The stability offered by the community’s adoptions of the idea of hereditary status allowed for a relatively stable local urban aristocracy at least to the end of the eleventh century; thereafter, the city’s elite shifted again for a number of reasons, the most important being the establishment of the commune around 1106, when at the council of Guastella the pope liberated the sees of Piacenza, Parma, Reggio, Modena, and Bo­logna from the supervision of Ravenna’s archbishops.14 While it is does not mark a clean break for the local elites, the formation of the commune as the primary means of political organization in the twelfth century would change the relationships among the noble families of Ravenna.

 11 West-Harling, ‘Proclaiming Power in the City’, p. 235. During the decade following 950, most of the noble families of Tuscany emerged; more broadly, it served as the moment when the importance of hereditary nobility and dynastic origins became central to the maintenance of elite status, a period we might describe as potenziamento after Cortese, L’aristocrazia toscana.  12 Tabacco, ‘Romualdo di Ravenna’; D’Acunto, ed., Ottone III e Romualdo di Ravenna; Schoolman, ‘The Monastic Conversion of Romuald’.  13 Capitani, ‘Politica e cultura Ravenna’; Brown, ‘Culture and Society in Ottonian Ravenna’.  14 Rabotti, ‘Dai vertici dei potert medioevali’, p. 147; Pini, ‘Il comune di Ravenna’.

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Ethnogenic Identity in Ravenna’s Nobility Within the charters of Ravenna, one of the reoccurring means of representing elite status and hereditary identity in the tenth century was the use of an ‘ethnogenic’ label. This might seem an odd expression, which I will define as a phrase that served to identify an inherited ‘ethnicity’, which appears to be both self-described and context-derived in the form beginning ‘ex genere …’, translated or understood as ‘from the people of ’ or ‘from the line of ’.15 This seems to be ideo­logically and practically distinct from earlier forms of fluid ethnic identification, which either directly attributed membership in a group (in the case of Roman, Lombard, or Frank), or a legal status, such as in Lombard inheritance regulations that differentiated between ‘si quis Langobardus and si quis Romani homo’.16 The historical contexts for the appearance of this ethnogenic label in Ravenna begin with the first waves of Franks and other ‘non-Italians’ who came to own and inhabit land in and around the city and take part in its legal procedures. Initially, they were mostly marked by their often distinctly ‘non-Ravennate’ names, but towards the end of the ninth century members of this new group became identified by a distinct ethnogenic label, ‘ex genere Francorum’, which first described a witness to a donation in 896 of a Frankish woman, Ingelrada, to her son Peter.17 It appeared again in 909 when a man who described himself as ‘Adam inlustri vir filio quondam Milteo ex genere Francorum’ was the petitioner for a lease from the church of Ravenna.18 The format was not limited to Franks: in a lease from 948, the petitioners are Adalo, named as ‘ex genere allamanorum’, and his wife Anna, a ‘clarissima femina’; the witnesses include ‘Acadeo vir magnificus filio Guinigisi ex (g)enere alamanorum, Deusdedit vir magnificus filio Marinus callegario’, and ‘Constantinus vir magnificus filio Iohannis negociatore’. This example is  15 On the problems related to contemporary uses of ethnicity in medi­eval contexts, see Pohl, ‘Introduction — Strategies of Identification’.  16 Pohl-Resl, ‘Legal Practice and Ethnic Identity’, p. 211. Along with origin narratives, the creation of ‘ethnic’ laws and a corresponding legal status was ‘intended to help give coherence and identity to a political and ethnic community like the Lombards’; Pohl, ‘Memory, Identity and Power’, p. 16. For the connections between ethnicity and profession in relation to Gothic identity, see Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy; and more broadly on the early medi­eval legal codes and their use in differentiation during the later Carolingian period, see Faulkner, Law and Authority in the Early Middle Ages.  17 Le carte ravennati dei secoli ottavo e nono, no. 54, ed. by Benericetti, pp. 141–48. The charter only survives in a sixteenth-century copy now in the Archivio di Stato in Modena. Ingelrada gave to her son Peter, a deacon in the church of Ravenna, as an heir to his father the deceased duke Martin, a large number of properties in the territory of Faenza, Forli, Ravenna, Comacchio, Ferrara, and Gavello, as well as the monasteries of Sant’Eufemia and San Tomasso in Rimini and several houses in Ravenna: ‘pro omnipotentis dei clementia Ingelrada filia Apaldi comitissa’. The witness was described as ‘Adelengo q(ui) vocatur Acio ex genere Franco(rum)’.  18 Le carte ravennati del decimo secolo, no. 15, ed. by Benericetti, i, pp. 34–36.

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instructive as to how witnesses and scribes were employing the ethnogenic label of ‘ex genere’. It was not only to demarcate a distinct and non-local identity, but also to present a status that was normally given over to occupations or local markers of elevated rank, even if the procedure to draft a legal agreement was the only instance in which such a form of identification was used.19 This is an important parallel, made clear by the fact that other witnesses were primarily identified through their occupations: Deusdedit was identified as a callegario (medi­eval version of collectarius, money changer, rather than calegarius, a maker of boots, caliga), and Constantinus was a negociatore or merchant. Both these men would likely not have belonged to the highest level of local landed aristocracy, but rather among those striving to reach it.20 This ethnogenic labelling did not remain solely for the use of Ravenna’s recent arrivals, the Franks and Alemanni — it became appropriated by the local Ravennati elites to emulate the appearance of ‘ethnic’ descent but in what had become local markers of status. The first instance of this functionality appeared in 956, when in the subscription of another lease a witness is described as ‘Petrus viro magnifico ex genere consul’.21 The use of ethnogenic labels in these charters was to equate a status of occupation to newly arrived ‘non-Italians’, and its function had been ‘translated’ to apply to members of Ravenna’s aristocracy and striving elites. Yet why the ethnogenic label was being used is not clear in this instance. The other witnesses appearing in the document, ‘Iohannes consul’ and ‘Iohannis filio petrus consul’, tell us very little, as does the limited identity given to the petitioners, ‘Petro qui vocatur “de Saliano”’ and his wife, ‘Argentia qui vocatur Grimisa’, or the fact that ‘consuls’ were involved. This title indicated a lesser elevated status and was frequently seen with those who were negotiatores or notaries, along with the recurrent appearance of abbreviated honorifics like vc for vir clarissimus, which survive through their continued utility and the conservative nature of the civic notaries, the tabellioni, of Ravenna.22 By the 970s, the formulation of the ethnogenic label reached the highest levels of Ravennati society, and we find littered throughout the charters witnesses and petitioners who claim the titles of ‘ex genere ducum’ and ‘ex genere magistri militum’, designed to identify those who descended from

 19 In this instance, the details of occupations for others taking part in the creation of the document offer some support to the ‘situational’ nature of referencing descent ‘from the line of Alemanns’ for an individual, although it might also be related to the membership in a military unit. The complicated issues related to the notion of a ‘dux ex genere’ have been explored in Geary, ‘Ethnic Identity as a Situational Construct’, pp. 23–24.  20 Le carte ravennati del decimo secolo, no. 59, ed. by Benericetti, i, pp. 132–35. The practice of employing a varied and heterogeneous group of witnesses in the process of creating legal documents of Ravenna can be shown in the city’s Byzantine period: Schoolman, ‘Local Networks and Witness Subscriptions’.  21 Le carte ravennati del decimo secolo, no. 87, ed. by Benericetti, i, pp. 212–14.  22 For the honorific titles, see Schoolman, ‘Vir Clarissimus and Roman Titles’.

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hereditary dukes and magistri militum, titles used extensively in the tenth century to demarcate the highest ranking members of Ravennati society.23 In a flurry of charters from the early 970s, we find witnesses like ‘Andreas ex genere magistri militum’ and ‘Andreas ex genere dux, Petrus filio conda(m) Pauli ex genere ducis’, and ‘nobiles viri Rodaldo et Andreas germ(ani) ex genere magistri militu(m)’. There are fourteen documents from that decade that include an ethnogenic labelling (Table 5.1), sometimes with multiple individuals who were primarily witnesses, many of whom are either ‘from the line’ of dukes or ‘from the line’ of the magistri militum. We should note here the political situation that may have influenced the development and use of these rather strange expressions. The period coincides with the regular appearance of the Ottonian emperors in Ravenna, whose officials and members of their court may have spurred on the development and spread of this practice as a means to elevate the local elites to the same status as foreign aristocrats. While the timing may also appear to be purely coincidental, the larger contexts prove otherwise: the use of ‘ex genere ducum’ and ‘ex genere magistri militum’ was short lived. The last instance in which these appeared was a major charter issued on 4 April 1001, a renunciation of ownership in which four participants were attributed with various ethnogenic labels: Farualdus qui voc(atur) Paulus iudex et ex genere duci Petrus iudex filius q(uo)nd(am) Pauli ex genere duci qui vocatur de Traversaria Andreas tabell(io) ex genere consulis Rainardo ex genere [Langobardoru]m This was not simply a local document confirming possession, but rather a major political statement, as the confirmation took place in the presence of Pope Silvester, Emperor Otto III, and a number of important abbots, who acknowledged the validity of a request to the archbishop of Ravenna by the monastery of Santa Maria in Pomposa.24 It served as part of a series of documents produced in late March and early April of that year that established the independence of Pomposa and its imperial patronage. What is critical here was where these names appeared: Farualdus and Petrus were listed among the notables present at the conclusion of the authentication (although not as witnesses, a job left for members of the monastic community), while Raindaro and Andreas served as advocatoris in the proceedings. The charter of 1001 was a product of a local notary, which might explain the use of the ethnogenic labels. Yet it marks the last time that the phrases ‘ex genere’ appeared for the descendants of dukes, magistri militum, or  23 Schoolman, ‘Nobility, Aristocracy, and Status’.  24 Le carte ravennati del secolo undicesimo, no. 2, ed. by Benericetti, i, pp. 5–10.

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e dwa r d  m. s c h o o l m an Table 5.1. The appearance of ‘ex genere’ in charters from the 970s in Ravenna. All of these documents were requests for emphyteutic leases except for the charter of 11 May 973 (a donation) and 22 April 974 (an ecclesiastical judgement). Unless otherwise noted, all the examples were witnesses to the documents.

Date

Document*

Use of Ethnogenic Label

1 February 972

no. 158, ii, pp. 193–95

Iohannes Dei nutu ex genere consulis et tabellio

30 April 972

no. 159, ii, pp. 195–98

Andreas et ex genere dux

15 May 972

no. 160, ii, pp. 198–201 Andreas et ex genere dux

13 August 972

no. 166, ii, pp. 214–17

Andreas ex genere [magistri] militum

1 November 972 no. 173, ii, pp. 231–33

Andreas ex genere magistri militum

11 May 973

Andreas ex genere magistri militum

no. 2, pp. 5–14

Petrus fil. qd. Andreas ex genere ducum 1 August 973

no. 176, ii, pp. 239–42 Andreas ex genere magistri militum Andreas ex genere dux

9 September 973

no. 178, ii, pp. 244–48 Paulus iudex ex genere ducis de civitate Ravenna (on the list of attendees)

22 April 974

no. 185, ii, pp. 263–66 Nobili viro Petro de Augusto ex genere ducum (mention in the text)

Paulus (?) Deo annuente dativo ex genere ducis

Petrus filio q(uon)d(am) Andreas ex genere ducu(m) [974–975]

no. 188, ii, pp. 271–74

Ioh(anne)s D(e)i nuto ex genere consulis et tabell(ionis)

[975–976]

no. 190, ii, pp. 278–81

Ioh(anni)s D(e)i nuto ex genere consulis et tabell(i)oni

19 May 977

no. 198, iii, pp. 21–23

Petrus filio conda(m) Pauli ex genere ducis

23 June 977

no. 201, iii, pp. 27–29

nobilesa viri Rodaldo et Andreas germ(ani) ex genere magistri militu(m)

4 August 977

no. 29, pp. 98–102

Faraldus filius Pauli ex genere duci atque dative Petrus filius qd Pauli ex genere ducis

* Most examples are from Le carte ravennati del decimo secolo, ed. by Benericetti; 11 May 973 from Regesto di S. Apollinare nuovo, ed. by Federici; and 4 August 977 from Le carte del monastero di S. Andrea Maggiore, ed. by Muzzioli. All citations are to the document number and (volume and) pages.

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Lombards, perhaps due to the political changes in Ravenna following the death of Otto III in January of the following year. Ravenna’s elites, who once described themselves through the descent of those groups, moved on to find other expressions of status not tied to lineage in a formulation that had its roots in the crystallization of new, and notably non-Roman, identities in the early Middle Ages. But the use is not totally extinguished. Local notaries in Ravenna adopted as a mark of their occupations and status the phrase ‘tabellio ex genere consulis’, which is used in at least another thirty instances through the end of the eleventh century, evidencing both the conservative nature and self-promotion of Ravenna’s notarial class.

Reimagining the History of Ravenna’s Elites The second of the notable features of elite identity in Ravenna in the late ninth and tenth centuries are the ways in which this period proved fertile ground for the recasting of Ravenna’s history, especially for the roles of elite women in local society.25 In Ravenna, as in many other locations in Italy, women were frequently the co-donors, co-lessors, or co-petitioners with their husbands. In some cases they were the sole legal actors, most often as nuns and abbesses, where they functioned independently to support their institutions.26 While women did not witness documents, they made signa and marks on many charters recording agreements to which they were parties. While this practice is not exceptional, Ravenna’s unique position was a factor in a noticeable elevation of women’s roles. Perhaps the most well-known case is that of Ingelrada (whose name also appeared as Engelrada), the name belonging to two women, a mother and daughter, who played substantial roles in the city. The first Ingelrada (hereafter Ingelrada I) was the daughter of a comes palatini named Hucbald, who may have arrived in Italy as early as the 830s and by the 850s had established his family: his son, also named Hucbald, was given the same position and held sway in Tuscany.27 Given this status, Ingelrada found an equal partner in a dux of Ravenna named Martin (the son of another of Ravenna’s dukes, Gregory, and his wife known as either Valbesinda or Albesina). As a pair, Duke Martin  25 A multidisciplinary effort to underscore the breadth of ‘female action’ during this period is represented in scholarship such as La Rocca, ed., Agire da donna.  26 Evidence from Ravenna is centred primarily on Santa Maria in Cereseo and San Martino, both of which fell under the authority of the monastery of Sant’Andrea in 1014; their history has been well outlined in Bondi, ‘Fuori dal chiostro’.  27 On the history of Hucbald and his descendants, see Manarini, ‘Gli Hucpoldingi’ and Manarini, I due volti del potere. The importance of this family in the late tenth and eleventh centuries, especially in the guise of the Conti Guidi, and the growing connections between Ravenna and Tuscany, has been well documented: Eckenstein, ‘The Guidi and their Relations with Florence’; Buzzi, ‘Ricerche per la storia’; Curradi, ‘I conti Guidi nel secolo x’; Rinaldi, ‘Le origini dei Guidi’; Rauty, Documenti per la storia dei Conti Guidi.

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and the newly titled comitessa Ingelrada were active in Ravenna’s political realm, and after Martin’s death in 896 Ingelrada became a conduit in the establishment of convents and in support of the church, including a donation directly to her son Peter who was a deacon in the church of Ravenna.28 After the death of her husband, Ingelrada was still able to find a suitable match for their daughter, Ingelrada II, in the form of Tetgrimo (who was also known as Teudigrimo), following a pattern of marriages to newly arrived Franks that she herself took part in and which was witnessed later in the development of the employment of the ‘ex genere’-formula discussed above. Although details of Tetgrimo’s background are unknown, he first appeared as the recipient of a royal donation in 927 in Tuscany where he first settled. In this donation, he secures hereditary rights over the royal monastery of San Salvatore in Agna (located outside of Pistoia) from the recently crowned king of Italy, Hugh of Provence, who addresses him as ‘Tetgrimo dilecto compatri et fideli nostro’ (beloved and faithful compatriot).29 Perhaps more telling of his origins is that the grant of this monastery was made at the request of Alda, Hugh’s second wife, who was described as being ‘ex Francorum genere Teutonicorum’ in Liudprand’s Antapodosis.30 Even in the muddled context of this document it is clear that Tetgrimo was a newcomer to Italy and had ties to Germany, and that his political connections put him firmly within the pro-Berenger factions.31 This last political fact matters in that the children of Ingelrada II and Tetgrimo, named Rainerius and Guido, would begin an open conflict with Ravenna’s pro-Ottonian bishop, the results of which ultimately caused their exile and the re-establishment of the family in the possession of the Casentino valley on the other side of the Apennines.32 An abbreviated timeline is as follows: in 941, Rainerius and Guido donated property to the church of San Zenon in Pistoia for the souls of Ingelrada and Tetgrimo; in 957, Guido donated independently to San Zenon; and in 963, Rainerius and his nephew Tetgrimo II (the son of Guido, who had died in the meantime) donated under duress a ronco and saltworks to the archbishop of Ravenna, for ‘the diverted and overdue payments [owed to the church]’, which were then the following year leased not back to the brothers but to another family  28 Marriages like that of Ingelrada also helped to set the relationship between Ravenna and the late Carolingian rulers through strategic alliances between Ravenna’s aristocracy and leading Frankish families; Brown, ‘A Byzantine Cuckoo in the Frankish Nest?’, pp. 196–97.  29 ‘Descrizioni e trascrizioni dei facsimili’ 1, ed. by Schiaparelli, p. 33.  30 ‘Hic [Ugo] ex Francorum genere Teutonicorum uxorem acceperat nomine Aldam, quae filium ei genuerat nomine Lotharium’, Liudprand, Antapodosis, iii. 20, ed. by Chiesa, p. 75.  31 The marriage between Tetgrimo and Ingelrada must have been complicated by the fact that Ingelrada was the major landholder within their partnership. As Elisabeth van Houts has observed, this factor may have played an important role in ‘the persistence of the female historical tradition’ broadly across Europe at this time, along with the awareness of and complaints about this imbalance between propertied heiresses and ‘men without any lands and thus “without a past”’, in Memory and Gender in Medi­eval Europe, pp. 78–84.  32 Manarini, I due volti del potere, pp. 158–62.

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entirely.33 This slight, and the friction between a group of nobles in Ravenna and the archbishop Peter (who was from Bo­logna and had been a long-standing supporter of Otto), came to a head in 965 when Peter was captured by Rainerius and imprisoned, and the episcopal palace sacked and documents destroyed. In 967, while holding court in San Severo in Classe outside of Ravenna, Otto I completed legal proceedings and issued a placitum depriving Rainerius of his property as compensation to Peter. After this point the descendants of Ingelrada continued to remain absent from the city, with their last appearance in 963. The compelling aspect about the memory of these series of events was its transformation after the family of Ingelrada ceased to have a presence in Ravenna. Of all the aspects of the relationship between the family and the city, it was Ingelrada’s historic ownership that continued to find an active audience in both literary and documentary sources. This was due in part to monasteries she and her family helped to develop, and in part because of her importance as a leading member of the city at the end of the ninth and beginning of the tenth centuries. Less than forty years after the family’s reversal of fortune in Ravenna, a charter composed on 28 January 1001 in the city of Rimini included a reference to territories that had ‘belonged to the deceased countess Ingelrada, and [had been] obtained lawfully’.34 This reference was specific to the lands obtained by the church of Ravenna and then distributed following the confiscation from Ingelrada’s sons in 967, an act that may have seemed dubious even forty years later. Yet, the memory of what was held by Ingelrada II and her mother, not their husbands or children, was what continued to resonate as part of the historical continuity in the shared history of the city. As another example, in 1063 in the Saxon city of Allstedt, Henry IV issued a confirmation of the possessions and privileges of the church of Ravenna. Henry, only twelve at that time, was still under the regency of Anno, archbishop of Co­logne, and was nearly two decades away from being installed as emperor. The confirmation was signed by both the young king and Guibert, a cleric who had acted as the vice chancellor for Italy under Anno, who would in 1072 be installed as the archbishop of Ravenna by the king and in 1080 become the anti-pope Clement III. In the charter, Henry confirmed the church of Ravenna’s ownership of ‘omnia, quę Ingelrada tenuit comitissa a mari Adriano usque ad Alpes, a fluvio Reni usque Potentiam, sicut maximus Otto imperator in placito per legem investivit Petrum Rauenatem archiepiscopum suamque aecclesiam’ (everything that the comitissa Ingelrada held, from the Adriatic up to the Alps, from the Reno River up to the Potenza, just as the emperor Otto the Great invested Peter the archbishop of Ravenna and his church in a placitum).35

 33 These exchanges are detailed in Schoolman, ‘Nobility, Aristocracy, and Status’, pp. 230–31.  34 ‘Per iura quondam Ingelrada comitissa terries et vineis seu edifitjis’, Le carte ravennati del secolo undicesimo, no. 1, ed. by Benericetti, i, pp. 3–5.  35 Die Urkunden Heinrichs IV, no. 102, ed. by von Gladiss and Gawlik, p. 134.

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The vision of a legendary Ingelrada controlling vast amounts of territory in the Romagna before the conflicts of the 960s was not limited to charters confirming the possessions of the church of Ravenna, but was also found in later narratives about the region’s past. The Chronicon Faventinum is one example, written by an anonymous author later known as Master Tolosanus and focused on the city of Faenza.36 The chronicle covers the history of the city and the broader region of Romagna in a rough and frequently convoluted chrono­logical order from the city’s purported establishment by Augustus in 20 bce to 1226, and is continued by an anonymous author through 1236, where the text ends abruptly.37 The Chronicon was a composite work, including elements taken from a wide variety of earlier sources as well as providing a substantial part of its own original narrative material. Even within the first few chapters, details about the comitessa Ingelrada II and her husband, Tetgrimo, and in a compression of the familial line, Tetgrimo II, who was their grandson rather than son, are clearly established as central to the history of the region. The first mention of Ingelrada II and Tetgrimo appears in the eighth chapter after a description of the establishment of Constantinople in the fourth century in the preceding chapter. The content of the chapter is a short prayer followed by a contextual anecdote.38 ‘Hoc responsum factum fuit per archiepiscopum Ravenne in turri Mutilianensi quando captus fuit a Tygrimo Tuscie comite et ab Englarata filia Martini Ducis de Ravenna eius uxore’ (This was said by the archbishop of Ravenna [Peter IV] in the tower of Modigliana when he had been detained by Tetgrimo the count of Tuscany and his wife Ingelrada, the daughter of Duke Martin of Ravenna).39 However, the broken chrono­logy was likely the product of a scribal error, which moved a marginal note next to Chapter 11 about the archbishop’s imprisonment into the manu­script as an independent section.40 The effect of this mistake was to incorporate a foreshadowing to the succeeding legend, but here only stands to raise confusion even if the tale was commonly known. Although seldom mentioned in the charters from Ravenna, the imprisonment was likely an often-told tale, and the actual events, or at least those that made it to the court of Otto I in 967, were echoed in these types of historical narratives, which account for including this imprisonment in the Chronicon Faventinum.  36 The most recent analysis of this chronicle and its authorship has been Mascanzoni, Il Tolosano e i suoi continuatori.  37 The text survives in only one manu­script; earlier editions of Tolosanus’s work often edited the text into a ‘correct’ chrono­logical order, or as close as possible given the material.  38 Magistri Tolosani Chronicon Faventinum, 8, ed. by Rossini, pp. 15–17, ‘Rogamus te, Domine Deus, quia peccavimus tibi; veniam petimus quam non meremur; manum tuam porrige lapsis, qui latroni confitenti paradisi ianuas aperuisti. Vita nostra in dolore suspirat et in opere non emendat; si expectas, non corripimur, et si vindicas, induramur’.  39 Magistri Tolosani Chronicon Faventinum, 8, ed. by Rossini, 8, p. 15.  40 The theory that it was a misplaced marginal note was argued by Güterbock, ‘Studi sulla Cronaca Faentina’, p. 127. Mascanzoni goes further to suggest that the chapter as such cannot be ascribed to Tolosanus: Mascanzoni, Il Tolosano e i suoi continuatori, p. 132.

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What followed from Tolosanus was a mutation of the story, and the broken chrono­logy does not allow the reader to gain any immediate clarification as to the events surrounding the imprisonment of Ravenna’s archbishop by Tetgrimo and Ingelrada, or the position of the prayer within a more general narrative; the following chapter (nine) was untitled, but concerned the destruction of the nearby city of Forlí by the Lombard king Grimoald in the seventh century, which might actually have been a better context for the prayer supposedly offered by the archbishop of Ravenna. The tenth chapter of the Chronicon races forward to the age of the Carolingians, beginning with an abbreviated account of the Battle of Roncevaux, followed by a genealogy of Charlemagne’s heirs through to Lothar (Charlemagne’s grandson, who ruled as king of Italy from 818, and with his son Louis II until Lothar’s death in 855). In the remaining text of the same chapter, the local history resumes: ‘Quodam tempore Romam pergens a Faventinis receptus est honorifice; qui curtem quamdam Aceretam nomine positam Faventino subposuit comitatui; Lautiranum autera, quod comes Tigrimus invaserat, restitui fecit episcopo’ (At that time he [Lothar] was received with honour coming to Rome from Faenza; he placed the area called Acereta [which sits in the foot of the Apennines] under his forces for the jurisdiction of Faenza, then he made Lutirano as restitution to the bishop because Count Tetgrimo had invaded it).41 This confused statement seems to indicate that after travelling to Rome, Lothar corrected jurisdictional issues which arose in Faenza, offering the Valle di Acereta (which, by the time of Tolosanus, was home to an important Camaldolensi monastery) to the comitatus of the city, while Lutirano, a settlement south-west along the same valley of Modigliana, was given as ‘restitution to the bishop’. Although the content suggests that it was the bishop of Faenza who received the town, the text allows for a level of ambiguity, and given the following chapter, may well be read as part of the response to the actions of Ingelrada and Tetgrimo. Under either condition, the surrender of Lutirano would have been a major concession, as the settlement held strategic value positioned on the route from Faenza to the Sieve valley (and on to Florence). Furthermore, Tetgrimo is also cast in a decidedly negative light: invadere implies either invading, despoiling, or attacking, and Tolosanus is suggesting that Lutirano was forcibly taken by the count and only returned to its rightful owner, the bishop of Faenza, on account of the actions (or perhaps the judgement) of the emperor, echoing the events of the 960s. Ultimately, what was presented in the Chronicon Faventinum for this earlier period was saturated with oral tradition and legend; no corroborating evidence for Tetgrimo, especially in the first half of the ninth century, exists, nor is there any connection with Lautiranum in the rest of the chronicle.

 41 Magistri Tolosani Chronicon Faventinum, 10, ed. by Rossini, pp. 18–19.

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Tolosanus’s fictionalized history of the family of Ingelrada appears immediately in the following chapter, under the unassuming title of ‘De eo quod Tigrimus et Englarata matrimonium contraxerunt’ (On the account that Tetgrimo and Ingelrada were married).42 Fanciful and imaginative details laden with medi­eval cultural tropes connected to both noble and ignoble behaviour surround the core event: the imprisonment of the archbishop of Ravenna mentioned by Tolosanus in his preceding chapter. Rather than present it as part of the shadowy past of the region surrounding Faenza, Tolosanus offers us a date at the very beginning, ‘in the year 925 after the birth of our Lord’, a pattern which becomes standard in the later chapters, implying a greater degree of veracity to this short account: Post multum vero temporis, anno videlicet DCCCCXXV post Domini nativitatem, Englerata filia Martini Ducis de Ravenna, qui ducatum Romanie a Romano habuerat pontifice, apud Mutilianum, suum honorabile castrum, magnam tenebat curiam. Contigit eo tempore Tigrimum Tuscie comitem venando quandam usque Mutilianum persequi cervam; audito etiam quod ibi tanta esset domina, cura cerva, quam ceperat, ad ipsam devenit; cui profecto in tanto placuit, quod in ipso die matrimonium contraxerunt. Qui per totum ducatum tyrannidem exercentes, Petrum Ravenne archiepiscopum in turri quadara apud Mutilianum sub duris vinculis ponere non formidarunt. Hoc vero scelere, et aliis eorum exigentibus meritis, anbo a Ravennatibus sunt interfecti; quorum filium nutrix eius dicitur liberasse, qui, factus magnus, Ravennatum sanguinem, cum pro vindicta patris et matris eos occidere polerat, ex gladio pro certo lambebat; ob quani causam dictus est Tigrimus Bibenssanguinem.43 (After much time, in the year 925 after the birth of our Lord, Ingelrada, the daughter of Martin the duke of Ravenna, who had authority over Romagna from the Roman pontiff, held a great gathering near Modigliana, her honourable castle. It so happened that at the time Tetgrimo the count of Tuscany was on a hunt pursuing a doe up to Modigliana; and hearing that there was such a lady there, he came to her with the doe that he had caught. She was clearly pleased in some measure by this, since that very day they entered into marriage. They cultivated cruel authority throughout the entire duchy, to the degree that they did not fear to place Peter, the archbishop of Ravenna, in a square tower near Modigliana under harsh imprisonment. On account of this evil deed, and because of the other crimes which they had committed, they were both killed by the citizens of Ravenna. Their child’s nurse was called to save him, whereby, after reaching adulthood he licked the blood of the citizens of Ravenna from his sword, as he

 42 Magistri Tolosani Chronicon Faventinum, 11, ed. by Rossini, p. 19.  43 Magistri Tolosani Chronicon Faventinum, 11, ed. by Rossini, pp. 19–20.

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ravaged the killers of his mother and father for the sake of revenge; on account of such an act he was called Tetgrimo Blood-Drinker.) Although this episode raises a number of issues about the intersections of memory, narrative, and folklore, one specific attribute of this mythic account warrants detailed comment: the way in which Ingelrada was said to have held her possessions. Tolosanus described Ingelrada as having held authority ‘over Romagna from the Roman pontiff ’, an odd expression but one which reflects a later perception of the holdings of Ingelrada I and the activities of Ingelrada II found in the charters as well as the outcome of the events of 967: the imprisonment of the archbishop Peter IV by the sons of Ingelrada II and Tetgrimo, the deacon Rainerius and Guido I, resolved by imperial placitum. The construction of ‘qui ducatum Romanie a Romano habuerat pontifice’ is unknown in the charters, and suggests a role that the Roman church likely did not play. In nearly all cases, the local land-holding aristocracy reconfirmed the ownership through leases, donations, and grants, with the surviving evidence underscoring a close relationship to Ravenna’s archbishops. There is one notable exception, and that is the possession of the monasteries of San Tommaso and Sant’Eufemia in Rimini by Ingelrada and her clan. Although the territory is mentioned in a donation from 896, in a concession of a lease from 943 offered by the sons of Ingelrada II and Tetgrimo, Rainerius and Guido, they claim to hold the territory of the monastery of San Tommaso ‘ad jura sancta Romane ecclesie’.44 This clause must have signified either the status of the monastery (falling originally under Rome) or perhaps its past ownership, and while its exact meaning in this context is unclear, it or a similar construction might have been an inspiration for Tolosanus’s description. The context of the other element, the imprisonment of the archbishop Peter IV, had also been lost by the time of Tolosanus’s writing. The Chronicon Faventinum contorted the chrono­logy of the tenth century, skipping generations between Ingelrada II and Tetgrimo I and their grandson Tetgrimo II, and assigning the imprisonment of Peter to the wrong generation. In the placitum from 967, Peter’s claim was that ‘Rainerius diaconus cum sua forcia et introivit in ipso meo episcopio sancte Rauennatis ecclesie per vim et disviolavit meam sedem et apreendit meam personam et misit me in vincula quod est in carcerem et tullit tensaurum de me[arum] ecclesiarum et de meo episcopio quod inumerare non possunt’ (the deacon Rainerius himself came with his conspirators and he went into my own episcopal residence of the holy church of Ravenna through force, dishonoured my see, took hold of me, and sent me in chains into prison; and he carried off the treasure from my churches and from my residence to a degree that they were  44 Le carte ravennati del decimo secolo, no. 49, ed. by Benericetti, i, pp. 108–10. The donation of 896 was from Ingelrada I to her son Peter, and was also referenced in Le carte ravennati dei secoli ottavo e nono, no. 54, ed. by Benericetti, pp. 141–48.

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uncountable).45 Although where the archbishop was imprisoned goes unmentioned, the general outline of the charge against Rainerius clearly was appropriated to become the core of the myth reported by Tolosanus. But like the reinterpretation of ‘ad jura sancta Romane ecclesie’ as a means of deriving the authority to rule (or in this case possess), here the placitum is transformed; it is not the end of Ingelrada’s family and their authority, as it was in Ravenna, but rather a set piece that allows Ingelrada to become the villain, and her son to perform an act of vengeance, one of the main folkloric elements in this narrative from the Chronicon Faventinum. The conclusion of this episode in the Chronicon, with the murder of Tetgrimo I and Ingelrada II by the citizens of Ravenna as retribution for their crimes against the archbishop and the community, and the revenge exacted by their son, ended any further discussion about that particular line; yet the history of Ravenna remained critically important for Faenza’s own historical memory (an element to be revisited in the Conclusion). What binds the Chronicon and the continued references to Ingelrada was a legacy that was both malleable and important, even if why it was important could be bent to serve contemporary needs. The commonalities, however, are telling: what made Ingelrada important was her wealth, held in land, connected to her ability to wield power. The documents outlining the history of the lands of Ingelrada as they moved from noble holdings into the patrimony of the church of Ravenna, and the legends that grew up around the downfall of her descendants, were contemporaries to a range of other instances of family memory in which women and their roles in the memorialization of inheritance remained central. In both instances in Italy and far beyond it, the long-held references to the holdings arranged and organized by women echo those of Ingelrada.46

Conclusions, and on the Importance of Place Although this paper has focused on the use of ethnogenic labels as markers of status and difference, and the role that women played in creating a shared local history, the importance of place for the medi­eval inhabitants of Ravenna has long been seen as an important component in local identity for both elites and those belonging to lower social echelons. Thomas Brown identified this sense of civic pride already apparent in the work of the ninth-century cleric Agnellus, whose Gesta supplies much about the early medi­eval history of the city and its bishops.47 This pride, described as campanilismo, was also visible in other forms in the tenth and eleventh centuries in the phenomenon of the adoption

 45 Le carte ravennati del decimo secolo, no. 128, ed. by Benericetti, ii, pp. 108–11.  46 Skinner, ‘Gender and Memory in Medi­eval Italy’.  47 Brown, ‘Romanitas and Campanilismo’.

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of ‘Ravenna’ and its derivative forms as a personal name, not simply marking origins in ‘the metropolitan seat of Ravenna’ but intimately celebrating it.48 The masculine name Ravennus was known in the early Middle Ages, most notably in the name of a martyr whose relics were housed in Macé, Normandy, along with those of a fellow martyr, Rasyphus (BHL 7089–7091). Both were eventually translated to the abbey of Bayeux in the eleventh century, which is also the first time their hagio­graphies were promulgated.49 In the city of Ravenna, beginning in the middle of the tenth century through the end of the eleventh century, thirty-four individuals who were named after their city are attributed in the charters. The majority were women called Ravenna, with twenty-four cases, although a few were known by the addition of other names, such as ‘Ravenna qui vocator Bona’.50 There was variation when the name was applied to men, who used the forms Ravenno or Ravennio but also more consistently employed a second name or a geo­graphic qualifier. As a group, they represented an enormous range of social strata. On one side, a number were peasants who in groups made requests for small leases of land from Ravenna’s church or its monasteries, such as Ravenna de Hugo, who was one of thirteen coloni who requested a lease in 1022 with rents paid in labour and kind.51 On the other side were individuals like Ravenna the wife of Iohannes (who is known as Pitulo the callicerio), who in 990 independently leased a cubiculum (which in this case seemed to be a large house with river access) from the archbishop for three denarii, or Ravenna the wife of Vitalis the vir magnificus and negociator, who with her husband was the recipient of a lease of a substantial number of properties in 1055.52 Some references exist only in the evidence of tragedy: we know of one ‘Ravenna, qui vocatur Sigeza’, the victim of murder perpetrated by her brother, a crime described in a concession of 1014 by the emperor Henry II that allowed the monastery of Pomposa to seize the brother’s possession.53 In these instances, the use of a name identical to the city that one inhabited must have felt like the ultimate statement of civic identity and pride by parents, its application first transcending the ranks of society. Ultimately its primary ‘adoption’ was not by the members of the highest elite, but rather by the ‘lesser’ elites, the notaries and merchants, whose civic pride was unfettered by landholding elsewhere.

 48 Haubrichs, ‘The Early Medi­eval Naming-World’.  49 On the hagio­graphy of Ravennus and Rasyphus and their role and veneration in Bayeux, see de Gaiffier, ‘Les Saints Raven et Rasiphe’, and Overbey, ‘Taking Place’, pp. 39–41, 46–47.  50 The naming of women after cities was not unknown in other areas of Italy. Patricia Skinner, ‘“And Her Name Was…?”’, p. 34, has identified names in the records of Amalfi for Barisana (from Bari), Babilonia (in reference to medi­eval Cairo), and Hierosolyma.  51 Le carte ravennati del secolo undicesimo, no. 75, ed. by Benericetti, i, pp. 192–94.  52 Le carte ravennati del decimo secolo, no. 248, ed. by Benericetti, iii, pp. 97–99, and Le carte ravennati del secolo undicesimo, no. 253, ed. by Benericetti, iii, pp. 107–09.  53 Die Urkunden Heinrichs II, no. 281, ed. by Bresslau and others, pp. 332–33; Le carte dell’Archivio di Santa Maria di Pomposa, ed. by Mezzetti, pp. 202–05.

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Place mattered to the highest echelon of elites in other ways, from ethnogenic labels to outside recognition of belonging to the central group, often through partnership with the archbishop and participation in legal matters before the imperial court when it was in Ravenna. In a wider lens, what constituted membership of Ravenna’s elite was never expressed in a single form, and later was reconceptualized to fit contemporary patterns. For example, when the thirteenth-century chronicler Salimbene de Adam reflected on the status of Ravenna’s elites in his own Chronicon, he wrote that: Et nota quod in Ravenna antiquitus fuerunt IIII nobilia casalia, sicut in Pontificali Ravennae pluries legi. Habitavi enim ibi per quinquennium. Et omnia illa casalia, que erant nobiliora et super alia, ad nichilum sunt redacta; quorum ultimum, quod plus duravit, fuit casale domni Pauli Traversarii, quod diebus meis omnino defecit. (From ancient times Ravenna has had four noble families, as I have read often in the Ravenna Pontifical during the five years that I lived there. Yet all these great houses, noble and superior as they were, have been reduced to nothing. The last of these, the one that endured the longest, was the house of Lord Paul Traversaria, which was obliterated in my own days.)54 Salimbene remarked about the ‘end’ of the Traversaria clan, finally forced from Ravenna in 1240 by Frederick II, but in doing so suggested that they were of some antiquity after reading presumably the Liber pontificalis of Agnellus. What becomes clear from his account is that Salimbene acknowledged a discontinuity between the noble families of Ravenna’s past and those who occupied that position in the thirteenth century. This gap is perhaps why he invested in the legend of Ingelrada at the beginning of his chronicle, attempting to — as Patrick Geary has noted — ‘make sense of this inherited residue and use it to form their own individual and corporate sense of identity’, in this case as heirs to a past, one whose protagonists now served as a distant foundation for the communes of the twelfth century.55 It was the political and geo­graphic position of Ravenna in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries that served as the impetus for the uses of the ethnogenic ‘ex genere’-formulation in charters, heightened the historical value of its elite tenth-century families, and even supported the development of the ‘civic’ names. For those who lived in Ravenna, pulled between its long-standing customs, regional rivalries, and the juxtaposition between its past glory and contemporary revivals, its varied pasts served to buttress an evolving hierarchy of local elites.

 54 Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, 242, ed. by Scalia, i, p. 255; Salimbene de Adam, Chronicle, trans. by Baird, Baglivi, and Kane, p. 158.  55 Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance, p. 25.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Le carte del monastero di S. Andrea Maggiore di Ravenna, i: 896–1000, ed. by Giovanni Muzzioli (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1961) Le carte dell’Archivio di Santa Maria di Pomposa (932–1050), ed. by Corinna Mezzetti (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 2016) Le carte ravennati dei secoli ottavo e nono, ed. by Ruggero Benericetti (Faenza: University Press Bo­logna, 2006) Le carte ravennati del decimo secolo: Archivio Arcivescovile, ed. by Ruggero Benericetti, 3 vols (Ravenna: Società di Studi Ravennati; Imola: University Press Bo­logna, 1999–2002) Le carte ravennati del secolo undicesimo: Archivio arcivescovile, vols i, iii, and iv, ed. by Ruggero Benericetti; vol. ii, ed. by Massimo Ronchini (Imola: Biblioteca Cicognani; Faenza: University Press Bo­logna, 2003–2011) ‘Descrizioni e trascrizioni dei facsimili’, ed. by Luigi Schiaparelli, 4 vols, Bullettino dell’Archivio paleografico italiano, 3–6 (1910–1919) Liudprand, Antapodosis, ed. by Paolo Chiesa, Liudprandi Cremonensis Opera Omnia, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medi­evalis, 156 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998) Magistri Tolosani Chronicon Faventinum, ed. by Giuseppe Rossini, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, n.s., 28.1 (Bo­logna: Nicola Zanichelli, 1936–1939) Regesto di S. Apollinare nuovo, ed. by Vincenzo Federici (Rome: E. Lescher, 1907) Salimbene de Adam, The Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, trans. by Joseph L. Baird, Giuseppe Baglivi, and John Robert Kane (Binghamton, NY: Medi­eval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1986) —— , Cronica, ed. by Giuseppe Scalia, 2 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998–1999) Die Urkunden Heinrichs II., ed. by Harry Bresslau and others, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Diplomatum regum et imperatorum Germaniae, 3 (Hanover: Hahn, 1900–1903), pp. 1–692 Die Urkunden Heinrichs IV., i: 1056–1076, ed. by Dietrich von Gladiss and Alfred Gawlik, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Diplomatum regum et imperatorum Germaniae, 6.1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1941) Secondary Works Amory, Patrick, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489–554 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) Augenti, Andrea, and others, ‘Il monastero di San Severo a Classe: Risultati delle campagne di scavo 2006–2011’, in Atti del VI Congresso Nazionale di Archeo­ logia Medi­evale, L’Aquila, 12–15 settembre 2012, vol. vi (Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2012), pp. 238–45 Betti, Maddalena, ‘Incestuous Marriages in Late Carolingian Ravenna: The causa Deusdedit (878–81)’, Early Medi­eval Europe, 23 (2015), 457–77

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Bondi, Mila, ‘Fuori dal chiostro: Monasteri femminili a Ravenna (secoli ix–xi)’, in Il monachesimo femminile in Italia nei secoli viii–xi: Famiglia, potere, memoria, ed. by Veronica Ortenberg West-Harling, special issue, Reti Medi­evali Rivista, 20.1 (2019), 353–71 Brown, Thomas S., ‘L’aristocrazia di Ravenna da Giustiniano a Carlo Magno’, Felix Ravenna, 131/32 (1986), 91–98 —— , ‘The Background of Byzantine Relations with Italy in the Ninth Century: Legacies, Attachments and Antagonisms’, in Byzantium and the West, c. 850– c. 1200, ed. by James D. Howard-Johnston (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1988), pp. 27–45 —— , ‘A Byzantine Cuckoo in the Frankish Nest? The Exarchate of Ravenna and the Kingdom of Italy in the Long Ninth Century’, in After Charlemagne: Carolingian Italy and its Rulers, ed. by Clemens Gantner and Walter Pohl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 185–97 —— , ‘The Church of Ravenna and the Imperial Administration in the Seventh Century’, English Historical Review, 94 (1979), 1–28 —— , ‘Culture and Society in Ottonian Ravenna: Imperial Renewal or New Beginnings?’, in Ravenna: Its Role in Earlier Medi­eval Change and Exchange, ed. by Judith Herrin and Jinty Nelson (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2016), pp. 335–44 —— , ‘Romanitas and Campanilismo: Agnellus of Ravenna’s View of the Past’, in The Inheritance of Historio­graphy, 350–900, ed. by Christopher Holdsworth and T. P. Wiseman (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1986), pp. 107–14 Buzzi, Giulio, ‘Ricerche per la storia di Ravenna e di Roma dell’ 850 al 1118’, Archivio della R. Società Romana di Storia Patria, 38 (1915), 107–213 Capitani, Ovidio, ‘Politica e cultura Ravenna tra Papato e Impero dall’xi al xii secolo’, in Storia di Ravenna, iii: Dal mille alla fine della signoria polentana, ed. by Augusto Vasina (Ravenna: Marsilio, 1991), pp. 169–200 Cortese, Maria Elena, L’aristocrazia toscana: sette secoli (vi–xii) (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 2017) Cosentino, Salvatore, ‘Antoponimia, politica e società nell’Esarcato in età bizantina e post-bizantina’, in L’heritage byzantin en Italie (viiie–xiie siècle), ii: Les cadres juridiques et sociaux et les institutions publiques, ed. by Jean-Marie Martin, Annick Peters-Custot, and Vivien Prigent (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2012), pp. 173–85 Curradi, Corrado, ‘I conti Guidi nel secolo x’, Studi Romagnoli, 28 (1977), 17–64 D’Acunto, Nicolangelo, ed., Ottone III e Romualdo di Ravenna: Impero, monasteri e santi asceti (Negarine di S. Pietro in Cariano [Verona]: Il segno dei Gabrielli editori, 2003) Deliyannis, Deborah Mauskopf, Ravenna in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) Delogu, Paolo, ‘Lombard and Carolingian Italy’, in The New Cambridge Medi­ eval History, ii: c. 700–c. 900, ed. by Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 290–319

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Eckenstein, Lina, ‘The Guidi and their Relations with Florence’, English Historical Review, 14 (1899), 235–49 Faulkner, Thomas, Law and Authority in the Early Middle Ages: The Frankish Leges in the Carolingian Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) Gaiffier, Baudouin de, ‘Les Saints Raven et Rasiphe vénérés en Normandie’, Analecta Bollandiana, 79 (1961), 303–19 Geary, Patrick J., ‘Ethnic Identity as a Situational Construct in the Early Middle Ages’, Mitteilungen der anthropo­logischen Gesellschaft in Wien, 113 (1983), 15–26 —— , Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) Güterbock, Ferdinand, ‘Studi sulla Cronaca Faentina del Tolosano con un nuovo esame dei manoscritti’, Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo, 52 (1937), 107–35 Haubrichs, Wolfgang, ‘The Early Medi­eval Naming-World of Ravenna, Eastern Romagna and the Pentapolis’, in Ravenna: Its Role in Earlier Medi­eval Change and Exchange, ed. by Judith Herrin and Jinty Nelson (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2016), pp. 253–95 Herrin, Judith, Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020) Houts, Elisabeth van, Memory and Gender in Medi­eval Europe, 900–1200 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999) La Rocca, Cristina, ed., Agire da donna: Modelli e pratiche di rappresentazione (secoli vi–x), Atti del convegno (Padova, 18–19 febbraio 2005), Collection Haut Moyen Âge, 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007) Manarini, Edoardo, ‘Gli Hucpoldingi: Poteri, relazioni, consapevolezza di un gruppo parentale ai vertici del regno italico (secc. ix–xii)’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Università degli studi di Torino, 2014) —— , I due volti del potere: Una parentela apticia di ufficiali e signori nel regno italico (Milan: Ledizioni, 2016) Mascanzoni, Leardo, Il Tolosano e i suoi continuatori: Nuovi elementi per uno studio della composizione del Chronicon Faventinum (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1996) Overbey, Karen Eileen, ‘Taking Place: Reliquaries and Territorial Authority in the Bayeux Embroidery’, in The Bayeux Tapestry: New Interpretations, ed. by Martin Foys, Karen Eileen Overbey, and Dan Terkla (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2009), pp. 36–50 Pietri, Charles, ‘Les aristocraties de Ravenne (ve–vie s.)’, Studi Romagnoli, 34 (1983), 643–73 Pini, Antonio Ivan, ‘Il comune di Ravenna fra episcopio e aristocrazia cittadina’, in Storia di Ravenna, iii: Dal mille alla fine della signoria polentana, ed. by Augusto Vasina (Ravenna: Marsilio, 1991), pp. 201–57 Pohl, Walter, ‘Introduction — Strategies of Identification: A Methodo­logical Profile’, in Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medi­eval Europe, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 1–64

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—— , ‘Memory, Identity and Power in Lombard Italy’, in The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Matthew Innes and Yitzhak Hen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 9–28 Pohl-Resl, Brigitte, ‘Legal Practice and Ethnic Identity in Lombard Italy’, in Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300–800, ed. by Walter Pohl and Helmut Reimitz (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 205–20 Rabotti, Giuseppe, ‘Dai vertici dei potert medioevali: Ravenna e la sua chiesa fra diritto e politica dal x al xiii secolo’, in Storia di Ravenna, iii: Dal mille alla fine della signoria polentana, ed. by Augusto Vasina (Ravenna: Marsilio, 1991), pp. 129–68 Rauty, Natale, Documenti per la storia dei Conti Guidi in Toscana: Le origini e i primi secoli, 887–1164 (Florence: Casa Editrice Leo S. Olschki, 2003) Rinaldi, Rossella, ‘Le origini dei Guidi nelle terre di Romanga’, in Formazione e strutture dei ceti dominanti nel medioevo: Marchesi, conti, e visconti nel Regno Italico (secc. ix–xii) (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1996), pp. 211–40 Schoolman, Edward M., ‘Local Networks and Witness Subscriptions in Early Medi­eval Ravenna’, Viator, 44.3 (2013), 21–41 —— , ‘The Monastic Conversion of Romuald of Ravenna and the Church of Sant’Apollinare in Classe’, Journal of Medi­eval History, 43.3 (2017), 285–97 —— , ‘Nobility, Aristocracy, and Status in Early Medi­eval Ravenna’, in Ravenna: Its Role in Earlier Medi­eval Change and Exchange, ed. by Judith Herrin and Jinty Nelson (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2016), pp. 211–38 —— , ‘Vir Clarissimus and Roman Titles in the Early Middle Ages: Survival and Continuity in Ravenna and the Latin West’, Medi­eval Prosopo­graphy, 32 (2017), 1–39 Skinner, Patricia, ‘“And Her Name Was…?” Gender and Naming in Medi­eval Southern Italy’, Medi­eval Prosopo­graphy, 20 (1999), 23–49 —— , ‘Gender and Memory in Medi­eval Italy’, in Medi­eval Memories: Men, Women and the Past, 700–1300, ed. by Elisabeth van Houts (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 36–52 Tabacco, Giovanni, ‘Romualdo di Ravenna e gli inizi dell’eremitismo camaldolese’, in L’Eremitismo in Occidente nei secoli xi e xii (Milan: Società editrice Vita e pensiero, 1965), pp. 73–121 West-Harling, Veronica Ortenberg, ‘Proclaiming Power in the City: The Archbishops of Ravenna and the Doges of Venice’, in Urban Identities in Northern Italy (800–1100 ca.), ed. by Cristina La Rocca and Piero Majocchi (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 219–49

Sarah Whitten

Secundum Legem Gender, Law, and Ethnicity in Early Medi­eval Southern Italian Documents

Determining the boundaries of political rule, ethnic communities, and legal jurisdiction is a complicated proposition for ninth-century southern Italy. During the Lombard period (mid-eighth century to the 1070s), the region was divided and redivided between regional leaders and different legal traditions.1 The Lombard principalities of Benevento and Salerno utilized the Lombard laws with later additions made by two Beneventan princes, while Apulia and other nearby cities such as Naples, Amalfi, and Gaeta utilized Roman law.2 Before 900, many of these political boundaries were redrawn multiple times in periods of conquest and political uncertainty. Legal manu­scripts produced during the period also attest to the complexity of a legal culture that drew on Lombard laws, Carolingian capitularies, Justinian’s Institutes, as well as more uncommon material from Visigothic law and Alaric’s Breviary. People living in southern Italy before 900 cited specific laws and law codes as part of property transactions, criminal cases, and property disputes in a plethora of single-sheet charters and cartulary material. In these citations of specific laws and legal traditions, individuals expressed their ethnicity, their sense of political belonging, and their place in the larger transformations of the period. Writing about ethnicity as a situational construct, Patrick Geary

 1 Martin, ‘Le droit lombard en Italie méridionale’; Everett, ‘How Territorial Was Lombard Law?’; Taviani-Carozzi, La principauté lombarde, pp. 514–40.  2 For the Lombard law manu­script (Cava, Bib. Badia, MS 4), see Pohl, Werkstätte der Erinnerung, pp. 108–52. BL, MS Add. 47676 contains material from many different sources, including Roman and Gothic law; Kaiser, ‘Collectio Gaudenziana’. For canon law, see Gaastra, ‘Penance and the Law’. Sarah Whitten ([email protected]) is an Assistant Professor of History at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Her research focuses on how violence reshaped legal relationships and boundaries in early medi­eval southern Italy. She is currently writing a mono­graph about how vulnerable people like women and the enslaved utilized southern Italian legal systems to respond to violence and political instability in the region. Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe: Studies on Cultural Identity and Power, ed. by Courtney M. Booker, Hans Hummer, and Dana M. Polanichka, CURSOR 41, pp. 129–150 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022)        10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.127579

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argues that ‘early medi­eval ethnicity should be viewed as a subjective process by which individuals and groups identified themselves or others within a specific situation for specific purposes’.3 Drawing mostly on evidence from Merovingian historio­graphy, Geary indicates that ethnicity mattered in political and military affairs, but that in Italy and Septimania, ethnicity was also expressly stated in law courts. In the last lines of the piece, Geary envisions the study of ethnicity as not ‘the end point of an examination of society, but rather a beginning, a code which must be deciphered in order to understand the process of social change’.4 Reading legal citations of specific laws or legal codes as expressions of legal ethnicity illuminates how southern Italians related to the boundaries between ethnic communities and political leadership in the historical context of the tremendous upheaval of the ninth century.5 Different communities within southern Italy utilized references to law in very distinctive ways reflecting their differing relationship with Lombard authority. In property transactions, women regularly cited Lombard laws and Lombard legal traditions to show that their ownership and alienation of land followed the legal procedures; however, Lombard men rarely included references to Lombard laws in their documents. This suggests that gender played a central role in determining the expression of Lombard legal ethnicity. In legal disputes, dukes, princes, and judges expressed how their legal decisions complied with general ideas about law as well as specific laws and legal traditions. These court cases attest to how legal authorities and disputants tried to navigate a complex world of legal plurality. There are 120 surviving single-sheet charters from the eighth and ninth centuries preserved in five archives across southern Italy. The vast majority of these documents survive from the Archivio della S.ma Trinità at Cava dei Tirreni (henceforth Cava), which houses over fifteen thousand Latin charters on parchment. For the pre-Norman period, there are five hundred charters before the year 1000, including 104 from before 900.6 This wealth of material

 3 Geary, ‘Ethnic Identity as a Situational Construct’, p. 16.  4 Geary, ‘Ethnic Identity as a Situational Construct’, p. 26.  5 In documents from the tenth and the eleventh centuries, participants sometimes did state their ethnicity. The most complicated group doing this was the Atranensis, who were ethnically Amalfitans living in the city of Salerno and had the distinct legal identity of using Roman law rather than Lombard law. Taviani-Carozzi, La principauté lombarde, pp. 800–839. I did not include indirect references to Lombard laws, such as using Lombard legal terms like launegild, which is a counter-gift, wadia/guadia, or vague references to the rules of the morgengabe. Chris Wickham has shown in the kingdom of Italy how these concepts can be used in documents purporting to follow Roman law: Wickham, Early Medi­eval Italy, p. 69. One of the disputes preserved in the Chronicon Vulturnense attributed the practice of oathhelping to Roman law. This dispute will be discussed later in the essay.  6 Loud, ‘The Medi­eval Archives’, p. 130. The Archivio dell’Abbazia at Monte Cassino preserves thirteen charters dating from 809 to the 890s. The Archivio Diocesano in Trani holds one charter dated to 845. The Archivio Diocesano in Barletta preserves one charter dated to 897. The Biblioteca capitolare in Benevento possesses one charter dated to 898. The vast majority of

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reflects Cava’s role as a depository of charters during the medi­eval period.7 It is equally important to note that these five archives and the documents that they preserve come from border zones between Lombard and Byzantine regions. Located about ten miles from the Lombard capital city of Salerno as well as 5.5 miles from the independent Byzantine Duchy of Amalfi, Cava houses charters from both Lombard and Byzantine populations. Monte Cassino, Trani, and Barletta were closely located to Byzantine regions and preserve documents from these communities. The extensive single-sheet document collections from southern Italy provide insight into how people expressed political and ethnic boundaries in legal transactions. The charters prior to 899 document transactions from a wide variety of people including the Lombard princes of Salerno, local clergy, and ordinary people, including many women.8 This wealth of charters reflects general documentary practices from southern Italy. When land was donated or sold, all of the pertaining documents were transferred with the property. The rules of Lombard inheritance and morgengabe (marital property) could create ‘complicated patterns of ownership’ prompting people and churches to keep the charters supporting their ownership of property for long periods of time.9 This means that monastic institutions preserved tremendous numbers of private documents that oftentimes pre-dated the foundation of the monastic house.10 Due to the complications of forgeries and dating certain charters, I have relied on the Chartae Latinae Antiquiores volumes to determine which documents to include in my pool of charters.11 In addition to the original single-sheet material, documents from before 900 were also incorporated into cartularies produced by three of the great Lombard monasteries in the early twelfth century that incorporated documents from the monastic communities’ early years.12 These manu­scripts preserve

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these documents are edited in volumes of the Chartae Latinae Antiquiores and preserve property gifts, sales, and exchanges; just two charters record the proceedings of judicial disputes. Cava also never created a cartulary in the twelfth century, unlike other major regional monasteries. For archival practices at Cava in the early Middle Ages, see Erhart, ‘“Carta ista amalfitana est et nescitur legere”’, pp. 28–32. Skinner states that forty-four ninth-century charters from Cava involve women; Skinner, Women in Medi­eval Italian Society, p. 89. Loud, ‘The Medi­eval Archives’, p. 134. While founded c. 1020, Cava houses two late eighth-century charters (792 and 799), which are the only surviving original documents from that century. For the eighth-century charters: Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, xx, ed. by Bruckner and Marichal. For the ninth-century charters: Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, l–liii, ed. by Cavallo and Nicolaj; Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, cxvii, ed. by Cavallo and Nicolaj, has charter material from Cava, but it had not been published at the time I wrote this essay. There is a register of documents for southern Italy, but the editors have included many documents that were summarized into chronicles and are missing many elements of the original charter; Regesti dei documenti, ed. by Martin and others. On document production in southern Italy, especially in connection with the Cava collection, see Vitolo and Mottola, eds, Scrittura e produzione documentaria. There are four twelfth-century cartularies produced in Campania, all of which have scholarly

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property transactions, mostly donations to the monastic community, and also judicial dispute documents. Because the compilation process included selective editing of the material, many documents were either simplified, leaving out parts of the original text, or totally recreated from memory. The monasteries of Monte Cassino and San Vincenzo al Vulturno were burned to the ground in the 880s and lost many of their original documents. Later both communities worked to recreate the lost documents, many of which are preserved in the cartularies.13 Due to these complications, I have left out these documents when discussing property transactions.14 The cartularies, however, preserve a considerable number of dispute documents. Eight judicial documents were included in the Chronicon Vulturnense and Chronicon Sanctae Sophiae, four of which included legal citations of law codes and specific laws.15 Together the two sources of documents provide a glimpse into how law codes and specific laws were cited and utilized by different communities in Lombard southern Italy before 900.

I The property transactions preserved as single-sheet charters provide insight into how people related to the plurality of legal traditions in southern Italy. Of the 118 single-sheet charters documenting property sales, gifts, and exchanges, there are only four surviving charters that explicitly state a participant’s Lombard legal ethnicity. At the centre of all four transactions is the ownership and alienation of women’s property. Two of the documents are morgengabe contracts that detail the giving of property after a wedding night from a husband to his accepted bride.16 The two other records involve the sale and alienation of a woman’s property in connection to their morgengaben.17 The single-sheet charters before 899 only have references to Lombard law and no references to Roman law or church canons.18 There is no reference to law or

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editions. Chronicon Vulturnense, ed. by Federici; Chronicon Sanctae Sophiae, ed. by Martin; Regesto di S. Angelo, ed. by Inguanez; Registrum Petri Diaconi, ed. by Martin and others. The Regesto di S. Angelo in Formis does not preserve any material from before 900. Resl, ‘Illustration and Persuasion’. For problems of forgeries in the cartularies, see Anderson, ‘Historical Memory, Authority, and the Written Word’, pp. 252–55. Anderson has identified ten other mentions of disputes within the cartularies. Anderson, ‘Historical Memory, Authority, and the Written Word’, pp. 171–72. There are very few judicial documents, none from before 900, in the Register of Peter the Deacon reflecting Monte Cassino’s narrative strategies in the manu­script. Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, xx, doc. 701, and lii, doc. 17. Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 11, and liii, doc. 16. Beginning in the tenth century, charters preserved citations of Roman law. Patricia Skinner has written about women’s wills as part of Roman law tradition in southern Italy; Skinner, ‘Women, Wills, and Wealth’.

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ethnicity at all in eighty-six of the documents; twenty charters have vague references to law such as ‘secundum legem’ and ‘iusta legem’. Just fourteen charters have references to a specific law code or a specific individual law.19 The most significant difference between the charters that contain citations of law and those lacking them is the gender of the participants. In almost all the charters that contain the citations of law, a woman is the central actor in the transaction, and in almost all the charters that have no citation of law, a man is the central actor in the transaction. Before I discuss the documents that contain citations of Lombard law, I briefly want to address the eighty-six charters without legal references. Ethnicity is identified in specific moments, but it is equally important to pay attention to examples in which ethnicity is not specified. The vast majority of these eighty-six charters record the sale or donation of property by men. There is a casual quality to these charters and these transactions. Many record either property sales between two men living in Lombard regions or a man giving to a Lombard religious house, so it is likely that none of the parties involved felt it was necessary to connect their transactions to law or ethnicity. Yet not all of the charters without legal reference are purely simple transactions, and it appears that some of them may have purposefully left out any reference to law. There are some hints that certain transactions were occurring across the political boundaries of Roman law and Lombard law. Both the archives of Cava and Monte Cassino contain documents concerning people and places outside the Lombard territories. Occupants and owners, likely under Roman law, gave or sold land to Lombard people and monasteries.20 This suggests that in the cases in which transactions crossed the borders of legal identity, the participants decided to de-emphasize legal difference.21 Annick Peters-

 19 Just 11.6 per cent of the charters have any legal citations; seventeen Lombard laws and pacts are cited. Two documents are records of disputes to be discussed in section two of this essay. Edictus Langobardorum, ed. by Bluhme. For an English translation, see The Lombard Laws, trans. by Drew; and Anderson, ‘Historical Memory, Authority, and the Written Word’, pp. 256–62. For the remainder of the essay, I cite an individual law by giving the ruler’s name and law number.  20 Unlike in the Carolingian world, political leaders in southern Italy never formally stated policies around the personality of the law. Cities like Naples, Amalfi, and Gaeta never produced new laws in the early Middle Ages and continued to utilize Roman law. This is similar to parts of Gaul like Aquitania, which never had barbarian laws issued for the region. Stefan Esders has argued that legal identity was increasingly about where a person was born rather than the ethnicity of their parents; Esders, ‘Roman Law as an Identity Marker’, p. 343.  21 Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, li, doc. 22, Cunari, who lived in Castellammare di Stabia, which was under Roman law, sold land to Giovanni. The document uses Lombard indiction dates and references coins with Lombard princes on them, suggesting Giovanni was a Lombard. In Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, liii, doc. 12, the count of Gaeta, which used Roman Law, gave a barn and workshops to Monte Cassino, which used Lombard law. In Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 8, Senatus, who lived in Noceria (a Roman-law territory), sold land to Benenatus, who was under the jurisdiction of the Lombard prince of Salerno and Lombard law as seen at Cava, Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 24.

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Custot, writing about convivencia amongst Greek and Latin Christians within Byzantine southern Italy before the Normans, argues that this de-emphasis on legal tradition ‘seems to show a great neutrality in front of a variety of legal customs’.22 This might suggest common legal values (especially ideas about land sales) between the two regions, but it might have also been a calculation on the part of one or both parties to prevent later contestation of the transaction using ethnically based legal jurisdiction.23 The transactions from Apulia also straddled the legal boundary between Roman and Lombard law use, but they might be unclear for different reasons. Apulia, especially the city of Bari, experienced tremendous political turbulence, shifting from Lombard, Byzantine, Islamic, Carolingian, and then finally back to Byzantine hands in the course of the long ninth century.24 Thus these documents lacking citations suggest an uncertainty about the validity and durability of legal traditions.25 The clearest example of this uncertainty is a charter that records the donation of Rodenardus of Bari to Monte Cassino in 879 and makes no reference to law.26 Rodenardus directly experienced the turmoil of the period because his son was captured and sold into overseas slavery. Given the uncertain status of his son, Rodenardus established provisions for his son to recover the land if he happened to return from his enslavement. Again, these eighty-six charters without any reference to law were primarily focused on men selling and giving land. While the majority of the single-sheet charters did not cite any laws or law codes, eight women’s documents (three morgengabe contracts, three land sales, and two land donations) include specific laws and references to the Lombard legal tradition. Four charters, two morgengabe contracts, one land sale, and one donation, cited how the property in question was owned by women ‘in accordance with the laws and rites of our Lombard people’, affirming these women’s membership in Lombard legal ethnicity.27 The attention to the legal tradition around women’s property rights is also clear in the citation of individual laws within the charters. Appearing in five charters, the most

 22 Peters-Custot, ‘Convivencia between Christians’, p. 205.  23 The charter evidence from Gaul suggests that legal distinctions did not matter as much as those in the law codes; Esders, ‘Roman Law as an Identity Marker’, p. 330.  24 For the history of Bari, see Musca, L’Emirato di Bari; Martin, La Pouille du vie au xiie siècle; Kreutz, Before the Normans. Eventually Apulia would utilize Lombard law until the Norman period.  25 In contrast, the charters produced between 773 and 774 in the context of Charlemagne’s conquest of Lombard Pavia emphasize Italian custom and Lombard law. Everett, ‘How Territorial Was Lombard Law?’, pp. 359–60.  26 Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, liii, doc. 10. Monte Cassino utilized Lombard law in its land transactions.  27 ‘Sicondum ritum genti nostrem Langubardorum’, Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, xx, doc. 701; ‘secundum lex nostra langubardorum’, Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 17; ‘secundum ritum et consuetudo gentis nostre langobardorum’, Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 11; ‘unde te lex langobardum’, Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, liii, doc. 16.

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widely cited individual law was Liutprand, 7, which outlined the practices of the morgengabe, the heart of most female property ownership.28 According to the practice, a Lombard woman can be given up to a quarter of her husband’s property at the time of their marriage. Amongst the single-sheet charters from southern Italy, three record the morgengabe given by a husband to his new wife on the morning after the wedding. Two of these three records employ significant paraphrases from Liutprand, 7 to outline the procedure of how the husband gave the morgengabe to his new wife.29 A third morgengabe document dated to 882 records the marriage between Ioanne, a notary, and Orsa, a widow. Because this was a second marriage for Orsa, Ioanne only gave his new bride an eighth of his property secundum lex nostra Langubardorum (in accordance with our laws of the Lombards).30 The reduced amount reflected the fact that Orsa had been previously married and presumably retained her first morgengabe. The document also preserves how Ioanne gave his wadia (legal surety) to Gaidoaldo in order that all things for his wife were carried out in accordance with the law.31 All three documents make very clear that these husbands were giving morgengaben to their wives in compliance with the procedures set out in the Lombard laws.  28 Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, xx, doc. 701; l, doc. 23; li, doc. 21; lii, docs 11, 17.  29 In Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, xx, doc. 701, Alderisi describes giving a morgengabe at the time of his marriage, stating: ‘in meo sociavit coniugio tunc in alia diae nuptiarum inter parentes et amicus nostros’, paraphrased from Liutprand, 7, Edictus Langobardorum, ed. by Bluhme, p. 110: ‘in coniugio sociaverit, ita dicernimus ut alia diae ante parentes et amicos suos’. The document describes how the gift was given and should not be lost in the future: ‘per hunc hellibe llum scriptum et a testes rovoratum ostendere previdimus sicondum ritum genti nostrum Langubardorum decernet, ut in foturo pro hanc caus periurio non percurrat’, paraphrased from Liutprand, 7, Edictus Langobardorum, ed. by Bluhme, p. 110: ‘ostendat per scriptum a testibus rovoratum et dicat: “quia ecce quod coniugi meae morgingap dedi”, ut in futuro pro hac causa periurio non percurrat’; in Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, li, doc. 21, Lupo explains his gift of a morgengabe to his wife, Bonetruda, stating: ‘in meo sociabis coniugio tunc in alia dies nuptjarum ante amici et parentis nostril, do adque per unc scriptu alibellum et a testibus roboratum’. The editors of the document in the Chartae Latinae Antiquiores do not identify the citation of Liutprand, 7.  30 Ioanne the notary describes: ‘ante presenjiam Trasenandi gastaldi et iudice benit mulier nomine Orsa filia Ursi et uxor fuet Vualperti filii Leopardi et manifestabit se dicendum, ut bonam esset sua bolumtate sibi accipere birum me qui supra Ioanne; quam et ego supra­ scripto Ioanne a mea parte similiter me manifastabit, ut ipsa suprascripta Horsa uxorem ducere bolere. dum ipse supradicto iudex audibit nostra manifestatjone adque cognobit, ut bona essere nostra bolumtate inter nos tollendum, taliter tribuit nobis licentiam cod inter nos coniugio flere, et ibique bona bolumtate ipsi es mulieris per hosculum nos coniunsimus ad abendam ego eam uxorem, secundum lex nostra Langubardorum continet’. Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 17. This passage is drawn from Liutprand, 7, and Adelchis, 3, Edictus Langobardorum, ed. by Bluhme, pp. 110, 211, but is not a clear paraphrase of either.  31 ‘Sequenter lex nostra Langubardorum continet et ibique dedit ego vuadia Gaidoaldi, qui est fratres eius consobrino filio Ermenandi, cot omnia adimplere ad ipsa uxore mea sequenter lege’, Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 17. This passage paraphrases Rothair, 360, Edictus Langobardorum, ed. by Bluhme, p. 82: ‘Si quis alii wadia et Fideiussorem de sacramentum dederit, per omnia, quod per wadia obligavit adinpleat’.

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There were two main reasons for the citations of laws around women’s property. The first is that Lombard society was deeply concerned about property potentially leaving a family, especially in the case of the simple inheritance between a father and son. Patricia Skinner has described the morgengabe ‘as the thorn in the side of husbands’ families’.32 Multiple documents from Cava have clauses about how the property rights of wives related to their morgengabe impacted the transaction, such as guaranteeing a wife one quarter of the purchase price, or that a wife would sell her morgengabe lands as part of a larger land sale. Later documents from southern Italy suggest that female property ownership was particularly vulnerable to contestation by male family members, especially after the death of their husbands.33 The Lombard princes took interest in how a widow handled her morgengabe after her husband’s death. The first Lombard prince of Benevento, Arichis, stipulated how much property a widow could give to the Church without infringing on the inheritance rights of her children. Prince Adelchis of Benevento, in his set of eight laws issued in 866, protected the morgengabe from contestation by close relatives due to the widow’s lack of documents.34 Secondly, the rules governing the morgengabe tradition under Roman law as practiced in Amalfi, Gaeta, and Apulia were different from the Lombard morgengabe rules. Under Roman legal tradition, a woman could receive up to a third of her husband’s property at the time of their marriage and could alienate the property without the involvement of a male guardian. Therefore, the rules of the morgengabe were widely recognized within Lombard and Roman legal tradition as a major point of distinction. For people living in southern Italy before the Normans, female property ownership was at the heart of what made one legally a Lombard or legally a Roman. This was a distinction that likely impacted almost every family within the region, and many Lombard charters mention wives or mothers owning a quarter of the family’s lands. For southern Italy before the Normans, legal ethnicity was deeply intertwined with gender. Some have argued that this emphasis on Lombard law in morgengabe contracts reflects marriages made across the legal boundary between Roman-law and Lombard-law communities.35 The Lombard laws prior to 774 give significant attention to intermarriage between Romans and Lombards, especially Liutprand, 127, which describes the procedures related to ‘mundium’ (guardianship) when a Roman man marries a Lombard woman. Because none of the charters discussed in this essay explicitly state the ethnicity of the participants, it is hard to definitively determine intermarriage, though educated guesses can be made. The earliest morgengabe charter is probably an example of a Roman woman marrying a Lombard man. The bride, Cuntruda,

 32 Skinner, Women in Medi­eval Italian Society, p. 90.  33 Skinner, ‘Women, Wills, and Wealth’, pp. 139, 145.  34 Arichis, 14, and Adelchis, 3, Edictus Langobardorum, ed. by Bluhme, pp. 208, 211.  35 Pohl-Resl, ‘Legal Practice and Ethnic Identity’, pp. 210–11.

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came from the city of Nuceria (Nocera), which was under Neapolitan control and Roman law, but her husband, Alerdisi, lived in Forino, which was under Lombard jurisdiction.36 The other two morgengabe contracts involve Lombards marrying other Lombards.37 The charter evidence suggests that legal citations were included in Lombard morgengabe documents regardless of whether intermarriage occurred or not. This focus on legal identity did not solely occur when women received property at the time of their marriage. It also continued when they tried to alienate property through either sales or donation. In five surviving documents, in order to support their donation or sale of land, women provided citations to the laws that allowed them to own the land as part of their morgengabe (Liutprand, 7), allowed them, as women, to sell land (Liutprand, 22), or allowed them to donate land if, as widows, they undertook a religious life (Liutprand, 101).38 The use of these references is most clearly expressed in a charter from 882 when Rodelenda, a widow, sold land from her morgengabe in the city of Salerno. First the widow describes how her husband ‘in die coniunctjonis adque copulationis nostre secundum ritum et consuetudo gentis nostre langobardorum traditum habuit mihi morgincapum, idest quartam pars ex omnibus rebus substantjis suis’ (on the day of our marriage and copulation handed over to me the morgengabe according to the rite and custom of Our Lombard people, that is a quarter-part of all of his property), summarizing Liutprand, 7.39 After stating her intention to sell the land, Rodelenda (summarizing Liutprand, 22) describes hearing: per ecdoctos et sapientissimos omines, ut mulier, quando rebus suas bindere boluit, nam non absconse set faciat notitjam inter duos bel tres parentes suos, et pariter pergeret ante nubiliores omines et omnia illius annuntiaret, ut per eius absolutionem bindictjo illam fiat et quodcumque in isto hordinem de rebus suas cuique dederit, stabile ordinem debeat permaneret.40 (from learned and most wise men that a woman, when she wishes to sell her things cannot conceal it, but should notify two or three of her relatives, and equally must go before respectable men and declare  36 Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, xx, doc. 701. Peter Erhart discusses the notation on the back of the charter that reads ‘Carta ista Amalfitana est et nesitur legere’, which he indicates was part of the first organization of the archive at Cava. Erhart, ‘“Carta ista amalfitana est et nescitur legere”’, p. 31.  37 These two morgengabe documents in the Cava collection were probably related. Ioanne, the groom in Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 17, was likely the notary for Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, li, doc. 21. Ioanne was also the notary for one other document, in which transaction Orsa’s first husband took part, Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 6. For naming practices in the Cava collection, see Morlicchio, Antroponimia longobarda.  38 Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, l, docs 20, 23; lii, docs 11, 33; liii, doc. 16.  39 Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 11. English translation from ‘A Widow Makes Alternative Arrangements’, ed. and trans. by Skinner and van Houts, p. 211.  40 Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 11.

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everything to them so that the sale may take place with their permission and so that whatever of her property should be given in this way to whomsoever should through this remain firm.) Rodelenda then states how she wanted to observe exactly the customs of the law and visited the local gastald to do so. This document shows very clearly how women, in order to prevent their transactions from being challenged, explicitly stated how their ownership and sale of land complied with the Lombard laws. In the two donation charters by women, widows without any relatives and under the guardianship of the palace gifted local religious institutions one-third of their property drawing on Liutprand, 101, which outlines the rule of widows donating land. These five together suggest that in order for women to undertake fairly commonplace transactions, such as selling and donating property, they explicitly stated how they were very directly complying with Lombard law. There are just four property contracts that specifically invoke individual Lombard laws to support the legal transactions of men. Unlike the documents pertaining to women that outline the rules of commonplace transactions, these charters describe uncommon gifts and land exchanges. To re-enforce these rare property matters, male participants attempted to prevent further contestation by relying on legal ideas about gifts and reciprocity and showing how heirs were not harmed by the transaction. In 872, two brothers swapped land in Pregiato and tried to prevent later contestation of this exchange by promising to give an oath in support for the transactions, paraphrasing Liutprand, 61.41 In 837, Radipert, who was unwell, gave land to Arnipert to honour Arnipert’s good service to him. Radipert stated that his heirs could not contest the transaction due to the laws about the launegild (counter-gift), citing Rothair, 175.42 In both of these examples, men relied on ideas about the legal reciprocity of oaths and gift-giving to reinforce the legality of the transactions. These legal mechanisms were not, however, open to Lombard women. The two other transactions emphasized how male heirs did not lose out on their inheritance due to the donation of land. In 882, Grispertus gave all of his lands to the monastery of San Massimo in Salerno except what was promised to his son Petrus as was outlined in Rothair, 154. Grispertus then goes on to state that if his son dies without children, the property will go to the monastery.43 Lastly in 886, Prince Guaimarius of Salerno gave the land of Benenatus and Ademarus to San Massimo in Salerno, because the two men died without heirs and their property came under the control of the sacred palace. The documents paraphrase Rothair, 223, which states that when a person dies without heirs, their property goes to the palace, which

 41 Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 2.  42 Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, l, doc. 14.  43 Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 14.

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cannot be contested.44 Both charters emphasize that although land is being alienated outside of the family, the participants took into consideration how heirs might not be negatively impacted by these legal matters. Thus, men cited law to prevent future contestation, which was significantly different than how women utilized legal citations. Transactions of women emphasize that the women had owned the land and alienated it correctly. For men, the validity of the legal action is not of concern. Instead, male participants used legal citations to show how their male heirs were unharmed by the property transactions. The legal citations in the charters suggest that women related to law and legal authority very differently than men. Women used legal references to express how they were closely following the rules for owning and alienating land, applying a legal precision to their transactions that men did not need. This precision suggests a legal vulnerability of women’s ownership of property: an anxious dotting of i’s and crossing of t’s to prevent future contestation. Other evidence of this precision can be found in clauses about violence that were incorporated into many charters pertaining to property held by women. These clauses state exactly how a woman was not compelled by violence to alienate her lands.45 This precision suggests that legal authorities such as judges, gastalds, and the Lombard princes related very differently to women than men who were trying to alienate land. They were deeply concerned to make sure women’s transactions followed the rule of law and were not compelled by violence, concerns that never seemed to be of much importance in dealings by men. This legal anxiety surrounding women’s property ownership was further heightened because the morgengabe was the most widely recognized legal difference between Lombard-law and Roman-law communities. This legal boundary was not so much about the percentage of property owned by a woman but more about how women and their families were continually asked if their land transactions upheld the rules of Lombard law.46 In times of upheaval especially when Lombard rule was under threat, the continual reminder that women owned and alienated property according to Lombard law reinforced the idea that Lombard political, legal, and ethnic communities were still functioning. Not all property held by women received so much precision and anxiety. In fact, these legal citations and violence clauses tend to cluster in documents from certain periods of tremendous upheaval in southern Italy. Between 845 and 860, there is a group of documents of which two charters have legal citations, six documents include the violence clause, and one has both a

 44 Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 24.  45 Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, l, docs 22, 23, 26, 31, 33, 34; li, docs 8, 25, 26, 27; lii, docs 11, 18, 19.  46 Charters of the tenth and the eleventh centuries make explicit how southern Italian women held land according to either Lombard law or Roman law; Skinner, ‘Women, Wills, and Wealth’.

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legal citation and a violence clause.47 This period was a moment of immense transition for the city of Salerno, which experienced a civil war with Benevento, faced the increased violence of Muslim mercenaries, and formally split into its own principality.48 Women responded to these upheavals by selling land, and their charters have a legal precision that did not occur in other periods. The combination of political uncertainty, transactions by women, and legal precision is repeated in the year 882, when the city of Salerno was besieged by Muslim forces from Sicily, seriously threatening Lombard rule of the city. Just a year later, the major Lombard monasteries of Monte Cassino and San Vincenzo al Vulturno were burned down. Of the twelve documents dated to the year 882 preserved at Cava, three contain legal citations. The violence clause reappears again in charters after its omission for over a decade.49 The most evocative of these twelve charters is a land sale by the widow Rodelenda discussed earlier. Her desire to sell part of her morgengabe was complicated by Muslim forces, who had enslaved one of her sons and prevented her other son from entering the city due to their siege of it. Consequently, Rodelenda needed to sell her property, presumably to support herself during her new widowhood, but could not because political violence had taken away her mundoalds (guardians). In this situation, Rodelenda and Nandipert, the gastald and judge, turned to legal precision in order to massage the legality of the transaction. In the document, Rodelenda narrates how she received the morgengabe according to the rites of ‘our Lombard people’, very clearly indicating her legal ethnicity and strong connection to Lombard society. Then she describes the laws that allow her to undertake the transaction. As discussed earlier, she gives a lengthy summary of Liutprand, 22 and Liutprand, 7, stating that her actions are in compliance with these rules. She also swears that she was not coerced through violence to undertake this transaction. Through this land sale, Rodelenda was able to gain the means to support herself during a period of political uncertainty within the city of Salerno and personal tumult, losing her husband and son. For Nandipert, the Lombard gastald and judge, this transaction allowed him to publicly recite critical Lombard laws, reminding Rodelenda and the wider community in Salerno that Lombard law and sovereignty were still intact during this moment of profound political and legal challenge.50 One of the legal consequences of this violence was the loss of family members, compelling Lombard princes to be more involved in property

 47 For violence clauses, see Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, l, docs 22, 26, 31, 33, 34; li, doc. 8. For legal citations, see Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, l, doc. 20; li, doc. 21. The charter Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, l, doc. 23, has both a violence clause and a legal citation.  48 Whitten, ‘Franks, Greeks, and Saracens’. For the history of Salerno, see Taviani-Carozzi, ‘Salerno longobarda’; Delogu, Mito di una città meridionale.  49 For the violence clause, Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, docs 11, 18, 19. For the legal citations, see Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, docs 11, 14, 17.  50 Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 11.

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transactions. The Lombard princes of both Benevento and Salerno helped people who had lost their entire families dispense with their property in the absence of heirs. When the two brothers Benenatus and Ademarus died in 886 without any heirs, their property came under the control of the Salernitan palace and was donated by Prince Guaimarius to the princely monastery San Massimo.51 Prince Guaimarius also handled the affairs of the widow and religious woman Teoperga, who no longer had any living relatives and wanted to donate property in memory of her dead son Adelprandus.52 The Beneventan prince Radelchis II promised to donate the property of Adelbona, a religious woman without relatives, after her death.53 For both of the religious women, the Lombard princes also had to assume their mundium (guardianship) for the remainder of their lives.54 The breakdown of inheritance within certain families was a consequence of the violence of the late ninth century, when large numbers of people were killed or captured for overseas slavery, forcing the princes to take control over property and legal control over some women. To support these princely actions, the Lombard rulers utilized legal citations in all three charters: both women’s charters included the rules concerning a widow alienating property (Liutprand, 101), and Prince Guaimarius included in both charters the legal reasons that he could oversee these transactions (Rothair, 182 and 223).55 For the Lombard princes these transactions helped to reinforce their sovereignty and increase their personal wealth. A portion of both women’s estates by legal right became part of the sacred palace after the women’s deaths. For Prince Radelchis II, this legal transaction was an important opportunity to reaffirm his rule over Benevento. The Lombard princes lost jurisdiction over the city of Benevento in the 890s, which was ruled by the Byzantine protospatharus Simbaticius and Guy IV, duke of Spoleto, and Radelchis II was only briefly able to reassert Lombard rule over the city. As part of their expression of Lombard sovereignty, the Lombard princes became involved in the property transactions of those without families, especially those involving women. Declarations of legal ethnicity in southern Italy before the Normans were deeply connected to gender. Men in property transactions rarely stated any connection to law, but women, especially in moments of political upheaval,

 51 Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 24. In Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 8, Benenatus bought some of the land in question from Senatus.  52 Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 33.  53 Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, liii, doc. 16.  54 For the rules and practices surrounding the mundoald, see Vòllono, ‘Methodik und Probleme’, pp. 477–91.  55 Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, liii, doc. 16 cites Liutprand, 101, Edictus Langobardorum, ed. by Bluhme, p. 149; Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 33 cites Rothair, 182 and Liutprand, 101, Edictus Langobardorum, ed. by Bluhme, pp. 43, 149; Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 24 cites Rothair, 223, Edictus Langobardorum, ed. by Bluhme, p. 54.

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stated their allegiance to the Lombard legal community and cited Lombard laws especially in reference to their ownership of morgengabe lands. Women and their lands became one of the most important boundaries between Lombard and non-Lombard culture within southern Italy. This boundary was upheld in the property transactions recorded in single-sheet charters, but it was also upheld more widely in Lombard legal culture. The Lombard princes made women’s property one of their central concerns when legislating new laws and when overseeing criminal cases. The vulnerability of property ownership by women was one of the sites of articulating Lombard sovereignty that was widely recognized by political and legal leaders as well as common southern Italians.

II In contrast to the wealth of single-sheet charters about property, there are very few surviving judicial documents from southern Italy before 900. The archive at Cava preserves just two dispute charters, both of which are criminal cases resolved with penal enslavement.56 The cartulary material is a much richer source of dispute documents: of the eight preserved, all focus on the ownership of monastic property and unfree people. Unsurprisingly, the ten dispute records incorporated references to specific laws and legal codes at a much greater rate than the property transactions. The two judicial charters from Cava and four of the eight cartulary documents preserve references to specific laws and multiple legal traditions. Unlike the property transactions, these dispute records mention Roman law, canon law, and local custom in addition to Lombard law. One of the central responsibilities of the Lombard princes and judges was determining which law codes and specific laws should be applied to resolve a judicial dispute.57 Savvy disputants like the Lombard monasteries could propose resolving the court case utilizing different legal traditions that could improve their chances of legal victory. In the two judicial charters from Cava dating to the 890s, legal authorities resolved a case concerning violence against a woman and her property, and punished a man with close ties to Saracen outsiders. Both of these court cases reflected similar concerns to those in the property transactions: protecting Lombard women from violence that might coerce them to alienate property inappropriately, and re-establishing order in the aftermath of the 880s attacks on Salerno and the countryside. Two gastald-judges heard a case in September  56 Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, docs 29, 34.  57 For justice in Lombard Campania, see Delogu, ‘La Giustizia nell’Italia meridionale longobarda’; Martin, ‘Le juge et l’acte notairé en Italie méridionale’. For a detailed discussion of the eight cases from the cartularies, see Anderson, ‘Historical Memory, Authority, and the Written Word’, pp. 171–93. For the most recent summary of justice in northern Italy, see Heil, ‘Justice and Legal Practice’.

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894 at the palace in Salerno directly concerned with violence against a woman and her property. Adelgisa, and her tutor Adelfrid, accused Teodelgardus of compromising Adelgisa’s virtue by throwing her on the ground, defiling her, and forcing her into marriage.58 They supported these claims with oaths of unnamed witnesses, and Teodelgardus was directly questioned by the two gastald-judges, who decided that he should pay a fine of nine hundred solidi as assigned in the law Rothair, 186. Due to the amount of money that Teodelgardus had to pay to Adelgisa and the palace in Salerno, he was forced into permanent slavery to work off his debts. Alice Rio asserts that the Lombard law utilized large fines to be paid off through penal slavery in cases of sexual misdeeds because the crimes were so egregious and should be dealt with inside the family.59 The vast majority of the charter focuses on establishing the conditions of Teodelgardus’s slavery, including cutting his hair short and putting him into Adelgisa’s and the palace’s hands.60 Penal slavery was also deployed by Prince Guaimarius of Salerno to punish Lupus, who travelled and made pacts with Saracens, for breaking the 849 pact between Radelchis and Sikenolf. Convicted of his crimes, Lupus became a slave of the sacred palace and was given by Prince Guaimarius to the monastery of San Massimo.61  58 ‘Dum ante nos Petrus et Benedictus gastaldei et iudicibus coniuncti fuisset Adelgisa filia Vualcari cum Adelfrid filio Adelmundi parentes et adbocatore suo, simul cum ipsi benit Teodelgardus de nuceria filius *****, primis ipsa nominata Adelgisa cum ipso Adelfrid tutore et parentes suos, in cuius mundio subiacebat, dixerunt, ut ipse Teodelgardus in birtute conpreensisset ipsa Adelgisa et in terra illa iactasset et adulterasset illam, et iam ante os dies inde iudicatum abuisset, ut per testes ipso ei adprobaret’, Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 29. The charter hints that Adelgisa does not have any living male relatives and is under the mundium of an unrelated tutor.  59 Rio, Slavery after Rome, p. 58; Rio, ‘Penal Enslavement’.  60 ‘Dum nos iudicibus tale eius manifestationem audibimus, iudicabimus, ut secundum legem nongentos solidos ex hac causa componere medietate palatii et medietate ipsius mulieris, adstante ibidem Gaidenardus filius Petri gastaldei, qui missus erat a pars palatii conpositione ista recipiendum. nos quidem iudicibus diximus eidem Teodelgardo, ut daret wadia ipso­rum, ut secundum legem nongentos solidos eidem mulieris et ad pars palatii conponere; ille dixit, ut non tanta abere rebus aut substantia, unde se ab ac culpa liberare possat, eo quod pauca rebus se dicebat abere. dum nos iudicibus tale eius audibimus manifestationem et pauca se dicebat abere substantia, de presentis per capillis capitis suis se ipso Teodelgardus conprendere fecimus, et in manum ipsius Adelgise et Adelfrid parenti et tutori sui seu et ipsius Gaidenardi, qui missus erat a pars palatii’, Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 29. This section of the charter borrows language from Liutprand, 152, Edictus Langobardorum, ed. by Bluhme, p. 175, which describes the process of penal enslavement for crimes including adultery.  61 ‘Declaro ego Vuaimarius princeps et imperialis patricius, quia concessum est mihi a sanctissimis et piissimis imperatoribus Leone et Alexandro per berbum et firmissimum preceptum bulla aurea sigillatum integram sortem Benebentane probincie, sicut divisum est inter Sichenolfum et Radelchisum principem, ut liceret me exinde facere omnia, quod voluero, sicut antecessores mei omnes principes fecerunt. Pro inde concessimus in ecclesia Beatissimi Maximi pro nostre salutis anime, quem domnus Vuaiferius princeps pater meus a nobo fundamine construxit intus hanc nobam civitatem salernitanam, hunc serbum sacri nostri palatii Lupus filius Ragimperti cum uxore sua, et filiis, filiabus, nuris et nepotibus suis, cum omnibus rebus substantia illorum, movile adque immovile, et cum omnibus illorum pertinentiis, pro

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Like Adelgisa’s case of violent marriage, the charter provides some of the details of the case, including Lupus’s crime of making a pact with Saracens and the specific law that he violated, yet the focus of the document is on the conditions of his and his family’s slavery. Because Lupus was married to a free woman while being a slave, his wife and family with their considerable possessions were also given to San Massimo in accordance with the Lombard legal idea that a free woman who married an enslaved man became enslaved herself.62 These two court cases suggest that Lombard legal authorities cited Lombard law in both property transactions and criminal proceedings to resolve the upheavals of the late ninth century and affirm Lombard princely power.63 The two Cava cases very clearly state the laws that were broken by Teodelgardus and Lupus. In the property disputes preserved in the cartularies, the notaries often cited the specific laws or legal tradition used to determine ownership of property or people. In 756, the nun Eglidi attempted to recover a small church founded by her family from the monastery of SS. Archangeli et Benedictus in Senedochio. After both sides presented their claims of ownership and their documentation, the Beneventan duke judging the case asked the two disputants to swear oaths with five oath-helpers.64 Eglidi could not present the oath-helpers and lost her claim to the property in accordance with Rothair, 359 and 363.65 The dukes and princes of Benevento did not determine property ownership solely with Lombard law, but with church canons as well. In 746, Duke Gisulf II decided whether the small church of St Peter had been temporarily or permanently granted to the monastery of

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quo ipse Lupus cum Saracenis ambulavit et pactuotes fuit, quando ipse storus super hanc predictam civitatem resedit, et proinde supradictum Lupus concessimus in predicta sancta ecclesia cum uxore sua et filiis, filiabus, nuris et nepotibus suis, sicut supra­dictum est, pro eo quod postquam nobis culpatus fuit, postea autem ipsa eiusdem mulier super annum spatium ipsum Lupum abuit birum et ipsi filiis, filiabus et nepotibus suis postea genuerunt, et iusta legem ad sacrum nostrum palatium perbenerunt potestatem, cum omnibus rebus substantiis suis movile adque inmovile cum omnibus suis pertinentiis in supradicta sancta ecclesia concessimus securiter abendum’, Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, lii, doc. 34. Generally, the woman becomes a slave within her own family, but if she marries a slave of the sacred palace, she becomes a palace slave like her husband according to Rothair, 221, Liutprand, 24, and Adelchis, 1, Edictus Langobardorum, ed. by Bluhme, pp. 53–54, 118, 211. When discussing this charter, Rio suggests that Lupus was a relatively comfortable slave due to his wife and property; Rio, Slavery after Rome, p. 59. Two documents in the Chronicon Vulturnense preserved court cases brought by the abbot of San Vincenzo al Volturno in 897 and 899 to preserve monastic ownership of land, despite the loss of the monastery’s archives when it was sacked in 881; Chronicon Vulturnense, docs 77 and 79, ed. by Federici, ii, pp. 14–18, 20–21. Prior to 774, Lombard southern Italy was ruled by dukes based in Benevento. In 774, Duke Arichis II declared himself prince, beginning the princely title in the south, which would last until the late eleventh century. In the eighth and early ninth centuries, disputes were judged solely by the dukes/princes, but in the late ninth century other officials undertook the responsibility of judging alongside the princes; Martin, ‘Le juge et l’acte notairé en Italie méridionale’. Chronicon Sanctae Sophiae, i, doc. 25, ed. by Martin, p. 376.

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S. Peter in Quintodecimo. Discerning that S. Peter had been temporarily granted, the duke ordered the church to be returned to the monastery S. Maria in Quintodecimo because according to the canons, one church cannot seize another. Duke Gisulf II states that he had already known that the church belonged to S. Maria in Quintodecimo but made his legal decision according to the church canon.66 In all these disputes, a specific law or law code was cited as part of the legal reason for the determination of a crime or legal ownership. This application of law in courts of southern Italy helps to explain the citation of law in property transactions. Directly incorporated laws informed the judge of which law to utilize in the event of contestation. The cartularies also preserve two cases in which legal officials were asked to determine whether Lombard law, church canons, or local custom applied in a particular case. In a 762 dispute concerning monastic ownership of slaves, Abbot Mauricius of the monastery S. Benedictus of Benevento argued that a group of people was illegally manumitted by his predecessor, arguing that the manumission was contra canonicam regulam (against canon law). Mauricius wanted to recover these people and force them back into unfreedom. Ultimately, Arichis II decided in favour of Mauricius recovering ownership of the people, citing both church canons and Lombard law to justify his conclusion. In the matter of these unfree people, the two legal traditions did not have competing spheres of influence but instead were harmonized by Arichis to support his verdict.67 In a later case before Prince Sicard of Benevento, Iustus, a representative of the bishop of Benevento, claimed that the church of S. Felice should be under the jurisdiction of the bishop because the church had a baptismal font, and all churches with baptisteries were under the control of the bishop according to the church canons.

 66 It seems that the duke was not citing a specific canon but rather a general idea found within canon law: ‘Ideo nostra qui supra gloriosa, audita inter eos utraque itentio et cognoscentes certam veritatem quod ipse Sancto Petro ad Sancta Mari adprotenuit, fecimus venire sancte canune et relegente in nostra presentia et sic ibidem continebatur ut ęclesia una ab altera non raperentur; tunc nostra Gloria recte nobis comparuit iudicare secundum precepta canuni ut Sancto Petro ad Sancta Maria adpertenere debeat’; Chronicon Sanctae Sophiae, iii, doc. 3, ed. by Martin, p. 484.  67 ‘Quorum capitula sciscitantes ita continents inveniums in sanctorum apostolorum seu Nicino nec non et Anquritano atque Silvestri pape urbis Romę conciliis ut nullus episco­ porum, presbyterorum, diaconorum et claericorum qui sanctis et venerabilibus locis present res ecclesię distraherent aut alienare presumant, et qui presumerent a propprio gradu disciderent. Post hę inreprehensibilter, prestante Deo, iudicium dare poteremus, iussimus aduci edictum gentis nostre Langobardoum. Quod sciscitantes invenimus qualiter bone recordationes domnus Liutprand rex instituit ut precept que facta anteriora essent statuimus firmiores et stabiliores esse, sicut volumus ut nostra precept semper roborem opteneant’; Chronicon Sanctae Sophiae, ii, doc. 15, ed. by Martin, p. 462. The law from Liutprand has been identified as Liutprand, 73, Edictus Langobardorum, ed. by Bluhme, p. 173; Chronicon Sanctae Sophiae, ii, ed. by Martin, p. 464. No one has successfully identified the passage from church canons. Perhaps it is one of the church canons about slavery associated with Hosius of Cordova, who represented Pope Silvester at the Council of Ganga.

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The representatives of San Maria in Locosano, which owned the church, argued that the legal status of many other religious foundations in Benevento broke both church canons and Lombard law and instead reflected local use of custom.68 To prove this claim, the monastic representatives argued that the town of Siponto should have their own bishop and not be part of the diocese of Benevento if canon law was applied.69 Prince Sicard ordered the question of Siponto to be further investigated and decided in the matter of S. Felice that it belonged to the monastery according to local custom. In this case, the correct laws to support legal ownership were not just determined by Sicard but were part of a legal strategy to challenge the bishop’s use of church canons by threatening his control of Siponto. After Sicard made his decision according to local custom, Iustus had to give a wadia (surety) to the monastic representatives, who, in turn, with five oath-helpers, had to swear an oath according to Roman law.70 Sicard utilized these oaths to heal the tensions between the episcopal and monastic communities as well as to create legal commonalities between Lombard and Roman laws. These two cases suggest that political leaders and judges in Benevento looked to find legal commonalities in cases involving church property without mention of ethnicity or territory, yet savvy disputants could question the application of a particular legal tradition as part of a successful legal strategy. Citations of laws and legal traditions provide powerful insights into how different communities negotiated the boundaries of political rule and ethnicity. The rich charter collections preserved in southern Italy document how Lombard legal ethnicity was experienced by regular men and women. In criminal cases and property disputes, legal officials referenced specific laws and law codes to support their determinations of guilt and ownership, in some cases citing multiple law codes as part of their decision. In the property transactions preserved in single-sheet charters, Lombard men rarely had to cite individual Lombard laws suggesting that their legal ethnicity was de-emphasized. Yet Lombard women were regularly expected to state how their property ownership and alienations of land were in accordance with Lombard rules, at the same time confirming the boundaries of Lombard political authority. Female landownership was especially fraught during periods  68 ‘Hoc quidem racionabilitar stare potest, quia semper principes et antistite, pontentes in oblivionem canones et edicta gentis nostre Langobardorum, semper usus huius nostrę provincie sic est iudicaturi’; Chronicon Vulturnense, doc. 61, ed. by Federici, i, p. 300.  69 ‘Si ipsa sedes Sipontina contra canonica sanccione fuit usurpata, et ipse nobis claruit dicentes, eo quod contra canones facta est de usurpacionis predicte sedis Sipontine’, Chronicon Vulturnense, doc. 61, ed. by Federici, i, p. 300.  70 ‘Et pro ampliorem definicionem fecimus dare guadiam suprascripto Teuperto preposito iam dicti Iusti archipresbiteri, ut ei preberet a parte monasterii sęundum legem Romanam sibi quinta persona, dicendo quod ecclesia Sancti Felicis tantum palacio obaudivit, nam nichil ad ęiscopum qunadoque audientiam habuit; et esset causa finite’; Chronicon Vulturnense, doc. 61, ed. by Federici, i, p. 302. Nicholas Everett has written about the overlap between the Roman stipulatio and Lombard wadia; Everett, Literacy in Lombard Italy, p. 121.

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of political upheaval and was an important space for articulating Lombard sovereignty: a gendered border that touched the lives and property of most southern Italian families. The charter evidence, especially the single-sheet charters, provides a very different perspective on the situational nature of expressions of legal ethnicity. When discussing the situational nature of legal ethnicity, Geary cited two examples: Italy and Septimania. In the scholarship about Gaul and the Carolingian world more broadly, normative ideas about legal ethnicity and personality of the law come from the law giver, when rulers created new law codes or confirmed the validity of other legal traditions.71 In contrast to the world north of the Alps, early medi­eval Italy created and preserved rich charter collections unmatched in other parts of Europe, allowing scholars to study how legal ethnicity was felt and expressed on the ground. The charters from southern Italy, especially the property transactions of women, indicate that legal identity was significantly shaped by gender. As scholars study expressions of legal ethnicity in other charter collections like in the northern Italian archives or from later periods in southern Italy, our picture of the situational nature of ethnicity will become ever more nuanced and complicated.

 71 Esders, ‘Roman Law as an Identity Marker’; Guterman, ‘The Principle of the Personality of Law’.

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Works Cited Manu­scripts Cava, Biblioteca Badia, MS 4 London, British Library, MS Add. 47676 Primary Sources Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, vol. xx (Italy i), ed. by Albert Bruckner and Robert Marichal (Zurich: Urs Graf, 1982) Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, vols l–liii (Italy xxii–xxv), ed. by Guglielmo Cavallo and Giovanna Nicolaj (Zurich: Urs Graf, 1997–1999) Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, vol. cxvii (Addenda 1), ed. by Guglielmo Cavallo and Giovanna Nicolaj (Zurich: Urs Graf, 2019) Chronicon Sanctae Sophiae (cod. Vat. Lat. 4939), ed. by Jean-Marie Martin, 2 vols (Rome: Nella sede dell’Istituto Palazzo Borromini, 2000) Chronicon Vulturnense del monaco Giovanni, ed. by Vincenzo Federici, 3 vols (Rome: Tipografia del Senato, 1925–1937) Edictus Langobardorum, ed. by Frederick Bluhme, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Leges, 4 (Hanover: Hahn, 1868), pp. 1–225 The Lombard Laws, trans. by Katherine Drew (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1973) Regesti dei documenti dell’Italia meridionale 570–899, ed. by Jean-Marie Martin and others (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 2002) Regesto di S. Angelo in Formis, ed. by Mauro Inguanez (Montecassino: Badia di Montecassino, 1925) Registrum Petri Diaconi (Montecassino, Archivio dell’Abbazia, Reg. 3), ed. by JeanMarie Martin and others, Fonti per la storia dell’Italia medi­evale: Antiquitates, 45, 4 vols (Rome: École française de Rome, 2015) ‘A Widow Makes Alternative Arrangements to Sell her Land, Salerno, 882’, in Medi­ eval Writings on Secular Women, ed. and trans. by Patricia Skinner and Elisabeth van Houts (New York: Penguin, 2011), p. 211 Secondary Works Anderson, Julie, ‘Historical Memory, Authority, and the Written Word: A Study of the Documentary and Literary Culture at the Early Medi­eval Court of Bene­ vento, 700–900 ce’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Toronto, 2017) Delogu, Paolo, ‘La Giustizia nell’Italia meridionale longobarda’, in La Giustizia nell’alto medioevo: (secoli 9–11) (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 1997), pp. 257–312 —— , Mito di una città meridionale (Salerno, secoli viii–xi) (Naples: Liguori, 1977)

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Erhart, Peter, ‘“Carta ista amalfitana est et nescitur legere”: The Charters of Cava dei Tirreni and St Gall and their Evidence for Early Medi­eval Archival Practice’, Gazette du livre médiéval, 50 (2007), 27–39 Esders, Stefan, ‘Roman Law as an Identity Marker in Post Roman Gaul (5th–9th Centuries)’, in Transformations of Romanness: Early Medi­eval Regions and Identities, ed. by Walter Pohl and others, Millennium Studies, 71 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), pp. 325–44 Everett, Nicholas, ‘How Territorial Was Lombard Law?’, in Die Langobarden: Herrschaft und Identität, ed. by Walter Pohl and Peter Erhart, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 9 (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2005), pp. 345–60 —— , Literacy in Lombard Italy, c. 568–774 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) Gaastra, Adriaan H., ‘Penance and the Law: The Penitential Canons of the Collection in Nine Books’, Early Medi­eval Europe, 14 (2006), 85–102 Geary, Patrick J., ‘Ethnic Identity as a Situational Construct in the Early Middle Ages’, Mitteilungen der anthropo­logischen Gesellschaft in Wien, 113 (1983), 15–26 Guterman, Simeon, ‘The Principle of the Personality of Law in the Early Middle Ages: A Chapter in the Evolution of Western Legal Institutions and Ideas’, University of Miami Law Review, 21 (1966), 259–306 Heil, Michael, ‘Justice and Legal Practice in Early Medi­eval Italy, ca. 700–900’, History Compass, 18 (2020), 1–13 Kaiser, Wolfgang, ‘Collectio Gaudenziana und Textkritik des Codex Iustinianus’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Romanistische Abteilung, 132 (2015), 201–98 Kreutz, Barbara, Before the Normans: Southern Italy in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991) Loud, Graham A., ‘The Medi­eval Archives of the Abbey of S. Trinità, Cava’, in People, Texts and Artefacts: Cultural Transmission in the Medi­eval Norman Worlds, ed. by David Bates, Edoardo D’Angelo, and Elisabeth van Houts (London: University of London Press, 2017), pp. 127–51 Martin, Jean-Marie, ‘Le droit lombard en Italie méridionale (ixe–xiiie siècle): Interprétations locales et expansion’, in Byzance et l’Italie méridionale, ed. by Jean-Marie Martin (Paris: ACHCByz, 2014), pp. 393–413 —— , ‘Le juge et l’acte notairé en Italie méridionale du viiie et xe siècle’, in Scrittura e produzione documentaria nel mezzogiorno longobardo: Atti del convegno iternazionale di studio (Badia di Cava, 3–5 Ottobre 1990), ed. by Giovanni Vitolo and Francesco Mottola (Cava di Tirreni: Badia di Cava, 1991), pp. 287–301 —— , La Pouille du vie au xiie siècle (Rome: Diffusion De Boccard, 1993) Morlicchio, Elda, Antroponimia longobarda a Salerno nel ix secolo: I nomi del Codex diplomaticus Cavensis (Naples: Liguori, 1985) Musca, Giosuè, L’Emirato di Bari, 847–871 (Bari: Dedalo Litostampa, 1964) Peters-Custot, Annick, ‘Convivencia between Christians: The Greek and Latin Communities of Byzantine Southern Italy (9th–11th Centuries)’, in Communities,

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Cultures, and ‘Convivencia’ in Byzantine Society, ed. by Barbara Crostini and Sergio La Porta (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2013), pp. 203–20 Pohl, Walter, Werkstätte der Erinnerung: Montecassino und die Gestaltung der lango­ bardischen Vergangenheit (Vienna: Oldenbourg, 2001) Pohl-Resl, Brigitte, ‘Legal Practice and Ethnic Identity in Lombard Italy’, in Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300–800, ed. by Walter Pohl and Helmut Reimitz (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 205–19 Resl, Brigitte, ‘Illustration and Persuasion in Southern Italian Cartularies (c. 1100)’, in Strategies of Writing: Studies on Text and Trust in the Middle Ages, ed. by Petra Schulte, Marco Mostert, and Irene van Renswoude (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), pp. 95–109 Rio, Alice, ‘Penal Enslavement in the Early Middle Ages’, in Global Convict Labour, ed. by Christian Giuseppe De Vito and Alex Lichtenstein (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 79–107 —— , Slavery after Rome, 500–1100 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) Skinner, Patricia, Women in Medi­eval Italian Society, 500–1200 (Harlow: Longman, 2001) —— , ‘Women, Wills, and Wealth in Medi­eval Southern Italy’, Early Medi­eval Europe, 2 (1993), 133–52 Taviani-Carozzi, Huguette, La principauté lombarde de Salerne (ixe–xie siècle) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1991) —— , ‘Salerno longobarda: Una capital principesca’, in Salerno nel medioevo, ed. by Huguette Taviani-Carozzi and others (Galatina: Congedo, 2000), pp. 5–55 Vitolo, Giovanni, and Francesco Mottola, eds, Scrittura e produzione documentaria nel mezzogiorno longobardo: Atti del convegno iternazionale di studio (Badia di Cava, 3–5 Ottobre 1990) (Cava dei Tirreni: Badia di Cava, 1991) Vòllono, Maria, ‘Methodik und Probleme bei der Erforschung des Langobardi­ schen am Beispiel einiger juristischer Fachbegriffe: Mundoald, Launegild, Sculdhais’, in Die Langobarden: Herrschaft und Identität, ed. by Walter Pohl and Peter Erhart, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 9 (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2005), pp. 477–502 Whitten, Sarah, ‘Franks, Greeks, and Saracens: Violence, Empire, and Religion in Early Medi­eval Southern Italy’, Early Medi­eval Europe, 27 (2019), 251–78 Wickham, Chris, Early Medi­eval Italy: Central Power and Local Society, 400–1000 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989)

Hans Hummer

Kinship and Inheritance in Early Medi­eval Europe I would like to take up an old problem, kinship and inheritance, because the inheritance of property has long been held up as a powerful indicator — or non-indicator, as the case may be — of kinship. Indeed, property in many ways sits at the origins of kinship studies. Briefly, the formal study of kinship began with its invention in the 1860s by Johann Bachofen, Henry Maine, John Ferguson McLennan, Fustel de Coulanges, and Lewis Henry Morgan.1 All were either lawyers, jurists, or engaged with legal sources, especially Roman law. Closely related was the issue of property. On that subject, Roman law had quite a bit to say, as did any other number of law codes in Antiquity and the European Middle Ages. Fustel de Coulanges, for example, was adamant throughout his career about the antiquity of private property, although he believed also that it remained in a family trust.2 However, I single out Lewis Henry Morgan for special mention because his study of Consanguinity and Affinity laid out the method for the study of kinship that would become paradigmatic for both anthropo­logists and historians.3 Less well remembered now was what he and his contemporaries considered his magnum opus, the subsequent Ancient Society, an audacious study that charted the stages of human development from primitive subsistence to societies progressively ordered by government, reaching a pinnacle in the Roman Empire.4 Societal progression was visible in the evolution of kinship, which reached its end stage in the monogamous family of civilized peoples. Social and political development was accompanied by techno­logical progress



* Research for this paper was kindly supported by a George William Cottrell, Jr. Membership at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ.  1 Trautmann, Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship, pp. 1–4, 179–204.  2 Fustel de Coulanges, from his first book (originally published in 1864), The Ancient City, to his posthumous The Origin of Property in Land.  3 Morgan, Consanguinity and Affinity.  4 Morgan, Ancient Society.

Hans Hummer ([email protected]), is Professor of History at Wayne State University in Detroit. Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe: Studies on Cultural Identity and Power, ed. by Courtney M. Booker, Hans Hummer, and Dana M. Polanichka, CURSOR 41, pp. 151–167 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022)        10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.127580

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and evolving notions of property as humanity moved — in the language of his day — from savagery to barbarism to civilization. With respect to property, Morgan was gripped by the evolution of inheritance, in particular the eventual devolution of property to children and, in the absence of children, the freedom to bestow one’s property upon whomever one wished, thus creating the conditions in which friendship might be more valued than kinship.5 According to his partner in the kinship business, Henry Maine, the modern, absolute right to dispense property was traceable, at least in its embryonic form, to the feudal lord of the Middle Ages, who had loosened the shackles of customary family control of property and established the right to manage and dispense property as he wished, even as this authority was not fully realized until the modern era.6 I recall these older works because they spell out an enduring issue in Western historio­graphy: the close relationship between property holding and kinship, or rather their unconsciously anachronistic assumption that kinship was defined by birth, such that property inheritance can be held up as the acid test of closeness. Karl Leyser, for example, famously criticized the enthusiastic use of the monastic memorial books to illuminate the putative wide consciousness of early medi­eval kin groups. While such sources might testify to a broad prayer network, it was less clear to him that this consciousness extended to other spheres of activity. The kinship patterns of medi­eval Europe, and the shape, behaviour, and fate of its families, were more accurately gauged by inheritance practices.7 Leyser’s brandishing of property inheritance as if it were a decisive trump card stands in tension with indigenous voices that can express qualitatively different views of kinship. Sidonius Apollinaris gushed that he was much closer to Probus, his cousin’s husband, than to a natural brother, because their relationship was free of quarrels over inheritance. Consequently, their ‘love’ and ‘fraternity’ was purer, so much so that Sidonius felt them to be of the same paternal ‘seed’.8 That is, kinship for Sidonius was animated not by material interest, but by intimacy and closeness, and therefore was not limited to natal kin. Even still, Sidonius implied that property presumptively went to children. The Carolingian duchess Dhuoda, in her now famous handbook for her son, suggested that inheritance was not necessarily so automatic. In her digression on the members of his carnal family William was supposed to pray for, she brought up her son’s proprietary inheritance. She advised that he was to pray for those who had passed on their inheritances to his father, who, she assured her son, had not alienated them. She then remarked that ‘si digne et humiliter erga eum certaueris, Pium tibi ex hoc augebit incrementum

 5 Morgan, Ancient Society, pp. 549–60.  6 Maine, Village Communities, pp. 161–65.  7 Leyser, ‘The German Aristocracy’, pp. 32–39, 47–53.  8 Sidonius Apollinaris, Epistulae, iv, 1. 1, ed. by Luetjohann, p. 52.

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fragilitatis dignitatum suarum’ (if you [William] will have strived humbly and worthily towards Him, the Holy One will enlarge from this an increase in transient dignities for you). These transient honours were to include an inheritance from his father on the condition that ‘si, concedente prius clementia omnipotentis Dei, tuus genitor aliquid exinde tibi jusserit largiri […], ora ut illi merces adcrescat ex eorum animabus quorum cuncta fuerunt’ (if, with the clemency of omnipotent God first granting it, your genitor [i.e. the procreative father] shall order something afterwards to be bestowed upon you […], pray that reward shall accrue to him from the souls of those who had tarried [here on Earth]).9 That is, William’s right to his father’s property was not foreordained by birth, but was dependent upon William’s behaviour and his father’s decision to give it to him. This implies that Bernard could deal his inheritance to someone else — indeed Dhuoda’s assurance that Bernard had not already alienated the properties says as much! It might be helpful to disentangle for a moment property on the one side, and on the other natal kinship, or the kinship relations springing from birth, what we would call blood kinship, and what people in the Middle Ages would have called ‘carnal’ kinship, kinship ‘by nature’, or relatives ‘of the flesh’. This kind of kinship can express intimacy, as for Sidonius, but also obligations. These obligations may be to one’s natal family members, or they may express the interests of ruling authorities in seeing to the peaceful devolution of property to ensure public order, since disputes over property in premodern times so frequently sparked societal conflagrations. Thus Roman law, that endlessly productive body of work so fruitful to the development of kinship studies, is with respect to inheritance particularly concerned with intestate situations, that is, occasions when someone died without leaving a will.10 This implies that if a person were to leave a will, that person could have given property to whomever. Indeed, Roman law specifies that at least a fourth of the property — the Falcidian fourth — had to be left to heirs, leaving the remaining three-fourths to be distributed wherever.11 How that might have worked in practice is anyone’s guess, but the stipulations anticipate situations in which family members might be ignored entirely. In fact, the Falcidian law developed in response to heirs anxious about being left with nothing.12 The provisions also assume that these family members

 9 Dhuoda, Liber manualis, viii. 14, ed. and trans. by Thiébaux, p. 204.  10 Gaius, Institutiones, iii. 1–54, ed. by Seckel and Kuebler, pp. 125–38; Codex Theodosianus, i. 2. 4, ii. 16. 2, ii. 19. 2, ii. 19. 4, ii. 24. 1, iii. 12. 3, iii. 18. 1, iv. 1. 1–4, iv. 3. 1, iv. 4. 5, iv. 4. 7, iv. 6. 8, iv. 21. 1, v. 1. 1–5, v. 3. 1, v. 6. 1, viii. 18. 6–9, ix. 9. 1, ix. 14. 3, ix. 42. 9, x. 10. 30, x. 14. 1, xvi. 2. 27, xvi. 5. 49, xvi. 5. 58, xvi. 7. 7, xvi. 8. 28, ed. by Mommsen and Meyer, pp. 30, 100, 106–07, 108–09, 112–13, 152, 161, 167–68, 171–72, 173–74, 178, 204, 211–21, 221, 424–28, 451–52, 458, 511–12, 551–52, 843–44, 871, 875–76, 886, 894–95.  11 Justinian, Digesta, xxxv. 2–3, ed. by Mommsen, pp. 549–62; Justinian, Codex, vi. 50, ed. by Krueger, pp. 279–80.  12 Paulus, ‘Changes in the Power Structure within the Family’.

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did expect something by virtue of being a part of a family, which for Romans meant anyone subject to the father. Thus, the paternal relationship was a civil status, rather than an exclusively natural one, hence the declaration even of the adopted as ‘consanguineous’.13 Inheritance rules in early medi­eval law codes in the Frankish world are less elaborate, less general, more concrete, leaving them notoriously difficult to interpret. Nonetheless, they do, similar to Roman law, take up intestate situations, albeit of a more idiosyncratic sort, such as in the Alemannic laws when a free man dies and his wife wishes to remarry. In that case, she should give up her inheritance, but was allowed a dowry, her own father’s property, and whatever her deceased husband’s relatives decided to give her. She was allowed to take all of these things, provided that she had not already either consumed or sold them.14 In the case of two sisters who had no brother and survived their father, but one decided to marry a free man and the other a(n unfree) colonus, the former should receive all of the landed property in the paternal inheritance, and they should split anything else.15 The Alemannic laws curiously specify that brothers were to divide their father’s portion, if they received an inheritance after his death.16 Did this indicate that there might have been no property to inherit, or that the father had already given it away either while he was living or posthumously in his will? The Bavarian laws were somewhat more direct, specifying that brothers were to split their father’s inheritance equally, but then went on to account for a situation in which the brothers might be from different wives of unequal wealth. In that case, they were to split the father’s wealth, but each was to possess his respective mother’s inheritance. If one of the wives was a servant, that son from her did not, according to Old Testament law, have a claim, but his brothers should give him something out of charity because they are ‘of his flesh’.17 The Salic and Ripuarian laws are the most detailed: if someone died without children, the person’s surviving parents were to receive the inheritance. If that person’s parents were deceased, siblings were to inherit, and if there were none of those, the property supposedly went to the mother’s sister, and after that to the father’s sister. As a last resort, the property was to go to a relative on the father’s side (genus).18 I suspect these were intestate situations too, rather than grand socio­logical revelations about the priorities of a supposedly coherent blood group, since Salic law and other codes also

 13 Gaius, Institutiones, i. 55, i. 56, i. 64, ed. by Seckel and Kuebler, pp. 15–16, 18; Justinian, Institutiones, iii. 2. 2, ed. by Krueger, p. 30.  14 Leges Alamannorum, liv. 1, ed. by Lehmann and Eckhardt, p. 112.  15 Leges Alamannorum, lv, ed. by Lehmann and Eckhardt, pp. 114–15.  16 Leges Alamannorum, lxxxv, ed. by Lehmann and Eckhardt, p. 149.  17 Lex Baiwariorum, xv. 9, ed. by von Schwind, pp. 428–29.  18 Pactus legis Salicae, lix. 1–4, ed. by Eckhardt, pp. 222–23; Lex Ribuaria, lvii. 1–3, ed. by Beyerle and Buchner, p. 105.

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have provisions for the dispensation of properties to either a church or an adopted heir.19 The Ripuarian laws add that one may adopt an heir so long as there are no ‘sons or daughters by procreation’. These chosen heirs may be either relatives or non-relatives, or in indigenous terms, those from among ‘the near or strangers’.20 The provisions in these law codes can be difficult to find cited in actual cases, but the capitularies — ad hoc injunctions drawn up as responses to actual complaints and petitions — also reveal the bequeathing of property beyond kin of the flesh. Injunctions that the interests of relatives (of the flesh) be heeded surely means that their interests were … not being heeded. In 818, for example, among the impressive outpouring of legislation that marked the opening years of his reign, Louis the Pious stipulated at the top of one capitula ‘Ut omnis homo liber potestatem habeat, ubicumque voluerit, res suas dare pro salute animae suae’ (that every free man has the power to give his property for the sake of his soul wherever he wishes). A person might give the property, he specified, ‘vel ad aliquem venerabilem locum vel propinquo suo vel cuilibet alteri’ (either to some venerable place, or to a relative, or to anyone else).21 In another capitulary about a decade later, Louis took up the cause ‘de orfanis et pauperibus, qui debite et indebite dicuntur amisisse hereditate paterni vel materni juris’ (of orphans and the impoverished, who rightly or unjustly are said to have lost their heredity by paternal or maternal ties), that is, those ‘quos patres et matres propter traditiones illorum exheredes fecerunt’ (whom their fathers or mothers because of [their] bequests have made ex-heirs of them), and decreed that these grants were to be ‘emended’ to the extent that it was within his (Louis’s) powers.22 I have avoided the vexed issues of the manu­script provenance of the law codes and capitularies, and how their provisions might have been mobilized or emphasized in specific times and places. For my purposes, they demonstrate that inheritance laws may have taken many directions and forms, not limited to natal kin; and those that do deal with natal kin are not all-encompassing. These various provisions for kin of the flesh were for a long time interpreted as evidence of the existence of a corporate kin group, or rather were explained by the putative existence of such a thing. The idea also goes back to the origins of kinship studies and the belief that primitive societies were based on kinship and commonly held property. This not

 19 Pactus legis Salicae, xlvi, ed. by Eckhardt, pp. 176–81; Leges Alamannorum, i, ed. by Lehmann and Eckhardt, pp. 63–65; Lex Baiwariorum, i. 1, ed. by von Schwind, pp. 268–69; Marculfi Formulae, ii. 13, ed. by Zeumer, pp. 83–84; Formulae Turonenses, xxiii, ed. by Zeumer, pp. 147–48; Formulae Salicae Lindenbrogianae, ed. by Zeumer, pp. 279–80.  20 Lex Ribuaria, l. 1, ed. by Beyerle and Buchner, p. 101.  21 Capitularia, no. 136, c. 6, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, p. 282; Ansegisus, Collectio Capitularium, iv. 18, ed. by Schmitz, p. 629.  22 Capitularia, no. 154, c. 1, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, p. 312; Ansegisus, Collectio Capitularium, ii. 31, ed. by Schmitz, pp. 553–54.

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only applied, in nineteenth-century parlance, to contemporary savages, but also to the Romans in their primitive state, and of course barbarian peoples who, by deduction, must also have been similarly organized because of their relative underdevelopment. The discovery of kinship was a consequence of the desacralization of history, whereby nineteenth-century social theorists abstracted kinship, made it primary, and then cast it as a form of a human self-organization and a mechanism of history.23 In short, kinship was turned into a comprehensive regulating structure. The Germanist thesis of corporate, primeval clans lurking about early medi­eval Europe has been dismantled for lack of evidence, and even the primitive societies of anthropo­logical legend have been thoroughly reassessed.24 There turns out to be no society so elementary ever to have been organized essentially by kinship.25 This has provoked some recent, pessimistic assessments that medi­eval kinship was structurally weak and therefore could not have been a predictable or stable social glue, because it seems not to have been determinant in areas such as the care for the dead, the prosecution of feuds, or the formation of alliances.26 That judgement, however, is predicated on the belief that kinship should take priority and be stable, that it should fill the role social theorists had presumptuously assigned to it, so that when it does not do those things, it suddenly is depicted as weak. It is also predicated on the belief that families should be bounded and autogenous, separate and distinct from other social forms. Most of all, it has been predicated on the persisting belief — especially among historians — that kinship is the sum of blood relations, and that one traces kinship by mapping (biogenetic) relationships, even though the thoroughgoing bio­logizing of kinship is quite recent.27 Kinship, however, is always relative to, bound up with, and expressed through and within other spheres of activity, so that understanding its protean manifestations requires attention to a given society’s presuppositions about how the world works.28 Which brings me back to inheritance. Oddly, the worry that kinship in the Middle Ages was structurally weak has had little effect, so far as I can tell, on inheritance, which is still presumed to be dominated by the expectations of birth kin. However, if natal kinship is neither primary nor regulating, then it by definition cannot, and never was intended to, be a comprehensive regulator of property inheritance, as is evident in its limitation to intestate situations and in the various qualifiers and silences

 23 Hummer, Visions of Kinship, pp. 11–56.  24 Genzmer, ‘Die germanische Sippe als Rechtsbild’; Kroeschell, ‘Die Sippe im germanischen Recht’; Murray, Germanic Kinship Structure.  25 Godelier, The Metamorphoses of Kinship.  26 Jussen, ‘Perspektiven der Verwandtschaftsforschung’; Lübich, Verwandtsein.  27 Johnson and others, eds, Blood and Kinship.  28 Sahlins, What Kinship Is and Is Not; Carsten, After Kinship; cf. Hummer, Visions of Kinship, pp. 103–10.

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that tell us that property could have been alienated or left to institutions or to people who were not kin of the flesh. The particular responsibility for settling intestate situations was assigned to carnal relatives, who, it should be admitted, presumably did anticipate a share in the inheritance. Their expectations sprang partly from the literal nearness among family members that breeds affection, and — because they inhabited an economy of mostly agricultural wealth — partly from nearness to the land and the attachment to property one worked or commanded. If the laws make clear enough that family members expected something, the legal culture also presumed a wider distribution of property during a person’s life, and potentially at its end, so long as the deceased had made out a will. In other words, familial heirs did not necessarily expect everything, only that they ought to be left with something. Indeed, the political logic of this world, and that of the Roman era for that matter, required the wider circulation of wealth as a predicate of alliance building. The idea of bounded families hoarding up wealth really does not make much sense, at least not until the later Middle Ages when a different political logic took shape.29 Hrabanus Maurus gave an exquisite, if unconscious, expression to the separation of property from family succession in his De rerum naturis, a reworking of Isidore of Seville’s Etymo­logies and his amplification of it with mystical meanings.30 Hrabanus reorganized Isidore’s twenty books into twenty-two to reflect the number of books in Jerome’s translation of ‘the Old Testament of divine law’.31 Thus, unlike Isidore, whose work began with the liberal arts and then moved to sacred matters, Hrabanus’s revamped version began with five books on sacred matters: God and other heavenly beings, the scriptures, and the Church.32 He then moved to two books on human beings, one on the human person and a second on the human life cycle, the relations of kinship, and herd animals. After that came books on various facets of the world — its animals, geo­graphy and topo­graphy, minerals, stars and the moon, plants, and human arts. That is, Hrabanus put forth an elegant hierarchy of cosmic order descending from God; separated the sacred from the profane; and effectively bridged the heavenly and the worldly with the two chapters on human beings, who were a composite of eternal spirit and ephemeral flesh. This scheme also called for a resorting of the contents. Isidore had begun his section De adfinitatibus et gradibus (On kinship and its degrees) with

 29 We have to wait until the appearance of the Codex Falkensteinensis in the mid-twelfth century when we finally encounter a lay codex of property holdings: cf. Freed, The Counts of Falkenstein. Only in the late Middle Ages did families actually organize themselves into welldefined patrilineages: see Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, and Spiess, ‘Lordship, Kinship, and Inheritance’.  30 Hrabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis, ed. by Migne.  31 See Hrabanus Maurus’s dedicatory letter to Louis the German, Epistolae, 37, ed. by Dümmler, p. 473.  32 Heyse, Hrabanus Maurus’ Enzyklopädie, pp. 47–64.

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taxes and inheritance. The etymo­logical origin of the word for heir, heres, he observed, was the census aeris because the heir assumed the testator’s tax liability. ‘In hoc enimvero vocabulo prima successio est hereditatis et generis, ut sunt filii et nepotes’ (For indeed in this word is [meant] the first succession of inheritance and birth, such as are children and grandchildren). He then moved to an etymo­logical discussion of words for the lineal figures among the agnatic succession: father, mother, grandfathers, children, and grandchildren. This treatment of family and kinship was embedded in Isidore’s ninth book on languages, nations, military matters, and citizenry.33 Evidently, the ancient Roman assumptions about the interdependence of family and inheritance taken up in Isidore’s Etymo­logies had shifted by the ninth century. Hrabanus reworked the section and made matters of kinship a part of his seventh chapter on the human life cycle. He rebranded this section the ‘lineage of generation’ (de generationis prosapia), which now began with father, pater, ‘a quo initium nascitur genitum’ (from whom the beginning of the family is begotten).34 Missing is Isidore’s passage on property and heirs that began the section in the Etymo­logies and thereby introduced the father, such that inheritance formed the material underpinning of paternal succession. Rather, Hrabanus dispatched that passage, as well as the rest of Isidore’s ninth book, to a sixteenth book on languages, nations, the military, and citizen relationships.35 In other words, the discussion of heirs and inheritance was removed from the discussion of family relationships and instead was appended to the section on citizenry, and thereby allotted to the books assigned to mundane matters. Nevertheless, material inheritance was still figured as a sign of eternal prosperity. As Hrabanus then said in his mystical digression, ‘hæredes autem mystice sancti dei possunt intelligi, et qui cœlestis patriæ possessores futuri sunt’ (heirs can be understood as the blessed of God, who are the future possessors of the celestial homeland).36 The decoupling of inheritance and kinship makes perfect sense when we consider the fate of so-called family property in the early Middle Ages. Indeed, we have excellent records about the recipients of the mass of property not given to natal kin: monasteries. The period has left to us a rich trove of property records most visibly in the donations made to monasteries preserved in cartularies (i.e. codices of property transactions), and invisibly in deperdita, or now lost charters, whose erstwhile existence we can easily infer from assorted references, and in later digests and summaries.37 In all, thousands of charters are extant, and the erstwhile existence of at least ten thousand others can be inferred. The scale of property rolled into monastic

 33  34  35  36  37

Isidore of Seville, Etymo­logiae, ix. 5, ed. by Lindsay. Hrabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis, vii. 2, ed. by Migne, col. 185. Hrabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis, xvi. 4, ed. by Migne, cols 457–58. Hrabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis, xvi. 4, ed. by Migne, col. 458. Hummer, ‘The Production and Preservation of Documents’, esp. pp. 189–94.

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endowments was so vast that by the year 1000 Europe was effectively a monastic corporation.38 These cartularies are not merely monastic, as if they represented only narrow ecclesiastical interests, because ecclesiastical interests were never marginal to, or neatly distinct from, those of their patrons, without whose largess the monks would have had almost nothing. Abundant clues tell us that collections of monastic documents were assembled with the cooperation of donors so that they necessarily express the interests of patrons and monasteries.39 Not surprisingly, monastic records represent almost all that we know of the property held by lay people, either by the direct donation of property, or because even the handful of lay records that do exist come to us through monastic archives.40 In other words, monasteries were so integral to the construction of power in the early Middle Ages, and the scale of donation so vast, that monastic records can tell us a great deal about the social and cultural imperatives that demanded the wide distribution of property, a phenomenon abetted by a resonant conception of kinship that encompassed and transcended the natal family. With that in mind, let me return to the charters, more specifically the non-royal charters, which reveal surprisingly little about a donor’s carnal family, or about the provenance of their donated properties. In the Wissembourg cartulary, only 43 of 273 charters prior to 864 ce state that part or all of the donated property had been inherited from one or both parents, or about 16 per cent.41 Among the 579 Fulda charters prior to 880 ce, the frequency is even lower, almost 9 per cent.42 In the 738 charters of St Gall prior to 920 ce, the rate is just under 11 per cent.43 The Freising charters are the exception: about one-third of the charters say that the donated property at least in part had been inherited from a parent (or, rarely, a sibling), although even that suggests that two-thirds of donated property might not have been inherited  38 Borgolte, Stiftung und Memoria.  39 Hummer, Politics and Power, pp. 26–75, 190–208; and Hummer, Visions of Kinship, pp. 231–64.  40 See Brown and others, eds, Documentary Culture and the Laity.  41 See the chrono­logical register to the cartulary, Traditiones Wizenburgenses, ed. by Glöckner and Doll, pp. 525–63.  42 I did not include the royal or papal charters, which ran to forty-two in the edition of Fulda’s charters and to seventy for St Gall, unless the king was merely confirming a transaction between two individuals, thus bringing the total number of charters to 579 for Fulda and 738 for St Gall. Property inherited from one or both parents appears in the following Fulda charters, Codex Diplomaticus Fuldensis, 9, 22, 24, 26, 38, 39, 55, 56, 66, 68, 87, 88, 93, 99, 103, 105, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 122, 123, 124, 126, 135, 157, 161, 163, 189, 195, 196, 197, 204, 215, 275, 282, 283, 293, 296, 301, 312, 333, 337, 340, 341, 351, 353, 415, 459, 529, ed. by Dronke.  43 Property inherited from one or both parents appears in the following St Gall charters: Urkundenbuch der Abtei Sankt Gallen, 7, 10, 11, 12, 15, 21, 22, 25, 27, 30, 33, 38, 39, 44, 49, 52, 60, 69, 74, 85, 100, 110, 122, 140, 142, 144, 145, 150, 153, 154, 155, 159, 162, 170, 171, 190, 194, 195, 201, 202, 214, 215, 238, 284, 291, 297, 299, 334, 341, 342, 355, 371, 373, 374, 376, 385, 386, 414, 419, 420, 438, 444, 459, 480, 484, 499, 510, 538, 539, 540, 545, 562, 568, 607, 619, 654, 676, 701; Anhang: 1, 11, ed. by Wartmann.

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from the members of a donor’s natal family.44 It may be that the Freising charters more honestly reveal what many of the other charters leave unsaid, although the obliviousness to the donor’s carnal family in the other collections would nonetheless not be insignificant. The carnal origins of the donors were of little worth from the perspective of eternity or, in the case of Freising, were included as a sign of other things. Thus, we hear that in 744 a certain Moatbert donated to Freising ‘quicquid pater meus Petto mihi in hereditatem reliquid […] seu quicquid ad me legibus pertinere videbatur’ (whatever my father Petto left to me in heredity […], as well as whatever is seen to pertain to me by laws’, so that ‘hereditas mea haec pro me et meis hereditas sit sanctorum in perpetuum’ (my inheritance might be the inheritance of the saints for me and mine forever).45 As Moatbert’s donation indicates, where donors do detail the provenance of properties, they are often careful to distinguish properties that were acquired from those that were inherited. In 754, a certain Eggiolt gave to Fulda ‘hereditatem meam, quam mihi pater meus moriens et fratres mei dereliquerunt’ (my heredity, which my father — dying — and my brothers left to me).46 Similarly, in 778 a certain Arndeo gave to Fulda ‘quicquid [m]i[h]i ex jure patris mei in hereditatem convenit’ (whatever came to me in heredity from the tie of my father) in two locations.47 However, while Count Leidrat in 763 gave properties in Bingen, ‘quod genitor meus et genetrix mea morientes mihi dereliquerunt et quod germana mea mihi tradidit’ (which my father and mother, dying, left to me, and which my sister gave to me), he also gave ‘in alio loco’ (in another place) called Dromersheim a farmstead, specifying no inherited connection to that property, despite having been quite explicit about those in Bingen.48 In 772, a certain Odalgrus gave properties in Wackernheim ‘quem genitor meus et genetrix mea mihi moriens dereliquerunt et ego ipse conparavi aut de qualibet tracto aut de conparato mihi provenit’ (which my father and mother dying left to me, and I myself have purchased or [which] has accrued to me either from assarting or from purchase).49 Likewise in 792, Altfrid and his wife Folrat gave ‘a third part’ of what they held in Rannungen and Maβbach, as well as in Guisunga ‘totum et integrum, quod mihi Altfride pater meus Alt[t]huring ex iure proprietatis suae in haereditatem reliquerat, et omne, quod postea ibidem exquisitum et elaboratum habemus’ (everything, which my father Altthuring left to me Altfrid in inheritance from the tie of his property, and all that we afterwards have acquired and worked there).50 The next year a certain Gundberct gave six vineyards in Bingen, as well as  44  45  46  47  48  49  50

Die Traditionen des Hochstifts Freising, ed. by Bitterauf. Die Traditionen des Hochstifts Freising, 1, ed. by Bitterauf, p. 27. Urkundenbuch des Klosters Fulda, 22, ed. by Stengel, p. 44. Urkundenbuch des Klosters Fulda, 85, ed. by Stengel, p. 156. Urkundenbuch des Klosters Fulda, 40, ed. by Stengel, p. 70. Urkundenbuch des Klosters Fulda, 59, ed. by Stengel, p. 102. Urkundenbuch des Klosters Fulda, 192, ed. by Stengel, p. 289.

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a forest which ‘mater mea Gundrada mihi moriens dereliquid. Et similiter dono, quicquid ego proprietatis visus sum habere, id est terris araturiis, silvis, pratis, pascuis, aquis aquarumve decursibus, vineis, mobilibus et immobilibus, cultum et incultum’ (my mother Gundrada dying left to me. And similarly I give whatever of property I am seen to have, that is in arable lands, woods, pastures, meadows, waters and running waters, vines, movables and immovables, cultivated and uncultivated [land]).51 At this point we might fruitfully return to Karl Schmid’s work in the memorial sources, in particular his study of Freising’s list of the ‘names of brothers’, which included among the names of monks those of laymen and women, some of whom were cognate to the bishop.52 While this astounded Schmid, it perhaps is not so astounding when we grasp that a family was never just a family, so that even if Schmid could suss out some of the names to the bishop’s kindred, the list actually embedded those figures within the brethren of the monastery, within the ‘household of St Mary’. Forms of family and kinship, at least as they come to us in early medi­eval sources, frequently point to higher things, to spiritual kinship and spiritual adoption. Indigenous conceptions of kinship, inseparable as they were in moral demands and prefigurements of divine sociality, were enlivened by an Augustinian vision of sociality that infused proprietary charters, so that ephemeral families of the flesh were enmeshed within a dynamic and eternal spiritual kinship.53 This explains why property given to monasteries was never quite given away, but frequently circulated back to the donors’ descendants as precarial grants, with the effect that monasteries became mediators of family identity.54 The ‘church’ had not ‘inserted itself ’ into inheritance law; rather the practices of inheritance expressed a native conception of kinship in which the carnal and the spiritual existed in a perpetual dialectic, the one forever informing the other, so that carnal kinship was figured as a sign of eternal things. Dhuoda had observed that her husband’s role as a procreative father, a genitor, was a precondition for becoming an ethical and spiritual father, a pater, after the manner of the biblical patriarchs and saints. Of our two births, carnal and spiritual, the spiritual is superior, she said, but the latter cannot take place without the former. The language of begetting applied to both, so that Dhuoda saw herself as her son’s ‘genetrix secunda mente et corpore ut in Christo cotidei renascaris’ (genetrix in mind and body, so that you will be reborn in Christ daily), similar to the mothers of saints who ‘qualiter primae et secundae natiuitatis genetrices in Christo sius extiterunt prolibus’ (as genetrices of the first birth, as well as the second in Christ have stood out with

 51 Urkundenbuch des Klosters Fulda, 196, ed. by Stengel, p. 293.  52 Schmid, ‘Religiöses und sippengebundenes Gemeinschaftsbewußtsein’, pp. 42–59.  53 Hummer, Visions of Kinship, pp. 236–47.  54 Hartung, ‘Adel, Erbrecht, Schenkung’; Hummer, Politics and Power, pp. 63–75, 115–27, 190–207, 234–49; Jahn, ‘Tradere ad Sanctum’.

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their children). Even a man can give birth to children, after the manner of Paul who begat people through the Gospel, so that ‘per hanc enim regenerationis augmentum multi pluraliter plurimis extiterunt genitores’ (through the augmentation of regeneration many genitores have stood out with so many more [offspring]), that is, with offspring of the spirit beyond those of the flesh.55 Dhuoda certainly knew her Augustine, who four centuries before had declared that ‘unusquisque, quoniam ex damnata propagine exoritur, primo sit necesse est ex Adam malus atque carnalis; quod si in Christum renascendo profecerit, post erit bonus et spiritalis’ (each person, because we spring from a damned progeny, is at first necessarily from Adam, wicked and carnal; but if that person should be born again in Christ, then that person will become good and spiritual).56 It is my working hypothesis that inheritance was subjected to similar cultural processing. People handed down inheritances to heirs of the flesh, and apparently to others, as well as to the ‘celestial heir’ when a donor or testator made a monastery an heir by the act of donation. Salvian had recommended that people should give their property to churches rather than storing them up and handing them off to children in the vainglorious pursuit of worldly ambition.57 Dhuoda desired worldly success for her son, but worried that he might mistake such transient successes as ends, rather than the means of obtaining eternal reward.58 I also point to the ceaseless biblical commentary on generation, corruption, and regeneration, from Late Antiquity right on through the Middle Ages, and its relationship to carnal kinship.59 What stands out — to me, anyway — is the endless fetishizing of

 55 Dhuoda, Liber manualis, vii. 1–3, ed. and trans. by Thiébaux, pp. 190, 192.  56 Augustine, De civitate Dei, xv. 1, ed. by Dombart and Kalb, p. 454.  57 Salvian, Timothei ad ecclesiam IIII, ed. by Halm.  58 Dhuoda, Liber manualis, ii. 2, iii. 3, iv. 1, iv. 8, v. 1, v. 9, ed. and trans. by Thiébaux, pp. 74–76, 88, 126, 150–56, 164–68, 178–80.  59 Ambrose, De fide, i. 10–14, iv. 8–9, ed. by Faller, pp. 27–41, 183–98; Jerome, Commentariorum in Hiezechielem libri XIV, iv. 16. 1–8a, ed. by Glorie, pp. 160–68; Augustine, De nuptiis et concupiscentia, ed. by Urba and Zycha, pp. 211–319; Augustine, De civitate dei, xv. 1–3, 16–20, xx. 5–7, ed. by Dombart and Kalb, pp. 453–56, 476–86, 703–12; Bede, In Lucae euangelium expositio, i. 3, 23–38, ed. by Hurst, pp. 85–93; Bede, Homeliarum Euangelii, ii. 18, ed. by Hurst, pp. 311–14; Alcuin, Commentaria in sancti Iohannis Euangelium, ed. by Migne, cols 748, 778–80; Paschasius Radbertus, Expositio in Matheo, i, lines 560–730, ii, lines 84–930, ed. by Paulus, pp. 20–25, 116–42; Hrabanus Maurus, Expositio in Matthaeum, i. 1. 1–3, i. 1. 17–24, i. 3. 13–17, ed. by Löfstedt, pp. 13–14, 35–50, 86–93; Eriugena, Periphyseon, ii. 556c–561a, iv. 844b–849c, ed. by Jeauneau, pp. 42–48, 145–52. This is a distinctively medi­eval phenomenon, as one can see in an expanded word search of the Brepols Library of Latin Texts and the Perseus Project for generatio, procreatio/procreatus, and regeneratio. According to the Library of Latin Texts, regeneratio appears not at all in classical Latin Antiquity, but 935 times in the patristic period and 1696 times in the Middle Ages. Generatio appears just twenty-five times in Latin Antiquity, mostly in Pliny’s Natural History, but 4650 times in the patristic period, and 26,238 times in the Middle Ages. Procreatio/procreatus appears 10/198 times in Antiquity, 114/1230 times in the patristic period, and 477/2301 times in the Middle Ages.

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carnal generation, of human reproduction, vis-à-vis divine generation, and the spiritual regeneration and rebirth of human beings in baptism. When viewed from this perspective, legal obligations to ‘kin of the flesh’, or to the sons and daughters by ‘procreation’, suddenly take on a different hue. Provisions for natal kin were not a functional socio­logical backstop, a mere default to a socio­logical baseline to maintain social order, but presumably were bound up with the spiritual responsibilities expected of a procreator, of a genitor or a genetrix, for those he or she had procreated. Not surprisingly, the act of donating property to a church, of making a monastery an heir, as the opening para­graphs of the Alemannic and Bavarian laws gravely intone, was an act of redemption. *** In conclusion, there is little evidence that properties held by individuals had routinely been inherited from natal relatives; that people in the early Middle Ages believed that their property was fundamentally constrained by the demands of relatives assigned by birth; or that a person ever appealed to some kind of primordial kin-right when faced with a relative who wanted to donate property elsewhere. Relatives of the flesh did harbour expectations of inheritance, but this says no more than that closeness breeds expectations, not that we are in the presence of a society ‘rooted’ in (biogenetic) kinship as we would understand it. Rather, we are in the presence of a dynamic conception of kinship such that the natal family was part of a culturally specific manifold of societal reproduction in which worldly forms sat in dialectical interaction with the spiritual. Inheritance was not a (biogenetic) family matter that somehow was invaded and disturbed by spiritual demands. If that were the case, we would be pressed to explain how it was that so many effectively made monasteries their heirs. Inheritance was part of a wider conception of kinship that saw to the circulation of property as material signs of, and means to, eternal rebirth. Natal kinship did not stand in zero-sum competition with ecclesiastical institutions, as if a donation to the latter represented a self-evident loss to the former. Rather, kinship was — in this particular manifestation — the medium that bound individuals, natal kin, significant others, and institutions to one another through the friction of inheritance.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Alcuin, Commentaria in sancti Iohannis Euangelium, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, Patro­logiae cursus completus: series latina, 100 (Paris: Garnier, 1863), cols 743–1008 Ambrose, De fide, ed. by Otto Faller, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 78 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1962) Ansegisus, Collectio Capitularium, ed. by Gerhard Schmitz, Monumenta Ger­ maniae Historica: Capitularia regum Francorum nova series, 1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1996) Augustine, De civitate Dei, ed. by Bernhard Dombart and Alfons Kalb, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 47–48 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955) —— , De nuptiis et concupiscentia, ed. by Karl F. Urba and Joseph Zycha, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 42 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1902) Bede, Homeliarum Euangelii libri II, ed. by David Hurst, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 122 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955) —— , In Lucae euangelium expositio, ed. by David Hurst, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 120 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1960) Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. by Alfred Boretius and Victor Krause, Monu­menta Germaniae Historica: Legum sectio, 2, 2 vols (Hanover: Hahn, 1883–1897) Codex Diplomaticus Fuldensis, ed. by Ernst F. J. Dronke (Kassel: Theodor Fischer, 1850) Codex Theodosianus: Theodosiani libri XVI cum constitutionibus Sirmondianis et leges novellae ad Theodosianum pertinentes, ed. by Theodor Mommsen and Paul M. Meyer, vol. i.2 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1905) Dhuoda, Liber manualis, ed. and trans. by Marcelle Thiébaux (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) Eriugena, Periphyseon, ed. by Édouard A. Jeauneau, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 161–164 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996–2000) Formulae Salicae Lindenbrogianae, ed. by Karl Zeumer, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Formulae Merovingici et Karolini aevi, Legum sectio, 5 (Hanover: Hahn, 1886), pp. 265–84 Formulae Turonenses, ed. by Karl Zeumer, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Formulae Merovingici et Karolini aevi, Legum sectio, 5 (Hanover: Hahn, 1886), pp. 128–65 Gaius, Institutiones, ed. by Emil Seckel and Bernhard Kuebler, 7th edn (Leipzig: Teubner, 1935) Hrabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis [titled De universo libri viginti duo], ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, Patro­logiae cursus completus: series latina, 111 (Paris: Garnier, 1852), cols 9–614 —— , Epistolae, ed. by Ernst Dümmler, in Epistolae Karolini aevi, vol. v, Monu­menta Germaniae Historica: Epistolae, 7 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1899), pp. 381–516

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—— , Expositio in Matthaeum, ed. by Bengt Löfstedt, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 174 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000) Isidore of Seville, Etymo­logiarum sive Originum Libri XX, ed. by W. M. Lindsay, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911) Jerome, Commentariorum in Hiezechielem libri XIV, ed. by François Glorie, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 75 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1964) Justinian, Codex, ed. by Paul Krueger, in Corpus juris civilis, ii (Berlin: Weidmann, 1884) —— , Digesta, ed. by Theodor Mommsen, in Corpus juris civilis, i (Berlin: Weidmann, 1882) —— , Institutiones, ed. by Paul Krueger, in Corpus juris civilis, i, 16th edn (Dublin: Weidmann, 1966) Leges Alamannorum, ed. by Karl Lehmann and Karl August Eckhardt, 2nd edn, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Legum sectio, 1, Legum nationum Germanicarum, 5.1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1966) Lex Baiwariorum, ed. by Ernst von Schwind, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Legum sectio, 1, Legum nationum Germanicarum, 5.2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1926) Lex Ribuaria, ed. by Franz Beyerle and Rudolf Buchner, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Legum sectio, 1, Legum nationum Germanicarum, 3.2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1954) Marculfi Formulae Libri II, ed. by Karl Zeumer, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Formulae Merovingici et Karolini aevi, Legum sectio, 5 (Hanover: Hahn, 1886), pp. 32–112 Pactus legis Salicae, ed. by Karl August Eckhardt, Monumenta Germaniae Histo­ rica: Legum sectio, 1, Legum nationum Germanicarum, 4.1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1962) Paschasius Radbertus, Expositio in Matheo libri XII, ed. by Beda Paulus, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 56 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1984) Salvian, Timothei ad ecclesiam IIII, ed. by Karl Halm, in Salviani presbyteri Massiliensis libri qui supersunt, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Auctores Antiquissimi, 1.1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877), pp. 120–68 Sidonius Apollinaris, Epistulae et carmina, ed. by Christian Luetjohann, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Auctores Antiquissimi, 8 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1887) Die Traditionen des Hochstifts Freising, ed. by Theodor Bitterauf, Quellen und Erörterungen zur bayerischen und deutschen Geschichte, n.s., 4–5, 2 vols (Munich: Rieger, 1905) Traditiones Wizenburgenses: Die Urkunden des Klosters Weissenburg, 661–864, ed. by Karl Glöckner and Anton Doll (Darmstadt: Hessische Historische Kommission, 1979) Urkundenbuch der Abtei Sankt Gallen, ed. by Hermann Wartmann, 2 vols (Zurich: Bürkli, 1862–1866) Urkundenbuch des Klosters Fulda, ed. by Edmund E. Stengel (Marburg: N. G. Elwert Verlag, 1956)

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Secondary Works Borgolte, Michael, Stiftung und Memoria, ed. by Tillmann Lohse (Berlin: Academie Verlag, 2012) Brown, Warren, and others, eds, Documentary Culture and the Laity in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) Carsten, Janet, After Kinship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) Freed, John B., The Counts of Falkenstein: Noble Self-Consciousness in TwelfthCentury Germany, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 74.6 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1984) Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis, The Ancient City: A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Ancient Greece and Rome (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980) —— , The Origin of Property in Land, trans. by Margaret Ashley (London: S. Sonnenschein, 1891) Genzmer, Felix, ‘Die germanische Sippe als Rechtsbild’, Zeitschrift der SavignyStiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Germanistische Abteilung, 67 (1950), 34–49 Godelier, Maurice, The Metamorphoses of Kinship, trans. by Nora Scott (New York: Verso, 2011) Hartung, Wolfgang, ‘Adel, Erbrecht, Schenkung: Die strukturellen Ursachen der frühmittelalterlichen Besitzübertragungen an die Kirche’, in Gesellschaftsgeschichte: Festschrift für Karl Bosl zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. by Ferdinand Seibt, 2 vols (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1988), i, pp. 417–38 Heyse, Elisabeth, Hrabanus Maurus’ Enzyklopädie ‘De rerum naturis’: Untersuchungen zu den Quellen und zur Methode der Kompilation, Münchener Beiträge zur Mediävistik und Renaissance-Forschung (Munich: ArbeoGesellschaft, 1969) Hummer, Hans, Politics and Power in Early Medi­eval Europe: Alsace and the Frankish Realm, 600–1000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) —— , ‘The Production and Preservation of Documents in Francia’, in Documentary Culture and the Laity in the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Warren Brown and others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 189–230 —— , Visions of Kinship in Medi­eval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) Jahn, Joachim, ‘Tradere ad Sanctum, Politische und gesellschaftliche Aspekte der Traditionspraxis im agilolfingischen Bayern’, in Gesellschaftsgeschichte: Festschrift für Karl Bosl zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. by Ferdinand Seibt, 2 vols (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1988), i, pp. 400–16 Johnson, Christopher H., and others, eds, Blood and Kinship: Matter for Metaphor from Ancient Rome to the Present (New York: Berghahn, 2013) Jussen, Bernhard, ‘Perspektiven der Verwandtschaftsforschung fünfundzwanzig Jahre nach Jack Goodys “Entwicklung von Ehe und Familie in Europa”’, in Die Familie in der Gesellschaft des Mittelalters, ed. by Karl Heinz Spiess (Ostfildern: VuF, 2009), pp. 275–324 Kroeschell, Karl, ‘Die Sippe im germanischen Recht’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Germanistische Abteilung, 77 (1960), 1–25

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Leyser, Karl, ‘The German Aristocracy from the Ninth to the Early Twelfth Century: A Historical and Cultural Sketch’, Past & Present, no. 41 (1968), 25–53 Lübich, Gerhard, Verwandtsein: Lesarten einer politisch-sozialen Beziehung im Frühmittelalter (6.–11. Jahrhundert) (Co­logne: Böhlau Verlag, 2008) Maine, Henry Sumner, Village Communities in the East and West, 3rd edn (New York: H. Holt and Company, 1876) Morgan, Lewis Henry, Ancient Society: Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization (New York: H. Holt and Company, 1877) —— , Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (Washington, DC, 1871; repr. Oosterhout: Anthropo­logical Publications, 1966) Murray, Alexander Callander, Germanic Kinship Structure: Studies in Law and Society in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1983) Paulus, Christoph G., ‘Changes in the Power Structure within the Family in the Late Roman Republic’, Chicago-Kent Law Review, 70.4 (1995), 1503–13 Sahlins, Marshall, What Kinship Is and Is Not (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013) Schmid, Karl, ‘Religiöses und sippengebundenes Gemeinschaftsbewußtsein in frümittelalterlichen Gedenkbucheinträgen’, Deutsches Archive für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 21 (1965), 18–81 Spiess, Karl Heinz, Familie und Verwandtschaft im deutschen Hochadel des Spät­ mittelalters 13. bis Anfang des 16. Jahrhunderts, 2nd edn (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2015) —— , ‘Lordship, Kinship, and Inheritance among the German High Nobility in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period’, in Kinship in Europe: Approaches to the Long-Term Development (1300–1900), ed. by David Sabean, Simon Teuscher, and Jon Mathieu (New York: Berghahn, 2007), pp. 57–75 Trautmann, Thomas R., Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987)

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Religious Identities

Carrie E. Beneš

The Blackbird, the Basilisk, and the Evicted Corpse Sacralizing Landscape in Jacopo da Varagine’s Genoese Relic Treatises One of the most famous moments in Patrick Geary’s Furta Sacra takes place in 1087, when merchants of Bari stole the relics of Saint Nicholas (also known as Santa Claus) from the city of Myra, in Anatolia.1 The Baresi rejoiced in what they understood as Nicholas’s decision to move, cherished their new relics, and built an enormous basilica in Nicholas’s honour — the church of San Nicola, Bari, Italy, still a major pilgrimage destination to this day. More than nine hundred years later, in 2017, Turkish archaeo­logists claimed to have found the real tomb of Saint Nicholas intact and undisturbed.2 This claim came after over a decade of unsuccessful calls by the Turkish for the saint’s relics to be repatriated to Myra.3 Once the Baresi proved unwilling to give up the relics they had cherished for nearly a thousand years, how convenient from the Turkish perspective if the relics stolen in 1087 should turn out to have been fakes! Naturally, the Baresi dispute the Turkish discovery: at present both the Baresi and the Turkish claim to hold the relics of the ‘real’ Saint Nicholas. Returning to Furta Sacra and the year 1087: while Geary acknowledges that the Baresi had to contend not only with resistance from the monks who tended the saint’s bones but also with competition from Venetians who wanted to carry them off to Venice, he omits to note that others were also on the trail of Nicholas’s relics — the Genoese, for one.4 According to one later medi­eval  1 Geary, Furta Sacra, pp. 94–103.  2 Uzun, ‘Body of St Nicholas’.  3 For example: Carroll, ‘Bones of Contention’, or ‘Turkish Professor Calls for the Return of Santa Claus’ Bones to Turkey’.  4 On the trade in relics during the crusades, see, for example, Purkis, ‘“Holy Christendom’s New Colony”’; Bell and Dale, ‘The Medi­eval Pilgrimage Business’; and Freeman, Holy Bones, Holy Dust, chaps 11–13.

Carrie E. Beneš ([email protected]), is a cultural historian of late medi­eval Italy and Professor of History at New College of Florida. Her research focuses on civic identity, landscape, and the classical tradition. Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe: Studies on Cultural Identity and Power, ed. by Courtney M. Booker, Hans Hummer, and Dana M. Polanichka, CURSOR 41, pp. 171–190 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022)        10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.127581

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source, in fact, when the Genoese arrived in Myra only to discover that the Baresi had been there before them, the disappointed Genoese cast about for alternative spoils and grabbed a marble urn, which — under duress — the custodial monks admitted held the ashes of John the Baptist.5 The Genoese decided these were a perfectly good substitute, took the urn home, and presented it to Genoa’s cathedral of San Lorenzo in 1099.6 Perhaps predictably, this account of the translation of the ashes of John the Baptist comes from a Genoese source, the Dominican friar Jacopo da Varagine. Jacopo was archbishop of Genoa from 1292 to 1298, but he is better known today by the Latinized form of his name, Jacobus de Voragine, as the author of the hagio­graphical bestseller the Golden Legend.7 Although Jacopo’s renown as the author of the Golden Legend tends to eclipse both his personal career and the rest of his literary corpus, this Dominican archbishop also wrote over seven hundred sermons, a Chronicle of Genoa, and a number of minor works.8 Among his other virtues, Jacopo excelled at tailoring his writing and rhetoric for his intended audience: while the Golden Legend and most of the sermons are intentionally void of local context or bias — to improve their usefulness for any preacher in need of material — the Chronicle and his minor works are intensely local texts aimed directly at his Genoese flock.9 Among them are three short treatises on Genoese relics — on the already-mentioned Saint John the Baptist; Saint Syrus, an early bishop of Genoa; and Saints Philip and James, patrons of the Genoese convent of Dominican nuns (Santi Giacomo e Filippo, founded in 1264).10 In each of these treatises, Jacopo engages his native audience by situating relics and the stories he tells about them amid the familiar landscapes of Genoa, Liguria, and beyond. The relic treatises thereby demonstrate the crucial interrelatedness of text, object, and place in the construction of cultural meaning and collective identity.11 Jacopo uses place and landscape to contextualize and authenticate the relics he discusses, while also seeking to unite his Genoese audience in a shared view of civic virtue and Genoa’s place in the Christian cosmo­logy.

 5 Jacopo da Varagine, Historia sive legenda, ed. by Vigna, pp. 483–84. The episode also appears briefly in Jacopo’s Legenda aurea, ed. by Maggioni, pp. 974–75; trans. by Ryan, The Golden Legend, p. 521.  6 Polonio, ‘L’arrivo delle ceneri’; Beneš, ‘Civic Identity’, pp. 204–10.  7 Jacopo da Varagine, Legenda aurea, ed. by Maggioni.  8 Epstein, The Talents of Jacopo da Varagine; Beneš, introduction to Jacopo da Varagine’s Chronicle (pp. 1–37), especially pp. 16–19.  9 Beneš, Jacopo da Varagine’s Chronicle, p. 19.  10 Jacopo da Varagine, Historia sive legenda, ed. by Vigna; Jacopo da Varagine, Legenda seu vita sancti Syri, ed. by Promis; and Jacopo da Varagine, Historia reliquiarum, ed. by Vigna. On the foundation of the convent of Santi Giacomo e Filippo, see note 35 below.  11 See the recent volume by Räsänen, Hartmann, and Richards, eds, Relics, Memory, and Iden­ tity, especially Räsänen’s introduction, pp. 1–12. More generally, see Freeman, Holy Bones, Holy Dust.

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The Legend of Saint Syrus The Legend or Life of Saint Syrus, Bishop of Genoa, is the most intensely local of Jacopo’s relic treatises. According to Jacopo’s Chronicle of Genoa, Syrus was the third bishop of Genoa: Istud autem pro certo scimus quod sanctus Syrus, qui fuit episcopus tertius, ante tempora sancti Gregorij pape extitit, quia ipse Gregorius in libro Dyalogorum de ecclesia Sancti Syri episcopi Ianuensis expressam mentionem facit. Gregorius autem florebat circa annos Domini d.c.; per quantum autem temporis Sirus precesserit Gregorium ignoratur. (We know for certain that Saint Syrus lived before the time of Pope Saint Gregory [the Great] because this Gregory explicitly mentions the church of Saint Syrus, bishop of Genoa, in his book of Dialogues. Gregory flourished around the year of the Lord 600; but it is unknown by how much time Syrus preceded him.)12 Somewhat to its own dismay, modern scholarship has been unable to improve much upon Jacopo’s assessment of Syrus’s place in history. Essentially, Syrus was a miracle-working protobishop about whom we now know almost nothing apart from Jacopo’s own statements and one earlier vita.13 But he was the city’s major patron saint up to the twelfth century, and his relics are still much cherished.14 Jacopo’s legend of this very local saint starts with Syrus’s roots in Molassana, a village only eight kilometres up the valley of the Bisagno River from Genoa. As he does in the Chronicle, Jacopo offers historical, etymo­logical, and miraculous details that connect Syrus to Molassana. He relates, for example, that Syrus’s father was a noble citizen of Genoa named Milianus, after whom the village was originally known as Emiliana.15 Its name was later changed to Molassana by combining mollis (gentle) and sana (healthy or wise), which Jacopo identifies as characteristics of the saint. In this way the very name of the place evokes its native son.

 12 Jacopo da Varagine, Chronica, xi. 1, ed. by Monleone, ii, pp. 226–27; trans. by Beneš, Jacopo da Varagine’s Chronicle, p. 166, relying on Gregory the Great, Dialogi, iv. 55, ed. by Moricca, p. 313.  13 See Beneš, Jacopo da Varagine’s Chronicle, pp. 166–67 (especially n. 1) and 173–75; also Angeli Bertinelli, ‘Le origini’.  14 Polonio, Istituzioni ecclesiastiche, pp. 122–29; Rosser, ‘The Church and Religious Life’, pp. 346–51.  15 ‘Hic igitur beatus Syrus ex patre nomine Miliano et loco qui Emiliana dicitur qui per viiio. miliaria a civitate Ianue distat, secundum carnem duxit originem. Qui quidem locus nomen a patre non infimo Ianue cive accepisse dicitur. Sed nunc Molliciana nomine immutato vocatur. Unde in fundo panno hedificata manet ecclesia suo nomini dedicata. Recte autem Molliciana quia mollis et sana dicitur. Que fructum pertulit et sanum per integritatem rectitudinis et mollem per affectum compassionis’; Jacopo da Varagine, Legenda seu vita sancti Syri, ed. by Promis, p. 364.

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Figure 8.1. Polyptych of Saint Syrus with blackbird and basilisk, central panel, attributed to Pier Francesco Sacchi, Genoa, church of San Siro. c. 1516. Photo by author.

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Jacopo then notes the existence of a church dedicated to Syrus in the village of Molassana and explains that a merula, or blackbird, can always be seen around its roof and bell tower as visible witness of an early miracle of the saint, in which he kept such a bird as a pet and brought it back to life after it died suddenly. In huius autem miraculi evidens testimonium avis eiusdem speciei et generis super campanile sancti Syri. vel in alio loco eiusdem ecclesie singulis annis nidum conligat, pullos generat, et locum sollicita visione frequentat. (Bearing witness to this miracle, every year a bird of the same species and type builds its nest, raises its young, and frequents the place with a solicitous expression on the bell tower or in another place in the same church of Saint Syrus.)16 Jacopo’s account brings Syrus’s childhood to life in a setting familiar to his thirteenth-century Genoese audience: the village’s name, its church, and the birds that habitually roost there. The story flattens the two chrono­logically distant time periods into a single idealized yet tangible landscape, linking known places and objects to Jacopo’s account of the saint. The textual account explains the physical objects and places, and the physical objects and places authenticate the textual account. In other words, the landscape functions icono­graphically, bearing physical witness to young Syrus’s experience and presaging the fact that later portraits of the saint use a blackbird among his attributes (see Figure 8.1).17 Jacopo continues this approach with the environs of Genoa itself, relating several water miracles that took place in Genoa’s harbour.18 But his hagio­graphical topo­graphy is most precise when dealing with the basilica of the Twelve Apostles, the original cathedral of Genoa, which was later renamed after Syrus and became one of the city’s chief monastic foundations.19 Jacopo reports: Tunc temporis serpens regulus greco vocabulo dictus basiliscus in quodam puteo prope atrium basilice Apostolorum qui nunc sancti Syri dicitur latitabat qui aerem ex flatu corrumpebat venenoso et ex visu inflammabat ignito. Ex quo pestis maxima causabatur.

 16 Jacopo da Varagine, Legenda seu vita sancti Syri, ed. by Promis, p. 365.  17 Such as the polyptych of San Siro attributed to Pier Francesco Sacchi (1485–1528) in the church of San Siro, Molassana, now technically in the neighbouring suburb of Struppa in the Val Bisagno.  18 Jacopo da Varagine, Legenda seu vita sancti Syri, ed. by Promis, pp. 366, 371.  19 Now known as the basilica of San Siro, the present Baroque church is largely the work of rebuilding by the Theatine order between 1583 and 1619: Poleggi and Croce, Ritratto di Genova. On the relocation of the episcopal seat from San Siro to San Lorenzo inside the ninth-century city walls — an event which probably occurred in the late tenth century — see Balzaretti, ‘Early Medi­eval Genoa’, pp. 85–87, and Gorse, ‘Architecture and Urban Topo­ graphy’, pp. 222–24.

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(At that time a snake, a viper called by the Greek term ‘basilisk’ used to lurk in a certain well near the atrium of the basilica of the Holy Apostles, which is now called San Siro, corrupting the air with its poisonous breath and inflaming it with its fiery gaze. By this a great plague was caused.)20 Here Jacopo repeats the renaming phrase he used earlier — ‘basilice apostolorum qui nunc sancti Syri dicitur’ — explicitly to connect the basilica in Syrus’s day (the basilica of the Twelve Apostles) with how it was known to Jacopo’s contemporaries (San Siro). He is also precise about the location of the miasma-causing serpent — ‘in a certain well near the atrium of the basilica’ — so his contemporaries would be able to pinpoint the location of the miracle precisely. The miracle then circles back to the harbour as Syrus catches the serpent in a jar, carries it a few blocks down to the harbour, and commands it to throw itself into the sea (see map, Figure 8.2).21 This miracle maintained a vivid presence in local memory for centuries to come: a plaque dated 1580 and located in the nearby Vico San Pietro della Porta reads: ‘Hic est puteus ille ex quo beatissimus Syrus ep[iscopu]s q[uo]ndam Ianuen[sis] exthrasit durum serpentem no[m]i[n]e baxiliscum mccccclxxx’ (Here is the well from which the most blessed Syrus, former bishop of Genoa, banished the terrible serpent known as the basilisk. [Dated] 1580; Figure 8.3). The basilisk, unsurprisingly, also became one of Syrus’s icono­graphical attributes in later artistic depictions (Figures 8.1 and 8.3). But Jacopo’s concerns as a hagio­grapher go beyond facilitating the association of the saint with particular attributes; his priority is actually to embed the holy man behind those attributes in the local surroundings. Moving beyond beasts, then, Jacopo’s treatise turns to focus on Syrus’s posthumous miracles, in which the saint’s tomb and relics maintain his bodily presence in Genoa in a way that transcends the human lifespan. The aforementioned basilica of the Twelve Apostles becomes the basilica of Saint Syrus, and Syrus’s episcopal ring and an ampule of his blood perform numerous healing miracles.22 In fact, the church takes on Syrus’s own personality in a way that combines pious moralizing with slapstick comedy.23 Following Gregory the Great, Jacopo explains that a certain Valentinus — a ‘defender of the Milanese church’24

 20 Jacopo da Varagine, Legenda seu vita sancti Syri, ed. by Promis, p. 370.  21 ‘Precepit autem sanctus Syrus serpenti ut de vase abscederet et in mare se precipitem daret. Cuius iussioni protinus obedivit’; Jacopo da Varagine, Legenda seu vita sancti Syri, ed. by Promis, p. 371.  22 Jacopo da Varagine, Legenda seu vita sancti Syri, ed. by Promis, p. 375.  23 This would have been a combination of styles at which Jacopo, as a Dominican trained in preaching to public audiences, was especially adept.  24 Jacopo da Varagine, Legenda seu vita sancti Syri, ed. by Promis, pp. 372–73, following Gregory the Great, Dialogues, iv. 53. Defensor ecclesie is a legal post, but given Jacopo’s tendency (demonstrated across his numerous works) to connect the Milanese with unorthodox religious belief and practice, it may also have implied to a Genoese audience that Valentinus

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Figure 8.2. Map of late thirteenth-century Genoa. Map by author.

Figure 8.3. Relief identifying the location of Syrus’s basilisk miracle, Genoa, Vico San Pietro della Porta. 1580. Photo by author.

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and a deceitful man caught up in trivial matters — arranged to have himself buried in the basilica of Saint Syrus. The church, however, refused to hold his corpse and ejected it into the street in the middle of the night. At the end of his treatise, Jacopo comments pithily: ‘Sanctus eius locus qui Valentini corpus sceleste non pertulit sed ipsum cum ignominia foras eiecit’ (holy was that place which refused to hold the corpse of the wicked Valentinus, but rather tossed it out of doors in ignominy).25 The site of Syrus’s own miracle of the banished basilisk becomes a site of new miracles performed posthumously, attesting to the holiness of the place and Syrus’s continued presence there. Molassana and Genoa are not the sole witnesses to Syrus’s existence and sanctity, however. As further miracles in Jacopo’s legend demonstrate, Syrus’s aura encompasses numerous sites throughout Liguria and the world beyond. In one example, Jacopo avails himself of a better-established local saint to support the cult of Saint Syrus. He relates how a woman of Pavia went to pray for healing at the shrine of Saint Columbanus at Bobbio, a monastery at the top of one of the main Apennine passes from the Po valley to Genoa on the coast.26 Having received no miracle from Columbanus, however, she continued through the pass down to Genoa to pray at the church of Saint Syrus, where she was restored to full health. Jacopo interprets this as a vote of confidence in favour of Syrus by Columbanus: ‘Ex quo perpenditur sanctus Columbanus beatum Syrum quantum honore dignum esse perdocuit, qui huius curationem suis meritis reservavit’ (this shows that Saint Columbanus has taught that Saint Syrus is worthy of equal honour, since he reserved this cure for him by his merits).27 In this way, Bobbio and other cities within Genoa’s regional network join Molassana and Genoa in Jacopo’s treatise as topo­graphical witnesses to Syrus’s sanctity.28 While their inclusion in Syrus’s legend demonstrates that not all such sites needed to be officially dedicated to Syrus in order to do the work of authenticating Syrus’s holiness, churches with that dedication form the backbone of Jacopo’s argument.29 A final example from Syrus’s legend, therefore, has to do with an otherwise unidentified church dedicated to the

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was a heretic. Supporting this hypothesis is the fact that the basilisk in the previous miracle is often interpreted as representing the Arian heresy, and Syrus celebrated as a champion of Genoese orthodoxy: Angeli Bertinelli, ‘Le origini’, p. 44. Jacopo da Varagine, Legenda seu vita sancti Syri, ed. by Promis, p. 376. Jacopo da Varagine, Legenda seu vita sancti Syri, ed. by Promis, p. 375. While Bobbio is only about fifty kilometres inland from Genoa as the crow flies, the mountainous landscape nearly doubles the travel distance between the two. Jacopo da Varagine, Legenda seu vita sancti Syri, ed. by Promis, p. 375. The city of Bobbio had been raised to a bishopric and placed under Genoa at the time of the latter’s elevation to an archbishopric in 1133: Destefanis and Guglielmotti, eds, La diocesi di Bobbio. There were churches dedicated to Syrus not only in Molassana, but also in the Ligurian towns of Sanremo, Nervi, Langasco (Campomorone), and Viganego (Bargagli).

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saint in North Africa.30 Jacopo’s Genoese audience would have known the North African trade well, and the Genoese typically named churches in their overseas outposts after their own saints.31 The story Jacopo recounts therefore probably sounded familiar to its hearers: during Syrus’s funeral, blood flowing from the nose of the corpse was piously wiped away by a visiting Christian ship-captain from North Africa.32 When his ship neared its home port, it was met by a multitude of people afflicted by illness and demonic possession shouting, ‘Ecce sanctus Syrus venit, qui nos a nostris infirmitatibus liberabit’ (Behold, Saint Syrus comes, who will deliver us from our infirmities!).33 They waded out into the sea, asking those onboard if it carried anyone named Syrus, or any saints’ relics, and eventually the confused ship-captain realized they were referring to his bloodstained handkerchief: ‘infirmos inde tetigit, et omnes sancti Syri meritis reportaverunt beneficium sanitatis. Episcopus autem civitatis illius, et populus in honore sancti Syri ecclesiam construxerunt, velum supradictum cum multa ibidem reverentia reponentes’. (So the infirm touched it, and all of them regained the blessing of health by the merits of Saint Syrus. Then the bishop and people of that city built a church in honour of Saint Syrus, in which they installed the aforesaid cloth with great reverence.)34 While Jacopo does not identify the site of this new church of Saint Syrus, the saint’s churches in Genoa and Molassana attest to its existence almost metonymically: if Syrus has performed so many miracles of healing and sea rescue in and around Genoa, naturally he could also do so in North Africa. Jacopo’s example thus attests to the power of Syrus’s relics and the breadth of his patronal reach across time and space.

The History of the Relics in SS. Giacomo e Filippo In his other treatises, Jacopo’s treatment of Genoese relics whose saints were not natively Genoese follows a similar pattern. Unlike the relics of Saint Syrus, however, these relics originated in milieux far distant from Genoa, so Jacopo actually has to work harder to make them Genoese. He does so by linking relics of distant origin with their contemporary Genoese surroundings — as previously, by either paralleling or conflating multiple landscapes. Jacopo’s

 30 Even after the collapse of Christian outposts in North Africa, the Genoese maintained trading outposts across Ifriqiya from modern-day Morocco to Libya, with particular concentration on the coastline from Algiers to Tunis and Tripoli; Constable, Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World, ch. 4, especially pp. 128–32; see also Notai genovesi in Oltremare, ed. by Pistarino.  31 In this period, overseas Genoese churches tended to be named after Syrus and Lawrence; later on, dedications to Saint George dominated; Beneš, ‘Civic Identity’, pp. 201–02.  32 Jacopo da Varagine, Legenda seu vita sancti Syri, ed. by Promis, pp. 371–72.  33 Jacopo da Varagine, Legenda seu vita sancti Syri, ed. by Promis, p. 372.  34 Jacopo da Varagine, Legenda seu vita sancti Syri, ed. by Promis, p. 372.

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Historia reliquiarum que sunt in monasterio sororum sanctorum Philippi et Jacobi (History of the Relics in the Sisters’ Monastery of Saints Philip and James), for example, discusses the relics held in the Genoese community of Dominican nuns, which had been founded about thirty years earlier, in 1264.35 First as provincial prior for Lombardy and later as archbishop, Jacopo maintained a close relationship with the convent. In fact, he states proudly that he himself acquired or facilitated the acquisition of most of its treasures — chiefly relics of its patrons Philip and James, but also relics of John the Baptist and the skull of one of the companions of Saint Ursula of Co­logne.36 Jacopo’s treatise on the nuns’ relics chiefly focuses on place in matters of provenance: Jacopo testifies, for example, that he himself broke Philip’s finger off a larger hand relic held ‘in civitate Venetiarum quoddam monasterium in honorem sancti Philippi’ (in the city of the Venetians, in a certain monastery in honour of Saint Philip).37 Similarly, he gives the text of a signed and sealed deposition confirming the Ursuline relic’s origin from an abbess in Co­logne and the names of the Dominican friars — Manfred and Emanuel — commissioned by Jacopo to bring the relic to Genoa.38 On the one hand, Jacopo’s detailed descriptions of these relics’ places of origin emphasize the fundamentally topo­graphical nature of translatio: Philip’s finger began attached to a larger hand relic ‘in civitate Venetiarum’, where it remained until Jacopo himself conveyed it to Genoa (‘detulimus Ianuam reverenter’). On the other hand, since the act of translatio strips such objects of their original surroundings — and therefore of context and meaning — the precision of Jacopo’s textual geo­graphy reinforces the relics’ claim to authenticity by providing geo­graphical provenance: this object began in the Holy Land, was transferred first to Venice, and came thence to Genoa.

 35 Grossi Bianchi and Poleggi, eds, Una città portuale, p. 126.  36 Jacopo da Varagine, Historia reliquiarum, ed. by Vigna.  37 Jacopo da Varagine, Historia reliquiarum, ed. by Vigna, p. 466: ‘Siquidem in civitate Veneti­ arum quoddam monasterium in honorem sancti Philippi est constructum, in quo manus eius celebri devotione servabatur. Istam manum dignissimam in manibus nostris licet indignis tenuimus, et cum debita reverentia adorata, digitum illum sanctissimum digitis nostris, licet non sanctis, de voluntate prelati ab illa manu evulsimus et Januam detulimus reverenter’.  38 ‘Nos Lissa Dei gratia Abbatissa ecclesie sanctarum virginum de Colonia, notum volumus esse universis, et testimonio presentium profitemur, quod caput virginis quod officialis curie Coloniensis dedit fratribus Ordinis Predicatorum Manfredo et Emanueli, consignandum fratri Jacobo provinciali fratrum dicti Ordinis in Lombardia, ut firmiter tenemus, fuit unum de capitibus sanctarum Undecim milium quae apud nos in Colonia requiescunt. In cuius assertionis fidem, sigillum nostrum duximus presentibus apponendum. Actum in Colonia, anno Domini millesimo.cc.lxxxii’; Jacopo da Varagine, Historia reliquiarum, ed. by Vigna, p. 476. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw the development of an extensive export trade in Ursuline relics out of Co­logne, and ‘by the fourteenth century, relics of the Holy Virgins of Co­logne could be found in numerous cities and monasteries in what is now Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, England, Flanders’, and beyond: Montgomery, St Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins, p. 24.

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Moving beyond provenance, Jacopo also uses place to increase the emotional impact of the objects he describes. He dwells on the relics’ origins in far distant times and places in a kind of meditative parallelism, in which a preacher might stress that this finger of Saint Philip that his audience could see right in front of them actually handled the biblical five loaves and two fishes: Felix digitus qui turbe pascende cum Andrea panes hordaceos ministravit. Felix digitus qui gentiles qui venerant Jerosolimam in die festo adduxit ad Jesum. Felix digitus per quem Deus in mundo sapientiam suam conscripsit; per quem magos Pharaonis superavit, qui confessi sunt dicentes: digitus Dei est iste. Felix digitus per quem Christus eiecit demonia multa, et regnum Dei in multos pervenit. (Happy finger that with Andrew passed out bread to feed the multitudes. Happy finger that led to Jesus the Gentiles who had come to Jerusalem on the festal day. Happy finger through which God wrote his wisdom in the world, through whom he overcame the mages of Pharaoh, who confessed him, saying: This is the finger of God. Happy finger through which Christ cast out many demons, and through which the kingdom of God has reached many.)39 He does the same for Saint James: although the relic in question is an unspecified ‘particula de corpore’ (bit of body), he reflects on its presence at the major events in James’s life — his birth from the same mother as Jesus, his vision of the risen Christ, his tenure as bishop of Jerusalem, his presence at the Last Supper, and so on.40 Jacopo’s narrative makes Philip’s finger and James’s particula (whatever it may be) into talismans linking ancient Judaea with thirteenth-century Genoa; he uses them on the one hand to inspire the medi­eval Genoese to a closer appreciation of the lives of Christ and his disciples, and on the other to give Christ, his disciples, and their world a more direct and manifest presence in the everyday landscape of medi­eval Genoa.41

The History of the Translation of Saint John the Baptist This technique also works in Jacopo’s Historia sive legenda translationis sancti Iohannis Baptistae (History or Legend of the Translation of the Blessed John the Baptist), about the Genoese cathedral of San Lorenzo’s most valued medi­eval

 39 Jacopo da Varagine, Historia reliquiarum, ed. by Vigna, pp. 466–67.  40 Jacopo da Varagine, Historia reliquiarum, ed. by Vigna, p. 467.  41 While ‘talisman’ appropriately conveys the religious weight and miraculous function of these objects, their ability to telescope space and time is more accurately conveyed through the language of fantasy, with its taxonomy of wormholes, teleportation, and portal stones. Here the best analogy is the ‘portkey’ of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter canon, an object that, when grasped, magically transports its holder to a distant place.

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relics, which the Genoese had brought home after the First Crusade.42 While the cathedral was formally dedicated to Saint Lawrence, John’s relics received prominent placement and eventually an elaborate chapel on its northern wall.43 In the History, Jacopo meditates on the events of John’s life in the Holy Land as he had done for Philip and James, but he also expatiates on the movement of John’s relics before their arrival in Genoa: Macheron, where John was beheaded; Sebastia, where disciples took his body; Jerusalem and Alexandria, where his ashes were originally stored; then finally Myra, whence the Genoese brought them to Genoa. These familiar names provide a sense of corroboration and legitimation for the well-travelled Genoese, whose crews helped liberate Jerusalem; whose merchants traded in Alexandria; whose crusaders carried off John’s relics from Myra supposedly to save them from approaching Turks. At the same time, Jacopo’s account of the relics’ travels implicitly positions Genoa as equal or superior to such major Mediterranean cities as Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Myra, which were only deemed worthy of hosting John’s relics temporarily. Jacopo’s emphasis on place in the cosmopolitan history of John’s relics underscores his insistence on saints’ agency regarding their relics: by this logic, the removal of John’s relics to Genoa was not so much an act by the Genoese as a choice by the saint himself.44 This approach to relics is echoed in the treatise on Philip and James, where Jacopo emphasizes the saints’ choice of Genoa as their home. He writes, ‘Ibi igitur Philippus habet digitum de sua manu beata decisum. Ibi Jacobus quandam habet particulam de corpore suo sumptam’ (In this convent Philip keeps a finger detached from his own hand; there James keeps a chosen piece of his own body).45 The use of the present tense asserts clearly that Philip, James, and their fellow saints actively chose Genoa as the resting place for their mortal remains and, furthermore, that they continue to choose it as such and to take an interest in what happens there. Even more than provenance, therefore, the key element of the treatise is the miracles performed by these relics after their arrival in Genoa, which confirm the saints’ approval of their new home. Jacopo’s narrative keeps the reader’s attention grounded by frequently referring to ‘this monastery’, ‘the aforesaid monastery’, and Genoa itself, regarding both the relics and the miracles they perform. So, for example, ‘soror eiusdem monasterii nomine Thomasina de Cicadis’ (a sister of the same monastery by the name of Thomasina de Cicadis) was terribly crippled, but

 42 See note 6 above. On Genoese participation in the Crusade, see Mack, ‘Genoa and the Crusades’, as well as the source collection focused on Caffaro di Rustico’s annals: Caffaro di Rustico da Caschifellone and others, Caffaro, Genoa and the Twelfth-Century Crusades, ed. by Hall and Phillips.  43 Di Fabio and Besta, eds, La cattedrale di Genova, pp. 77–87; Calderoni Masetti and Wolf, eds, The Cathedral of San Lorenzo, ii, pp. 47–58.  44 Geary, Furta Sacra, pp. 125–26 and 132–33.  45 Jacopo da Varagine, Historia reliquiarum, ed. by Vigna, p. 466.

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sustained a vision of John the Baptist and found herself cured.46 Jacopo attests that he heard the story from Thomasina’s own mouth, that he himself had previously seen her injured — walking about with a crutch — and afterward restored to full health. Saint John then appeared to another incapacitated sister named Katharina de Nigro: ‘Ego sum Johannes qui sororem Thomasinam salutari quadam unctione perunxi et pristine sanitati restitui. Dicas ergo sororibus quod de meis reliquiis quas habent nulla eis insit dubitatio, sed omnimoda certitudo quia verissime eas habent’. (I am John, who anointed Sister Thomasina with a certain unguent to make her well and restored her former health. Therefore let you speak with the sisters, so that there should be no doubt about the relics of mine which they hold; rather they should have certitude of every kind that these are absolutely genuine.)47 Concerned by the level of doubt about the veracity of his relics in Genoa, John tells Katharina to look for a certain stone in the box of his relics, dip it in wine, and drink the wine. The desired miracle requires the participation of local institutions at two different sites in medi­eval Genoa: from her sickbed at Santi Giacomo e Filippo, Katharina is forced to send a message to the bishop of Genoa, who must rummage in John’s reliquary in San Lorenzo to find the stone in question.48 The bishop finds the stone, dips it in wine as instructed, and soon Katharina too is restored to health.49 The key is Saint John’s very localized, present-day interest in the convent, cathedral, and city that now house his relics: he wants to ensure everyone knows they are genuine (‘nulla eis insit dubitatio’‚ as above) and thereby to demonstrate that the institutions that hold them are under his protection. The miracles performed in Genoa by John’s relics — independent of their origin — sanctify the nuns’ convent, confirm its inhabitants’ worthiness to possess these relics, and verify the saint’s continuing concern for what happens there. In fact, Jacopo’s account of the translation of John’s relics contains an explicit warning regarding the danger of disobeying the saint’s instructions. Going back to the relics’ collection in Myra, Jacopo explains that once the Genoese sailors there had identified John’s relics, they agreed to divide them up for transport in multiple ships. Upon attempting to set sail, however, they were prevented by a sudden tempest.50 A priest in the group explained that it had been revealed to him that ‘nisi sanctas reliquias quas diviserant in

 46 Jacopo da Varagine, Historia reliquiarum, ed. by Vigna, pp. 470–71.  47 Jacopo da Varagine, Historia reliquiarum, ed. by Vigna, p. 472.  48 ‘Ibi inventus est quidam lapillus qui de monumento sancti Johannis creditur fuisse excisus. Episcopus igitur reverenter lapillum illum in vinum abluit, sorori potum dedit, et illa sanitatem recepit’; Jacopo da Varagine, Historia reliquiarum, ed. by Vigna, p. 472.  49 Smith, ‘Portable Christianity’, discusses a similar account about a stone that works miracles through immersion in liquid, noting ‘the tendency of [the Christian] religious community to vest small material objects with importance as points of contact between the divine and the human’ (pp. 143–44). See also Smith, ‘Relics’.  50 Jacopo da Varagine, Historia sive legenda, ed. by Vigna, p. 485.

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unum redigerent nullatenus poterant liberari’ (they would not be allowed to leave unless they reunited into a single whole the holy relics which they had divided). Once this was done, they sailed straight home and into the port of Genoa ‘cum omni leticia feliciter’ (with much rejoicing).51 While Jacopo does not state explicitly that this episode is a lesson for the notoriously fractious citizenry of Genoa, the rest of the treatise goes out of its way to emphasize the glory and success that accrue to the Genoese when they act as a united community. The treatise begins: ‘Convenientibus nobis in unum fratres charissimi hodierne celebritatis dignitatem causam […] quod presentis dominice iocunda solemnitas revelationi reliquiarum beati Johannis Baptiste a laudabili tam clero quam populo urbis Janue in qua habentur recondite est unanimiter dedicata’ (Most beloved brethren, since we are gathered together as one […] on a day unanimously dedicated to the solemn revelation of the relics of the blessed John the Baptist by both the clergy and people of the city of Genoa).52 Jacopo emphasizes the unanimity of action on the part of the Genoese at every possible moment thereafter, such as when the relics are brought to Genoa, ‘omnes tam laici quam clerici magnifice de Dei beneficio congaudentes’ (with everyone rejoicing — laypeople as much as clerics — for the great blessing of God).53 When disaster threatens the city, ‘tocius populi’ (the entire populace) takes the relics ‘processionaliter per civitatis circuitum’ (in procession around the circuit of the city).54 Jacopo concludes: In huius ergo solemniis gaude et letare filia Sion,55 tu videlicet civitas Ianuensis, talis ac tanti patroni gloria a Domino decorata. Omnis sexus, omnis etas, omnis conditio, omnibus omissis, hodierna die in domo Domini congregentur, et in ore omnium inveniatur gratiarum actio et vox laudis. (Therefore in these solemnities rejoice and be glad, daughter Zion — namely you, city of Genoa — that you have been adorned with the glory of such a patron [i.e. John] by God. Let every sex, every age, every condition, gather today in the house of God with all else set aside, and let acts of grace and a voice of praise be found in the mouths of all.)56 The repetition of omnis (every, all), as well as the variety of categories Jacopo enumerates within the totality — clergy and people, men and women, old and young — stresses the unanimity of Genoa’s support for the Baptist, and the Baptist’s support for all of the Genoese. John’s relics therefore represent the Baptist’s guiding hand as the city’s self-appointed new patron saint in  51 Jacopo da Varagine, Historia sive legenda, ed. by Vigna, p. 485.  52 Jacopo da Varagine, Historia sive legenda, ed. by Vigna, p. 480.  53 ‘Quibus auditis omnes tam laici quam clerici magnifice de Dei beneficio congaudentes, sacrosanctas reliquias super altare maioris ecclesie cum omni reverentia et gaudio processionaliter detulerunt’; Jacopo da Varagine, Historia sive legenda, ed. by Vigna, p. 485.  54 Jacopo da Varagine, Historia sive legenda, ed. by Vigna, pp. 487–88.  55 Zechariah 9. 9.  56 Jacopo da Varagine, Historia sive legenda, ed. by Vigna, pp. 490–91.

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correcting error and discord, and encouraging the Genoese to correct moral behaviour, especially public behaviour that affects the common good.57 John’s commitment to the city is emphasized by the presence and efficacy of his relics both in the Dominican convent of Santi Giacomo e Filippo and in the city’s cathedral of San Lorenzo. These locales form new cult sites authenticated by John himself while also evoking the relics’ former homes around the Mediterranean. Saints, places, and objects all work together to create a sense of local signification and sanctity. Jacopo actually explains how he understands the workings of these complex webs of meaning in the Legend of Saint Syrus. At the end of the story of the sinner Valentinus — whose corpse was unceremoniously evicted from Saint Syrus’s basilica — he explicitly lays out the connection he sees between person, place, and meaning: In sanctis namque tria consideramus scilicet spiritum glorificatum. corpus sanctificatum. et locum dedicatum. Quilibet autem horum in multa reverentia est habendum. videlicet spiritus quia ipsum inhabitat deus. corpus quia inhabitat spiritus. locus quia ipsum habitat corpus. Ex hoc igitur quod deus passus non est ut ille quem peccata gravia reprimebant in ecclesia beati syri sepultus constitit. (With regard to the saints, we must consider three things: the glorified spirit, the sanctified body, and the consecrated place. Each of these must be accorded great reverence: the spirit, because God inhabits it; the body, because the spirit inhabits it; and the place, because the body inhabits it. Thus God did not allow someone weighed down by grave sin to be buried in the church of the blessed Syrus.)58 While Jacopo’s hierarchy accords only tertiary holiness to place — in essence, space is sanctified by the presence of people imbued with the Holy Spirit — it acknowledges that places acquire meaning by the movement of people and objects such as relics in and around them. The basilica of Saint Syrus, the convent of Philip and James, and the chapel of John the Baptist in San Lorenzo are all intensely local places situated in an area of less than one square kilometre, an urban space hemmed in by steep hills: Jacopo’s Genoa is therefore a hagio­graphy written on or even with the local landscape. Its cathedral, churches, convents, harbour, and surrounding villages are all imbued with moral meaning and the histories of the city’s saints. Such places authenticate the stories he tells, while his narratives give moral import to the daily surroundings of his Genoese audience. In particular, they remind Jacopo’s parishioners that the city’s saints are constantly present among them in support, encouragement, and — when necessary — admonition.59  57 Bertini Guidetti, ‘Contrastare la crisi della chiesa cattedrale’, pp. 175–77.  58 Jacopo da Varagine, Legenda seu vita sancti Syri, ed. by Promis, p. 373.  59 Webb, Patrons and Defenders, ch. 4.

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Figure 8.4. View of the north wall of the nave of San Lorenzo, with the early fourteenthcentury bust of Janus on the arcade above and the chapel of St John the Baptist (c. 1450–1475) visible through the arcade below, Genoa, cathedral of San Lorenzo. Photo by author.

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Jacopo’s relic treatises thereby support scholars’ efforts to understand and analyse the intertwined nature of ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ experiences in the cities of later medi­eval Italy, spheres that are easy to isolate given the richness of the Italian source materials. Recently scholars have focused particularly on the role of the institutional Church in community-building as well as on civic activities framed in religious terms and intended to foster social cohesion.60 Approached from the opposite perspective, Jacopo’s relic treatises are themselves forms of political rhetoric and community-building. They shape civic identity just as the supposedly secular cult of the city’s founder Janus does; Jacopo’s Chronicle of Genoa presents Janus and John the Baptist equally as founders and patrons of the city.61 In fact, the two figures live cheek by jowl in Genoa’s cathedral of San Lorenzo to this day: the relatively modest bust of Janus that was installed on an arch on the north side of the nave in the early fourteenth century physically overlooks the much more splendid mid-fifteenth-century chapel of John the Baptist (Figure 8.4).62 Positioned together in the largest public interior in medi­eval Genoa — a space designed for moral exhortation — both Janus, the city’s founder, and John, its patron saint, function didactically as ancestors, mentors, and inspirational figures for the Genoese people. At the same time as they promote holy figures such as John and Janus, however, Jacopo’s relic treatises ground these figures and their Genoese protégés within the local environment. First, Jacopo’s publicization of the relics’ present locations could increase citizens’ pride and local devotional traffic, for example to the churches of San Siro, San Lorenzo, and Santi Giacomo e Filippo. Second, Jacopo’s analysis maps local manifestations of sanctity onto the contemporary medi­eval landscape: the Genoese harbour, where Syrus performed his miracles, the well from which Syrus banished the basilisk, the cathedral John the Baptist chose for his relics, and the convent whose nuns John healed. Third, Jacopo’s treatises reveal how physical spaces and objects — then as now — can telescope time and space, displaying ancient Genoa in present Genoa as well as inserting distant cities like Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Co­logne into the Genoese landscape: the city walls encompass the macrocosm as well as the microcosm.63 Within this parallel cosmo­logy, as Archbishop Jacopo clearly understood, the city’s relics stand at the crux of civic piety, communal politics, and Genoese identity.

 60 For example, Dameron, Florence and its Church; Thompson, Cities of God; or Jansen, Peace and Penance.  61 Jacopo da Varagine, Chronica, i. 1–4, ed. by Monleone, ii, pp. 10–32 and 302–21; trans. by Beneš, Jacopo da Varagine’s Chronicle, pp. 45–56 and 198–206. Compare Giovanna Petti Balbi’s observation about the ‘Christianization’ of Janus in Una città e il suo mare, p. 320.  62 Di Fabio and Besta, eds, La cattedrale di Genova; Calderoni Masetti and Wolf, eds, The Cathedral of San Lorenzo.  63 Lilley, City and Cosmos, especially pp. 15–40.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Caffaro di Rustico da Caschifellone and others, Caffaro, Genoa and the TwelfthCentury Crusades, ed. by Martin Hall and Jonathan Phillips (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013) Gregory the Great, Dialogi, ed. by Umberto Moricca (Rome: Typo­graphia del Senato, 1924) Jacopo da Varagine [ Jacobus de Voragine, also Iacopo da Varazze], Chronica civitatis Ianuensis, ed. by Giovanni Monleone as Jacopo da Varagine e la sua cronaca di Genova, 2 vols (Rome: Tipografia del Senato, 1941); trans. by Carrie E. Beneš as Jacopo da Varagine’s Chronicle of the City of Genoa (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020) —— , Historia reliquiarum que sunt in monasterio sororum sanctorum Philippi et Jacobi, ed. by Amedeo Vigna, in ‘Due opuscoli di Jacopo da Varagine’, Annali della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 10 (1874), 455–91 (pp. 465–79) —— , Historia sive legenda translationis sancti Iohannis Baptistae, ed. by Amedeo Vigna, in ‘Due opuscoli di Jacopo da Varagine’, Annali della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 10 (1874), 455–91 (pp. 480–91) —— , Legenda aurea, ed. by Giovanni Paolo Maggioni, 2nd edn (Florence: SISMEL, 2007); trans. by William Granger Ryan as The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, rev. edn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012) —— , Legenda seu vita sancti Syri episcopi Ianuensis, ed. by Vincenzo Promis, in ‘Leggenda e inni sacri di S. Siro, vescovo di Genova’, Annali della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 10 (1874), 355–83 Notai genovesi in Oltremare: Atti rogati a Tunisi da Pietro Battifoglio (1288–1289), ed. by Geo Pistarino (Genoa: Civico Istituto Colombiano, 1986) Secondary Works Angeli Bertinelli, Maria Gabriella, ‘Le origini: L’età romana e tardoantica’, in Il cammino della chiesa genovese: Dalle origini ai nostri giorni, ed. by Dino Puncuh (Genoa: Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 1999), pp. 33–75 Balzaretti, Ross, ‘Early Medi­eval Genoa’, in A Companion to Medi­eval Genoa, ed. by Carrie E. Beneš, Brill’s Companions to European History, 15 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 72–92 Bell, Adrian R., and Richard S. Dale, ‘The Medi­eval Pilgrimage Business’, Enterprise and Society, 12.3 (2011), 601–27 Beneš, Carrie E., ‘Civic Identity’, in A Companion to Medi­eval Genoa, ed. by Carrie E. Beneš, Brill’s Companions to European History, 15 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 193–217 —— , Jacopo da Varagine’s Chronicle of the City of Genoa, Manchester Medi­eval Sources (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020)

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Bertini Guidetti, Stefania, ‘Contrastare la crisi della chiesa cattedrale: Iacopo da Varagine e la costruzione di un’ideo­logia propagandistica’, in Le vie del Mediterraneo: Idee, uomini, oggetti (secoli xi–xvi); Genova, 19–20 aprile 1994, ed. by Gabriella Airaldi (Genoa: ECIG, 1997), pp. 155–81 Calderoni Masetti, Anna Rosa, and Gerhard Wolf, eds, The Cathedral of San Lorenzo in Genoa=La cattedrale di San Lorenzo a Genova, Mirabilia Italiæ, 18, 2 vols (Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini, 2012) Carroll, Rory, ‘Bones of Contention’, The Guardian, 22 December 2000 [accessed 7 May 2021] Constable, Olivia Remie, Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World: Lodging, Trade, and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) Dameron, George W., Florence and its Church in the Age of Dante (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) Destefanis, Eleonora, and Paola Guglielmotti, eds, La diocesi di Bobbio: Formazione e sviluppi di un’istituzione millenaria (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2015) Di Fabio, Clario, and Raffaele Besta, eds, La cattedrale di Genova nel medioevo, secoli vi–xiv (Genoa: Silvana, 1998) Epstein, Steven A., The Talents of Jacopo da Varagine (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016) Freeman, Charles, Holy Bones, Holy Dust: How Relics Shaped the History of Medi­eval Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011) Geary, Patrick J., Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages, rev. edn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) Gorse, George, ‘Architecture and Urban Topo­graphy’, in A Companion to Medi­eval Genoa, ed. by Carrie E. Beneš, Brill’s Companions to European History, 15 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 218–42 Grossi Bianchi, Luciano, and Ennio Poleggi, eds, Una città portuale: Genova nei secoli x–xvi (Genoa: Sagep, 1987) Jansen, Katherine Ludwig, Peace and Penance in Late Medi­eval Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018) Lilley, Keith, City and Cosmos: The Medi­eval World in Urban Form (London: Reaktion, 2009) Mack, Merav, ‘Genoa and the Crusades’, in A Companion to Medi­eval Genoa, ed. by Carrie E. Beneš, Brill’s Companions to European History, 15 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 471–95 Montgomery, Scott, St Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Co­logne: Relics, Reliquaries, and the Visual Culture of Group Sanctity in Late Medi­eval Europe (Bern: Peter Lang, 2010) Petti Balbi, Giovanna, Una città e il suo mare (Bo­logna: CLUEB, 1991) Poleggi, Ennio, and Isabella Croce, Ritratto di Genova nel’400: Veduta d’invenzione=A Portrait of Genoa in the Fifteenth Century (Genoa: Sagep, 2008) Polonio, Valeria, ‘L’arrivo delle ceneri del Precursore e il culto al santo a Genova e nel Genovesato in età medioevale’, in San Giovanni Battista nella vita sociale e

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religiosa a Genova e in Liguria tra medioevo ed età contemporanea, ed. by Claudio Paolocci (Genoa: Associazione Amici della Biblioteca Franzoniana, 2000), pp. 35–66 —— , Istituzioni ecclesiastiche della Liguria medi­evale (Rome: Herder, 2002) Purkis, William, ‘“Holy Christendom’s New Colony”: The Extraction of Sacred Matter and the Colonial Status of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem’, Haskins Society Journal, 30 (2018), 177–212 Räsänen, Marika, Gritje Hartmann, and Earl Jeffrey Richards, eds, Relics, Memory, and Identity in Medi­eval Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016) Rosser, Gervase, ‘The Church and Religious Life’, in A Companion to Medi­eval Genoa, ed. by Carrie E. Beneš, Brill’s Companions to European History, 15 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 345–67 Smith, Julia H. M., ‘Portable Christianity: Relics in the Medi­eval West (c. 700–1200)’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 181 (2012), 143–67 —— , ‘Relics: An Evolving Tradition in Latin Christianity’, in Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond, ed. by Cynthia Hahn and Holger Klein (Dumbarton Oaks: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2015), pp. 41–60 Thompson, Augustine, O.P., Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–1325 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005) ‘Turkish Professor Calls for the Return of Santa Claus’ Bones to Turkey’, Hurriyet Daily News, 23 December 2012 [accessed 7 May 2021] Uzun, Salim, ‘Body of St Nicholas Buried in Demre, Claim Officials’, Hurriyet Daily News, 4 October 2017 [accessed 7 May 2021] Webb, Diana, Patrons and Defenders: The Saints in the Italian City-States (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006)

Boris A. Todorov

Hagio­graphy as Political Theo­logy A Mid-Fourteenth-Century Case from Bulgaria

ἐκεῖνοι δὲ ζημίαν οὐ μικρὰν ἡγούμενοι τὸ κεναῖς ἀναχωρεῖν χερσὶν ἐπιστράτευσαν Μυσοῖς, καὶ ἀπέκτειναν πολλοὺς κατὰ τὴν ἔφοδον ἐκείνην καὶ ἠνδραποδίσαντο, καὶ βοσκημάτων ἐκράτησαν παμπόλλων, καὶ, εἴπερ ποτὲ, ἐκάκωσαν Μυσίαν. (And those people [the Turks], considering it no small loss should they return home empty-handed, invaded the Moesians [the Bulgarians], and they killed and enslaved many of them, and stole numerous cattle, and devastated Moesia as never before.)1 This Turkish incursion in Bulgarian territory took place in 1346 and was a side effect of the chaotic Second Civil War tearing the Late Byzantine Empire apart.2 This was the earliest dated Turkish attack on Bulgaria — one in a long sequence of devastating blows that Turkish (often, but not always, Ottoman) raiders inflicted on the enfeebled Christian polities of south-eastern Europe over the second and third quarters of the fourteenth century, building up to the eventual Ottoman conquest of Trnovo-centred Bulgaria by 1396.3 While from the perspective of modern historio­graphy the Ottoman onslaught was an ominous, irreversible sequence of events of unprecedented magnitude, the sources of the period demonstrate little to no awareness of the impending disaster. The first Greek and Church Slavic texts that openly bemoaned the apocalyptic picture of the infidel taking over the Christianized Balkans  1 John Kantakouzenos, Histories, ed. by Schopen, p. 596.  2 Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, p. 206.  3 On the Turkish attacks on Bulgaria, the most detailed account is Andreev, Bulgariia prez vtorata chetvurt na xiv vek, pp. 171–244. Andreev tends to place the earliest Turkish attacks more than a decade earlier, relying on later Ottoman sources and disregarding the discrepancy between the presumable Bulgarian ethnic space and the real-time territory of the Second Bulgarian Empire, which was considerably smaller.

Boris A. Todorov ([email protected]; PhD, UCLA, 2007) is an independent scholar based in Sofia, Bulgaria. He has published on the social and cultural history of medi­eval south-east Europe. Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe: Studies on Cultural Identity and Power, ed. by Courtney M. Booker, Hans Hummer, and Dana M. Polanichka, CURSOR 41, pp. 191–213 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022)        10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.127582

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date from after Sultan Murat I’s crushing defeat inflicted on the coalition of Balkan Christian rulers at Chernomen (on the Maritsa River) in 1371.4 For the typical grand historical narratives of the Christian nationalisms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the decades preceding 1371 are those of political blindness, disorientation, and self-destructive fraternal struggles that transpired in de-centralization, separatism, and economic decline.5 The nationalist narrative paradigm has emphasized the lack of capacity for emperors, tsars, and despots to conceive in proper terms the advance of the conquerors and, consequently, to counter it efficiently. But while it seems unnecessary even to argue for the possibility of conceptualizing, and standing up for, nationhood in modern terms, it is still unwarranted to ignore the traces of theoretical and practical response to the peril: these traces show up not in the elusive political thought of the period, but in the theo­logical discourse, which naturally transposed the effects of conquest — destitute refugees and enslaved prisoners — as offences to the Christian sense of order. This essay aims to suggest that the oblique discourse of medi­eval written sources in Church Slavic does in fact voice concern with the calamities falling upon the Christian population of the region and exhibits functions and purposes at least tangentially related to political pragmatism. One particular written document in focus is a miscellany of pious readings copied, and perhaps compiled, by a monastic scribe by the name of Lavrentii (Laurentius) in 1348.6 It is very probable that the miscellany was presented as a gift to Bulgarian tsar John Alexander (r. 1331–1371). In its interpretation of the miscellany as a source on the response of medi­eval Bulgarians to impending devastation and fall to invaders, the essay follows several steps: First, it brings into attention the written legacy of Patriarch Athanasios I of Constantinople (served 1289–1293, 1303–1309, d. 1310), which enacts tangible public discourse, on Byzantine soil, on policies responding to the calamitous consequences of the Turkish advances in north-western Asia Minor in the early fourteenth century. Next, it examines the recorded interaction of ecclesiastical leaders with the Bulgarian rulers in the 1340s and posits that similar public discourse could have arisen in Bulgaria, in the years immediately following the first Turkish incursions. Finally, the specific content of Lavrentii’s miscellany is analysed to point out the implied political messages and the urgency of taking action in response

 4 Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State, pp. 540–41.  5 A representative case of a positivist Bulgarian national narrative of the period is Nikov, ‘Turskoto zavoevanie na Bulgariia’, here p. 45 for the notions of de-centralization, separatism, and economic decline. See a recent critique in Daskalov, Golemite razkazi na bulgarskoto srednovekovie, pp. 206–07.  6 The manu­script is catalogued as St Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS F.I.376 and has been published twice. A detailed description, together with large excerpts from its contents, are in Kuev, Ivan-Aleksandroviiat sbornik; a facsimile edition of the manu­script is in Lavrentiy’s Miscellany, ed. by Zashev. Further references to the manu­script will cite both its folia and Zashev’s edition.

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to the new threats and crises. The recurring Turkish attacks, together with the probable, yet unattested, spread of the bubonic plague, as everywhere else in Europe and the Mediterranean after 1347, tested the ability of the tsar and the elite of the kingdom, above all the high clergy, to act. Although we have very limited information about the political actions taken, such as possible changes in fiscal policies, redirecting of resources, and implementation of social policies favouring one or another layer of society, we may still conduct a little exercise in probing the existing textual evidence for the conceptual capacities of decision-makers to make sense of what was happening and communicate, within a more or less public space and a functional discourse, visions of how to cope with the situation. This essay contends that these conceptual capacities were limited to the seemingly closed and poorly adaptable discursive frameworks of hagio­graphy. Transcending the realm of liturgical commemoration of holy men and women, hagio­graphy could also serve as the medium of communication of messages on real-time issues and developments. To hear the voices of rulers and their subjects in medi­eval south-east Europe is a hard task since there is little evidence related to, and reflecting, historical events and long-term developments. This is particularly so with the Second Bulgarian Empire in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, where written documents were not a major aspect of governance, judging from the glaring absence of sigillo­graphy. Literacy was reduced to the purposes of the liturgy, but even in the area of liturgical readings the legacy from before the mid-fourteenth century is often conjectural. The sudden abundance of manu­scripts from the reign of Tsar John Alexander, together with the much more significant manu­script output in the neighbouring Serbian lands, where, on account of the shared written language, largely the same texts and genres circulated, bespeak some original creativity, but most often recontextualize earlier, typically Byzantine, works whose history is opaque. Modern linguistic analysis of the preserved texts has postulated previous redactions going back to the more distant past, yet these redactions are, more often than not, missing. Indeed, it is typically impossible to conjecture when a particular text was appropriated by the south Slavic literate community and for what immediate purposes. Original Slavic works and translations from Greek made in earlier periods reappeared in circulation in the fourteenth century, but it is far from obvious where the originals had been kept in between, whether they were read, and who read them. One must assume that in making sense of the realities of their own times, literate people living in the 1340s — authors, translators, compilers, scribes, commissioners of books, readers (and listeners) — formed a discursive community that stood on shaky ground, built knowledge on glimpses of essentially foreign intellectual and cultural traditions, and communicated to each other ideas within conceptual frameworks and generic distinctions produced outside their geo­graphical space and historical timeline. Such limitations were typical even for the much larger, and richer, Greekusing Byzantine area where the formulation of textual, visual, and ritualistic

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ideo­logical claims conversed within an elaborate and painstakingly clarified theo­logical framework. Power and faith coexisted in a dynamic centuries-long exchange. The symphonia of Church and Empire, the mutual dependence of secular and religious authority, the gradual mixing of secular and canon law, and the overlapping of political and theo­logical discourse are commonplace in the study of Byzantine civilization to which fourteenth-century Bulgaria belonged.7 Yet, the usual approach to the larger picture is to look for imperial protection of (or encroachment upon) the institutions and dogmas of the Church, and theo­logical justification for (or the withdrawal thereof) imperial authority.8 Wide currents of Byzantine studies have followed paths that, had it been the case of Western medi­eval history, would be labelled as anthropo­logical, focusing on the representational and ideo­logical implications of ritualistic practices, courtly rhetoric, and artistic programmes in the decoration of churches and other monuments of art. While very gratifying as to the longterm, global dimensions of Byzantine theo­logical thought and perspectives on statehood, such approaches ignore the very possibility for intellectuals, clergymen, and administrators to debate impending political matters and short-term decision-making.9 Yet, when approached from a more pronouncedly theo­logical perspective, that is, when the divine is understood not just as a rhetorical, ideo­logical, justificatory reference, but as an active principle in Christian stances and actions, we may observe a pragmatic side to late Byzantine (and late medi­eval Bulgarian) culture: emperors and their clerical counterparts did not simply theorize and wade into rhetorical exercises but effectively adopted one or another course they saw as the right one. The growing new political theo­ logy school, centred on German and Austrian research institutes, interprets historical action as, in the words of political theo­logian Jürgen Manemann, the ‘non-possibility of indifference’.10 The Turks pillaged and burned Christian cities and rural areas in Asia Minor and, starting in the 1340s, the Balkans; the Christian population suffered; thousands of people were displaced and sought safety in Constantinople or Trnovo; monastic communities were dispersed; long-existing networks of trade collapsed; and imperial finances crumbled. These changes brought forth new understandings of political

 7 The concept of the mutual dependence of Church and Empire was formulated in the sixth novella of Emperor Justinian, dating from 535. See Karayannopoulos, Politicheskata teoriia na vizantiitsite, p. 77.  8 On the later Byzantine period, see Nicol, Church and Society, pp. 1–30.  9 An ‘anthropo­logical’ reading of the relation between emperor and orthodoxy is Hunger, Reich der neuen Mitte, pp. 67–75. A more normative approach to emperor and orthodoxy is in Beck, Das byzantinische Jahrhundert, pp. 87–108.  10 Manemann, ‘Speaking of God in our Times’. This growing school is most clearly inspired by Carl Schmitt’s search for a transcendent source of sovereignty in the political body. See Schmitt, Political Theo­logy. On the application of Schmitt’s approaches in the study of Orthodox Christianity, see Makrides, ‘Political Theo­logy in Orthodox Christian Contexts’.

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responsibility, called for new models of political action, and posed new imperatives for rulers and ecclesiastical institutions alike. How much of the ongoing processes could people of the period grasp in the first place? Where did they look for possible advice? The Byzantine Empire faced the disaster of Turkish invasion most painfully in 1302, when, at the outcome of the battle of Baphaeus, near Nicomedia, the ghazi emir Osman defeated the last Byzantine forces (in fact, mostly Alan mercenaries) and took over the entire countryside of Bithynia, the north-western-most region of Asia Minor.11 Someone took note of the human dimensions of the military defeat and stood up for the thousands of refugees in Constantinople or the few remaining, and completely surrounded, Byzantine outposts in Asia: Patriarch Athanasios I.12 Athanasios was a unique figure in Byzantine ecclesiastical history, as he was the one leader who not only reached the patriarchal dignity at the end of a long ascetic life but also kept to many of his ascetic practices while in office. Athanasios is typically seen as the exception to a long tradition of patriarchs who belonged to the aristocratic ranks of Byzantine society and thrived in the imperial courtly culture of rhetoric and Atticized Greek.13 He left a substantial body of correspondence with statesmen, officials, and other men and women of status, and what makes him stand apart from other prolific Byzantine episto­lographers is that his many letters — for instance, those addressed to Emperor Andronikos II (r. 1282–1328) — are not after-the-fact reminiscences of past events or exercises in epideictic political rhetoric, but calls for action.14 In the spirit of charismatic prophets, Athanasios continuously called for repentance and Christian virtue and exemplified the understanding of virtue as monastic self-negation, humility, and bodily discipline. He personified the long-adopted view that virtue is the foundation of imperial authority because of divine favour, a perspective that generations of ecclesiastical and secular thinkers shared before him. To this view, however, he added purely political understandings of a community based on baptism and a sense of solidarity against an enemy — Turk or Latin — who persecutes the Christian. He promoted repentance as a precondition for the clearly political goal of restoring Christian authority upon lands taken by the enemy; more urgently, however, he saw as the prime responsibility of those in power and in possession of riches the support for refugees and prisoners sold into slavery whom he, out of convenience, referred to under the same concept of ‘aichmalōtoi’.15 Athanasios made a direct link between ascesis and charity, since that which pious Christians would spare through fasting he wanted given away to refugees. He turned churches into asylums for refugees, dispensed money

 11 Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, p. 126.  12 Angelov, Imperial Ideo­logy, p. 371.  13 Talbot, ‘The Patriarch Athanasius I and the Church’.  14 Athanasios I (Patriarch), Correspondence, ed. and trans. by Talbot.  15 Boojamra, ‘Social Thought and Reforms’, p. 350.

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to them, and managed to organize food programmes in 1303 and later. He went even further by supporting the confiscation of monastic property for the sake of providing for the refugees.16 In many ways, Athanasios’s political programme failed: neither did the emperor engage in a long-term social welfare policy, nor did Byzantium ever regain control over the Ishmaelites in Asia. In 1309, he resigned from office, unable to impose himself on the worldly authorities. Athanasios was perhaps a lonely radical of active political theo­logy, but the role he played and the image he created for himself embodied the ethical tradition of the Orthodox Church. Charity and communal action were the foundations that made it imperative for early Christians to organize into churches and gradually begin to elect bishops who should supervise these same churches in matters liturgical but worldly too. Charity was perhaps the clearest and most easily understandable expression of the virtue of philanthropia that Christians attributed to God and saw as their own highest ethical and socially binding imperative. Over the centuries, the ethical imperatives of charity and love for the other prompted Byzantine traditions in building, sponsoring, overseeing, and regulating charitable institutions that supported the sick, old, orphans, and outsiders. These institutions were often the fruit of imperial donations and fitted the image of the philanthropic ruler. Philanthropy was a virtue that frequently appeared in the ever-accumulating body of imperial rhetoric.17 Since much of this rhetoric was epideictic and was pronounced in verse panegyrics on solemn occasions like the celebration of Epiphany in the court, it did not have to relate so much to political realities as to parallels between recent developments in the Empire and biblical models, or examples from the pre-Christian history and mytho­logy of the Graeco-Roman world. Such models and examples contributed to building a bridge between the world here and the kingdom of God — a bridge that was frequently an ideo­logical abstraction. Because of this abstract aspect of ideo­logical imagery, adorning the emperor with the virtues of philanthropy did not have to reflect ongoing charitable activities, nor any attempt whatsoever to provide for any social welfare. More generally, the philanthropic ruler was a static part of a theo­logically sound ideo­logical hierarchy, which was based both on the Old Testament mytho­logy of God creating and regulating the world and the New Testament message of God who chose to suffer and die for his love of man. Philanthropy was not prescribed to the emperor as a duty, but was extracted, in rhetorical panegyrics, out of the emperor’s deeds as proof of his worth. Philanthropy was associated much more closely with decisions regarding politics of power and not so much with economic or social welfare issues: showing mercy to defeated opponents, providing for the security of other nations, and taking heed of petitions.18 Philanthropy,

 16 Talbot, ‘The Patriarch Athanasius I and the Church’, p. 28.  17 Angelov, Imperial Ideo­logy, p. 111.  18 Angelov, Imperial Ideo­logy, p. 112.

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furthermore, was attributed particularly to Andronikos II and was not widely listed among emperors’ virtues before him.19 Even when a ruler would be labelled philanthropic, his philanthropy bore no associations to charity: political thinkers of the fourteenth century explicitly dissociated philanthropy from care for the poor on the practical grounds that there were too many poor people and that charity would harm the pursuit of one’s career. Athanasios of Constantinople belonged to a time when it was perhaps impossible to apply social welfare policies even when specific political and economic change required action, such as constant Turkish and Catalan pillaging, and the consciously destructive policy of Emperor Andronikos II in the years 1306–1307 to prevent the farmers of Thrace from sowing and harvesting so as to starve the Catalans out.20 Still, Athanasios’s calls for reform and solidarity with the destitute were heard and, at least indirectly, prompted further developments in the political and religious structure of Byzantine society. Constantinople presented enough of a public space within which to debate and struggle, and the patriarch’s dynamic actions created enemies all around: he even provoked a strike of the priests and deacons of the Great Church of Hagia Sophia. He addressed a long list of letters to the emperor as well as to many other potentates in and out of the city. He reprimanded and penalized monastic institutions, forced bishops who had run away from the Turks and the Latins back to their sees, and engaged in rabid altercations with the other Eastern patriarchs. Athanasios, although he was not involved with hesychasm — a movement within the Eastern Orthodox Church that was to spread in the decades immediately after — attracted the interest of hesychast-minded clerics who wrote two alternative vitae about him. He was thus incorporated into a textual and spiritual tradition that became prevalent in Byzantium and her Christian neighbours in the latter half of the fourteenth century.21 That is, a patriarch of Constantinople occupied sufficient space both in the literal sense of one who strolled the streets of the city and caused real-life problems to his contemporaries, and in the abstract sense of a person who gave body, weight, and voice to the written discourses of the period: his own epistles were read, and his gestures and acts were calculated to emulate those of St John Chrysostom of Late Antiquity.22 His deeds were written down in detail, in historical narratives, and gave substance to the after-the-fact political theorizing of Byzantine intellectuals commonly labelled by Byzantinists as Kaiserkritik.23 In the end, his bodily remains were registered as miracle-working relics, and vitae and a feast in the calendar of the Church  19  20  21  22  23

Hunger, ‘Zur Humanität Kaiser Andronikos II’. Laiou, ‘The Provisioning of Constantinople’. Talbot, ‘The Patriarch Athanasius I and the Church’, p. 16. Talbot, ‘The Patriarch Athanasius I and the Church’, p. 15. Kaiserkritik as a common generic feature of Byzantine historio­graphy is most substantially analysed in Tinnefeld, Kategorien der Kaiserkritik. See, as well, Magdalino, ‘Aspects of Twelfth-Century Byzantine Kaiserkritik’.

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were dedicated to him. Athanasios is so ubiquitous in the diverse written evidence from the fourteenth century that he may be analysed as not only a reformer, but also a political and canonical thinker and actor who tried to develop a truly hierocratic vision of the relations of Church and Empire in the late Byzantine period.24 He is a good example of how political theo­logy works — bringing concepts of the divine into implementing specific policies and exerting pressure on worldly authorities that typically ignore constitutional or institutional restraints. There was no ecclesiastic in the historical narrative of the South Slavic realms — Bulgaria or Serbia — who loomed so large as Athanasios. Such an absence may be partly explained with the insufficient public space among the southern Slavs: within polities that had underdeveloped urban economies, poor communications, limited literacy, and questionable social cohesion, it is difficult to see how a bishop, monk, or preacher could formulate any social programme and provide any political impact beyond purely canonical issues, such as fighting heresy or developing liturgical praxis. In the Bulgarian case, one such fighter against heresy would be the hesychast holy man Teodosii (Theodosios) of Trnovo (d. 1363), who, together with his namesake, Patriarch Teodosii, and, more importantly, Tsar John Alexander, combated heresy in the mid-fourteenth century. Hesychasm was a growing movement among Eastern Orthodox monks, especially in the 1340s, with spiritually prepared hermits practising contemplation and continuous prayer, and pursuing communion with God. What we know about Teodosii comes from his vita written by the Patriarch of Constantinople Kallistos I (d. 1363).25 Kallistos wrote down Teodosii’s deeds, first, because the latter had been a disciple of the hesychast Gregory of Sinai (d. 1346) and, second, because of the specific services Teodosii offered to Constantinople: he openly disagreed with the Bulgarian Church’s practice of performing the Holy Chrism with myrrh oozing from the icon of St Demetrios or the relics of a rather mysterious saint Barbaros, and downplaying the right of the ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople to provide Orthodox clergy with the proper holy unction.26 The Bulgarian hesychast instigated and presided over two anti-heretical councils, one in 1350, another ten years later. The two councils may be seen as good examples of political theo­logy, since both dealt with heretical practices allegedly disrupting the social structures of the Bulgarian capital: in one case, the condemned would be denying the primacy of the established Church, liturgical practices, and social canons, including marriage; in the other, the entire Jewish community was judged on account of challenging the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Although the vita mentions nothing of the sort, one modern reading posits that the real

 24 Angelov, Imperial Ideo­logy, pp. 353–57.  25 Kallistos (Patriarch), Vita of Theodosios of Trnovo, ed. by Zlatarski. The presumptive Greek original — the patriarch of Constantinople unlikely wrote it in Church Slavic — is lost.  26 Todorov, ‘Trnovo’, p. 411.

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stake behind the councils’ unmasking of heresy was scapegoating heretics and Jews for the disastrous effects of the plague, which supposedly hit Bulgaria as strongly as any other European country after 1347.27 Another lonely figure who turned theo­logy into a factor of social cohesion was Teodosii’s disciple and later Bulgarian patriarch Evtimii (Euthymios) of Trnovo (d. 1402?). To him may be attributed a massive project to establish a programme of liturgical commemoration of the several saints whose relics lay buried in different churches of the Bulgarian capital. He not only wrote a number of long, elaborate vitae and/or homilies dedicated to the saints, but also constructed and reconstructed, from the internal evidence within the texts, a topo­graphy of holy places that provided the city with the supernatural defences of the holy men and women.28 This hagio­graphical project went hand in hand with Evtimii’s ongoing practice of cleansing and correcting the Church Slavic texts of the gospels, the liturgies, and the entire corpus of homiletic and hagio­graphical works supporting the proper functioning of Christian worship in a country that had been formally part of the Eastern Orthodox Church, but had in fact independently developed some questionable practices.29 To go back to Kallistos’s vita of Teodosii of Trnovo, it is a unique source testifying to the existence of a theo­logically based public discourse in Bulgaria. The narrative of the two councils in Tsar John Alexander’s capital includes short but content-rich descriptions of the procedures that Teodosii — on account of his theo­logical preparation and anchoritic discipline — impeccably followed. The holy man identified the threats that heretics posed to the Christian flock; persuaded the tsar, in face-to-face conversations, of the need to take action; brought in the entire high clergy plus his own brethren-anchorites from the desert; gave the floor to the suspects to expose their views and their own theo­logical basis; and finally, publicly refuted them, proved them wrong, and provided for their punishment or, in one case, a renunciation of the diabolic errors, and readmittance to the Church. Whether Kallistos reproduced the perspective of a Bulgarian cleric is at least partly clear: in his narrative of the second council — the one against all Jews in Trnovo — Kallistos faithfully listed Bulgaria’s metropolitans and bishops, quite plausibly relying on the official acts of the council sent to him in his role as an ecumenical patriarch (which he was, in 1360). As for the earlier council, it is possible that the story was his own, and that he described the procedure as it should have been observed in the synod he himself presided over in Constantinople. What was the background of the clerics taking part in a council charging people with heresy and obtaining their capital punishment, exile, or release  27 Stefanov, ‘Danse Macabre’.  28 Several generations of tsars had collected, and translated, various holy relics to the city of Trnovo since the late twelfth century. The relics were arranged in different churches according to topo­graphical visions that have been discussed but not thoroughly analysed yet, as in Erdeljan, Chosen Places, pp. 171–75.  29 Euthymios (Patriarch), Works, ed. by Kałužniacki.

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and pardon? Why did a hesychast hegumen of a lavra outside the city take the initiative in pursuing the heretics and provide responses to real, or imaginary, calamities befalling the country? Kallistos makes an explicit point that the hesychast Teodosii of Trnovo (to make things confusing, the patriarch of Trnovo was another Teodosii, and one of the heretics tried was a third Teodosii) took charge of procedures ‘иже тогда цръкви прѣдстателствоуеи патрїархь прость сыи, недооумѣашесе ѿвъсоудоу’ (because the patriarch then presiding over the church was a simple man and completely at a loss about what to do).30 This short sentence throws light on the practice of political theo­logy, when knowledge of the canons, ecclesiastical history, and the true dogma makes it possible to conceptualize a public act of condemnation and of restoring social cohesion. The tsar is a powerful agent, too, but according to the Byzantine hagio­grapher, he just follows in the steps of the holy man because ‘‘цареви же вѣдома сїа быше и опаснѣ сказанна’ (He [Teodosii] made him [the tsar] aware and carefully explained to him the proper decision and course of action).31 A decade later, Teodosii once again, this time on account of the perceived threat posed by the Jewish community, къ цареви прїиде. и того видѣвь наединѣ и особь поѥмь, и въсе безмѣстное онѣхь начинанїе сказа. и како и въ коликоу оустръмишесе злобоу. и толико въ ревность подвиже цара, елико нимала ѿложити, нь въскорѣ събороу събратисе повелѣти. ѕѣлѡ бо стыдѣшесе добродѣтѣли моужа […] и въ вьсемь тьщаашесе ревности его подражатель быти. (went to the tsar and conferred with him privately and secretly, and revealed to him all their ineffable machinations and how, and to what extent, they [the Jews] were driven by wickedness, and he filled the tsar with such a zeal that [the latter] could no longer wait but had a council convened right away. […] The tsar was deeply impressed with the holiness of the man […] and he did his best to imitate him in everything.)32 So what were the channels of shared knowledge that clerics and rulers of Bulgaria in the late 1340s used? Thanks to the hard work of scholars of medi­ eval hagio­graphy and Church Slavic palaeo­graphy, we may posit the literary career of one particular compiler and copyist from exactly that period, one who dug deep in the available hagio­graphical and homiletic heritage of the monastic libraries and produced books for audiences outside the monastery. His name, Lavrentii (Laurentius), is known from the colophon added to a single manu­script, one that is the focus of this essay.33 In 1347–1348, Lavrentii wrote in his own hand a miscellany, which he possibly dedicated to Tsar John  30  31  32  33

Kallistos (Patriarch), Vita of Theodosios of Trnovo, ed. by Zlatarski, p. 20. Kallistos (Patriarch), Vita of Theodosios of Trnovo, ed. by Zlatarski, p. 20. Kallistos (Patriarch), Vita of Theodosios of Trnovo, ed. by Zlatarski, p. 25. See above, note 6.

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Alexander and his family. Palaeo­graphical parallels by two eminent Slavicists — Klimentina Ivanova and Anatolii Turilov — have identified Lavrentii as the copyist of at least five, possibly as many as seven, other Church Slavic codices from the 1340s or as late as 1370, although no other manu­script bears his name.34 Four of these six (or eight) manu­scripts were produced within a few years in the late 1340s. It is worth observing that no two of the six (or even eight) codices attributable to Lavrentii contain the same works. The one closest to the miscellany contains an exhaustive rendition of The Ladder of Divine Ascent by St John Climacus, with an exceptional miniature portrait of the Sinai father. The Ladder is complemented, in the manu­script, with the Instructions of Abba Dorotheos of Gaza.35 Further on, Lavrentii copied the Tetraevangelion and then The Tale of Barlaam and Joasaph, the ancient prose romance of Indian provenance that includes long instructions on Christian, and specifically royal, ethics.36 To these he added St Ephraim the Syrian’s Homily on the Holy Transfiguration and the Desert Paterikon,37 while the two additional manu­scripts that are not of certain attribution contain a Menaion, that is, a collection of readings for the feasts of the Church,38 and a selection of homilies by St John Chrysostom under the popular title Margaritae. This translation of Chrysostom is attributed to a Bulgarian man of letters by the name of Dionisii Divnii (Dionysios the Wonderful), a contemporary of Lavrentii.39 The listed works suggest that at least at some point in his scribal career Lavrentii produced, or was part of a team of scribes producing, a programme of homiletic, and not liturgical, texts meant to be read by a particular audience for their spiritual benefit. The preserved manu­scripts’ history suggests they may have travelled, at least for a few centuries, together as a group, and that they were purposefully complementing each other. Who the intended audience was is a question considered by different students of the miscellany of 1348. The colophon is, in fact, somewhat misleading: писа сѧ книга доушополезнаа благовѣрномоу и хрїстолюбивомоу прѣвысѡкомоу и самодръжавномоу царю блъгаромъ и гръком іѡаноу алеѯанд[р]оу въ живѡтъ и въ здравie и въ оутвръждение царствоу еговоу и дѣтемъ его. и всѣкомоу хрїстїаниноу въ ползѧ. (This book, of use for the soul of the reader, was written for the pious and Christ-loving, exalted and autocratic Tsar of Bulgarians and Greeks John Alexander, for the sake of his long life and good health and for

 34 Lavrentiy’s Miscellany, ed. by Zashev, pp. 32–33.  35 St Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS Pog. 1054. Detailed description in Ivanova, Bulgarski, srubski i moldovlahiiski kirilski rukopisi, pp. 308–25.  36 Mt Athos, Zo­graphou, MS 24, and Kishinev, State Archive of Moldova, MS Noul Neamţ Monastery fund, inventory 2, no. 1, respectively.  37 Mt Athos, Zo­graphou, MS 109, and Zo­graphou, MS 83, respectively.  38 The manu­script’s present-day location is unknown. See Lavrentiy’s Miscellany, ed. by Zashev, p. 33.  39 St Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS F.I.197.

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the sake of the consolidation of his kingdom and that of his children, too, and for the benefit of every Christian.)40 There is no reason to identify the commissioner of the book as the tsar himself, as was accepted until very recently.41 A recent interpretation of the origin of the compilation suggests that the scribe, and the unknown true commissioner, intended it for wide use: this is supported by the fact that a Russian manu­script from the seventeenth century contains practically the same readings, and since it cannot have been copied from Lavrentii’s codex, there must have existed at least one more Bulgarian copy from the fourteenth century.42 Whatever the case, the miscellany of 1348 was precisely the type of reading that monks could refer to when urging the tsar, and the high clergy, to address matters of faith, devotion, and orthodoxy. If we accept that Lavrentii was working on a collection that produced a complementary source of spiritual enlightenment, the intended audience were monastic brothers. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, in a specifically Slavic selection, was a must for monastic libraries, since the Fathers provided answers on questions of discipline, faith, resistance to the temptations of the Devil, and practical examples for interaction between elders and novices, between hermits and the world. The 1340s were an especially ripe time for the collection, translation, redaction, and copying of such readings in the Bulgarian monasteries. The already-cited Vita of St Teodosii of Trnovo by Kallistos, as well as the much later Homily of St Evtimii of Trnovo by Gregory Tsamblak (d. 1420), and the Vita of St Romil (Romylos) of Vidin by another Gregory (dates unknown), narrate the convoluted path of hesychast teachers assembling groups of younger adepts who needed guidance and supervision in their quests for elevation and mystical experience.43 The use of books was ambiguous: elders like Romylos condemned precocious interest in the deeds of the desert monks collected in the paterika, on behalf of untrained monks, because the reading of these was tightly connected to the formation of the hermit and his ability to master his body, mind, and soul; one could not carelessly read.44 Still, next to the living example of the enlightened hesychasts who founded, over the second quarter of the fourteenth century, a new generation of monasteries in Byzantium, Bulgaria, or the frontier regions in between, it is paterika and hagio­graphy that offered the frames of reference to which hermits and coenobitic monks subscribed. The work of Evtimii of Trnovo in the 1370s and later, especially his hortatory epistle to his

 40 St Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS F.I.376, fol. 214r; Lavrentiy’s Miscellany, ed. by Zashev, p. 495.  41 Including the present author in Todorov, ‘Trnovo’, p. 408.  42 Moscow, State Historical Museum, MS Barsov 1498; Gagova, Vladeteli i knigi, p. 87.  43 Gregory Tsamblak, Homily of St Evtimii, ed. by Kałužniacki; Gregory (Monk), Vita of Romylos of Vidin, ed. by Syrku.  44 Todorov, ‘Trnovo’, p. 415.

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disciple Kiprian (Cyprian, later metropolitan of Kiev, d. 1406), in which he discussed the possibility for an anchorite to take communion by himself in his cell in extraordinary circumstances, specifies the parallels among reading books, discipline, and faith. ‘Разгываи често съвѣстноую книгоу и, якоже прѣд богомь, тоу выноу прочитаи’ (Do open frequently the book of your conscience, as if you stand before God).45 The growing abundance of manu­scripts containing paterika from the period clearly points to a reading audience craving models to follow and examples of interaction. The Instructions of Abba Dorotheos (d. 565), contained in one of the manu­scripts copied by Lavrentii, provide, through appropriate exempla, advice against weaknesses, errors, and sins that would mar relations within the monastic community and would, more importantly, affect the individual monk’s quest for spiritual elevation. The monk should be guided by his fear of God (fols 219r–227v), should examine his conscience, which was the most valuable gift to him from God (fols 216v–219r), should be an impartial judge of the misgivings of others (fols 233r–238v), should overcome rancour and anger (fols 244r–248v), and so forth. ‘Странно есть инокоу еже гнѣвати сѧ. такожде и ѡпечѣлити кого. и пакы. иже яростиѫ оудръжанъ быст, сии беса оудръжа’ (It is awkward for a monk to get angry, and whoever is overtaken by anger and the desire to offend and harm others is in fact taken over by demons).46 Self-constraint, clemency, and impartiality are classical virtues of emperors and kings as elaborated in Seneca’s advice for Nero, and, more importantly for the case of Byzantine political culture, they correspond to three of Menander Rhetor’s four cardinal virtues that he advised court orators to extol in the emperor: Menander’s remained among the most widely used handbooks of rhetoric in Byzantium even in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.47 The four virtues of prudence (φρόνησις), justice (δικαιοσύνη), fortitude (ἀνδρεία), and temperance (σοφροσύνη) served as a crucible that locked Christian piety and ethics together with the theory and practice of statehood in the late antique and medi­eval West as well.48 They undergirded the intellectual pursuit of late Byzantine culture and were even treated as a separate field of knowledge in the carefully planned, but never completed, encyclopaedic project of late Byzantine intellectual Joseph the Philosopher, next to rhetoric, logic, physics, anthropo­logy, mathematics, and theo­logy.49 In fact, these same virtues built up the emperor’s philanthropy that was the central concept in policies of persuasion from Late Antiquity onward. Thus, a didactic reading that provided for monks soliciting support in their spiritual

 45 Euthymios (Patriarch), Works, ed. by Kałužniacki, p. 235.  46 Ivanova, Bulgarski, srubski i moldovlahiiski kirilski rukopisi, p. 316.  47 Angelov, Imperial Ideo­logy, p. 18.  48 Bejczy, The Cardinal Virtues in the Middle Ages, pp. 28–29.  49 Nicol, Church and Society, p. 57.

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quests naturally addressed as well lay power-holders who ruled, or at least wanted to appear to rule, within a clearly Christian ethical framework. Lavrentii’s miscellany from 1348 also contained such readings. The second text included in the codex is a rather abridged selection from the Spiritual Meadow (Pratum spirituale) by John Moschus (d. 619). The collection, known in Slavic literature as the Sinaiskii paterik (the Paterikon Sinaiticum), is a helpful introduction to the complex and contradictory process of a man or a woman giving up on the world and donning the habit. The thirteen selections, out of more than eighty in the original text, may or may not have been selected on account of specific themes: bigamy, infanticide, eating meat during fast, or leaving one’s episcopal see. The association of the selected exempla with court drama or recurrent social ills in mid-fourteenth-century Trnovo is a tempting possibility, which might open a new direction of analysis. At least one of the stories — of the anonymous bishop who deserted his see and got himself hired as a low-paid construction worker — explicitly admonished the rich to spend their riches on charity, and identified charity and good works as the decisive step in obtaining the episcopal dignity.50 Next come the Teachings on the Eight Spiritual Sins by Nilus of Sinai (d. 430). The short texts do not theorize so much as summarize the connection between spiritual weakness and ethical failure; they further advise on how to discover the sin under the physical appearances of the person.51 The last of the fifteen distinct pieces making up the compilation is an interpretation of the Gospels formulated within a conceptual register accessible to broad audiences, to people not versed in any serious theo­logy. The Parable of the Ten Virgins, from the Gospel of Matthew, is deciphered as an allusion to virtues and vices: the five wise maidens signify faith, hope, love, peace, and clemency, while the five foolish ones refer to imprudence, inclemency, impatience, intransigence, and anger (the negative connotations of the four cardinal virtues).52 Further on, the miscellany contains the earliest preserved Bulgarian copies of translated or original Slavic works that must have circulated in the recently Christianized first Bulgarian Empire from the late ninth through the early eleventh century, but which survived mainly through Rus’ and Russian manu­scripts from the twelfth century and later. These texts contain short expositions on the

 50 St Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS F.I.376, fol. 76v; Lavrentiy’s Miscellany, ed. by Zashev, p. 220: ‘въ сиѧ бѡ дьни богь имать тѧ вьзвести на апостолскыи прѣстолъ града сего црькве да пасеши люди сиѧ’ (For soon God shall acclaim you the holder of the apostolic see of this city, so that you tend to her people).  51 An example of such connection is Chapter 4, on anger: ‘гнѣвъ страсть есть неистова. […] негнѣвлива доуша црькви бываеть свѧтомоу доухоу . и ѡбитѣлище бываеть свѧтѣи троици’ (Anger rocks the foundations of spiritual peace the soul unamenable to anger is the true church of the Holy Spirit and the house of the Holy Trinity). St Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS F.I.376, fol. 88v; Lavrentiy’s Miscellany, ed. by Zashev, p. 244.  52 St Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS F.I.376, fol. 212v; Lavrentiy’s Miscellany, ed. by Zashev, p. 492.

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Orthodox faith, on the institution of the Christian Church, on ecclesiastical history, on the creation of Slavic letters, and on the translation of the Holy Scriptures and liturgy into Church Slavic. The manu­script easily functions as an overview of the basic principles in ecclesio­logy and could support the instruction of lay readers interested in the defence of Orthodoxy. In short, Lavrentii’s miscellany might very well have been a reference in the articulation of Church and lay power, usable in the preparation of anti-heretical synods or other public shows of royal piety. Among the many short works included in the miscellany, there is a longer one that takes about a third of the entire volume. On the very first folio of the codex a marginal, undated note claims that at some point the codex belonged to the no-longer-functioning skete of St John the Merciful (the Almsgiver), a domain of the monastery of Agiou Pavlou, on Mount Athos.53 In the Ottoman period, the monastery was sponsored primarily by Serbian, Wallachian, and Moldovan donations, and this explains why a Slavic book would make it there. More importantly, however, this particular codex was assigned to this particular skete on account of its major text: the Life of St John the Merciful (in Greek, Eleemon; in Slavic, Milostivii)54 by Leontios of Neapolis (seventh century) in Cyprus (today’s Limassol).55 The work belonged to the compendia of hagio­ graphical readings that monasteries possessed in their libraries: the so-called menaia. A menaion is a collection of vitae, or sometimes homilies and apostolic acts, related to the fixed feasts in the liturgical calendar arranged in, ideally, twelve separate volumes (in pre-Ottoman Church Slavic literature, usually two months were included in a single volume). The intricacies of Slavic hagio­graphy and the translation of Greek vitae made it so that St John Eleemon’s life was available in both the original work by Leontios and the later, tenth-century metaphrastic version. A further distinction between redactions included those with, or without, an introduction — a difference already observable in the Greek textual transmission.56 Within the Slavic hagio­graphical tradition, there could be further omissions of particular exempla and miracles by the saint, partial rearrangement of their sequence, or presence, or lack, of indexed rubrics. Lavrentii’s miscellany contains the longest possible version, but is not unique — it appears for instance in Plevlja Monastery, Serbia, MS 98, datable to the 1610s (a miscellany containing three vitae for November feasts, but then a few other of the texts in the St Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS F.I.376 as well, which hints at a possible convoy of texts transmissible from one Balkan scriptorium to another).57 Otherwise, and as part of the  53 Lavrentiy’s Miscellany, ed. by Zashev, p. 23.  54 In English-language scholarship, the saint is widely referred to as John the Almsgiver (d. c. 620). See, for instance, Rapp, Holy Bishops, pp. 168–69. This present essay prefers ‘Merciful’ because it is a closer rendition of the Slavic Milostivii.  55 BHG 886, in Bibliotheca hagio­graphica graeca, ed. by Halkin, p. 19.  56 BHG 886b and 886c would be the abridged versions.  57 Bibliotheca hagio­graphica balcano-slavica, ed. by Ivanova, p. 108.

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transmission of texts in the Eastern Slavic area of the post-Byzantine period, abridged versions of the vita or selections of particular exempla showed up as insertions in the more typically monastic readings of the Skete paterika.58 By the fourteenth century, St John the Merciful had not been a particularly important saint: in the Balkans his cult modestly spread in the post-Byzantine period, while major churches dedicated to him sprang up in late medi­eval Venice and Bratislava. The Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates him on 13 November, the Catholic Church on 23 January. The selection of this particular vita to join the other readings in the miscellany has its explanation, thus, not in the significance of the saint’s cult, but in the content of the vita and in the possible theo­logical, ethical, or didactic messages it might contain. St John the Merciful of Alexandria was the Chalcedonian patriarch of Alexandria at the time of the Persian conquest of the city in 614. He directed efforts in providing refugees with food and shelter, but by 616 he himself ran away from the city and moved to Cyprus where he died in 620. His death on the island explains why a local hagio­grapher, Leontios, would write his vita. By the time Leontios wrote John’s life, however, Alexandria was already under the rule of the Arab Caliphate, and there is a very good chance that the entire content of the work is Leontios’s own creation and invention, pace the authorial claims that he visited the city in order to learn more about the late patriarch. Leontios quite possibly built his entire narrative upon didactic commonplaces and ethical concepts and situations that would be internalized and perpetuated by large Christian audiences. There is a common narrative thread throughout the vita of John of Alexandria: his unquenchable generosity and tendency to offer beggars and petitioners with much more than that owned by the church he administered. Inevitably, all such acts of unreasonable charity were substantiated with miraculous coincidences that provided to church, priests, and lay people compensations for their expenses. John refused to distinguish between rich and poor and claimed that anyone trying to test petitioners was revealing his doubts in divine providence; any churchman anxious that too much charity might bring the ruin of the church lacked faith in God. In the exemplum in Chapter 6 of the vita, John of Alexandria was approached multiple times by the same petitioner of ill will who introduced himself as a ‘prisoner’ (in the Slavic: плѣнень). John pretended to be blind to the deception and eventually gave the false prisoner twelve nomismata because he could not be sure whether it was not Christ himself testing him.59 At the same time, the Alexandrian patriarch was well aware of economic issues and of how the market functioned: he loaned huge sums of church money to merchants and ship captains of compromised

 58 Kuev, Ivan-Aleksandroviiat sbornik, pp. 54–55.  59 St Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS F.I.376, fol. 11r–v; Lavrentiy’s Miscellany, ed. by Zashev, pp. 89–90.

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integrity, yet guided them to profits unhoped for.60 On other occasions, as in Chapter 12, he refused to accept a huge donation, which was desperately needed for the support of refugees running from the Persians, because God could not accept a sacrifice coming out of illegal profits.61 John, who was magnanimous with clerics, laymen, and women alike concerning canonical transgressions, was strict and uncompromising with the officials of his church fulfilling administrative and judicial duties. From the very beginning of his office as patriarch, he subverted the social hierarchy, proclaiming that his true lords and tax collectors (владикы и бирникы) were the seven thousand destitute and begging (маломоштии и просителѧ) poor of the city.62 The social class John most often interacted with, however, were the officers taking charge of the properties and the expenses of the church — the oikonomoi and the cellarers (икономы and келарѧ, in Slavic). The witness who testified in front of the narrator about the miracles and great deeds of the late patriarch was one such oikonomos — Menas — while the person whose admirable charity struck the hagio­grapher from allegedly the very first days he stepped in the city of Alexandria was the servant of another oikonomos. Recurrent themes in the vita of St John the Merciful are the fates of the provinces that fell to Persian conquerors, the destruction brought by the military conquest, and the tribulations of the refugees escaping, or being ransomed from, the conqueror. John sympathized with the trials that the city of Jerusalem underwent after the Persians captured it, and sent to the local patriarch Modestos huge amounts of gold, food, and construction materials for the reconstruction of the churches that had been burned.63 The Patriarch of Alexandria welcomed the refugees (гонезль, which is the opposite of гонитель – persecutor) as ‘real brothers’.64 He engaged in a large-scale charitable action, exhausting remorselessly the resources of the church of Alexandria with the justification that these riches belonged to God anyway and what is God’s could not be wasted: ‘весь миръ аще съберетсѧ въ алеѯандриѧ милостынѧ трѣбоуѫ, то неизглаголемыхъ скровиштъ божїихь не оутѣснѧт ни свѧтыѧ цръкве’ (If it is God’s will that I give forth my own gifts, exclaimed John, should the entire world come begging to Alexandria, God will never stop bestowing upon our Holy Church his ineffable gifts!).65  60 St Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS F.I.376, fols 12v–13v; Lavrentiy’s Miscellany, ed. by Zashev, pp. 92–94.  61 St Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS F.I.376, fols 17r–18v; Lavrentiy’s Miscellany, ed. by Zashev, pp. 101–04.  62 St Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS F.I.376, fol. 5v; Lavrentiy’s Miscellany, ed. by Zashev, p. 78.  63 St Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS F.I.376, fol. 23v; Lavrentiy’s Miscellany, ed. by Zashev, p. 114.  64 St Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS F.I.376, fol. 3v; Lavrentiy’s Miscellany, ed. by Zashev, p. 74.  65 St Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS F.I.376, fol. 9v; Lavrentiy’s Miscellany, ed. by Zashev, p. 86.

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This statement is strongly reminiscent of the real-time deeds and writings of Patriarch Athanasios of Constantinople in the early fourteenth century who tried, and was partly successful, in mobilizing large segments of the wealthier class of the city to engage in economically risky actions in order to provide food and shelter for the refugees. While the real Athanasios provoked a conflict with the canons of the great church of Hagia Sophia by depriving them of any payment for their service at the liturgies and other religious offices,66 the hagio­graphical John imperatively forbade the canons of the Alexandrian church to collect fees for hearing judicial cases brought to them.67 Mercifulness (ἐλεημοσύνη) and good works (εὐεργετείν) — what John Eleemon does throughout his vita — are the most honourable (προτιμότερoς) and most philanthropic (φιλανθρωπότερος) courses of action in the words of St John of Damascus (d. 749), roughly a contemporary of the hagio­grapher Leontios of Neapolis.68 An illustrative case of an early fifteenth-century metropolitan bishop who engaged in the political administration and defence of his city, and who contributed to the development of late Byzantine hierocratic theory, is Symeon of Thessaloniki, who composed a separate treaty on mercifulness. Symeon’s use of the concept was mostly ethical and eschato­logical: he was pushing towards the expectation that good deeds in one’s lifetime might help against sufferings after death — a train of theo­logical thought largely untypical of Eastern Orthodoxy. Within the late antique and Byzantine intellectual tradition, philanthropy and clemency belonged to a spiritual sphere and related to transcendent realities; they did not necessarily crystallize into consistent real-time acts. When it came to the pragmatic conceptualization of a ruler’s philanthropy and clemency, they were boiled down to self-conscious desistence from cruelty even in cases when the statehood tradition presupposed it: in Byzantine epideictic rhetoric, the philanthropic emperor pardoned convicts, prevented mutilation of traitors, conspirators, or competitors, and released prisoners captured during war.69 Charity consisted mainly in tax privileges for the powerful or, in individual cases, in closing one’s eyes to the practice of tax evasion; in the estimation of a fourteenth-century Byzantine intellectual, the poor should be exempt from acts of charity.70 Yet, on unique occasions, panegyrists extolled an emperor’s efforts to provide the market with affordable commodities (ōnia) as expressions of philanthropy.71 Viewed from this perspective, John of Alexandria acts like a true charitable and philanthropic ruler, pardoning, or seeking divine pardon for, a rich spectrum of offences and still providing for the material sustenance  66 Talbot, ‘The Patriarch Athanasius I and the Church’, pp. 24–25.  67 St Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS F.I.376, fols 6v–7r; Lavrentiy’s Miscellany, ed. by Zashev, pp. 80–81.  68 Constantelos, Byzantine Philanthropy and Social Welfare, p. 20 n. 19.  69 Angelov, Imperial Ideo­logy, pp. 111–14.  70 Angelov, Imperial Ideo­logy, p. 144.  71 Angelov, Imperial Ideo­logy, p. 135 n. 4.

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of the poor and for the functioning of day-to-day economic activities. He is divided between purely spiritual concerns about sin and vice on the one hand and pragmatic care for the needy and the suffering on the other. The historical John of Alexandria was among those bishops in whom the three types of authority that Claudia Rapp distinguishes in her study of late antique episcopal leadership converge: spiritual, ascetic, and pragmatic.72 Leontios’s hagio­graphical portrayal of the Alexandrine prelate exemplifies then-valid notions of the political dimensions of theo­logy. In the widely distributed early Byzantine mirrors of princes, Agapetus (sixth century), a contemporary of Emperor Justinian (r. 527–565), claimed that ‘a pious empire, walled by acts of charity […] becomes impregnable to the missiles of your [ Justinian’s] foes’.73 Agapetus was translated into Church Slavic even in the early tenth century, but the text’s transmission precludes us from assigning it to the possible sources that Lavrentii, or any other Bulgarian compiler or reader of the fourteenth century, could have used.74 Still, the reactualization of concepts from late antique political theo­logy, such as the connection between charity, sanctity, and the polity, was very plausible on purely typo­logical grounds, at a time when ecclesiastical authorities tried to construct a pool of authoritative texts that addressed burning issues like heresy, plague, and powerful external foes. The vita of John the Merciful provided an accessible and acceptable model of political action that both took its roots in an established hagio­graphical tradition and referred to a similar historical situation: calamities befalling the Christian communities on account of infidel invasion and conquest. The intended reading audience for such a model might very well have been the high clergy of the Bulgarian Church, yet the colophon of the manu­script makes no mention whatsoever of the patriarch or any other ecclesiastical authorities: this was a collection of instructive texts addressed to powerful lay readers, most probably the tsar himself. The late 1340s witnessed the early stages of the monastic and literary reforms taking place in Bulgaria as a consequence of the spread of hesychasm. The growing popularity of this spiritual movement of anchorite monasticism focused on the individual mystical experience, and abstract theo­logy exerted a complex impact on social developments. Slavic, especially Bulgarian, monks joined the hesychast community of Byzantine teachers such as Gregory of Sinai, who meaningfully founded a monastery in the frontier region connecting Byzantium with Bulgaria and enjoyed the protection and material support of the Bulgarian tsar. In this way, a large bilingual network of mystics emerged — one that for all practical purposes exemplified the concept of ‘textual communities’ coined by Brian Stock, even without the heretical aspect.75 The hesychasts developed their mystical  72 Rapp, Holy Bishops, pp. 16–19.  73 Quoted in Rapp, ‘The Christianization of the Idea of the Polis’, p. 275.  74 The Slavic text in Agapetus, Ekthesis, ed. by Nikolov. On the Slavic version’s transmission and impact, see Ševčenko, ‘Agapetus East and West’.  75 Stock, The Implications of Literacy, pp. 90–91.

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and idiorhythmic practices on sound theo­logical bases that required the correct understanding of a carefully selected body of texts. Such practices promoted intellectual exchanges between the Greek and Slavic cultural areas and prompted the translation, redaction, and distribution of hagio­graphical, homiletic, and patristic readings. The very practice of selecting, sharing, and studying this growing textual corpus made it possible for clerics like Lavrentii to produce their own compilations and address them to various audiences. While menaia and paterika were intended for predominantly, if not exclusively, monastic purposes, the miscellany of 1348 reached for wider readership. There was an urgent need for communicating theo­logical instruction with lay power-holders on account of the real, or imaginary, threat of growing heresy, which a hesychast teacher such as Teodosii of Trnovo countered through a local council presided over by the tsar and the patriarch of Trnovo. Heresy was far from the only urgent issue, since at exactly the same time the country suffered from both the plague and the early incursions of Turkish bands that caused disruption, population displacement, and possibly even a refugee crisis in the city. The tsar, church, and landed estate owners had to find solutions to the problems, although they had no access to any clearly applicable theoretical and pragmatic models to provide advice. Earlier in the fourteenth century, Constantinople’s patriarch Athanasios had managed to mobilize a campaign of charitable works for the sake of Byzantine refugees running from Turks, Catalans, and Italians, while Byzantine orators and historians from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had elaborated a complex conceptual framework that at least indirectly influenced the emperor’s decision-making by extolling virtues and criticizing indifference, passivity, and misplaced policies. These conceptual frameworks worked within a thriving intellectual tradition that recontextualized ancient educational and social models for the benefit of a large, differentiated, and cultured bureaucratic class that filled both ecclesiastical and secular administrative functions. There was no such class in Bulgaria. Several of the literary genres related to political thought — imperial panegyrics, advice literature (mirrors of princes), and historio­graphy — were completely missing. The contextualization of a particular manu­script related directly, or tangentially, to the Bulgarian royal court of the late 1340s points to alternative sources of advice: late antique hagio­graphy. The vita of St John Eleemon, a text extracted from the available body of monastic hagio­graphical readings, provided a theo­logically sound and easily assimilable model of pragmatic leadership dealing with problems such as those faced by Bulgarian tsar John Alexander in 1348. His contemporaries made sense of what was happening. While unable to speak with their own words, they did not stay indifferent to the calamities of the time, but called upon philanthropy, charity, and piety as the necessary foundations of social cohesion and community welfare.

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Works Cited Manu­scripts and Archival Sources Kishinev, State Archive of Moldova, MS Noul Neamţ Monastery fund, inventory 2, no. 1 Moscow, State Historical Museum, MS Barsov 1498 Mt Athos, Zo­graphou, MS 24 Mt Athos, Zo­graphou, MS 83 Mt Athos, Zo­graphou, MS 109 Plevlja Monastery, Serbia, MS 98 St Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS F.I.197 St Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS F.I.376 St Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS Pog. 1054 Primary Sources Agapetus (Deacon), Ekthesis (in Church Slavic translation), ed. by Angel Nikolov, ‘Starobulgarskiiat prevod na “Izlozhenie na pouchitelni glavi kum imperator Iustinian” ot diakon Agapit i razvitieto na ideiiata za dostoinstvoto na bulgarskiia vladetel v kraia na ix — nachaloto na x v.’, Palaeobulgarica, 24.3 (2000), 76–105 Athanasios I (Patriarch of Constantinople), Correspondence, ed. and trans. by Alice-Mary Talbot, Corpus fontium historiae byzantinae, 7 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1975) Bibliotheca hagio­graphica balcano-slavica, ed. by Klimentina Ivanova (Sofia: Akademichno izdatelstvo, 2008) Bibliotheca hagio­graphica graeca, vol. ii, ed. by François Halkin, 3rd edn (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1957) Euthymios (Patriarch of Trnovo), Works, in Werke des Patriarchen von Bulgarien Euthymius (1375–1393), ed. by Emil Kałužniacki (Vienna: Carl Gerolds Sohn, 1901) Gregory (Monk), Vita of Romylos of Vidin, in Monakha Grigoriia zhitie prepodobnago Romila, ed. by P. A. Syrku, Pamiatniki drevnei pis’mennosti i iskusstva, 136 (St Petersburg, 1900) Gregory Tsamblak, Homily of St Evtimii of Trnovo, in Aus der panegyrischen Litteratur der Südslaven, ed. by Emil Kałužniacki (Vienna: Carl Gerolds Sohn, 1901), pp. 28–60 Ivanova, Klimentina, Bulgarski, srubski i moldovlahiiski kirilski rukopisi v sbirkata na M. P. Pogodin (Sofia: Izdatelstvo na BAN, 1981), pp. 308–25 John Kantakouzenos, Histories, in Ioannis Cantacuzeni eximperatoris historiarum libri IV, ed. by Ludwig Schopen (Bonn: Weber, 1831)

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Kallistos (Patriarch of Constantinople), Vita of Theodosios of Trnovo, in ‘Zhitie i zhizn’ prepodobnago ottsa nashego Theodosia… izhe v Tr”nove postnich’stvovavshago s”pisano sveteishim’ patriarkhom’ Konstantina grada kyr’ Kalistom’, ed. by Vasil N. Zlatarski, Sbornik za narodni umotvoreniia i kultura, 20 (1904), 1–41 Kuev, Kuio, Ivan-Aleksandroviiat sbornik ot 1348 g. (Sofia: Izdatelstvo na BAN, 1981) Lavrentiy’s Miscellany (Tsar Ivan Alexandăr’s Miscellany of 1348), ed. by Evgueni D. Zashev (Sofia: Cyrillo-Methodian Research Centre, 2015) Secondary Works Andreev, Iordan, Bulgariia prez vtorata chetvurt na xiv vek (Sofia: Sofia University Press, 1993) Angelov, Dimiter, Imperial Ideo­logy and Political Thought in Byzantium, 1204–1330 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) Beck, Hans-Georg, Das byzantinische Jahrhundert, 2nd edn (Munich: Beck, 1994) Bejczy, István P., The Cardinal Virtues in the Middle Ages: A Study in Moral Thought from the Fourth to the Fourteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2011) Boojamra, John L., ‘Social Thought and Reforms of Athanasios of Constantinople (1289–1293; 1303–1309)’, Byzantion, 55.1 (1985), 332–82 Constantelos, Demetrios J., Byzantine Philanthropy and Social Welfare (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1968) Daskalov, Rumen, Golemite razkazi na bulgarskoto srednovekovie (Sofia: Riva, 2018) Erdeljan, Jelena, Chosen Places: Constructing New Jerusalems in Slavia Orthodoxa (Leiden: Brill, 2017) Gagova, Nina, Vladeteli i knigi. Uchastieto na iuzhnoslavianskiia vladetel v proizvodstvoto i upotrebata na knigi prez Srednovekovieto (ix–xv v.): Retseptsiiata na vizantiiskiia model (Sofia: PAM Publishing, 2011) Hunger, Herbert, Reich der neuen Mitte: Der christliche Geist der byzantinischen Kultur (Graz: Styria, 1965) —— , ‘Zur Humanität Kaiser Andronikos II’, Zbornik radova Vizantološkog Institute, 8 (1963), 149–53 Karayannopoulos, Ioannes, Politicheskata teoriia na vizantiitsite, Bulg. trans. by K. Pavlikianov (Sofia: Sofia University Press, 1992; original Greek edn, Thessaloniki, 1988) Laiou, Angeliki, ‘The Provisioning of Constantinople during the Winter of 1306–1307’, Byzantion, 37 (1967), 91–113 Magdalino, Paul, ‘Aspects of Twelfth-Century Byzantine Kaiserkritik’, Speculum, 58 (1983), 326–46 Makrides, Vasilios N., ‘Political Theo­logy in Orthodox Christian Contexts: Specificities and Particularities in Comparison with Western Latin Christianity’, in Political Theo­logies in Orthodox Christianity: Common Challenges — Divergent Positions, ed. by Kristina Stoeckl, Ingeborg Gabriel, and Aristotle Papanikolau (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017), pp. 25–54

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Manemann, Jürgen, ‘Speaking of God in our Times — The Challenge of the New Political Theo­logy’ (Talk at the Orthodox Christian Political Theo­logies Conference, Leibniz Institute of European History, Mainz, 26–28 April 2018) Nicol, Donald M., Church and Society in the Last Centuries of Byzantium (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979) —— , The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261–1453, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) Nikov, Petar, ‘Turskoto zavoevanie na Bulgariia i sudbata na poslednite Shishmanovtsi’, Izvestiia na Istoricheskoto druzhestvo v Sofiia, 7–8 (1928), 41–112 Ostrogorsky, George, History of the Byzantine State, trans. by Joan Hussey, rev. edn (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1969) Rapp, Claudia, ‘The Christianization of the Idea of the Polis in Early Byzantium’, in Proceedings of the 22nd International Congress of Byzantine Studies (Sofia, 22–27 August 2011), i: Plenary Papers, ed. by Iliya Iliev and others (Sofia: Bulgarian Historical Heritage Foundation, 2011), pp. 263–84 —— , Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) Schmitt, Carl, Political Theo­logy: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. by George D. Schwab, 2nd English edn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004) Ševčenko, Ihor, ‘Agapetus East and West: The Fate of a Byzantine “Mirror of Princes”’, Revue des études sud-est européennes, 16.1 (1978), 3–42 Stefanov, Arhimandrit Pavel, ‘Danse Macabre: Nov pogled kum tsurkovnite subori v Turnovo prez xiv v’, in Teodosievi cheteniia: 640 godini ot uspenieto na prep. Teodosii Turnovski, ed. by D. Kenanov (Turnovo: Izdatelstvo na Velikoturnovskiia universitet, 2005), pp. 75–88 Stock, Brian, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983) Talbot, Alice-Mary, ‘The Patriarch Athanasius I (1289–1293; 1303–1309) and the Church’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 27 (1973), 11–28 Tinnefeld, Franz H., Kategorien der Kaiserkritik in der byzantinischen Historio­graphie von Prokop bis Niketas Choniates (Munich: Fink, 1971) Todorov, Boris A., ‘Trnovo’, in Europe: A Literary History, 1348–1418, vol. ii, ed. by David Wallace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 403–19

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Dana M. Polanichka

The Crumbs of the Crumbs Dhuoda and the Mid-Ninth-Century Carolingian Church

In the early 840s, civil wars raged across the Carolingian empire, dividing Frankish families. The turbulence engulfed an aristocratic woman in southern France. Dhuoda (b. c. 800 ce) had been married since 824 to Bernard of Septimania, once a triumphant military commander and Emperor Louis the Pious’s chamberlain who had fallen from favour when accused of adultery with Empress Judith.1 Although Bernard had purged himself of sin,2 he had recently demonstrated disloyalty to his new lord, King Charles the Bald.3 To prove his fidelity, Dhuoda’s husband commended their teenage son, William, to the king sometime in 841 ce.4 That same year, just months after the birth of their second son, Bernard had the infant taken from the new mother and brought to him in Aquitaine.5



* This article originated in a collaborative research project with Alora Buxton that was supported by the Office of the Provost and the Write Now, Right Now (WNRN) Program, both at Wheaton College, Norton, MA. I am grateful not only to Alora Buxton, but also to Courtney M. Booker, Andrew J. Romig, and the anonymous readers for Brepols whose feedback has tremendously improved this essay.  1 Astronomer, Vita Hludowici, 44, ed. by Tremp, p. 456; de Jong, The Penitential State, pp. 42, 148, 195–202.  2 Annales de Saint-Bertin, s.a. 831, ed. by Grat, Vielliard, and Clémencet, pp. 4–5; Astronomer, Vita Hludowici, 46, ed. by Tremp, p. 466; Thegan, Gesta Hludowici, 38, ed. by Tremp, p. 224; de Jong, The Penitential State, p. 44.  3 Nithard, Histoire, ii. 5, trans. and ed. by Lauer, pp. 58–60.  4 Dhuoda, Handbook, preface, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 50; English translations below are my own or, as cited, by Carol Neel. Most scholars interpret Dhuoda’s words here (‘genitor tuus Bernardus in manus domni te commendavit Karoli regis’) as indicating political hostage. See, for example, Chandler, ‘Barcelona bc 569’, p. 267, but Kosto has questioned this in ‘Hostages in the Carolingian World’, p. 133.  5 Dhuoda, Handbook, preface, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 50.

Dana M. Polanichka ([email protected]) is Associate Professor of History at Wheaton College, Massachusetts. She received her PhD in history from the University of California, Los Angeles, under the direction of Patrick J. Geary. Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe: Studies on Cultural Identity and Power, ed. by Courtney M. Booker, Hans Hummer, and Dana M. Polanichka, CURSOR 41, pp. 215–253 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022)        10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.127583

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Dhuoda found herself torn from her family and alone at their estate in Uzès. ‘Moved by longing’ for her children (Ex tuo desiderio utrique) and ‘besieged by many troubles’ (ex multis sim occupata angustiis), she composed a text for her son William to bridge the distance and allow her to teach him.6 From 30 November 841 to 2 February 843, Dhuoda wrote a lengthy text (divided, by modern scholars, into eleven ‘books’ akin to modern-day chapters) that she described as both handbook and speculum,7 near-synonymous genres at the time.8 Her Liber manualis is specifically a lay mirror, a Carolingian reorientation of the ancient speculum principis towards non-royal nobility.9 Dhuoda’s Liber manualis reveals the influence of its fellow lay mirrors,10 but also proves distinctive due to her status: unlike other authors, Dhuoda was a layperson, woman, and parent — indeed, a parent writing to her own son.11 Her lay status, in particular, has provided scholars with valuable, if limited, insight into Frankish lay lives and their ‘culture profane et religieuse’.12 The handbook, as scholars have regularly acknowledged, bears a deeply religious nature:13 the Liber manualis draws heavily on the Bible and myriad Christian writings, as Dhuoda encouraged her son to pursue a Christian life in devotion to God, follow the models of biblical patriarchs, and fill his life with prayers, good works, and readings by the orthodox fathers. In his edition of the text, Pierre Riché meticulously outlines the ecclesiastical topics about which Dhuoda did and did not write: her Liber manualis emphasizes prayer, reading sacred texts, and private confession to priests, but barely mentions the Eucharist.  6 Dhuoda, Handbook, preface, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 50; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 6.  7 Dhuoda, Handbook, xi. 2, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 236–38 (dates of composition); ‘manualis’, ‘in­venies etiam et speculum’: Dhuoda, Handbook, incipit, pro­logue, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 40, 48.  8 Riché, introduction to Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, p. 12. Carolingian lay mirrors do not refer to their genre. Dubreucq, ‘La littérature des specula’, p. 18.  9 Paulinus of Aquileia (d. 802) wrote the Liber exhortationis for Eric of Friuli around 795; Alcuin of York (735–804), De virtutibus et vitiis for Count Guy (Wido) c. 800; and Jonas of Orléans (c. 760–841), De institutione laicali for Matfrid of Orléans in the 820s. Riché, introduction to Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, pp. 12–13. See Sedlmeier, Die laienparänetischen Schriften; Stone, ‘Kings Are Different’, pp. 71–72; and Stone, Morality and Masculinity, pp. 36–42.  10 Riché, introduction to Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, p. 14; Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages, p. 39; among others.  11 Riché, introduction to Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, pp. 14–15, 26; Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages, pp. 36, 38–39; Bessmertny, ‘Le monde vu par une femme noble’, pp. 176–78; Cherewatuk, ‘Speculum Matris’, p. 55; Neel, introduction to Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. xiii; Claussen, ‘God and Man’, p. 43; Stone, Morality and Masculinity, pp. 145, 312; Romig, Be a Perfect Man, p. 101. Yet, see also Dhuoda’s very divergent view, from contemporaries, of Christianity’s apostolic mission. Olsen, ‘One Heart and One Soul’; Neel, ‘Mother, Father, King’, p. 23.  12 Riché, introduction to Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, p. 15; Riché, ‘Les bibliothèques de trois aristocrates laïcs carolingiens’, p. 103; McGuire, ‘Liturgy and Laity’.  13 Riché, introduction to Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, pp. 27, 37; Claussen, ‘God and Man’, p. 44; Neel, introduction to Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. xv; among others.

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Dhuoda referred only a few times to Jesus14 and once or twice to the Virgin Mary,15 but wrote regularly of the Holy Spirit and Trinity.16 Her son was to recite the canonical hours, yet the handbook never mentions monasticism.17 The Liber manualis focuses ‘inevitably’, as Riché has written, on respect to the clergy in one chapter, but not on priests’ temporal duties, tithing, or respect for clerical property.18 This mother’s lay, aristocratic perspective results in a lay mirror ‘bien différent’ from its counterparts that, with its significant emphasis on the duties owed to one’s family, presents, in Riché’s words, ‘une religion de la paternité’.19 Following Riché’s analysis of Dhuoda’s Christianity, scholars have emphasized her spirituality as familial, paternal, and secular,20 and her theo­logy as ‘practical’.21 Peter Dronke has noted how Dhuoda kept ‘the “cares of the world (mundare cure)” constantly in view’, encouraging her son to achieve salvation through the world by living his Christian values at the court, simultaneously pursuing God and world, and receiving largesse from God as a vassal from his earthly lord.22 Likewise, Martin Claussen has described Dhuoda’s spirituality as filled with secular aspirations, located firmly in the world, and arguing for the sanctity of the lay condition — what Claussen has termed a ‘lay spirituality’.23 Carol Neel has noted how ‘Dhuoda confidently asserts the positive spiritual value of ordinary secular activity’ and that ‘lay existence […] is as direct a path to

 14 Riché, introduction to Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, p. 28. Dhuoda referred roughly thirteen times to the Son of God and thirty-four times to Christ. A few uses of ‘Dominus’ refer to Jesus, as when speaking about the Passion or Gospel. Dhuoda also referenced the cross.  15 Riché, introduction to Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, p. 28. ‘Est tamen michi consors amica | Fidaque, de tuis relaxandi crimina’; ‘Purificationis sanctae et gloriosae semperque virginis Mariae’. Dhuoda, Handbook, epigram, xi. 2, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 44, 238. On the ‘surprising […] absence’ of Mary in Dhuoda’s text, see Mayeski, Dhuoda, pp. 62–63.  16 Riché, introduction to Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, p. 29; Dhuoda, Handbook, ii. 1, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 72–74. This focus is likely in response to contemporary Trinitarian discussions and heresies. Riché, introduction to Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, p. 28, and Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, p. 118 n. 1; Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 119 n. 1; Mayeski, Dhuoda, p. 58.  17 Riché, introduction to Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, p. 31.  18 ‘Il était donc inévitable que Dhuoda écrive un chapitre sur le respect dû à ceux qui ont reçu le sacerdoce, évêques et prêtres’. Riché, introduction to Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, p. 25. The lack of focus on tithing and clerical property is unsurprising for Riché: ‘Pouvait-il en être autrement? Dhuoda, issue de l’aristocratie, était, malgré sa grande piété, obligée d’épouser la cause de cette aristocratie’. Riché, introduction to Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, p. 26.  19 Riché, introduction to Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, pp. 26, 27.  20 For a historio­graphical orientation, see Stofferahn, ‘The Many Faces in Dhuoda’s Mirror’. But see scholarly resistance to the interpretation of Dhuoda’s spirituality as a ‘religion de la paternité’ in Claussen, ‘God and Man’, p. 48; Claussen, ‘Fathers of Power and Mothers of Authority’; Trenchard-Smith, ‘Furibunda silentia’; and Neel, ‘Mother, Father, King’, pp. 23, 25–26, 38.  21 Mayeski, Dhuoda, p. 38.  22 Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages, pp. 39, 41–43.  23 Claussen, ‘God and Man’, p. 47, who, in echoing Riché’s claim, writes that ‘our categories of religious and lay do not exist for Dhuoda’ (pp. 44–45).

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salvation as clerical or monastic life’.24 Patrick Geary, in his ground-breaking work on historical memory, highlights how ‘through her book of advice and spiritual guidance, Dhuoda sought to insure that her son would preserve the memoria, that is, the formal, liturgical memory, of this broad and important kindred throughout his life’.25 More recently, Alain Dubreucq has argued that Dhuoda’s text, along with other Carolingian lay mirrors, presents an eschato­logical vision of the world in which the laity composed an order with equal access to salvation.26 Notwithstanding her unique lay vision, the text reflects Frankish reform movements.27 ‘The very fact that she wrote such a work’, Rachel Stone has argued, ‘suggests that the moral instruction provided by Carolingian reformers had become firmly embedded within the consciousness of some of the lay elite’.28 She had ‘internalised’ it ‘sufficiently to transmit and adapt it’.29 Similarly, Cullen J. Chandler has described Dhuoda’s text as ‘evidence of the impact of the renouatio on the lay nobility’,30 while Anne C. McGuire has highlighted the influence of monastic reforms on Dhuoda’s education and thus manual.31 Despite the handbook’s pervasive Christian spirituality, two scholars have questioned Dhuoda’s treatment of the ecclesiastical institution and its hierarchy. Neel has briefly noted that ‘almost as an afterthought, the mother recommends that her son honor priests’ and that Dhuoda ‘minimizes […] priestly power’.32 Marie Anne Mayeski has observed that Dhuoda paid ‘surprisingly little attention to the church as an institution and to ecclesiastical structures’.33 These succinct comments, though provocative, have remained largely unexamined in scholarship, which has not doubted her view of priests or the Church, but assumed her acceptance of ecclesiastical messages

 24 Neel, introduction to Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. xvii.  25 Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance, p. 49.  26 Dubreucq, ‘La littérature des specula’, p. 27. He has described the Liber Manualis, iv. 6, as ‘une application, une intériorisation au niveau de la morale des laïcs, des idées énoncées par Jonas’, and the entire text as ‘l’application des idées énoncées par Jonas dans l’Institution des laïcs: elle accomplit scrupuleusement son ministère spirituel d’éducation et d’admonition’. Dubreucq, ‘La littérature des specula’, pp. 29, 32.  27 Riché, ‘Les bibliothèques de trois aristocrates laïcs carolingiens’, pp. 103–04; Riché, introduction to Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, p. 32; Neel, introduction to Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. xxii; Dubreucq, ‘La littérature des specula’, p. 26; Leja, ‘The Making of Men, not Masters’, p. 20; Chandler, ‘Barcelona bc 569’, pp. 267–68, 284–86, 289–90; among others. Chandler has written of how Dhuoda’s text, like Alcuin’s lay mirror, demonstrates ‘a common Carolingian cultural programme shared by cleric and laywoman alike’. ‘Barcelona bc 569’, p. 284. On Dhuoda’s internalization of Carolingian renewal vis-à-vis baptism, see Phelan, The Formation of Christian Europe, pp. 6, 207–09, 213–17, 219.  28 Stone, ‘Laicus’, pp. 13–14.  29 Stone, Morality and Masculinity, p. 41.  30 Chandler, ‘Barcelona bc 569’, p. 290.  31 McGuire, ‘Liturgy and Laity’, pp. 468, 486.  32 Neel, introduction to Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, pp. xviii, xix.  33 Mayeski, Dhuoda, p. 61.

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emanating from court.34 Neel, in a more recent article, has followed up on ‘Dhuoda’s broad critique of paternal, royal, even priestly power’, but with almost total emphasis on the first two, lay categories.35 Yet, considering the subtle, even subversive, political messages that scholars have found within the Liber manualis,36 we ought to return to Dhuoda’s text and consider how this Frankish woman presents the ecclesia. This essay examines Dhuoda’s portrayal of the Church, its structures, and its clerical body. A close reading of her mid-ninth-century text reveals not simply the ‘lay spirituality’ long articulated by scholars,37 but also the seemingly minimal consideration given to the Church and its rituals. Contextualizing the Liber manualis within its genre and contemporary lay piety explains Dhuoda’s treatment of the Church, liturgy, and sacraments — but not her ambivalent, at times critical, tone towards priests. I contend that the Liber manualis demonstrates the growing divide between clergy and laity in the ninth century, argues for lay access to spiritual wisdom equal to that of the clerical body’s, and suggests that the clergy were also responsible for the chaotic (political) landscape in which Dhuoda, her family, and the Carolingian world found themselves. Accordingly, I build upon the work of Glenn Olsen and Carol Neel regarding Dhuoda’s vision of the ideal Christian community by deepening our understanding of her views on the clergy and laity composing that community.38

Christianity and the Ecclesia in the Liber manualis Before turning to Dhuoda’s ambivalent, even critical, presentation of the clerical body, it is necessary to understand her views regarding Christianity and the Church, thus contextualizing both her text and spirituality within the mid-ninth-century Carolingian world. Dhuoda, as scholars have long noted, composed her handbook within a rich, extensive tradition of Christian writings, drawing from the Bible, the Rule of Benedict, and the writings of Augustine of Hippo, Gregory the Great, Gregory of Tours, Isidore of Seville,  34 McGuire, for example, has written confidently that Dhuoda ‘referr[ed] to liturgy, church and clergy’, while Dubreucq has asserted that these Carolingian lay mirrors constitute a historical moment in which the literature emphasized the harmonious cooperation of all the orders of Christianity and the Christianization of secular society. McGuire, ‘Liturgy and Laity’, p. 465; Dubreucq, ‘La littérature des specula’, p. 39.  35 Neel, ‘Mother, Father, King’, p. 24.  36 Neel, introduction to Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. xix; Le Jan, ‘The Multiple Identities of Dhuoda’, p. 219. Note, too, Margaret Trenchard-Smith’s discussion of Dhuoda as communicating through ‘raging silences’, but also Neel’s insistence that the claim Dhuoda was criticizing her husband is ‘not, then, argument from silence’. Trenchard-Smith, ‘Furibunda silentia’; Neel, ‘Mother, Father, King’, p. 33. More below.  37 Named so by Claussen, ‘God and Man’, p. 47.  38 Olsen, ‘One Heart and One Soul’, and Neel, ‘Mother, Father, King’.

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Ambrosius Autpertus, Paulinus of Aquileia, Alcuin of York, Jonas of Orléans, Hrabanus Maurus, and Lupus of Ferrières.39 Religious themes are ubiquitous in Dhuoda’s text and deeply ingrained in her language. Her handbook formulates the ideal nobleman’s life entirely in Christian terms: to be a good courtier is to be a good Christian, and William can learn about heaven through life on earth. The first two books are specifically dedicated to the Trinity. The importance of prayer permeates the entire Liber manualis, and the act of reading, particularly the Psalms and works of the Fathers, receives emphasis from Dhuoda as central to William’s spiritual formation, and she stressed the good works that ought to fill her son’s days.40 The question is not, however, whether Dhuoda’s text reveals a deep Christian spirituality, but how it presents the institutional structures, rituals, and personnel that oversee that faith. Dhuoda’s use of Benedict’s Rule demonstrates well the gap between her personal Christian spirituality and the ninth-century Church. The Rule, as many scholars have noted, strongly influenced Dhuoda’s writing.41 She quoted it a dozen times, not always verbatim, and encouraged monastic principles such as humility, chastity, and obedience.42 She promoted the ideal of correctio,43 abbatial authority,44 lectio divina,45 and the observance of the canonical hours.46 Even her use of a military metaphor in the battle against vice came from the Rule.47 Dhuoda, however, never mentioned monks, monasteries, or Benedict,48 by contrast with Alcuin, who, in his own, much shorter lay mirror, twice

 39 Riché, introduction to Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, pp. 29, 33–37; Neel, introduction to Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. xvi; Janssens, ‘L’étude de la langue et les citations bibliques’; Mayeski, ‘The Beatitudes and the Moral Life of the Christian’; Thiébaux, introduction to Dhuoda, Handbook, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 10; Mayeski, ‘A Mother’s Psalter’.  40 See Mayeski, ‘A Mother’s Psalter’.  41 McGuire, ‘Liturgy and Laity’, pp. 468, 486.  42 Claussen, ‘Fathers of Power and Mothers of Authority’, pp. 794–97; Dhuoda, Handbook, ii. 3, iii. 3, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 76, 90–92.  43 Dhuoda, Handbook, iv. 8, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 154–56; Claussen, ‘Fathers of Power and Mothers of Authority’, pp. 800–801; Leja, ‘The Making of Men, not Masters’, p. 22.  44 Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 1, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 86; Neel, introduction to Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. xviii; Claussen, ‘Fathers of Power and Mothers of Authority’, pp. 797, 801.  45 Riché, introduction to Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, p. 31; Mayeski, Dhuoda, pp. 66–72, 92.  46 Dhuoda, Handbook, ii. 3, viii. 15, x. 4, xi. 1, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 80, 206, 224, 236; McGuire, ‘Liturgy and Laity’, p. 486.  47 Benedict of Nursia, The Rule, pro­logue, ed. and trans. by Venarde, p. 2; Leja, ‘The Making of Men, not Masters’, p. 21. On the military battle against vice, see Noble, ‘Secular Sanctity’, p. 11.  48 Riché, introduction to Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, p. 31; Stone, Morality and Masculinity, p. 129. Dubreucq writes, ‘Il n’est donc pas étonnant que Dhuoda ne parle jamais de la vie monastique, même si, par ailleurs, pour définir l’état laïque, elle décrit les attributions des rois et des prêtres’; ‘La littérature des specula’, p. 30. Chandler, however, proposes that Dhuoda’s ‘familiarity with the Rule of Benedict may have arisen from her association with nuns’, based on her reference to living ‘among worthy women’ (inter dignas vivens); ‘Barcelona bc 569’, p. 269, referencing Dhuoda, Handbook, pro­logue, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 46.

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mentioned monks.49 The reason cannot be unfamiliarity with monastic life, because Dhuoda knew (of) monks and monasteries through her family. Moreover, in a text highlighting William’s noble family, William of Toulouse (William’s paternal grandfather and founder of Gellone monastery) would have been an ideal ancestor to emphasize.50 Despite the many good reasons for Dhuoda to have mentioned monks or monasticism, she remained silent about them, perhaps on account of her noble, secular audience. Not surprisingly in a text directed towards a noble son situated at court, Dhuoda discussed the Church more often than monasticism, writing the word ecclesia eleven times. Six instances refer to the universal faithful in Christ: she prayed that secular leaders would unite God’s holy Church more firmly in Christ and his true faith;51 described how priests baptize the faithful and unite them to the holy Church of God;52 explained how the devil seeks to snatch Christian symbols away from the faithful of God’s holy Church;53 reminded her son that spiritual parents daily beget spiritual sons in the holy Church;54 encouraged her son to pray that kings and their magnates support the universal Church’s firm faith in Christ;55 and wrote of people saved through the Church via baptism.56 In two instances, Dhuoda wrote of the ecclesia as an institutional structure with clergy. One relates to the mother’s instruction that her son pray for the various clerical ranks.57 The second refers to the faithful ministers of God’s church accepting prayers.58 Finally, Dhuoda thrice used ecclesia to describe physical buildings: she wrote of a puppy under an altar within the sacred church; encouraged her son to pray not only in church; and instructed

 49 Alcuin, Liber de virtutibus et vitiis, 28, 32, ed. by Migne, cols 633D, 635A.  50 Stone, Morality and Masculinity, p. 129. On familial monastic connections, see Bouchard, ‘Family Structure and Family Consciousness’, pp. 641–42; Claussen, ‘Fathers of Power and Mothers of Authority’, pp. 794–95; McGuire, ‘Liturgy and Laity’, pp. 468–69.  51 ‘Atque defendere, sanctamque Dei videlicet Ecclesiam in religione vera firmius coadunare in Christo’. Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 8, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 106.  52 ‘Ipsi sunt baptizantes in fide sanctae Trinitatis populum, ad sanctam Dei adunantes Ecclesiam’. Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 11, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 116.  53 ‘Katerva a fidelibus sanctae Dei ecclesiae’. Dhuoda, Handbook, iv. 1, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 126.  54 ‘Cotidie in sancta Ecclesia non desinunt generare filios’. Dhuoda, Handbook, vii. 3, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 192. On baptism and godparentage more generally, see Lynch, Godparents and Kinship, and further discussion below.  55 ‘Ut firmam in Christo teneant religionem universalis Ecclesiae’. Dhuoda, Handbook, viii. 5, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 198.  56 ‘Illos qui in archa, hoc est in Ecclesia, per aquam baptismatis renovati’. Dhuoda, Handbook, ix. 3, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 212.  57 ‘Ora, ut vales, pro omnibus gradibus ecclesiarum’. Dhuoda, Handbook, viii. 3, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 196.  58 ‘A fidelibus sanctae Dei Ecclesiae ministris pleniter recipiendum’. Dhuoda, Handbook, viii. 13, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 200.

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William to pray so that the ill might recover, rise from their beds, and praise God within churches.59 Dhuoda’s varied definitions of ecclesia reflect ninth-century usage: Carolingian legislation from the late eighth century through ninth century used all three definitions of ecclesia, often blurring distinctions.60 Although scholars today still wrestle with all the meanings of the term, particularly those related to the political order,61 ecclesia was a widely used word in the mid-ninth century — especially by those closely linked to the Carolingian court, the epicentre of ecclesiastical reform, as was Dhuoda.62 While eleven references to ecclesia might seem minimal within this historical context, the number is not unusual for the genre: Alcuin never wrote ecclesia in his lay mirror; Paulinus used the word twice (ch. 52). While Jonas of Orléans’s De institutione laicali repeatedly mentions the Church, his lay mirror offers an unusual example of the genre — one described, by scholars, as the most ‘sacramental’ or ecclesiastical Carolingian lay mirror.63 Rather than focusing on the quantity of her references, we ought to consider, if briefly, the definitions of ecclesia preferred by Dhuoda. More than half of her uses of ecclesia (six out of eleven) refer to the universal faithful in Christ, reflective of the broad community of Christians. Ecclesia, as Rutger Kramer has explained, invoked ‘the idea that all of the faithful were part of a larger social whole, an apostolic community unified by a shared understanding and practice of liturgy’ and ‘represented a more horizontal idea, which started from the notion that all of Christendom was essentially connected by a faith shared among its members, expressed through a cultus divinus that applied to all’.64 This accords with scholarly interpretations of Dhuoda’s Liber manualis as ‘proclaiming the sanctity of the lay state, and its onto­logical worth, and its

 59 ‘Ut sub mensam illius, infra sanctam videlicet ecclesiam’: Dhuoda, Handbook, i. 2, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 60; ‘Dic non solum in ecclesia’: Dhuoda, Handbook, ii. 3, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 78; ‘in ecclesiis valeant laudare et benedicere Dominum’: Dhuoda, Handbook, viii. 8, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 198.  60 Polanichka, ‘Precious Stones, Living Temples’, esp. ch. 2. Dominique Iogna-Prat, in his Maison Dieu, argues that the term, which originally referred to the community of believers, shifted — or became petrified — to refer to the church building in mid-ninth-century theo­ logical texts.  61 Mayke de Jong has written widely on the political meanings of ecclesia in the Carolingian period. See, for example, her ‘Two Republics’, in which, notably, she connects the myriad Carolingian definitions of ecclesia to the concept and practice of worship (p. 496), ‘The State of the Church’, and ‘Ecclesia and the Early Medi­eval Polity’.  62 The term ecclesia, its meaning, and its frequency have been widely discussed, including by Iogna-Prat, La Maison Dieu; Mayke de Jong, particularly in the works cited directly above; Kramer, Rethinking Authority, pp. 37–38; and Polanichka, ‘“My Temple Should Be a House of Prayer”’, pp. 374, 376–80.  63 Jonas’s has a greater ‘sacramental emphasis’ (Stone, ‘Laicus’, p. 11) and is ‘more exegetically detailed’ (Romig, Be a Perfect Man, p. 64).  64 Kramer, Rethinking Authority, pp. 37, 39.

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equality, in all things that really matter, with the clergy’.65 Similarly, Dhuoda’s use of Acts 4. 32–34, as Neel has contended, building on the earlier work of Glenn Olsen, offers an ‘adventuresome description of apostolic community as lay, non-patriarchal, and transgressive of ordines’, emphasizes ‘the spiritual and moral stature of the laity’, and ‘valoriz[es] […] the unity of faithful Christians in the contemporary world’.66 This argument by Dhuoda for the value of lay life on its own terms, with minimal reference to its clerical counterpart, contrasts that of Jonas’s vision of the ecclesia in his own, admittedly anomalous, lay mirror. Jonas also described the lay order as incorporated into the ecclesia,67 but he, unlike his fellow lay-mirror authors, emphasized the distinctions between lay and clergy in a pessimistic manner that was critical of, rather than hopeful for, the aristocracy.68 Dhuoda’s Liber manualis not only presented to her son a vision of the ecclesia that encompassed all the faithful, lay and clerical alike, but also, as we will see, argued for the value of the laity with an ambivalent, at times critical, portrayal not of the laity, but of the clerical hierarchy.

Ritual and Liturgy in the Liber manualis If Dhuoda emphasized an ecclesia that encompassed the lay faithful (as opposed to its more narrow definition referring to the ecclesiastical hierarchy or its buildings), the liturgy or cultus divinus that united the faithful nevertheless receives minimal explicit mention in her text — a choice that, as we shall see, accords with other contemporary lay mirrors. Although, as McGuire and Mayeski have noted, Dhuoda’s textual readings and recommendations to her son certainly emerge from a liturgical context that suggests her thorough knowledge of liturgy,69 she did not emphasize regular Mass attendance. In Book viii, Chapter 8, Dhuoda implies liturgical participation, instructing William to pray so that those recovered from illness ‘may praise and bless the Lord in churches’.70 In the same chapter, she advises William to read the prayers

 65 Claussen, ‘God and Man’, p. 48. This is clearest in Dhuoda’s discussion (Handbook, iv. 6, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 144), as noted by Claussen, on marital chastity: ‘while the gift of virginity for Dhuoda remains lucidissimum, it is not […] a superior state […] and she regularly compares and equates chastity in marriage with continence and virginity’. ‘God and Man’, p. 47.  66 Neel, ‘Mother, Father, King’, pp. 24, 37.  67 Dubreucq has argued that Jonas viewed the Church’s lay members as having something akin to a vow. Dubreucq, ‘La littérature des specula’, p. 28.  68 Romig, Be a Perfect Man, pp. 65–66. Stone has described Jonas’s text as ‘no longer correspond[ing] sufficiently to the reality of aristocratic lives […] and both too morally demanding and too socially specific to endure’. ‘Laicus’, p. 20.  69 McGuire, ‘Liturgy and Laity’, pp. 465, 472, 492; Mayeski, Dhuoda, pp. 50–52, 61.  70 ‘Pro infirmis, ut det illis Deus salutem animae et corporis medelam, atque a lecto aegritu­ dinis erecti in ecclesiis valeant laudare et benedicere Dominum’. Dhuoda, Handbook, viii. 8, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 198; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 85. But on where one must pray, and that it need not be within the church, see below.

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for Holy Friday to learn how to pray, implying (if not explicitly encouraging) that he attend church on that holy day.71 In three passages, two of them also in Book viii, Dhuoda instructs her son to make offerings of the Mass. First, following the example of Augustine’s Enchiridion, Dhuoda encouraged her son to offer alms for the dead.72 Her second explicit, and also her most extensive, liturgical passage comes later in Book viii when discussing William’s duties to his godfather, Tedderic. She exhorted her son to ‘Pluri ora enim et speciali cum plurimis […] in quantum vales, cum valde bonis pluraliter, in quantum potes’ (pray often for him, as much as you can, whenever you have the chance — and especially when you are with other good men), the latter clauses implying prayers within a church. Dhuoda made the context more explicit when she encouraged William to pray for Tedderic ‘in nocturnis, matutinis, vespertinis, caeterisque oris’ (at the night office and at matins and at vespers and at the other canonical hours) and ensure that ‘per orationes sanctorum sacerdotum […] Domino sacrificium pro eo offerre iubeas frequenter’ (sacrifice be made to the Lord on his behalf, through the prayers of holy priests) and that ‘Missarum namque et sacrificiorum solempnia non solum pro eo […] frequenter facias offerri’ (ceremonies of masses and sacrifices be offered on a regular basis not only for him).73 Soon after, she contended that in order to ensure that the dead rest in peace, ‘Nulla enim oratio in hac parte melior, quam sacrificiorum libamina’ (no prayer is better for this purpose than the offering of sacrifice).74 This is a strong claim in favour of liturgical ceremonies, but a singular one within her text. Dhuoda’s third explicit reference to Mass comes in Book x. As she bemoaned her pitiful state, she requested that her sons ‘sacrificiorum libamina, cum oblationibus hostiarum, pro me frequenter offerre dignemini’ (have the offering of the sacrifice and the presentation of the host made often on my behalf).75 Dhuoda’s language here has led McGuire to assert that ‘the sacrificial aspect of eucharist is emphasized again and again’,76 despite Dhuoda making only two explicit references to the Eucharistic rite.

 71 ‘Lege in oratione feriae vi, diem videlicet passionis dominicae, et ibidem invenies qualiter pro universo plebe sit orandum’. Dhuoda, Handbook, viii. 8, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 198.  72 ‘In sacrificis defunctorum, ut aiunt doctores, tribus modis eorum agitur ordo elemosinarum’. Dhuoda, Handbook, viii. 10, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 200. Derived from Augustine, Enchiridion 110, but possibly known from Jonas of Orléans’s De institutione laicali, iii. 15, ed. by Migne, cols 265A–B. Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, p. 312 n. 1; Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 141 n. 10.  73 Dhuoda, Handbook, viii. 15–16, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 206; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 88.  74 Dhuoda, Handbook, viii. 16, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 206; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 88.  75 Dhuoda, Handbook, x. 4, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 226; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 100.  76 McGuire, ‘Liturgy and Laity’, p. 474.

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More interesting and revealing about the Liber’s implicit references to the Host is what McGuire has detected in them: ‘Familiarity with the Eucharist is such that, for Dhuoda, the language of the eucharistic prayer becomes her own’.77 McGuire has cited places in which the mother lifts directly from the priests’ Eucharistic prayers and revealed how Dhuoda ‘presents an understanding of eucharist based on the biblical images of bread and wine, eating and drinking’.78 Drawing on Matthew, John, and the Psalms, Dhuoda wrote of the ‘most worthy bread’ and ‘the bread of angels’ and prodded her son to ‘find pleasure in working for this bread’.79 Dhuoda thus drew on biblical Eucharistic language and Eucharistic rites, in which she has presumably participated — but presented them within a non-liturgical context. Dhuoda similarly de-emphasized the liturgy when writing of baptism, the sacrament she referred to most in her Liber manualis.80 Early on, Dhuoda lamented that her youngest son had not yet been baptized when he was taken from her.81 Later she discussed the first and second births, spiritual parentage, and William’s godfather.82 Owen Phelan has argued that, for Dhuoda, baptism was central to understanding life and death and was the foundation of a moral Christian life.83 While Dhuoda did describe baptism as the means of entry to the Church,84 she emphasized not the ecclesiastical ritual or its meaning, but the spiritual family and its terrestrial benefits, obligations, and implications. Dhuoda’s chapter on Tedderic opens with a concise description of the godfather taking William from the mother’s arms and adopting him as his son in Christ through baptism — before discussing at length the connections forged between spiritual parent and child.85 As with much else discussed above, Dhuoda’s emphasis on the ties between godparent and godchild over above an ecclesiastical context is not entirely unusual for her genre. As Phelan has noted, she, alongside Jonas of Orléans (the author of the most sacramental lay mirror), ‘shifted the pedagogical burden from priests’ Lenten catechesis to godparents’ formative relationship with their godchildren’.86 Dhuoda, however, took the more

 77 McGuire, ‘Liturgy and Laity’, p. 475.  78 McGuire, ‘Liturgy and Laity’, p. 475.  79 McGuire, ‘Liturgy and Laity’, p. 475, quoting and translating Dhuoda, Handbook, iv. 8, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 156–58, drawing on Matthew 5. 6, John 6. 27, Psalm 78. 25 (77. 25), John 6. 35.  80 On baptism in the Liber manualis, see McGuire, ‘Liturgy and Laity’, pp. 478–79. On baptism’s need for lay participation, see Bullough, ‘The Carolingian Liturgical Experience’, p. 57.  81 Dhuoda, Handbook, preface, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 50.  82 Dhuoda, Handbook, vii. 1–6, viii. 15, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 190–94, 206.  83 Phelan, The Formation of Christian Europe, pp. 213–17, 222–27, 233.  84 Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 11, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 116.  85 ‘Nec hoc praetereundum est, fili, de illo qui te, ex meis suscipiens brachiis, per lavacrum regenerationis filium adoptavit in Christo’. Dhuoda, Handbook, viii. 15, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 206. On the Carolingian reform’s strengthening of, and greater emphasis on, the sponsor’s role, see Lynch, Godparents and Kinship, pp. 285–304.  86 Phelan, The Formation of Christian Europe, p. 227. Note Jonas of Orléans’s criticism of

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unusual step of de-emphasizing the rite’s necessity when claiming to be her son’s spiritual mother on account of her instruction of him.87 We cannot be certain whether Dhuoda knew of the Carolingian prohibition, following the Council of Mainz in 813, against individuals becoming spiritual parents to their bio­logical children,88 but her knowledge of that ban is beside the point here. Not only did Dhuoda avoid the term ‘baptism’ or any liturgical language when describing herself as William’s spiritual mother, but also she asserted that she had become her son’s godmother through not an ecclesiastical ritual, but rather her role as author of the present text and thus his spiritual teacher. Whether Dhuoda’s insistence on her role as a spiritual parent was motivated by her own experience of ‘the parent’s growing exclusion from the entire baptismal liturgy’ cannot be proven, though the declining role of parents in baptismal rituals deserves note here.89 In addition to the Eucharist and baptism, two other ecclesiastical rituals that Dhuoda mentioned and that help us understand her view of the Church (and ultimately contextualize her ambivalence towards priests) are confession and penance.90 Priests, she twice noted, ‘peccata populi comedent’ (eat the sins of [the Lord’s] people).91 She urged William, ‘Da illis, ut melius nosti, tuam occulte cum suspirio et lachrymis veram confessionem’ (offer [the true and learned priests] your true confession as best you know how — in privacy, with sighing and with tears) and to devote half his time to penance.92 Dhuoda twice encouraged her son, ‘In manus […] honestorum sacerdotum, te non pigeas commendare’ (entrust yourself into the hands of honorable priests).93 Likewise, her discussion of Tedderic notes the importance of penance to one’s eternal soul.94 Phelan has argued that penance was ‘an ecclesiastical matter […] closely associated with priestly ministry’ for Dhuoda, because she advised William to give private confession to priests and then emphasized the sponsors’ worldly motives: De institutione laicali, i. 6, ed. by Migne, col. 133A, discussed by Lynch, Godparents and Kinship, p. 287. Dhuoda embraced the worldly outcomes of William’s spiritual relationship with Tedderic alongside the spiritual ones.  87 Dhuoda, Handbook, vii. 1, vii. 3, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 190, 192. On Dhuoda as spiritual mother, see Phelan, The Formation of Christian Europe, p. 229.  88 On bio­logical parents as spiritual ones, see Lynch, Godparents and Kinship, pp. 99, 122, 149.  89 Lynch, Godparents and Kinship, pp. 297–305, quotation at p. 298; he also notes the ‘ousting [of] parents from every liturgical act’ at p. 297.  90 Phelan, The Formation of Christian Europe, pp. 234–37, has argued that Dhuoda saw penance as derived from baptism.  91 ‘Peccata populi comedent’ and ‘peccata populi comedentes’. Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 11, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 118; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 38.  92 Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 11, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 122; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 42. Also, Dhuoda, Handbook, xi. 1, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 232–34.  93 And ‘In manus namque eorum tuam mentem et corpus ne pigeas commendare, ortor’. Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 11, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 122; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 41.  94 ‘Pro eius delictis, si aliquid iniuste egit, et non aeterno poenituit’. Dhuoda, Handbook, viii. 15, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 206.

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resulting priestly correction and instruction.95 While this mother believed in the need for a priest to hear confession and eat the confessor’s sin, she placed the burden of spiritual progress on the individual, not the clergy. Dhuoda’s lack of sacramental emphasis, as highlighted in the above discussion of the Eucharist, baptism, confession, and penance, follows Alcuin’s and Paulinus’s lay mirrors.96 Just as Dhuoda focused on the layperson’s need to confess rather than on the confessor-priest, so did Alcuin focus on the sinner doing the confessing, not the priest as confessor ( Jonas, however, emphasized the priest).97 As Stone has explicated, Alcuin’s lay mirror ‘focus[ed] less on doctrine or devotional practices than on how laymen ought to behave’.98 Moreover, Alcuin’s lay mirror, called ‘unclerical’ by Stone, never refers to Communion, prayer, or saints.99 Dhuoda, in contrast to Alcuin, referred repeatedly to prayer100 — a personal endeavour that did not require the involvement of the clergy, or even the Church structure,101 and in which she repeatedly educated William. She claimed that one need not pray constantly, but insisted that doing good in the world is itself a prayer.102 William bore responsibility for his spiritual education, beyond that which Dhuoda’s little handbook could provide, and she urged him to surround himself with books and seek the counsel of learned doctors — that is, worthy Christian writers of old.103 It is not, at least explicitly, the task of a priest to educate him.

 95 Phelan, The Formation of Christian Europe, p. 236.  96 Stone, ‘Laicus’, p. 11.  97 Stone, ‘Laicus’, pp. 10–11, discussing Alcuin, Liber de virtutibus et vitiis, 12, ed. by Migne, cols 621B–622B, and Jonas of Orléans, De institutione laicali, i. 10, ed. by Migne, cols 138A–143A.  98 Stone, Morality and Masculinity, p. 1.  99 Stone, ‘Laicus’, p. 10. For two references to a single saint’s life: Dhuoda, Handbook, i. 7, vii. 3, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 70, 192; Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 119 n. 64. Dhuoda never encouraged collecting relics or devotion to specific saints. Stone, Morality and Masculinity, p. 129. The thematic parallels between Dhuoda’s and Alcuin’s lay mirrors, more than genre conventions, may result from her direct reliance upon Alcuin’s text. Riché, ‘Les bibliothèques de trois aristocrates laïcs carolingiens’, p. 94; Chandler, ‘Barcelona bc 569’, pp. 268, 283–89; Stone, Morality and Masculinity, p. 2.   100 Dhuoda, Handbook, ii. 3, viii. 1–16, xi. 1, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 76–80, 196–206, 232–36.   101 The mother exhorted her son to pray ‘not only in church’ even as she encouraged him to observe the canonical hours. ‘Dic non solum in ecclesia, sed ubicunque tibi provenerit eventus’. Dhuoda, Handbook, ii. 3, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 78. On canonical hours, see Dhuoda, Handbook, ii. 3, viii. 15, x. 4, xi. 1, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 80, 206, 224, 236. As Meg Leja has noted, ‘Dhuoda depicts a more personalized form of prayer that occurs, primarily, outside the church’s services’, and ‘she does not suggest that William needs priests or monks to mediate between himself and God; rather she instructs William on how to establish his own personal relationship with God’. ‘The Making of Men, not Masters’, p. 19. On prayer generally, see McGuire, ‘Liturgy and Laity’, esp. pp. 468–69, 484–89.   102 ‘Numquid semper orandum est, aut oculi clamant? Non, sed est sensus: quicquid enim bonum egeris in saeculo, ipsum incessanter orabit pro te ad Dominum’. Dhuoda, Handbook, viii. 1, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 196.   103 Dhuoda, Handbook, i. 7, iii. 5–6, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 68, 96–102.

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As Mayeski has summarized, ‘She seems much less concerned about the forms of piety (though she recommends them) and about the institutional structures of salvation (though she assumes them) than about William’s personal appropriation of the great mystery of salvation which, she believes, will come about through biblical study and right action’.104 Unfortunately, it is impossible to know exactly why Dhuoda remains silent on these topics: was she, as Mayeski has written, truly ‘less concerned’ about ecclesiastical matters or does her silence suggest their ubiquity and significance such that she felt no need to mention them? Dhuoda’s discussion of almsgiving raises similar questions. While Dhuoda encouraged Christian generosity — to the poor, pilgrims, orphans, widows, the children of widows, foreigners, the oppressed, the evil, the dead, and those bereft of merit105 — she did not, Rachel Stone has noted, explicitly mention giving to the Church or any ecclesiastical body.106 Only once did Dhuoda possibly reference tithing, when she ordered William to ‘honora […] Dominum […] de primitiis tuis’ (‘honor the Lord […] with your first fruits’) — but she does not explicitly suggest that the clergy or Church would benefit from this almsgiving.107 Rather, this reference appears within a discussion of charity to the poor. Neither did she encourage him to make donations to monasteries, nor indicate that such donations were commonplace.108 Once again, much of what Dhuoda emphasized and de-emphasized in relation to the Church aligns with her genre. The absence of lay giving to the Church is not remarkable within lay mirrors: Stone has observed that the Carolingian lay mirrors generally contain this ‘one surprising omission’109 (surprising for Stone since charters document landowners’ many donations to churches and monasteries and also because of, we might add, the Carolingian emphasis on tithing, including in legislation).110 Dhuoda’s presentation of the Church and its rituals in her Liber manualis thus aligns with her genre. Moreover, her text, when placed within its broader context, further accords with contemporary lay trends. As Thomas F. X. Noble has written:

  104 Mayeski, Dhuoda, p. 61.   105 Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 11, iv. 8, iv. 9, viii. 10, viii. 13, viii. 15, viii. 16, x. 2, x. 4, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 122, 150, 160, 162, 200, 206, 220, 224.   106 Stone, Morality and Masculinity, pp. 239–44.   107 Dhuoda, Handbook, iv. 8, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 160, referencing Proverbs 3. 9.   108 On aristocratic giving to, and founding of, monasteries, see Stone, Morality and Masculinity, p. 244, and Helvétius and Kaplan, ‘Asceticism and its Institutions’, p. 294.   109 Stone, Morality and Masculinity, p. 244; but see Riché, introduction to Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, pp. 25–26. Although Jonas’s mirror devotes a chapter to tithing (‘De decimis fidelium’), it is in many ways an outlier within the genre. Jonas of Orléans, De institutione laicali, ii. 19, ed. by Migne, cols 204B–208C.   110 Capitularia, no. 20. 7, no. 32. 6, no. 34. 17, no. 42. 2, 3, no. 59. 2, no. 78. 7, no. 81. 4, 9, ed. by Boretius, pp. 48, 83, 101, 119, 146, 174, 178.

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Carolingian spirituality was marked by […] the movement to the private and away from the ecclesial spirituality […]. In practice this meant that religion was more and more a matter of individual acts rather than of community celebrations or of intellectual assent to theo­logical doctrines. As the Carolingian period unfolded, more and more of the visible acts of which Christianity was comprised were restricted to the clergy. The liturgy became a more priestly enterprise as the priest stood with his back to the people and offered prayers on their behalf.111 McGuire has described the period in similar terms: ‘the importance of the liturgy is evident, but the laity’s participation is primarily one of watching the actions of the clergy and listening to their preaching’.112 McGuire has also offered the laity’s passivity as an explanation for why Dhuoda painted a picture of ‘a life — outside of the church — influenced by the liturgy’ — as opposed to ‘Jonas’ communal picture of the liturgy’.113 Meanwhile, Dhuoda’s lack of Eucharistic emphasis aligns with contemporary lay spirituality as explored by Julia M. H. Smith.114 Dhuoda’s lay status may thus explain why, as Mayeski has noted, ‘Much that was of interest to imperial religion finds no place in Dhuoda’s text’, and why she had ‘little interest in the development of institutional forms of power or in the development of the clergy’.115 All in all, considering her textual and lay contexts, Dhuoda’s approach to ecclesia, liturgy, and ritual ought not be surprising. Now, with this fully contextualized understanding of her view of the Church, we shall turn to the mother’s presentation of the clergy who served that institution and ministered to its lay members.

The Clerical Body in the Liber manualis Dhuoda rarely wrote not only of the ecclesia and its liturgies, but also of the clergy. In the Liber manualis, she mentions them in six places: two passages on those to whom William owes respect and prayer (iii. 11 and viii. 3), discussed below; a reference to the Syro-Phoenician woman (i. 2), discussed further below; her brief requests that William ask clergy to pray for his father and Tedderic (viii. 7, viii. 15); and verses listing all the people for whom William should pray (x. 1). This relative silence on the priesthood, like that on the ecclesia and its rituals, aligns with her genre: Alcuin, for example, wrote sacerdos only three times and clericus once in his lay mirror.116            

111 Noble, ‘Secular Sanctity’, p. 31. 112 McGuire, ‘Liturgy and Laity’, p. 492. 113 McGuire, ‘Liturgy and Laity’, p. 492. 114 Smith, ‘Religion and Lay Society’, p. 663. 115 Mayeski, Dhuoda, pp. 61–62. 116 Alcuin, Liber de virtutibus et vitiis, 6, 36, ed. by Migne, cols 617C, 638C. The bishop of York’s minimal references to the church hierarchy led, in part, to Stone’s observation of the ‘surprisingly unclerical’ nature of Alcuin’s lay mirror. ‘Laicus’, p. 10.

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As for the content of Dhuoda’s writing on the clerical body, much appears also to be in line with contemporary thought. For example, when this mother urged her son to show reverence to the clergy, she emphasized that they deserved his honour because of the duties they performed. Liturgical functions, not inherent holiness, defined the priesthood: they performed baptisms, consecrated and delivered the Eucharist, heard confession, and celebrated Mass. According to Dhuoda, they were priests because they were ‘in sorte ministerio Dei sunt electi’ (chosen for God’s ministry) — a view not uncommon, including among the clergy themselves, in the Carolingian period.117 Moreover, Dhuoda’s belief that religious and lay men had equal access to salvation reflects broader Carolingian understandings that insisted all humans were equal; they were measured not by their vocation or status, but by their merits and deeds.118 The lay mirrors of Paulinus and Alcuin similarly emphasize that all humans, independent of station or persona, possess the same access to the divine.119 We might note that scholars have considered whether these authors’ repeated insistence on lay–clerical equality suggests an attempt to convince their lay audience of a belief hardly pervasive in the ninth century: while Riché has described lay mirrors as intended to reassure recipients suffering from an inferiority complex, Andrew Romig has disagreed, offering evidence that undermines any claims that Eric of Friuli (the recipient of Paulinus’s lay mirror and a correspondent of Alcuin) was ‘driven by feelings of inferiority’.120 Accordingly, the lay mirrors, Dhuoda’s included, do not appear remarkable for these views. Also as expected from a ninth-century text, the Liber manualis praises the clergy. When outlining those to whom William owes loyalty and respect, Dhuoda devoted an entire chapter (iii. 11) to the priesthood.121 ‘Tu ergo in tota anima tua time Deum et sacerdotes illius honorifica’ (So fear God and honor his priests with all your soul), she commanded William. ‘Dilige, venerare eos’ (Love them and revere them).122 She listed their sacerdotal duties, explicated their titles, gave them credit for helping the laity reach heaven, and

  117 ‘Venerandi sunt sacerdotes, fili, pro eo quod in sorte ministerio Dei sunt electi’. Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 11, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 116; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 38. On priests as chosen by lot, see Kramer, Rethinking Authority, p. 101, discussing the Institutio Canonicorum and its citation of Jerome’s letter to Nepotian.   118 Romig, Be a Perfect Man, p. 103.   119 Romig, Be a Perfect Man, pp. 44–47, 60; Dubreucq, ‘La littérature des specula’, p. 27.   120 Riché, introduction to Dhuoda, Manuel, ed. by Riché, pp. 13–14; Romig, Be a Perfect Man, pp. 43 (quotation), 47, 56. Rather, Romig writes, ‘Eric is the superior in the exchange’ with Alcuin (p. 43).   121 Much of her ‘interpretation of the role of priests and the kinds of reverence due to them is a grand mixture of etymo­logies and allegories taken, most likely, from Isidore, Alcuin, and Augustine’. Mayeski, Dhuoda, p. 47.   122 Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 11, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 116; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 38.

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noted their worthy merits and shining dignity.123 Such statements have thus allowed scholars to take her esteem for the clergy for granted. McGuire has confidently asserted, ‘Dhuoda has a great respect for priests’, while Stuart Airlie has compared her respect for priests with Nithard’s for bishops.124 This explicit praise, however, distracts from the ways in which she simultaneously, if subtly, undermined clerical authority. First, there is the placement and internal organization of Dhuoda’s focus, in Book iii, on the priesthood. The chapter on priests comes eleventh, after exhortations to honour one’s father (chs 1–3), one’s seigniorial lord (4–7), the family of one’s lord (8), magnates (9), and greater and lesser men (10). This location prompted Carol Neel to opine that honouring priests was an ‘afterthought’ and ‘deference to [priests] is a far lesser obligation than [William’s] devotion to the patrilineage’.125 While Neel’s language might be extreme, Dhuoda’s placement of the clergy after all lay categories is notable. Although classical and medi­eval Latin could assign rhetorical weight to the end of a passage, priority here rests on the initial elements: after two books on God, Book iii focuses first on William’s father, then his lord, and so forth.126 To be clear, Dhuoda moved down the hierarchy, starting with God, then father, then lord, then lord’s family, and then magnates — with the clerical body coming after all the (lay) others who deserve respect. Moreover, while her chapter on priests is fairly lengthy, Dhuoda devoted three chapters to honouring one’s father and four to one’s lord.127 In Book viii, Dhuoda employs the opposite approach: when outlining the objects of William’s prayers, she lists ‘omnibus gradibus ecclesiarum’ (all ranks of the churches) (viii. 3) and ‘episcopis et sacerdotibus’ (bishops and priests) first (viii. 4). After them came ‘regibus et cunctis sublimibus illorum’ (kings and others of the highest rank) (viii. 5), ‘seniori tuo’ (your own lord) (viii. 6), and ‘genitori tuo’ (your father) (viii. 7).128 If clergy are given priority of placement, others receive priority of emphasis. Here Dhuoda dealt immediately and briefly with religious men, before treating laypeople at greater length.129

123 Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 11, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 116–24. 124 McGuire, ‘Liturgy and Laity’, p. 472; Airlie, ‘The World, the Text and the Carolingian’, p. 53. 125 Neel, introduction to Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. xviii. 126 For father as second to God, see Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 2, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 88; see also Chandler, ‘Barcelona bc 569’, p. 265.   127 Trenchard-Smith has also advanced an argument (in her case about Dhuoda’s criticism of Bernard) based upon the relative amount of space devoted to a particular topic (chastity) in the Liber manualis. Trenchard-Smith, ‘Furibunda silentia’, p. 15.   128 Dhuoda, Handbook, viii. 3–8, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 196–98; translation based on Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, pp. 83–84. See Dubreucq’s differing understanding in ‘La littérature des specula’, p. 32.   129 Dhuoda writes seven words of instruction about praying for all the ranks of the church, twenty-two for bishops and priests, twenty-four for the kings and their magnates, forty-four for his overlord, and sixty-six for his father. Dhuoda, Handbook, viii. 3–7, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 196–98.

       

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Note, too, that the hierarchy remains, despite the reversed order: one’s father is most important — more important than one’s lord — and praying for William’s father comes last here.130 That said, the reason for her two different orders in these books (i–iii and viii) is difficult to determine. It is possible that the contrasting organizational approaches demonstrate Dhuoda’s lack of a firm sensibility regarding the many societal orders; however, the hierarchy remains stable, suggesting, if anything, an inconsistency of compositional approach rather than of world view.131 Moreover, Dhuoda’s emphasis on the equality of lay and religious before God does not just elevate the former, but also acknowledges the imperfections of the latter. Although priests occupy a powerful intermediary position between man and God, they are not immune to transgressions. Even among these blessed ones, ‘Non enim est homo qui non peccet, ne si unius diei sit vita eius’ (there is no man who sinneth not even if his life is as short as a single day).132 In discussing sin and guilt by association, she wrote, ‘Omnis namque iniquitas atque iniustitia in suum pro certo recurrit auctorem. Sic et in regibus et in ducibus, sic etiam et in episcopis atque in ceteris praelatis qui male et nequiter viventes, semetipsos, propter iniustitias suas’ (Each iniquity or injustice returns to him who committed it. It is so among kings and dukes, and so even among bishops and other prelates who live badly or vainly and who not only perish for their own injustices).133 Thus, to err is human, and even the clergy (whom Christians might expect to be above such failings) are just as human and fallible as the laity. To put it another way, ordination and status do not change a man’s essential nature before God. Because even clergymen can sin, Dhuoda instructed her son William that only those who prove themselves honourable ought to receive his respect, time, and attention: ‘Tamen, quos meliores et sensu capaciores in verbis et factis inveneris, sequere […] ubicunque eos obviaveris, supplica et venera, […] In manus, ut praedictum est, honestorum sacerdotum, te non pigeas commendare’ (take as your models those priests whom you find to be the better among them, more clearheaded in word and deed. […] Wherever you encounter such priests, act humbly toward them and revere them […] do not hesitate to entrust yourself into the hands of honorable priests).134 Here the   130 After Dhuoda’s clear hierarchy, she shifted from William’s father (viii. 7) to various others — enemies and travellers (viii. 8), the deceased (viii. 10), the truly good (viii. 11), the not truly good (viii. 12), etc. — with no ranked order.   131 Dhuoda also used textual organization to her advantage when sharing ambivalent and even critical statements about the clergy, as discussed below. Her passage on priests (iii. 11) opens and closes with positive words, while ambiguous and even blatantly critical statements are buried in between.   132 Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 11, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 122, referencing iii Kings 8. 46 and Job 14. 5; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 42.   133 Dhuoda, Handbook, iv. 8, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 154. Based on the translation in Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, pp. 58–59.   134 Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 11, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 120–22; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook,

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mother encouraged her son to willingly place himself in the care of clergy, and yet in doing so she highlighted the variability among them. By drawing attention to ‘better’, ‘clearheaded’, and ‘honorable’ priests, she indicated the existence of ‘worse’, ‘unsound’, and ‘dishonorable’ clergymen — and implied that her son ought not to entrust himself to those men of God. Elsewhere too Dhuoda revealed more explicitly the presence of sin among contemporary clergymen, anticipating that William, like his peers, would encounter priests ‘qui meritis in sacris non aequantur abtis’ (whose personal merit is not adequate to their sacred office).135 How her son ought to handle such clergymen opens up space for varied interpretations of the mother’s advice. Dhuoda urged her son, ‘noli temere iudicare, eorumque vitam, ut faciunt multi, reprehendere in omnibus orresce’ (do not hastily judge them but shrink from condemning their way of life, as many do). She reinforced this point: ‘Non sunt a nobis reprehendendi, fili’ (we should not condemn priests) and ‘noli […] vituperare’ (do not […] revile them).136 While she pointed the finger at those who criticize less-honourable priests, her repeated instructions for her son not to judge these priests has the effect of also pointing the finger at a priestly body living morally deficient lives.137 William should not judge priests — and yet he should be aware that many clergymen open themselves up to such judgement. Dhuoda’s approach to these less-than-honourable priests can be better understood when contextualized, first within her genre and then within her broader discussion of mankind. Her insistence that William only follow honourable priests stands in contrast to Jonas of Orléans who, in his lay mirror, contended that all priests should be revered.138 While the bishop’s contention here, and his text as a whole, might be more atypical than the aristocratic mother’s, her advice about honouring laymen provides a fuller perspective for understanding her advice about clergymen. Dhuoda’s willingness to excuse William from obligations to unworthy priests contrasts with her earlier compunction that William obey his lord ‘quisquis ille est’.139 Thiébaux has translated the phrase as ‘whatever his status may be’, noting that Charles the Bald was not yet universally recognized as king.140 Meg Leja, however, has translated ‘whatever sort of lord he may be’ and argued that ‘this trans. by Neel, p. 41. Romig, Be a Perfect Man, pp. 102–03.   135 Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 11, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 120; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 41.   136 Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 11, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 120–22; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 41.   137 Mayeski has written that Dhuoda’s ‘assessment is gently expressed but filled with worldly realism’. Dhuoda, p. 91 n. 153.   138 ‘Et quid de eorum, qui digni sunt veneratione valeam dicere? […] ortor te ut eis qui digni sunt, in quantum vales, honorem impende’. Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 11, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 118–20; Dubreucq, ‘La littérature des specula’, p. 35; Stone, ‘Laicus’, pp. 11, 18.   139 Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 8, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 106.   140 Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 11, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 107 and p. 251 n. 91.

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statement seems to imply that she considered it William’s duty to obey even an incompetent or unjust ruler’.141 Leja’s argument makes sense considering Dhuoda’s possible allusions to disobedient royal sons (more below).142 Nor did the mother ever write that William should be loyal to his lord or his father only if the latter were good; rather, a man’s fidelity to his lord and a son’s loyalty to his father should be ceaseless. Dhuoda might have been crafting a deliberate juxtaposition: unlike the ‘unworthy priests’ to whom William owes no respect, his father and his lord deserve unconditional loyalty.143 Considering, too, his father Bernard’s many lapses in fidelity, about which Dhuoda and her audience both knew, the mother’s repeated, unrelenting insistence that William respect his father without cease (lest he suffer both on earth and beyond) offers a glaring example of a layman who was owed unwavering filial respect regardless of past actions.144 Other telling comparisons can be made between Dhuoda’s treatment of the laity and the clergy within her Liber manualis. Criticisms such as those directed at clergy are not aimed specifically at laymen — even if, as Neel has noted recently, Dhuoda rarely described secular leaders and patriarchs with the ‘positive attributes as she identified among deer’ and ‘offer[ed] no positive examples of secular leadership from her own family’s or people’s recent history’.145 Although Dhuoda encouraged William to model himself on aristocratic men who fight loyally and constantly for their lord, she rarely mentioned disloyal men. One of the few examples of a pointed reference to unfaithful laymen is less direct than her negative examples of priests: ‘Est enim ita agentibus sermo durus pessimusque’ (There is harsh and shameful talk about men who act in this fashion).146

  141 Leja, ‘The Making of Men, not Masters’, p. 15.   142 Neel, introduction to Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, pp. xix–xx, xxii–xxiii; Claussen, ‘God and Man’, p. 50; Chandler, ‘Barcelona bc 569’, p. 270; Le Jan, ‘Dhuoda’, p. 121; Le Jan, ‘The Multiple Identities of Dhuoda’, p. 218; Trenchard-Smith, ‘Furibunda silentia’, p. 19; Neel, ‘Mother, Father, King’, pp. 28, 33, 39.   143 Airlie has written that ‘Dhuoda […] urged her son to be unwavering in his loyalty to his lord’. ‘The World, the Text and the Carolingian’, p. 58. Chandler points out that despite Dhuoda’s disappointment in, and hurt caused by, her husband, she ‘still urged William to remain loyal to his father and lineage’. ‘Barcelona bc 569’, p. 270. But on kings needing to be just to earn fidelity, see Le Jan, ‘Dhuoda’, pp. 122–24; and Le Jan, ‘The Multiple Identities of Dhuoda’, p. 218. Perhaps more relevant — but too complicated a topic to discuss here — are the ways in which conflicts in a man’s loyalties might play out if a lord were not just dishonourable or unworthy, but actually undermined the Christian world order. For example, Le Jan has noted that Dhuoda emphasizes ‘her son’s right to be disloyal to a king, if he should attack the very foundations of Christian society by raising sons to oppose their father’. ‘The Multiple Identities of Dhuoda’, p. 218.   144 See Neel, ‘Mother, Father, King’.   145 Neel, ‘Mother, Father, King’, pp. 30, 33.   146 Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 4, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 94; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 26.

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Negative descriptions do appear in the discussion of counsel, but these claims are not explicitly directed at, or restricted to, laymen. She wrote, ‘Sunt nonnulli qui quasi consiliarii se arbitrantur esse, et non sunt, existimantes se sapientes cum non sint ita’ (there are some who consider themselves counselors and are not, for they think themselves wise even when this is untrue), that ‘sunt plerique qui dant malum’ (there are many who give bad counsel), and that ‘Fuerunt retro saecula multi digni utilesque et veraces et sunt hodie certe dissimiles in multis’ […] In hac volutione nescit homo quem eligat consiliatorem aut cui primum debeat credere’ (there were in former times many worthy, good, and truthful men, but today most people are unlike those ancients in many ways. […] As things are now, one does not know whom to choose as a counselor or whom one ought first to believe).147 While these particular passages are placed within chapters dedicated to lords and magnates at the court, we must remember that royal counsellors were not exclusively from the laity in the Frankish world: bishops, abbots, and other clergymen populated the Carolingian court and offered advice to its leaders. Moreover, Dhuoda’s many warnings about evil men with great worldly success and material riches and about those who are sinful are placed throughout the handbook in sections not specific to lay or religious men.148 Thus, we should understand these critical words as applying to lay and religious alike. Dhuoda did specifically mention men, ‘non tui similes’ (not like you [i.e. William]), who do not revere their fathers, and she related that ‘Multi sunt, ut dicunt, qui praesenti in saeculo tali volvuntur scelere’ (many in our times who, thinking their present circumstances unjust), do not honour their fathers.149 These and other statements about disloyal sons, many scholars have convincingly argued, were aimed at Louis the Pious’s sons, whose disloyalty to their father caused the civil wars that now engulfed Dhuoda’s family and the empire.150 Although Dhuoda never explicitly named the sons, her emotional laments about the civil wars, her praise of Louis the Pious, and her emphasis on filial obedience all support the interpretation that Dhuoda aimed her criticism here at Louis the Pious’s sons.

  147 Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 6, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 100; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, pp. 29–30.   148 For example, Dhuoda, Handbook, iv. 1, iv. 2, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 126–32.   149 Dhuoda, Handbook, iii. 1, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 84–86; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, pp. 21, 22.   150 Neel, introduction to Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, pp. xix–xx, xxii–xxiii; Claussen, ‘God and Man’, p. 50; Chandler, ‘Barcelona bc 569’, p. 270; Le Jan, ‘Dhuoda’, p. 121; Le Jan, ‘The Multiple Identities of Dhuoda’, p. 218. According to Trenchard-Smith, Dhuoda believed that ‘Louis the Pious was the last sovereign who could with certainty be said to have reigned by the grace of Christ’. Trenchard-Smith, ‘Furibunda silentia’, p. 19. Neel has read in the Liber manualis ‘reprobation of […] the Carolingian royal house’. Neel, ‘Mother, Father, King’, p. 39. Note also the minimal references to Charles the Bald, Louis the Pious, Charlemagne, or Bernard of Septimania. Neel, ‘Mother, Father, King’, pp. 28, 32–33.

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The most likely reference to strife among aristocrats comes in iv. 2, when she refers to William’s struggles in the world, worrying about her son and those fighting alongside him.151 She quoted from the New Testament to share her concerns: Dies mali sunt. […] Surgent pseudo et instabunt tempora periculosa. Eruntque illis in diebus homines seipsos amantes, cupidi, avari, protervi, inobedientes, saeculo magis quam Deo placentes, et quod longum est ennarrari per singula, quod iam, heu, proh dolor! nonnulli in multis adsurgentium cuneis conspiciuntur cernentes per loca si pervenerint. (The days are evil. […] For there shall arise false Christs, and there shall come dangerous times. Men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, haughty, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents […] lovers of pleasures more than of God. And this would be too long to describe in individual instances — alas — because already we see such men rising up in many ranks (cuneis) as if they see themselves on the point of victory.)152 The passage appears to refer to warriors. Even Neel’s interpretation that Dhuoda ‘means that [William] will do battle in a broader sense’ since she ‘consistently uses a martial term, militari, to refer to the struggle of the secular life’ does not keep Neel from acknowledging ‘the essential definition of her and her son’s social group as a warrior class’.153 Another focus on sinful laymen comes later, when Dhuoda advised William, Dilige obtimates magnos, in aulam Conspice primos, quoequa te humilibus. Iunge beniuolis, superbis et inprobis Cave ne flectas. (Love the great magnates; esteem Those who are first in the court, and act as the equal of those of low degree. Join yourself to those of good will, and take care Not to yield to the proud and the evil.)154 But here, again, Dhuoda did not direct her critical remarks only towards the laity. In the following verses, she shifts her focus to the clergy: ‘Veros

  151 ‘Tu tamen, fili, dum in saeculo militaris inter mundanas actionum turmas, […] Luctamen hodie surgit in multis. Timeo enim ne et in te tuisque militantibus eveniat’. Dhuoda, Handbook, iv. 2, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 130.   152 Dhuoda, Handbook, iv. 2, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 130–32, quoting Ephesians 5. 16, Matthew 24. 24, and ii Timothy 3. 1–4; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 46.   153 Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 129 n. 19, who sees the passage as simultaneously ‘reflect[ing] the Christian commonplace that Jesus’ followers are his earthly army’.   154 Dhuoda, Handbook, x. 2, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 220; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, pp. 96–97.

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sacrarum digni iuris ministros, | Praesuli dignos, honora semper’ (Always hold in honor the rightly constituted ministers of the divine rites, | Those who are worthy of the prelate’s status).155 Just as Dhuoda cautioned her son to esteem and join with ‘good’ magnates, not ‘the proud’ or ‘the evil’, so too did she insist that William honour the ‘rightly constituted ministers […] who are worthy’ of their status — implying the existence of both evil noblemen and unworthy clergy.

The Whelp in the Liber manualis Dhuoda’s ambivalence towards the priesthood emerges forcefully, if subtly, in her portrayal of dogs. Early in her handbook, Dhuoda adapts a story from the Gospels of Matthew and Mark in which a Syro-Phoenician woman sought Jesus’s help for her daughter, who was possessed by a demon. Jesus chastised her: ‘It is not good to take the bread of the children, and to cast it to the dogs’.156 He intended to silence the woman, a Gentile (‘dog’) not an Israelite (or ‘child’ of God) and thus not worthy of the Lord’s bread. She, however, answered, ‘Yea, Lord; for the whelps also eat of the crumbs that fall from the table of their masters’.157 Impressed by the woman’s humility and faith, Jesus cured her daughter. The biblical story, in its original first-century setting, cast Gentiles in the role of puppies, and Israelites as children. The children should be more deserving, but the Syro-Phoenician woman proved that dogs also merited the wisdom of God; the Gentiles, not just Jews, deserved to receive God’s word. The story also makes an argument about Jewish spiritual leaders since it occurs amid a dispute over the nature of true faith and its relationship to Pharisaic tradition.158 By the story’s end, the religious leaders had faltered, the Gentile woman had succeeded, and the children of Israel had been equated with (or even switched places with) the dogs.159 Meanwhile, the laywoman impressed Jesus with her faith and demonstrated that even she could achieve wisdom on par with the established religious authority. More than setting up an antithesis, the original scripture offered a story of inversion.160 In the verses, as interpreted in the early Middle Ages by Jerome and Bede, the woman stood as a type of the Church.161 Jesus originally elevated   155 Dhuoda, Handbook, x. 2, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 220; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 97.   156 Matthew 15. 26. English translations from The Holy Bible: Douay-Rheims Version. Cf. Mark 7. 27.   157 Matthew 15. 27; cf. Mark 7. 28.   158 Matthew 15. 1–20; cf. Mark 7. 1–23.   159 Mayeski, Dhuoda, p. 79.   160 Mayeski, Dhuoda, p. 79. Bede (unlike Jerome) blurred or removed the antithesis. Mayeski, Dhuoda, pp. 83–84. Dhuoda ‘does not thereby ignore the antithesis inherent in the original story’. Mayeski, Dhuoda, p. 90.   161 Mayeski, Dhuoda, pp. 76, 79, 81. Origen saw the woman as ‘a type, not precisely of the church,

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the Jews over the Gentiles (the children over the dogs), but the woman’s words convinced him otherwise. Within the chapter’s wider context, the incident depicted ordinary believers surpassing spiritual leaders in faith. Within the even broader context of religious history, it revealed the triumph of Church over Temple. Dhuoda repurposed this biblical account early in her Liber manualis. In the second chapter of her first book, she writes about the importance of seeking God (after an initial chapter on loving God and prior to chapters on his greatness and sublimity). William must strive for God as she herself strives for him, despite her being ‘indigna fragilisque ad umbram’ (unworthy and frail as a shadow).162 Dhuoda then underlined her humble status by placing herself in the role of the Syro-Phoenician woman, while transforming herself much more literally into a puppy. She wrote, ‘Nam solet fieri ut aliquotiens importuna catula, sub mensa domini sui, inter catulos alteros, micas cadentes valeat carpere et mandere’ (it often happens that an insistent little bitch, scrambling under the master’s table with the male puppies, is able to snatch up and eat such crumbs as fall).163 Dhuoda followed with biblical passages establishing God’s power and using animal and food imagery to reiterate that the Lord’s word provides spiritual sustenance. She wrote: Potens est enim ille qui os animalis muti loqui fecit, mihi secundum suam priscam clementiam aperire sensum et dare intellectum; et qui parat fidelibus suis in deserto mensam, dansque illis in tempore necessitatis satietatem tritici mensuram. (He who makes the mouth of a dumb beast to speak and opens my understanding, giving me insight according to his ancient mercy, is indeed a powerful Lord; he prepares for his faithful a table in the wilderness, giving them their measure of wheat to fill them.)164 Dhuoda then returned to the Gospel passage: Saltem ut sub mensam illius, infra sanctam videlicet ecclesiam, possim procul conspicere catulos, hoc est sanctis altaribus ministros, et de micis intellectu spirituali mihi et tibi, o pulcher fili Wilhelme, pulchrum et lucidum dignumque et abtum colligi valerem sermonem.

but of those who “pass over” from the irrationality and brutishness of sin to virtue through the power of faith’. Mayeski, Dhuoda, p. 73.   162 Dhuoda, Handbook, i. 2, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 60; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 8.   163 Dhuoda, Handbook, i. 2, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 60; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 8.   164 Dhuoda, Handbook, i. 2, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 60, referencing Numbers 22. 28, Luke 24. 45, Psalms 119. 125 (118. 125) and 78. 19 (77. 19), and Luke 12. 42; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 8.

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(At least under his table — that is, within his holy church — I can see from afar the puppies who are the ministers of his holy altars, and can gather words for both you and me, my son William — clear, worthy, beautiful words from among their intellectual and spiritual crumbs.)165 With this passage, Dhuoda forcefully notes the presence of women (symbolized by a single woman, herself, as the female puppy) among the otherwise male dogs deserving of the Lord’s bread.166 She, like the Syro-Phoenician woman, was among the faithful for whom the Lord prepared ‘a table in the wilderness’. Moreover, through this metaphor, Dhuoda portrayed herself as divinely endowed with the reason and language to teach her son. Just as God can make dumb animals speak, so, too, could he help this unworthy mother write eloquently on spiritual matters. She humbled herself — she is as dumb as a beast, here a young female canine — in order to invoke the Lord’s power, but also to bolster her own abilities as William’s teacher. Notably, Dhuoda placed this biblical story within an ecclesiastical setting: the master’s table explicitly became the Lord’s holy Church; the puppies, the ministers to the altar; the alimentary language of bread, wheat, and God’s preparation of a table, the Eucharistic ritual. Indeed, the passage, as Mayeski has noted, is one bursting with ‘Eucharistic flavor’,167 and this liturgical valence offers important insight into her crumb imagery. Dhuoda explained how from the clergy’s crumbs she ‘pulchrum et lucidum dignumque et abtum colligi valerem sermonem’ (can gather words that are beautiful and luminous and worthy).168 While one might read this, on face value, as the mother and son receiving only second-hand access to the Lord’s wisdom via the clergy’s crumbs, the crumbs’ framing as Eucharistic bread transforms our understanding of that wisdom since the Eucharist was partitive: any piece of the transubstantiated Host contained the entire body and blood of Christ. No matter how small the crumb that a whelp swallowed, she received the whole grace of God.169 In placing herself alongside the Church’s ministers, dogs the same as she, Dhuoda levelled the playing field. She, like the clergy, was part of the Lord’s faithful. The only distinction between herself and the clergy was the latter’s closeness to the altar. Beyond that favourable position, they were no more deserving of God’s wisdom than any other hound.170 Dhuoda’s insistence on her ability to gather spiritual wisdom has led scholars to appraise her words here as a strong statement of spiritual authority.   165 Dhuoda, Handbook, i. 2, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 60; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 8.   166 Neel, examining Dhuoda’s discussion of the harts crossing the river, noted how Dhuoda’s view of ‘the community of the faithful’ included ‘both sexes and all ages’. Neel, ‘Mother, Father, King’, p. 38. Cf. Introduction in this volume, notes 10, 24.   167 Mayeski, Dhuoda, p. 66.   168 Dhuoda, Handbook, i. 2, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 60.   169 Ganz, ‘Theo­logy and the Organisation of Thought’, pp. 777–80.   170 Mayeski, Dhuoda, pp. 90–91.

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Mayeski has called the passage ‘a culminating, and even bold, statement of self-justification’.171 Claussen, recognizing the ecclesiastical implications, has declared that she is ‘positioning herself with the clergy in their duty to pass on godly words’, that she ‘give[s] her work a sort of ecclesiastical standing’, and ‘endows herself with both a quasi-scriptural and quasi-sacerdotal authority’.172 Claussen’s argument rests in part on the fact that Dhuoda described herself receiving holy crumbs not from priests, but directly from God without clerical intervention. One could then interpret Dhuoda as assuming a ministerial role, undermining priestly authority, and criticizing the clergy by claiming that although they stand close enough to God to seize scraps from his table, they overlook some of his wisdom. Accordingly, even if the priests received the Lord’s full grace no matter how many crumbs they overlooked (precisely because the Eucharist was partitive), their neglect of some pieces of bread might suggest a lack of conscientiousness in their ministerial duties.173 Following this line of thought, we might wonder if Dhuoda portrayed herself as the Syro-Phoenician woman to comment on her position vis-à-vis the clergy through the biblical story’s use of antithesis and inversion. Children and dogs, Israelites and Gentiles, Jewish religious leaders and the ordinary faithful could become, in Dhuoda’s handbook, the contrast between clergy and herself as a symbol for the laity. Such interpretations, while suggestive, are difficult to support with the available evidence. What we can more confidently interpret is Dhuoda’s somewhat surprising decision to portray the clergy as dogs. Transforming herself into a whelp was an expected choice. Not only had the Syro-Phoenician woman, also a mother concerned for her child, been compared to a dog (by both Jesus and herself), but also canine comparisons were expressions of humility, as Jerome noted in his exegesis of the biblical passage.174 Dhuoda, who emphasized her unworthiness, weakness, and frailty throughout the handbook, here portrayed herself as a whelp for the same reason. But why transform the clergy into dogs? The original biblical metaphor provides an obvious and much more flattering option for describing the priests — as children.175 Moreover, canines were not a neutral choice. Earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus instructed his followers, ‘Give not that which is holy to dogs’, setting the stage for his later declaration to the Syro-Phoenician woman that they ought not to cast bread to the dogs.176 Late antique Christian

  171 Mayeski, Dhuoda, p. 87.   172 Claussen, ‘Fathers of Power and Mothers of Authority’, p. 800.   173 See also Kramer’s discussion of how the Pro­logus to the Institutio Canonicorum ‘begins by explaining the deplorable state of the Church by referring to the ignorance and/or laziness of neglectful praepositi — a clear sign that something was amiss at the meeting point between the ecclesia and the rest of the world’. Rethinking Authority, p. 112.   174 Mayeski, Dhuoda, p. 79.   175 Dhuoda ‘has completely identified the children with the dogs’. Mayeski, Dhuoda, p. 90.   176 Matthew 7. 6.

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writers, in their exegesis of the passage, thus highlighted the lowly status of dogs. They were, in Jerome’s words, animals one should beware of, animals representative of idolatrous barbarians.177 Canines also had an unfavourable connotation in Dhuoda’s own time and were distanced from the religious orders. At best, they were associated with secular life, and clergy were banned from owning them.178 One Carolingian capitulary regards dogs with derision, prohibiting them from the holy houses of God, lest worshippers be mangled by their bites.179 Alcuin’s lay mirror includes the biblical quotation ‘Canis revertitur ad vomitum suum’ (The dog returns to its vomit).180 We might note, too, the penitential practice of harmiscara in which the criminal or sinner endured the public humiliation of carrying a saddle on his or her back — a saddle replaced, in tenth-century German contexts, by a dog.181 Furthermore, the biblical story itself rested upon the superiority of children (the Jewish people) over dogs (Gentiles) whose roles, as Bede explained, were switched as a result of the Syro-Phoenician woman’s deep humility and faith. In Bede’s understanding of the passage, both he himself and contemporary Christians as a whole were dogs.182 It is an interpretation that Dhuoda, directly or not, adopts: all the faithful are canines. This choice allowed her to humble the clergy, placing them on equal footing with laypeople, male and female. So while Dhuoda’s canine metaphor would have been familiar to aristocratic men like William, as Valerie Garver has noted,183 this mother likely chose it for its ability to humble all people. In her world view, both laity and clergy were dogs, lowly beasts before the greatness of God. All humans, whether an aristocratic mother or a bishop, a young nobleman or a priest, were equally part of the faithful for whom the Lord prepares his table and who eat of the crumbs of spiritual wisdom.184

  177 Mayeski, Dhuoda, p. 76, and p. 79, discussing how Jerome’s commentary employs Philippians 3. 2: ‘videte canes’.   178 Capitularia, no. 113. 6, 7, ed. by Boretius, p. 231; Concilium Cabillonense, 9, ed. by Werminghoff, p. 276; Haito von Basel, 11, ed. by Brommer, p. 213; Capitula Neustrica tertia, 6, ed. by Pokorny, p. 66. On ‘prohibition[s] against clerical hunting’, see Goldberg, ‘Louis the Pious and the Hunt’, pp. 617–18, 636. Also, Lutterbach, ‘Die für Kleriker bestimmten Verbote’.   179 ‘Ne forte qui in ea miseriarum suarum levamen habere confidunt, infertorum canum morsibus lanientur. Custodienda igitur episcopalis habitatio ymnis non latrantibus, operibus bonis non morsibus venenosis. Hubi igitur Dei est assiduitas cantalene, monstrum est et dedecoris nota canes ibi vel accipitres habitare’. Capitularia, no. 113. 6, ed. by Boretius, p. 231.   180 Alcuin, Liber de virtutibus et vitiis, 13, ed. by Migne, col. 622C, quoting ii Peter 2. 22.   181 On harmiscara in the Carolingian period, see de Jong, ‘Power and Humility in Carolingian Society’, pp. 46–47. On the high medi­eval incarnation of harmiscara, including use of dogs, see Hemming, ‘Sellam Gestare’, pp. 49–53, 58–59, 62.   182 Mayeski, Dhuoda, p. 82.   183 Garver, Women and Aristocratic Culture, pp. 203–04, has described care of dogs as a masculine activity.   184 Dhuoda ‘advocates […] an ideo­logy of essential dignity and equality among all people under God’, not only here, but in another animal metaphor, that of the harts crossing a river. Romig, Be a Perfect Man, p. 103.

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Dhuoda and the Troubled Times in her World Dhuoda, in her Liber manualis, argued for the equality of the laity with the clergy, echoing other lay mirrors as well as broader Carolingian sentiments. It is her ambivalence towards — even, at times, criticism of — the priestly orders that stands in contrast to contemporary texts and attitudes, and it is those perspectives towards the ecclesiastical orders that need to be understood. Why did this deeply Christian mother demonstrate such ambivalence for the Church hierarchy? Although one of the few contemporary people that Dhuoda names in her handbook is the bishop who removed her younger son from her care,185 that painful memory does not appear to have affected her view of all bishops. Indeed, her criticism seems more often directed at priests, rather than episcopal leadership. Instead, her disapproval seems to have arisen from a clergy increasingly removed from lay spiritual matters, invested in political ones, and — despite, perhaps, an expectation of higher moral standards among the clergy — equally responsible for the ills plaguing the Carolingian empire. Dhuoda’s words emphasize that remove, at least within an ecclesiastical setting: her passage on the whelp describes how Dhuoda ‘can see from afar the puppies who are the ministers’. McGuire, who otherwise emphasizes Dhuoda’s respect for clergy, has noted the distance in her words: the phrase ‘from afar [procul] certainly implies a non-participation of the laity, a distancing from the rite’. She continues, ‘this accents the image of the ministers as puppies around the table of the Lord gathering the “crumbs” of God’s words, seemingly unintelligible to those who are not ministers’.186 That growing divide and the more rigidly defined lay–religious boundaries had been one effect of the Carolingian reform movement.187 Dhuoda’s placement of the clerical dogs at a distance from the lay whelp in the church suggest that she had personally experienced the growing distance between clergy and laity. In addition to growing ever more distant from the laity, the clergy might have seemed, in Dhuoda’s mind, to have become puffed up in their sense of moral superiority, while the laity were simultaneously, as Stone has suggested, becoming ‘unenthusiastic about […] repeated demands that [the laity] were to be subordinate to the clergy’.188 In the decade prior to Dhuoda composing her handbook, ‘claims for the supervisory role of priests and bishops’, as Stone continued, ‘may have become particularly problematic’.189 Dhuoda may have reeled at the pronouncements of priests and bishops, such as that in a Sexagesima Sunday homily discussed by Rosamond McKitterick, that the lay

         

185 186 187 188 189

‘Cum Elefanto, praedictae civitatis episcopo’. Dhuoda, Handbook, preface, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 50. McGuire, ‘Liturgy and Laity’, p. 472. Stone, ‘Laicus’, pp. 10–11. Stone, ‘Laicus’, p. 18. Stone, ‘Laicus’, p. 18.

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audience, inferior to preaching clergy, had to quietly listen to the words of priests.190 This mother, not only by composing the handbook to her son but also in her confident claims of authority, certainly challenged any contention that she ought only hear and not teach the Word.191 Nor was it only laypeople like Dhuoda who worried about clerical arrogance. In the decades prior to Dhuoda’s writing, ecclesiastical councils revealed a concern, as Rutger Kramer has demonstrated, with clergy ‘letting their status go to their heads’, with clerical ‘morality and misplaced feelings of superiority’, and how as clergy ‘ascended the hierarchy, the combination of power and humility became more and more of an issue’.192 Such troubling trends would have appeared only more problematic in the political circumstances of the 830s and early 840s. By the time Dhuoda began to compose her handbook, the Frankish world had reached a nadir. From her first folios Dhuoda described ‘discors regnum et patria’ (discord in the kingdom and the fatherland) and ‘Volvente et crescente calamitate huius saeculi miseria’ (the growing and worsening wretchedness of this world).193 Her ‘human world’, as Neel has detailed, had ‘fallen below the standard to which nature and scripture summon[ed] her’.194 Within this context and in such dire times, it is no wonder that Dhuoda sought to humble and even criticize a clerical body that could have — or should have, she might have thought — been more successful in their ministry and helped prevent the ills currently engulfing her world and her family. Instead of helping lift the empire out of the political drama, the ecclesiastical hierarchy had participated in it. Bishops, for example, had in 833 forced public penance upon an emperor whom Dhuoda would, in her handbook, describe as ruling with Christ’s favour.195 Thus this faithful Christian, reflecting on the political turmoil of the last decade, may have begun to question the clerical body. Dhuoda was not, of course, alone in her concerns about the troubles plaguing the Carolingian world: her contemporaries Nithard, Florus of Lyon, Angelbert, and Lupus of Ferrières all bemoaned the war and bloodshed pitting brother against brother.196 As Romig has noted, these four mid-ninth-century authors

  190 McKitterick, The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms, p. 109.   191 Mayeski, Dhuoda, pp. 91–92 n. 154.   192 Kramer, Rethinking Authority, pp. 85, 103. But note, of course, that through these councils ‘the clergy were in many ways correcting themselves — just the way the emperor expected it’. Kramer, Rethinking Authority, p. 76. On the formulation, beginning in the 820s, of a Carolingian model of episcopal authority, see also Patzold, Episcopus.   193 Dhuoda, Handbook, epigram, preface, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 46, 48; translation based on Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, pp. 4, 6.   194 Neel, ‘Mother, Father, King’, p. 30.   195 Dhuoda, Handbook, preface, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 48; Trenchard-Smith, ‘Furibunda silentia’, p. 19.   196 Nithard, Histoire, trans. and ed. by Lauer; Florus of Lyon, Carmen 28, ed. by Dümmler; Angelbert, ‘The Battle of Fontenoy’, ed. by Godman; sermon of Lupus of Ferrières, translated and quoted by Ganz, ‘The Debate on Predestination’, p. 284.

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‘placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of the aristocracy as a whole’.197 But while Dhuoda’s text shares many similarities with these contemporaries’ writings,198 as scholars have discussed, we would be mistaken to assume that she shared their exact frustration with the lay nobility — or that she directed her frustration at only the laity. Rather, as we have seen, Dhuoda’s words reveal a different and broader focus, one that included the religious orders as culpable. Dhuoda, to be clear, did not fully excuse the laity from culpability. Her appeals for fatherly loyalty, as discussed above, seem to implicate the traitorous sons of Louis the Pious, while her warnings to William refer to false Christs, in a context laden with militaristic language, and to bad counsellors, which would have included lay noblemen. Yet, her handbook does not question ‘the moral reform of the lay elite’ as contemporary reformers did,199 nor does it indulge in the cynicism towards the laity that, for example, Nithard’s Histories does. Stuart Airlie, in fact, has juxtaposed Nithard’s pessimistic view of the nobility and Dhuoda’s ideal prescription of noble virtue to note how the former seems to mock the latter, though without exploring the Liber manualis’s more positive view of the laity.200 Dhuoda, despite writing to her noble son in the midst of civil wars that engulfed the court at which he lived, never mentioned military endeavours or other lay-exclusive activities as the source of contemporary miseries.201 Dhuoda did emphasize chastity, possibly, as Margaret Trenchard-Smith has argued, as ‘a countermodel to [William’s] father’.202 Yet, as Stone has noted in her comparison between Dhuoda’s courtly advice and that of fellow lay-mirror author Alcuin, the former ‘felt no particular need to warn William about such dangers’ as ‘crowned doves’ at court ‘even though the only layman ever specifically accused of sexual crimes at court

  197 Romig, Be a Perfect Man, p. 105.   198 On Nithard’s critique of secular institutions, political society, and particular noblemen, see Airlie, ‘The World, the Text and the Carolingian’, pp. 51, 53–54, 61, 67–71, 74–76; Leja, ‘The Making of Men, not Masters’, pp. 8–9, 36; de Jong, The Penitential State, pp. 81, 96–102; Booker, Past Convictions, pp. 40–42, 59, 65, 78, 253, and 295 nn. 151 and 153. For comparison of Dhuoda to Nithard, see Airlie, ‘The World, the Text and the Carolingian’, pp. 53, 57; Leja, ‘The Making of Men, not Masters’, pp. 4, 11, 12, 14, 16–17, 22, 26–27, 36, 37, 38; Stone, Morality and Masculinity, pp. 118, 133. On Nithard’s (and, at times, Dhuoda’s) approach to the ninthcentury turmoil, see de Jong, The Penitential State, pp. 8, 96–102; Booker, Past Convictions, pp. 5–6, 41–42; Nelson, ‘Dhuoda’, p. 108.   199 Quotation from Stone, ‘Laicus’, p. 16.   200 Airlie, ‘The World, the Text and the Carolingian’, pp. 68–69; Stone, Morality and Masculinity, p. 65. Romig has described Nithard’s and other writings as ‘patent reminders of the aristocracy’s catastrophic failure to live up to the ideal of perfection that Dhuoda’s writing espoused’. Be a Perfect Man, p. 99.   201 Dhuoda, unlike Nithard and Angelbert, was not on the front lines of battle. On the lack of military discussion, see Leja, ‘The Making of Men, not Masters’, p. 18, and Nelson, ‘Dhuoda on Dreams’, p. 48. But see Dubreucq, ‘La littérature des specula’, p. 30. For Dhuoda on warfare, see Stone, Morality and Masculinity, p. 84.   202 Trenchard-Smith, ‘Furibunda silentia’, pp. 13 (quotation) and 23.

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was her husband Bernard’.203 Despite the ongoing wars that enveloped the Frankish world, the court, for Dhuoda, was not a place of danger, but another place to practice one’s Christian faith and to work to attain salvation. The laity were no more dangerous nor more culpable for the current ills than their clerical counterparts. Thus, unlike her contemporaries, Dhuoda cast a wider net of blame for the current state of the empire: the whole of the modern world, lay and religious. The ecclesiastical hierarchy, as Dhuoda subtly suggested in her handbook, were not above blame in these troubling times. They, as humans, were sinners before a perfect God; they, too, were dogs (and not children) before the Lord. In her Liber manualis, this frail and unworthy mother did more than place the religious on equal footing with the laity in a vision of the ideal Christian society in which priests had no particular monopoly on spiritual worth and in which all Christians, clerical and lay alike, had equal access to spiritual wisdom and salvation. Dhuoda also turned an ambivalent and at times critical eye towards the ecclesiastical hierarchy in a way that set her apart from contemporary authors.

‘Daring to Write to You’ To adopt such a penetrating gaze, especially as a ninth-century Frankish woman, proved a bold undertaking. Dhuoda was not unaware of this. Even through the very act of composition, she asserted an authority surpassing the average mother’s, and so she shared her hopes that no one would condemn her for daring to speak to her son about God in her handbook.204 Moreover, the content of her work further indicates the authority she embraced and brave sentiments she expressed, and scholars have long recognized the complexity of the Liber manualis, its capacity for multiple levels of readings, and even its author’s daring.205 For example, Dronke has claimed, ‘To a conventional Christian of her day, the orientation of much that she says might have seemed disturbing, if not subversive’.206 Garver has perceptively read Dhuoda’s mirror analogy as an indictment of male desire: when Dhuoda wrote that women were sometimes ‘in speculis mulierum demonstratio apparere soleat vultu, […]

  203 Stone, Morality and Masculinity, p. 139. When Alcuin wrote to Fredegisus, he warned him about the ‘crowned doves’ (likely the princesses) at the Aachen court.   204 ‘Ne me dampnent vel reprehendant pro eo quod sim temera in tali subintrari agonizatrio acumine laboris, ut tibi aliquid de Deo dirigi audeam sermonem’. Dhuoda, Handbook, i. 1, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 58.   205 Notably, Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages. Stofferahn provides an overview of scholars’ many and varied readings in his ‘The Many Faces in Dhuoda’s Mirror’.   206 Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages, pp. 38–39. See, too, Leja, ‘The Making of Men, not Masters’, p. 19.

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suis in saeculo satagunt placere maritis’ (absorbed in examining their faces in mirrors […] for the worldly intention of pleasing their husbands), she ‘turned the idea of female vanity on its head’ and ‘laid the blame for female vanity at the doorsteps of men’.207 Dhuoda also demonstrated daring in her political commentary, as discussed earlier. Neel has argued that Dhuoda implicitly criticized Carolingian leaders and current ties of obligation in her commentary on the civil wars. When this mother outlined her son’s responsibilities as being first to God, then to his father, and then to his lord, she suggested, as Neel has written, ‘if [these] clear lines of obligation […] are maintained, there can be no conflict such as the war between Lothar, Louis the German, and Charles the Bald’. Neel then continued: in ‘minimiz[ing] kingly and priestly power, Dhuoda is articulating a standard for social and moral behavior fundamentally different from that typically offered in clerical handbooks for lay performance or from that developed in court ideo­logy since at least Charlemagne’s time’.208 Indeed, scholars have shown how Dhuoda’s view of the world stretched beyond her thoughts about kings, civil wars, and political life. Olsen has revealed Dhuoda’s unique vision of the apostolic community, one rather different from that of her contemporaries and one that emphasized her maternal authority.209 Neel’s recent article, building on Olsen’s work, details how Dhuoda, through the Liber manualis, offered ‘an alternative to social realities’ and a vision of the ‘church in the world’ that challenges ‘the limits between secular and monastic or clerical status, along with gender difference’.210 Even more ink has been spilled over this aristocratic wife’s commentary on her husband. In his argument against the text’s ‘overwhelming patrocentricity’, Claussen has delved deeply (and rather liberally, we need acknowledge) into Dhuoda’s understanding of her own authority.211 He has insisted that Dhuoda quietly undermined her husband’s authority, even while explicitly stressing her son’s obligations to him, and elevated herself as bio­logical and spiritual mother.212 Some of Claussen’s claims have rightly been questioned,213 with Dubreucq cautioning against assertions of Dhuoda’s ‘thoroughgoing attack on the patriarchy’.214 Nevertheless, scholars cannot ignore the tension between wife and husband. Even while Chandler has asserted that Dhuoda ‘defends her

  207 Dhuoda, Handbook, pro­logue, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 48; translation from Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. 5, discussed by Garver, Women and Aristocratic Culture, p. 36.   208 Neel, introduction to Dhuoda, Handbook, trans. by Neel, p. xix. Also, Leja, ‘The Making of Men, not Masters’, p. 15; Stone, Morality and Masculinity, p. 212.   209 Olsen, ‘One Heart and One Soul’.   210 Neel, ‘Mother, Father, King’, p. 31.   211 Claussen, ‘God and Man’, p. 48.   212 Claussen, ‘Fathers of Power and Mothers of Authority’.   213 Leja, ‘The Making of Men, not Masters’, pp. 32–33.   214 Dubreucq, ‘La littérature des specula’, p. 32, quoting and refuting Claussen, ‘Fathers of Power and Mothers of Authority’, pp. 802–03, 805.

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husband’ in the Liber manualis — through her encouragement that William fulfil his courtly duties as intended by his father, her ‘defensive’ insistence that no family member had ever been disloyal, and her requests that her son pray for his father — Chandler also has admitted that Dhuoda ‘insinuat[es] that Bernard himself behaved impiously’ and ‘was in all likelihood severely disappointed in Bernard’s actions and hurt by rumours of his adultery with the empress’.215 Trenchard-Smith and Neel have argued more strongly and rather convincingly for Dhuoda’s criticism of Bernard. The former, in an unpublished paper, contends that Dhuoda presented herself as a wronged wife against whom her husband committed many injustices, such as forcing her to remain in Uzès to manage the family estate and fall into debt while trying to prevent her husband from leaving her.216 Dhuoda, according to Trenchard-Smith, ‘promot[ed] attributes at odds with Bernard’s career and character’ and emphasized chastity and fidelity within marriage to present a counter-model for William (counter, of course, to Bernard who was, by implication, not an ideal model).217 The wife may have, at times, praised her husband, but only ‘as a strategy and rhetorical tool’.218 Meanwhile, Dhuoda’s encouragement of prayer notably included an admission, as Trenchard-Smith has highlighted, that her husband allowed his worldly involvement to keep him from such devotional obligations.219 More recently, Neel has described the Liber manualis as written ‘in direct criticism of Bernard’s failures as a Christian nobleman’.220 She has rightly pointed out that the father’s ‘authority over his son […] depends solely on Bernard’s literal bio­logical and socially acknowledged fatherly status, not on his responsiveness to a notional fatherly role’.221 He is not presented ‘as a model of fatherly leadership’.222 In fact, Bernard receives minimal attention: Dhuoda wrote very few specific details about him, with most references to   215 Chandler, ‘Barcelona bc 569’, p. 270. Interestingly, Régine Le Jan, despite detecting ‘a certain ambivalence’ in their relationship, has argued that Dhuoda’s text offered ‘a challenging political dialectic’ written on Bernard’s behalf. ‘The Multiple Identities of Dhuoda’, pp. 216, 219. Le Jan appears to base the former claim on Dhuoda’s insistence on William’s loyalty to his father; on Bernard as the source of their son’s worldly position (honores and property); her emphasis on Bernard’s family and hereditary line (and William’s need to commemorate them in prayer); and, above all, the primacy of a man’s loyalty to his father, even above fidelity to his lord. ‘The Multiple Identities of Dhuoda’, pp. 216–19.   216 Trenchard-Smith, ‘Furibunda silentia’, p. 23, referencing Dhuoda, Handbook, preface, x. 4, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 50, 226.   217 Trenchard-Smith, ‘Furibunda silentia’, pp. 14 (quotation), 15, 23.   218 Trenchard-Smith, ‘Furibunda silentia’, p. 14.   219 Trenchard-Smith, ‘Furibunda silentia’, p. 16, referencing Dhuoda, Handbook, viii. 14, ed. by Thiébaux, p. 204: ‘Ex occupationibus enim multis illi non licet ad tempus’. Discussed by others, including Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages, pp. 50–51.   220 Neel, ‘Mother, Father, King’, p. 27.   221 Neel, ‘Mother, Father, King’, p. 28.   222 Neel, ‘Mother, Father, King’, p. 32.

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the father being either formulaic, related to prayer instructions, or revealing of his familial ties and history in relation to Dhuoda and William. He never receives the attention or praise that, for example, William’s godfather, Tedderic, or the biblical patriarch Joseph receive.223 Moreover, the biblical Joseph’s poor treatment by his male relations complicates the handbook’s notions of paternal authority, while Dhuoda’s emphasis on Joseph’s chastity despite the advances of Potiphar’s spouse ‘places Bernard squarely in the reprobation of his wife as the inverse of the exemplarity of Joseph’.224 Scholars have also pointed to Dhuoda’s understanding of her own authority vis-à-vis, not just her husband, but the great Christian writers. Karen Cherewatuk has highlighted Dhuoda’s ‘assertion that her maternal status is greater than that of learned doctors’, a claim ‘born entirely of personal conviction’ from her motherly role.225 Claussen has even interpreted Dhuoda’s declaration that her Liber manualis offered William all he needed to know as possibly elevating her writing to biblical status.226 These many perceptive readings of Dhuoda’s Liber manualis have thus allowed us to see the bold, yet subtly articulated, perspectives that this Frankish mother wove into her handbook, demonstrating the value of performing analyses that go beyond the face-value readings of her deeply complex text. Such readings are necessary to our full understanding of Dhuoda’s view of the ecclesia. Accordingly, the focus here on Dhuoda’s portrayal of the Church, its structures, its rituals, and its clerical body reveals that it was not only the reform’s educational and spiritual teachings that left an imprint on Dhuoda, but also the divisions and distance it had sown between clergy and lay, resulting in an ambivalent and at times critical view of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Unfortunately, we have few contemporary lay-authored texts with which to compare the Liber manualis and its attitude towards the clergy. But whether Dhuoda was a lone voice of clerical ambivalence or one among a pack, her critical views on the clergy should no longer be ignored just because she was an unworthy little whelp seizing upon overlooked crumbs of the crumbs.

  223 Neel describes Bernard as William’s ‘literally absent and literarily voiceless father’. Neel, ‘Mother, Father, King’, p. 31. When comparing Dhuoda’s treatment of Tedderic to that of Bernard, it is interesting to note how godparents became coparents to the spiritual child’s bio­logical parents (Lynch, Godparents and Kinship, p. 288), thus making Tedderic, perhaps, a better coparent for Dhuoda than Bernard might have been.   224 Neel, ‘Mother, Father, King’, p. 35.   225 Cherewatuk, ‘Speculum Matris’, p. 54.   226 Dhuoda, Handbook, pro­logue, ed. by Thiébaux, pp. 48; Claussen, ‘Fathers of Power and Mothers of Authority’, p. 798. But see the valid criticisms of Claussen’s argument, as noted above. For a more plausible interpretation of Dhuoda’s self-understanding as ‘reader and teacher of authoritative texts’, see Neel, ‘Mother, Father, King’, p. 36.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Alcuin, Liber de virtutibus et vitiis, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, Patro­logiae cursus completus: series latina, 101 (Paris: Garnier, 1863), cols 613B–638D Angelbert, ‘The Battle of Fontenoy’, in Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, ed. by Peter Godman (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), pp. 262–65 Annales de Saint-Bertin, ed. by Félix Grat, Jeanne Vielliard, and Suzanne Clémencet (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1964) Astronomer, Vita Hludowici imperatoris, ed. by Ernst Tremp, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum, 64 (Hanover: Hahn, 1995), pp. 279–555 Benedict of Nursia, The Rule of Saint Benedict, ed. and trans. by Bruce L. Venarde, Dumbarton Oaks Medi­eval Library, 6 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011) Capitula Neustrica tertia, ed. by Rudolf Pokorny, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Capitula Episcoporum, 3 (Hanover: Hahn, 1995), pp. 62–67 Capitularia regum Francorum, vol. i, ed. by Alfred Boretius, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Legum sectio, 2.1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1883) Concilium Cabillonense, ed. by Albert Werminghoff, in Concilia aevi Karolini, vol. i, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Concilia, 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1906), pp. 273–85 Dhuoda, Handbook for her Warrior Son, ‘Liber Manualis’, ed. and trans. by Marcelle Thiébaux (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) —— , Handbook for William: A Carolingian Woman’s Counsel for Her Son, trans. by Carol Neel (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991) —— , Manuel pour mon fils, ed. by Pierre Riché, trans. by Bernard de Vregille and Claude Mondésert, S.J., 2nd edn, Sources Chrétiennes, 225 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2013) Florus of Lyon, Carmen 28, ed. by Ernst Dümmler, in Poetae Latini aevi Carolini, vol. ii, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Poetae Latini medii aevi, 2 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1884), pp. 559–64 Haito von Basel, ed. by Peter Brommer, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Capitula Episcoporum, 1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1984), pp. 203–19 The Holy Bible: Douay-Rheims Version, rev. by Bishop Richard Challoner (Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, 2000) Jonas of Orléans, De institutione laicali, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, Patro­logiae cursus completus: series latina, 106 (Paris: Garnier, 1864), cols 121C–280B Nithard, Histoire des fils de Louis le Pieux, trans. and ed. by Philippe Lauer, rev. by Sophie Glansdorff, Les classiques de l’histoire au Moyen Âge, 51 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2012) Thegan, Gesta Hludowici imperatoris, ed. by Ernst Tremp, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum, 64 (Hanover: Hahn, 1995), pp. 167–259

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Secondary Works Airlie, Stuart, ‘The World, the Text and the Carolingian: Royal, Aristocratic and Masculine Identities in Nithard’s Histories’, in Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World, ed. by Patrick Wormald and Janet L. Nelson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 51–76 Bessmertny, Yuri, ‘Le monde vu par une femme noble au ixe siècle: La perception du monde dans l’aristocratie carolingienne’, Le Moyen Âge, 93 (1987), 161–84 Booker, Courtney M., Past Convictions: The Penance of Louis the Pious and the Decline of the Carolingians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009) Bouchard, Constance B., ‘Family Structure and Family Consciousness among the Aristocracy in the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries’, Francia, 14 (1986), 639–58 Bullough, Donald, ‘The Carolingian Liturgical Experience’, in Continuity and Change in Christian Worship: Papers Read at the 1997 Summer Meeting and the 1998 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. by Robert N. Swanson, Studies in Church History, 35 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1999), pp. 29–64 Chandler, Cullen J., ‘Barcelona bc 569 and a Carolingian Programme on the Virtues’, Early Medi­eval Europe, 18 (2010), 265–91 Cherewatuk, Karen, ‘Speculum Matris: Duoda’s Manual’, Florilegium, 10 (1988–1991), 49–64 Claussen, Martin A., ‘Fathers of Power and Mothers of Authority: Dhuoda and the Liber manualis’, French Historical Studies, 19 (1996), 785–809 —— , ‘God and Man in Dhuoda’s Liber Manualis’, in Women in the Church: Papers Read at the 1989 Summer Meeting and the 1990 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. by W. J. Sheils and Diana Wood (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), pp. 43–52 Dronke, Peter, Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua († 203) to Marguerite Porete († 1310) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) Dubreucq, Alain, ‘La littérature des specula: Délimitation du genre, contenu, destinataires et réception’, in Guerriers et moines: Conversion et sainteté aristocratiques dans l’Occident médiéval (ixe–xiie siècle), ed. by Michel Lauwers, CNRS Collection d’études médiévales, 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), pp. 17–39 Ganz, David, ‘The Debate on Predestination’, in Charles the Bald: Court and Kingdom, ed. by Margaret T. Gibson and Janet L. Nelson, 2nd edn (Aldershot: Variorum, 1990), pp. 283–302 —— , ‘Theo­logy and the Organisation of Thought’, in The New Cambridge Medi­ eval History, ii: c. 700–c. 900, ed. by Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 758–85 Garver, Valerie L., Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009) Geary, Patrick J., Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)

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Goldberg, Eric J., ‘Louis the Pious and the Hunt’, Speculum, 88 (2013), 613–43 Helvétius, Anne-Marie, and Michel Kaplan, ‘Asceticism and its Institutions’, in The Cambridge History of Christianity, iii: Early Medi­eval Christianities, c. 600–c. 1100, ed. by Thomas F. X. Noble and Julia M. H. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 275–98 Hemming, Jessica, ‘Sellam Gestare: Saddle-Bearing Punishments and the Case of Rhiannon’, Viator, 28 (1997), 45–64 Iogna-Prat, Dominique, La Maison Dieu: Une histoire monumentale de l’Église au Moyen Âge (v. 800–v. 1200) (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2006) Janssens, Bernadette, ‘L’étude de la langue et les citations bibliques dans le Liber Manualis de Dhuoda: Un sondage’, in Aevum inter utrumque: Mélanges offerts à Gabriel Sanders, professeur émérite à l’Université de Gand, ed. by Marc Van Uytfanghe and Roland Demeulenaere, Instrumenta Patristica, 23 (Steenbrugge: Abbatia S. Petri, 1991), pp. 259–75 Jong, Mayke de, ‘Ecclesia and the Early Medi­eval Polity’, in Staat im frühen Mittelalter, ed. by Stuart Airlie, Walter Pohl, and Helmut Reimitz, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 11 (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2006), pp. 113–32 —— , The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) —— , ‘Power and Humility in Carolingian Society: The Public Penance of Louis the Pious’, Early Medi­eval Europe, 1 (1992), 29–52 —— , ‘The State of the Church: Ecclesia and Early Medi­eval State Formation’, in Der frühmittelalterliche Staat–europäische Perspecktiven, ed. by Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 16 (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2009), pp. 241–54 —— , ‘The Two Republics: Ecclesia and the Public Domain in the Carolingian World’, in Italy and Early Medi­eval Europe: Papers for Chris Wickham, ed. by Ross Balzaretti, Julia Barrow, and Patricia Skinner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 486–500 Kosto, Adam J., ‘Hostages in the Carolingian World (714–840)’, Early Medi­eval Europe, 11 (2002), 123–47 Kramer, Rutger, Rethinking Authority in the Carolingian Empire: Ideals and Expectations during the Reign of Louis the Pious (813–828) (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019) Le Jan, Régine, ‘Dhuoda ou l’opportunité du discours féminin’, in Agire da donna: Modelli e pratiche di rappresentazione (secoli vi–x), Atti del convegno (Padova, 18–19 febbraio 2005), ed. by Cristina La Rocca, Collection Haut Moyen Âge, 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 109–28 —— , ‘The Multiple Identities of Dhuoda’, in Ego Trouble: Authors and their Identities in the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Richard Corradini and others, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 15 (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), pp. 211–19 Leja, Meg, ‘The Making of Men, not Masters: Right Order and Lay Masculinity according to Dhuoda and Nithard’, Comitatus, 39 (2008), 1–40

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Lutterbach, Hubert, ‘Die für Kleriker bestimmten Verbote des Waffentragens, des Jagens sowie der Vogel- und Hundehaltung (a. 500–900)’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 109 (1998), 149–66 Lynch, Joseph H., Godparents and Kinship in Early Medi­eval Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986) Mayeski, Marie Anne, ‘The Beatitudes and the Moral Life of the Christian: Practical Theo­logy and Biblical Exegesis in Dhuoda of Septimania’, Mystics Quarterly, 18 (1992), 6–15 —— , Dhuoda: Ninth-Century Mother and Theo­logian (Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 1995) —— , ‘A Mother’s Psalter: Psalms in the Moral Instruction of Dhuoda of Septi­ mania’, in The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages, ed. by Nancy van Deusen (Albany: State University of New York, 1999), pp. 139–51 McGuire, Anne C., ‘Liturgy and Laity in the Ninth Century’, Ecclesia Orans, 13 (1996), 463–94 McKitterick, Rosamond, The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms, 789–895 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977) Neel, Carol, ‘Mother, Father, King: Dhuoda and Carolingian Patriarchy’, in On the Shoulders of Giants: Essays in Honor of Glenn W. Olsen, ed. by David F. Appleby and Teresa Olsen Pierre, Papers in Mediaeval Studies, 27 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2015), pp. 23–39 Nelson, Janet L., ‘Dhuoda’, in Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World, ed. by Patrick Wormald and Janet L. Nelson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 106–20 —— , ‘Dhuoda on Dreams’, in Motherhood, Religion, and Society in Medi­eval Europe, 400–1400: Essays Presented to Henrietta Leyser, ed. by Conrad Leyser and Lesley Smith (Surrey: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 41–53 Noble, Thomas F. X., ‘Secular Sanctity: Forging an Ethos for the Carolingian Nobility’, in Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World, ed. by Patrick Wormald and Janet L. Nelson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 8–36 Olsen, Glenn W., ‘One Heart and One Soul (Acts 4:32 and 34) in Dhuoda’s “Manual”’, Church History, 61 (1992), 23–33 Patzold, Steffen, Episcopus: Wissen über Bischöfe im Frankenreich des späten 8. bis frühen 10. Jahrhunderts, Mittelalter Forschungen, 25 (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbeke Verlag, 2008) Phelan, Owen M., The Formation of Christian Europe: The Carolingians, Baptism, and the ‘Imperium Christianum’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) Polanichka, Dana M., ‘“My Temple Should Be a House of Prayer”: The Use and Misuse of Carolingian Churches’, Church History, 87 (2018), 371–98 —— , ‘Precious Stones, Living Temples: Sacred Space in Carolingian Churches, 751–877 ce’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2009) Riché, Pierre, ‘Les bibliothèques de trois aristocrates laïcs carolingiens’, Le Moyen Âge, 69 (1963), 87–104

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Romig, Andrew J., Be a Perfect Man: Christian Masculinity and the Carolingian Aristocracy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017) Sedlmeier, Franz, Die laienparänetischen Schriften der Karolingerzeit: Untersuchungen zu ausgewähltem Texten des Paulinus von Aquileia, Alkuins, Jonas’ von Orleans, Dhuodas, und Hinkmars von Reims, Deutsche Hochschuledition, 86 (Neuried: Ars Una, 2000) Smith, Julia M. H., ‘Religion and Lay Society’, in The New Cambridge Medi­ eval History, ii: c. 700–c. 900, ed. by Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 654–78 Stofferahn, Steven A., ‘The Many Faces in Dhuoda’s Mirror: The Liber Manualis and a Century of Scholarship’, Magistra: A Journal of Women’s Spirituality in History, 4 (1998), 89–134 Stone, Rachel, ‘Kings Are Different: Carolingian Mirrors for Princes and Lay Morality’, in Le Prince au miroir de la littérature politique de l’Antiquité aux Lumières, ed. by Frédérique Lachaud and Lydwine Scordia (Rouen: Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2007), pp. 69–86 —— , ‘Laicus: Jonas of Orléans and Carolingian Knowledge about Laymen’ (unpublished paper, Matrimonio, famiglia e società in epoca carolingia: Giona di Orléans e il ‘De Institutione laicali’, Bo­logna, May 2013), 1–20, [accessed 27 February 2016] —— , Morality and Masculinity in the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) Trenchard-Smith, Margaret, ‘Furibunda silentia: The “Raging Silences” of the Testimony of Dhuoda, Countess of Septimania’ (unpublished paper, University of California, Los Angeles, 1997), 1–28, [accessed 3 May 2021]

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Legal and Political Identities

Geoffrey Koziol

Pragmatic Sanctions? The Peace of God and its Carolingian Antecedents

Patrick Geary has written more important books and articles on a greater variety of important topics than most historians could manage in several lifetimes, including (yet hardly limited to) the cult of saints, charters and cartularies, prosopo­graphy, ethnicity, Merovingian politics, the ‘feudal mutation’, the mytho­logy of nations, and social memory and oblivion. But among his most influential and original contributions are two splendid articles he published on dispute settlement.1 Building on the seminal essays of Frederic Cheyette2 and informed by then-current work in legal ethno­logy, Geary, Stephen White, and some other, mostly Anglophone medi­evalists set aside the kinds of prescriptive sources that had until then almost entirely shaped our understanding of early and high medi­eval law and turned instead to largely untapped descriptive sources.3 In other words, they turned away from leges, capitularies, and customaries that represented how law and conflict resolution were supposed to work and read literary and diplomatic sources — charters and notices especially — to focus on case studies that showed how specific conflicts were initiated, prosecuted, and ended. It is no exaggeration to say that this research transformed our understanding of the field. We learned that a ‘state’ and its sanctions were not necessary to regulate conflicts successfully; that contemporaries considered compromise settlements more valuable than judgements; that contemporaries understood some kinds of ‘violence’ not as self-evident evils but as necessary tools to assert rights and enforce order; that in any case allegations of ‘violence’ were often a rhetorical conceit used by plaintiffs (usually monks and clerics) to cast themselves in the role of  1 Geary, ‘Vivre en conflit dans une France sans état’; Geary, ‘Extra-Judicial Means of Conflict Resolution’.  2 Cheyette, ‘Custom, Case Law, and Medi­eval “Constitutionalism”’; Cheyette, ‘Suum cuique tribuere’; Cheyette, ‘The Invention of the State’.  3 White, Feuding and Peace-Making; Miller, ‘Avoiding Legal Judgment’; Miller, ‘Gift, Sale, Payment, Raid’; Davies and Fouracre, eds, The Settlement of Disputes.

Geoffrey Koziol ([email protected]) is Professor of History at University of California, Berkeley. Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe: Studies on Cultural Identity and Power, ed. by Courtney M. Booker, Hans Hummer, and Dana M. Polanichka, CURSOR 41, pp. 257–286 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022)        10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.127584

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defenceless victims of lawless predators (usually lords and the developing class of knights); that although plaintiffs and defendants both might appeal to norms of just and unjust behaviour, those norms were not the rules found in prescriptive sources. The best, most recent work on law, social order, and conflict resolution remains unmistakably tributary to this revisionism.4 However, the turn to charters and notices has to some extent marginalized the study of prescriptive sources as evidence for theories and practices of medi­eval law, and even diminished their definition as properly legal sources. One sees this, notably, in the case of Carolingian capitularies and the statutes of the Peace of God. Capitularies were such generically complex sources of mixed purpose and purview that law and legislation are now seen as just one of their many domains, and not necessarily the most important.5 And in discussions of the Peace of God, the actual statutes of the Peace have often taken a backseat to narrative accounts, while the movement itself is more often mined for what it might tell us about social, political, and religious history.6 Save for the German variety of the Peace known as the Landfrieden, the legal and legislative aspects of the Peace have, until very recently, been ignored.7 The question posed here is whether something is to be gained by examining capitularies and the statutes of the Peace of God as legislation. The question and approach are not really aimed at discovering how (or whether) legislation was implemented or how law and conflict-processing worked in practice — though these issues will necessarily be discussed in passing. The primary aim is to use the texts of capitularies and Peace statutes to understand how law, conflict-processing, and above all social and political order were imagined and represented in texts that had some sort of ‘official’ standing as formal, public acts or the records of such acts. There is also a second aspect to this approach that concerns a problem that Geary’s own work has often addressed. One of the great historio­graphical debates of the last century (to take the problem only back to Marc Bloch) is whether there was a ‘feudal mutation’ in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. That is, around the year 1000, did a new class of military elites suddenly appear, their power founded on a dramatic new surge in the building of rudimentary castles, and did their appearance occasion more warfare and more unrestrained predation of peasants, traders, and church lands, and did this petty warfare in turn spark the development of not simply new but even unprecedented institutions to limit the violence, the Peace of God being the most famous such response? To compare how

 4 Firnhaber-Baker, Violence and the State in Languedoc; Firnhaber-Baker, ‘Jura in Medio’; Smail, The Consumption of Justice; McHaffie, ‘Law and Violence’; Brown, Violence in Medi­eval Europe.  5 Mordek, ‘Karolingische Kapitularien’, though see also the works cited below on the Carolingian leges capitularies.  6 For example, Head and Landes, eds, The Peace of God.  7 Koziol, The Peace of God; Gergen, Pratique juridique. On the German historio­graphical tradition treating Landfrieden as legislation, see, for example, Wadle, Landfrieden, Strafe, Recht; Buschmann, ‘Landfriede und Landfriedensordnung’.

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Carolingian capitularies and the Peace statutes framed both problems of disorder and solutions may help hone our understanding of the similarities and differences not so much in the realities of order and disorder as in their conceptualization by those in positions of authority. *** Of course, given the large numbers of capitularies and the great differences in their style and purport, even more given the deep differences of opinion among historians about the relationship between Carolingian capitularies on peace and the Peace of God, the possibility of making any useful comparisons may seem hopeless. Yet Hincmar of Reims can provide a kind of Ariadne’s thread through the problem. For Hincmar was quite committed to the legal validity of capitularies, had complete copies made of Ansegis’s collection of capitularies, and made dossiers of capitularies to support his polemical tracts.8 He also directly contributed to the writing of several important capitularies, for which he used the dossiers he had compiled. In both his tracts and his capitulary articles, one of his abiding concerns was to protect church property from encroachments by lay magnates, their military retinues, and their clients. In these contexts he opposed nearly all diversions of ecclesiastical property to the benefit of lay elites; but he was particularly opposed to exactions improperly demanded from churches and their peasants by armies when they were on campaign. Given that such actions were similar to those that the Peace of God tried to control, there is a certain consonance in the aims of both the capitularies that Hincmar marshalled and the statutes of the Peace of God that makes a focused comparison possible.9 One of Hincmar’s earliest efforts to create a useful dossier of capitularies resulted in a small collection of eleven articles that he put together in association with an assembly of bishops and lay fideles at Quierzy in 857.10 The conjuncture is significant. In 856–857, Charles the Bald was already learning of the kinds of conspiracies among his magnates that would lead to a major rebellion in 858.11 He also faced mounting dissatisfaction from some of his bishops, including Hincmar, because of what they regarded as the king’s high-handed treatment of church lands and his abusive appointments of secular abbots to monasteries (the abbots being able to use their control of monastic lands to underwrite their military obligations on the marches). Already in 846, Hincmar and other bishops had presented Charles with a compilation of recent conciliar decrees

 8 Depreux, ‘Hincmar et la loi Revisited’.  9 Magnou-Nortier, ‘La place du Concile du Puy’; also, Magnou-Nortier, ‘Les mauvaises coutumes’; Magnou-Nortier, ‘Les évêques et la paix’.  10 Concilia, ed. by Hartmann, pp. 383–98, at pp. 392–94 (a prefatory admonitio) and 394–96 (the capitulary collection). Hubert Mordek calls this a ‘Kapitularien- und Kanonessammlung über Herrbann und Kirchengut’, and details its transmission in Bibliotheca capitularium, pp. 499–500, 513, 600–603.  11 Nelson, Charles the Bald, pp. 182–86.

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asserting the sacrosanctity of ecclesiastical property, only to see Charles and his magnates reject nearly all of them.12 Not coincidentally, Hincmar only began to collect capitularies and cite them in his writings in the 850s. The 857 collection is a prime example. It seems likely that the dossier was intended, at least in part, to provide capitulary support for the failed episcopal programme of 846, which had relied solely on conciliar decrees. That is, if Hincmar could not convince Charles with conciliar decrees, he would convince him with the capitularies of Charles’s own father and grandfather; and he would insist that the capitularies of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious bound Charles also.13 Two items in the dossier come from capitularies of Charlemagne, via Book iii of Ansegis’s collection. One is a terse, one-sentence monitio: ‘De pace admonemus, ut omnes, qui per aliqua scelera rebelles sunt, constringantur’ (Concerning peace, we warn that all who become rebels by some evil deed be restrained).14 With equal terseness, the other states: ‘De pace et iustitia infra patriam, sicut sepe per alia capitula iussimus, adimpletum fiat’ (Let what we have often ordered in other capitularies about peace and justice within the country be implemented).15 Without being certain, it is possible that Hincmar quoted these capitula to establish two broad principles that were fundamental to his purposes in 857: first, ‘peace’ was a basic goal of a just, Christian society ruled by kings, so that any evil deed could be construed as an attack on peace and therefore a kind of rebellion; second, royal capitularies were legislation that bound later kings, in particular, by implication, Charles the Bald himself. Other capitula in the collection are considerably fuller. In particular, the opening article is so important that it should be quoted in full: Vobis vero comitibus dicimus vosque commonemus, quia ad vestrum ministerium maxime pertinet, ut reverentiam et honorem sancte dei ecclesiae exhibeatis et cum episcopis vestris concorditer vivatis et eis adiutorium ad suum ministerium peragendum praebeatis; ut et vos ipsi in ministeriis vestris pacem et iustitiam faciatis et, quae nostra auctoritas publice fieri decernit, ut in vestris ministeriis studiose perficiatur, studeatis. Proinde monemus vestram fidelitatem, ut memores sitis fidei nobis promissę et in parte ministerii nostri vobis commissi, in pace scilicet et iustitia facienda, vosmetipsos coram deo et coram hominibus tales exhibeatis, ut et nostri veri adiutores et populi conservatores iuste dici et vocari possitis; et nulla quaelibet causa aut munerum acceptio aut amicitia cuiuslibet vel odium

 12 Koziol, The Politics of Memory and Identity, pp. 171–74.  13 Devisse, Hincmar et la loi; also, Depreux, ‘Hincmar et la loi Revisited’, pp. 156–57.  14 Concilia, ed. by Hartmann, p. 395; Ansegisus, Collectio Capitularium, iii. 1, ed. by Schmitz, p. 571, originally from the Capitulare missorum generale of Thionville/Diedenhofen (805), in Capitularia, no. 44, c. 1, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, p. 122.  15 Concilia, ed. by Hartmann, p. 395; Ansegisus, Collectio Capitularium, iii. 62, ed. by Schmitz, from Capitulare missorum Aquisgranense primum (810), in Capitularia, no. 64, c. 10, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, p. 153.

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aut timor vel gratia ab statu rectitudinis vos deviare compellat, quin inter proximum et proximum semper iuste iudicetis. Pupillorum vero et viduarum et ceterorum pauperum adiutores ac defensores et sanctę ecclesię vel servorum illius honoratores iuxta vestram possibilitatem sitis. Illos quoque, qui temeritate et violentia in furta et latrocinia sive rapinis communem pacem populi perturbare moliuntur, vestro studio et correctione, sicut decet, compescite. Et si aliqua persona in aliquo vobis impedimentum fuerit, quin ea, quae dicimus, facere non valeatis, nobis ad tempus illud notum fiat, ut nostra auctoritate adiuti ministerium vestrum digne adimplere possitis.16 (We say to and warn you counts that it especially pertains to your ministry to show reverence and honour to the holy church of God and to live in concord with your bishops and aid them in fulfilling their ministry, so that you may do peace and justice in your [own] ministries, and that in your ministries you zealously strive to execute what our authority has publicly decided shall be done. For that reason we warn your fidelity that you be mindful of the faith (fidei) that you promised us and which was committed to you as a share of our ministry, that is, in doing peace and justice, and that you conduct yourselves before God and men in such a way that you can justly be called our true helpers and keepers of the people. And let nothing lead you to depart from the state of rectitude, neither acceptance of gifts nor the friendship of anyone, nor hatred nor fear nor favour, so that you may always judge justly between neighbour and neighbour. But be helpers and defenders of orphans, widows, and the other poor, and honourers of the holy church and its servants, so far as you are able. And by your effort and correction repress as is proper those who by temerity and violence disturb the common peace of the people with theft, robbery, and rapinis. And if any person hinders you in anything, so that you are not able to do what we say, make it known to us at the proper time, so that aided by our authority you can worthily fulfil your ministry.) This capitulum ultimately comes from Louis the Pious’s Admonitio ad omnes regni ordines of 823–825, though Hincmar took it not from the Admonitio itself but from Book ii of Ansegis’s collection.17 Yet whether we take it as originally issued within Louis’s Admonitio, or as extracted by Ansegis, or as used by Hincmar to create his own more focused collection, the article conveys a high Carolingian ideo­logy of governance. Indeed, as Steffen Patzold and others have argued, it was among the finest expressions ever articulated of the Carolingians’ ministerial model of government. The ruler has received a

 16 Concilia, ed. by Hartmann, pp. 394–95.  17 Capitularia, no. 150, cc. 7–8, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, p. 304; Ansegisus, Collectio Capitularium, ii. 6, ed. by Schmitz, pp. 526–27.

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ministerium from God. Counts and bishops are sharers of that ministerium. As sharers in the ruler’s ministerium, counts and bishops must ‘strive to execute’ the rulers’ decisions. A core duty of counts’ and bishops’ ministerium is to ‘do peace and justice’ — very broadly defined, one should note — and even more broadly, to conduct themselves in such a way that they can be called the ruler’s ‘true helpers and keepers of the people’. The ‘rectitude’ of counts and bishops is therefore essential to their ministry. ‘Rectitude’ means that they must judge justly, without hatred, fear, or favour; they must not accept gifts; they must defend widows, orphans, and the poor, and honour the church. They must ‘correct’ ‘those who by temerity and violence disturb the common peace of the people with theft, robbery, and rapinis’. All this they must do ‘mindful of the faith’ they swore to the ruler himself.18 The ruler is therefore the keystone of social and political order, and the exemplar of the kind of ministerial government that maintains it. Accordingly, the capitulary is issued in his name, and he issues it not so much as a command as a teaching — a monitio. Three other articles in Hincmar’s dossier are also taken from Louis’s Admonitio via Book ii of Ansegis. One is introduced — in all transmissions — with the words, ‘De pace vero in exercitali itinere servanda usque ad marcham’ (Concerning the peace to be kept in the army’s expeditions to the march). It states that ‘whoever knows by name the author of any harm done last year, he should seek and receive justice concerning him’ (quicumque auctorem dampni sibi praeterito anno inlato nominatim cognoscit, ut iustitiam de illo quaerat et accipiat). This is stated as the ruler’s command.19 Another records the ruler’s announcement that leaders of the army shall ‘render account for the actions of all those who went on such a march in their service’ (qui in suo obsequio in tali itinere pergunt, sive sui sint, sive alieni, ut ille de eorum factis rationem se sciat redditurum). It further states that the leaders themselves ‘will bear the danger for whatever [these men did] in violating the peace’ (quicquid in pace violanda deliquerint, ad ipsius debeti periculum pertinere). The sanction for such violations is that the man who violated the peace shall be brought into the presence of either the ruler or his missus, and there ‘pay the appropriate penalties […] according to the quality of his misdeed’ (iuxta facinoris qualitatem […] dignas poenas persolvat). As to the lord (senior) who took him in his military retinue and did not prevent his actions, he shall be ‘deprived of his honour, so that neither of them shall remain without just punishment’ (honore suo privetur, ut scilicet neuter illorum sine iusta vindicta remaneat).20 A third article states that ‘counts shall act in every way as the helpers of ministers of the church in their ministries’ (comites vero

 18 Patzold, Episcopus, pp. 140–46.  19 Concilia, ed. by Hartmann, p. 395; Ansegisus, Collectio Capitularium, ii. 14, ed. by Schmitz, p. 531; Capitularia, no. 150, c. 16, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, p. 305.  20 Concilia, ed. by Hartmann, p. 395; Ansegisus, Collectio Capitularium, ii. 15, ed. by Schmitz, pp. 531–32; Capitularia, no. 150, c. 17, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, p. 305.

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ministris ecclesiae in eorum ministeriis […] adiutores in omnibus fiant) with respect to any misdeeds committed against the church by either counts or the counts’ men. When a man does not ‘correct’ himself after two warnings by the count, his misdeeds are to be brought to the ruler’s attention so that ‘he shall be forced to submit to what is contained in our capitulary’ (quod in nostro capitulari continetur, subire cogatur).21 Perhaps finding these capitula a bit unspecific, Hincmar added two pseudo-capitula from the collection of Benedictus Levita that focus on army requisitions. In one, the ruler ‘utterly prohibits that anyone in the army shall plunder anything inside the kingdom […], or take hay or grain or cattle large or small, or break into houses and burn them’ (si quis in exercitu infra regnum […] aliquid praedare voluerit aut fenum tollere aut granum sive pecora maiora vel minora domosque infrangere vel incendere, haec ne fiant, omnino prohibemus). Any free man who does so shall pay sixty solidi, presumably as bannum dominicum, and ‘restore everything in like amount’ (omnia similia restituat) or, if he wishes to contest the charge, shall perform compurgation with twelve men.22 The other pseudo-capitulum states that ‘if anyone commits rapinam within the kingdom or takes anything by force from any of our faithful or from the man of our faithful’ (si quis infra regnum rapinam fecerit aut cuiquam nostro fideli eiusque homini aliquid vi abstulerit), he shall make triple composition to the victim and also pay the bannum dominicum of sixty solidi. And afterwards he shall be brought into our presence by our count, and put into prison until he has undergone such punishment as pleases us. And if he acted publicly, then he must do public penance for this […]; if he acted in secret, he shall do penance for this according to the counsel of priests. Those who plunder the property of churches are to be punished even more harshly by being excommunicated until they have done satisfaction.23 Having quoted these capitularies at length, one need only briefly articulate their salient characteristics. The most obvious is that all versions of these capitularies present rules, standards, and guidelines enunciated in the name of the ruler. The ruler’s voice was not absolutely necessary for a capitulary to be a capitulary; some are simple notes expressed impersonally, though

 21 Concilia, ed. by Hartmann, p. 395; Ansegisus, Collectio Capitularium, ii. 23, ed. by Schmitz, pp. 540–41; Capitularia, no. 150, c. 26, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, p. 307.  22 Concilia, ed. by Hartmann, p. 396, from Benedictus Levita, Edition der falschen Kapitularien, i, no. 341, ed. by Schmitz, pp. 114–15, adapted from the Lex Baiwariorum, ii. 5, ed. by von Schwind, pp. 297–99.  23 ‘Postmodum vero ante nos a comite adducatur, ut in bastonico retrusus, usque dum nobis placuerit, poenas luat. Nam si publice actum fuerit, publicam inde agat paenitentiam […]; si vero occultes, sacerdotum consilio ex hoc agat paenitentiam’. Concilia, ed. by Hartmann, p. 396, from Benedictus Levita, Edition der falschen Kapitularien, ii, no. 383, ed. by Schmitz, p. 81, also adapted from the Lex Baiwariorum, ii. 5, ed. by von Schwind, pp. 297–99.

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that may be a quirk of copying and transmission. In Charles the Bald’s 862 capitulary of Pîtres, some articles are cast as the voice of the bishops, while the capitulary as a whole can be read as the voice of the entire assembly. (Interestingly, in 864 Charles referred to this capitulary as a ‘peace’, presumably because it did represent an engagement by all those present.24) But most of the fullest texts of capitularies are enunciated in the ruler’s voice, and that is most adamantly true of capitularies that announce programmes of social, political, and ecclesiastical order.25 Second, these capitularies are embedded in a ministerial ideal of earthly government, in which counts and bishops work together because they share in a royal ministry. The essential duty of their ministry is to rule the Christian people in a godly fashion. Their ability to do so is predicated on the virtues they have been educated to live by. Their obligation to do so is predicated on their fidelity — both the fidelity they have sworn to and owe the ruler, and that which they have promised God as baptized Christians.26 Third, the centrality of the ruler is constantly reiterated in the requirement that returns problematic cases and enforcement back to him, personally.27 For instance, in Louis the Pious’s Admonitio, if counts are hindered in their efforts to deal with thieves and robbers, they should make the problem known to the ruler (c. 8). If bishops are unable to enforce their authority over abbots, abbesses, counts, or royal vassals, they should bring the matter to the ruler’s attention (c. 4). Bishops are to inform the ruler about how counts execute their ministries, as counts are to inform the ruler about bishops, as both are to inform him about the successes and failures of other ‘faithful’ (c. 14). Those who violated the peace during campaigns to the marches are to be denounced either to the ruler’s missus or to the ruler himself for correction (c. 17). Tolls that have been established without authorization are to be investigated, the offenders brought before the ruler (c. 17). Indeed, any matter in any diocese or county ‘that cannot be corrected without our power’ should be brought to the ruler’s attention, so that he may correct it (c. 15).28 This tethering of social, political, and ecclesiastical order to the authority of the ruler is not unique to Louis the Pious’s Admonitio and its reception. It is a linchpin of those Carolingian capitularies that deal with disorders, in particular homicide and the vengeance to which homicides could give rise. These seem to have been regarded as particularly important problems, not necessarily because homicides and revenge-killings were so frequent as because they were regarded as the most heinous of sins, the greatest affronts to God, because the inimicitia from  24 Capitularia, no. 272, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, pp. 302–10, esp. pp. 308–09 (‘Nos autem episcopi…’, ‘Nos quoque episcopi…’); no. 273, cc. 1–3, p. 311.  25 Nelson, ‘The Voice of Charlemagne’; Ubl, ‘Die Stimme des Kaisers’.  26 Anton, Fürstenspiegel und Herrscherethos, pp. 404–18; Heydemann, ‘The People of God and the Law’.  27 This tendency has also been noted in Ansegis’s collection: see Airlie, ‘“For it is written in the law”’.  28 Capitularia, no. 150, cc. 4, 8, 14, 15, 17, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, pp. 303–05.

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which they issued and which they fomented denied the pax and concordia that were supposed to vivify a Christian empire.29 Yet the ruler could not simply prohibit vengeance killings, which were widely regarded as a basic right. All he could do was demand that counts try to make peace between the killer and the victim’s kin, and if either refused to accept compensation (as was their right), send the parties to him.30 Finally, especially if one is familiar with later French and German law, in reading these capitularies one cannot help but be struck by how broad the legal categories are, their lack of definitional precision, their tendency to use terms that are morally and religiously charged but legally somewhat empty. In that above-mentioned brief article from the capitulary of Thionville which Hincmar quoted, what, exactly, counted as scelera? And what did constringantur mean? Arrest? Try? Punish? Imprison? Distrain by taking control of sureties or sequestering lands?31 Especially in Hincmar’s time, capitularies speak simply of dampnum, rapina, or praeda, without defining what these are, let alone providing indicators or procedures for distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate takings. Any context that might delimit the categories is itself too broad to be helpful. ‘De pace vero in exercitali itinere servanda usque ad marcham hoc omnibus notum fieri volumus, quod quicumque auctorem dampni sibi praeterito anno inlato nominatim cognoscit, ut iustitiam de illo quaerat et accipiat’ (Concerning the peace to be kept in the army’s expeditions to the march, we want this to be made known to all: that whoever knows by name the author of any harm done last year, he should seek and receive justice concerning him).32 But what constituted ‘harm’ (dampni)? Or again: Deinceps tamen omnibus denuntiare volumus, ut unusquisque cognoscat omnes, qui in suo obsequio in tali itinere pergunt […] ut ille de eorum factis rationem se sciat redditurum. Ut quicquid in pace violanda deliquerint, ad ipsius debet periculum pertinere; ea scilicet conditione, ut pacis violator primum iuxta facinoris qualitatem, sive coram nobis sive coram misso nostro, dignas poenas persolvat et senior, qui secum talem duxerit, quem aut constringere noluit aut non potuit, ut nostram iussionem servaret, et

 29 See Capitulare missorum generale (802), in Capitularia, no. 33, c. 32, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, p. 97; also, Patzold, ‘Consensus – Concordia – Unitas’.  30 For example, Capitulare pro lege habendum Wormatiense (829), in Capitularia, no. 193, c. 8, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, p. 20; Capitulare missorum Silvacense (853), in Capitularia, no. 260, c. 5, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, p. 272; Capitula Pistensia (869), in Capitularia, no. 275, c. 10, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, pp. 335–36.  31 Capitulare missorum generale of Thionville/Diedenhofen (805), in Capitularia, no. 44, c. 1, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, p. 122; Ansegisus, Collectio Capitularium, iii. 1, ed. by Schmitz, p. 571; Concilia, ed. by Hartmann, p. 395.  32 Concilia, ed. by Hartmann, p. 395; Ansegisus, Collectio Capitularium, ii. 14, ed. by Schmitz, p. 531; Capitularia, no. 150, c. 16, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, p. 305.

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insuper in regno nostro praedas facere non timuerit, pro illius negligentia […] honore suo privetur […].33 (Henceforward we want it to be announced to all […] that they will render account for the actions of all those who went on such a march in their service [… And] that accordingly they will bear the danger for whatever [these men] do in violating peace; such that […] the one who violates the peace shall first pay the appropriate penalties according to the quality of misdeed; and the lord who took such a man with him and could not or would not force him to obey our order so that he did not fear to take plunder in our kingdom, for his negligence […] he shall be deprived of his honor […].) What, exactly, did ‘violating peace’ mean? What were ‘appropriate penalties’? What were the different kinds of ‘misdeeds’? What constituted ‘plunder’? Si quis domum alienam cuiuslibet infregerit, quicquid exinde per vim abstulerit aut rapuerit vel furaverit, secundum legem eam illi, cuius domus fuerit infracta et spoliata, in triplum componat, et insuper bannum dominicum solvat.34 (If anyone breaks into the house of another, he shall compound triply according to the law to the person whose house he broke into and despoiled for whatever he took or seized or stole by force, and beyond that pay the bannum dominicum.) The bannum dominicum is well enough defined in the capitularies (it is sixty solidi payable to the fisc), and compensation is very well established in all sources of Frankish law.35 But what constitutes ‘breaking into another’s house’ (domum alienam infregerit) and ‘force’ (per vim)? Were arms required? A group of armed men? Bloodshed? Did crossing a boundary marker defining the edge of a homestead distinguish an infractio or did only entry into the house itself? Did this capitulum cover all times and places (as its context in Ansegis’s collection suggests, along with its reference to serfs (servi) who commit such acts) or only seizures made during military campaigns (as Hincmar seems to be implying when incorporating it into his collection)? It is true that one of Hincmar’s capitula is more specific: it prohibits anyone in the army (hoste) from taking harvests or grain beyond what was due according to the bannum dominicum (i.e. authorized military requisitions) or from allowing their horses to trample grain. Yet one should also note how limited in scope

 33 Concilia, ed. by Hartmann, p. 395; Ansegisus, Collectio Capitularium, ii. 15, ed. by Schmitz, pp. 531–32; Capitularia, no. 150, c. 17, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, p. 305.  34 Concilia, ed. by Hartmann, p. 396; Ansegisus, Collectio Capitularium, iii. 65, ed. by Schmitz, pp. 601–02; cf. Capitularia, no. 70, cc. 2–3, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, pp. 159–60.  35 Summula de bannis, in Capitularia, no. 110, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, pp. 224–25.

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this injunction was, since it applied only to military campaigns of the public army (the host).36 Carolingian capitularies could be much more legally precise. The second capitulary for the Saxons is a fine example, with its detailed stipulations about amounts owed for compensation and the equivalencies of Saxon and Frankish solidi. Jennifer Davis has expertly analysed others from early in Charlemagne’s reign.37 But perhaps the best examples of Carolingian legislation that is definitionally precise, focused in scope, and pragmatic in conception are the so-called capitularia legibus addita — specific emendations made to specific articles in existing written law codes, especially the Lex Salica and Lex Ribuaria.38 In these capitularies one finds detailed emendations concerning the amounts of compensation appropriate for different grades of clergy; the legal effects of marriage between free and unfree; the continuing validity of conveyances made by individuals who go on military campaign if the recipient dies and the conveyor does not; penalties for reopening res iudicata; and so forth.39 Significantly, these are also the capitularies most likely not merely to refer to the counsel and consent of some spectrum of the political/ecclesiastical community, but to actively foreground the participation of others besides the ruler in the formulation, issuance, and authorization of the stipulations, with clear indications that the rule changes were discussed by groups of informed individuals outside the presence of the ruler.40 They are also unusual in sometimes calling attention to efforts to gain formal agreement and commitment to the emendations from a wider public outside the general assemblies.41 Equally important, in marked contrast to capitularies like the Admonitio ad omnes regni ordines, the Capitularia legibus addita are often framed without much reference to the ruler at all, save in introductory inscriptions added later. The articles themselves are as impersonal as the leges they revise. Their validity is grounded in their status as lex, not in the moral, political, religious, or legislative authority of a ruler.

 36 Concilia, ed. by Hartmann, p. 396; Ansegisus, Collectio Capitularium, iii. 66, ed. by Schmitz, pp. 602–03; cf. Capitularia, no. 70, c. 4, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, p. 160.  37 Capitulare Saxonicum (797), in Capitularia, no. 27, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, pp. 71–72; Davis, Charlemagne’s Practice of Empire.  38 Faulkner, Law and Authority in the Early Middle Ages; Patzold, ‘Die Veränderung’. For an important critical intervention, see Ubl, ‘Gab es das Leges-Skriptorium Ludwigs des Frommen?’, with Ubl’s ‘Review’ of Faulkner’s Law and Authority.  39 These examples from Capitulare legibus additum (803), in Capitularia, no. 39, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, pp. 111–14. For a sampling of others, see Patzold, ‘Die Veränderung’.  40 Notably the Capitula legi Salicae addita (819?), in Capitularia, no. 142, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, pp. 292–93, with Patzold, ‘Die Veränderung’, pp. 71, 77–78.  41 Mordek, ‘Unbekannte Texte’. See also the lively debate implied in the Capitula de rebus exercitalibus in placito tractando (811), in Capitularia, no. 73, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, pp. 164–65.

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Another type of capitulary whose stipulations are precisely framed might be categorized as ‘administrative’. Charles the Bald’s so-called Edict of Pîtres (864) offers a good illustration, with its many articles regulating the weight of denarii, the mints that can strike them, the selection of moneyers, the exchange of old coins for new, and the penalties for those continuing to use old coins or rejecting the new ones — these alongside other, equally specific legislation about weights and measures, the location of markets, and the sharing of obligations for military service. There is even an extremely detailed, densely reasoned article on whether to count the forty nights allowed for the receiving of oaths in court inclusive or exclusive of the daytime on which the nights begin and end.42 The fact that Carolingian capitularies could legislate precisely and pragmatically raises the question of why, so often, they did not — or rather, re-raises the question, since it is hardly new.43 In order to prepare an answer, it will help to examine a few other Carolingian capitularies, specifically some West Frankish examples from late in the reign of Charles the Bald and his grandson Carloman: the capitularies of Pîtres (862),44 Quierzy (873),45 and Ver (884).46 Here we do find a few articles that try to grapple with the actual implementation of broad exhortations to peace. They appear to be more insistent than earlier capitularies that wrongdoers are to be outlawed (though not defining outlawry, forbannitio, a highly fluid term), and are also to be excommunicated by the wrongdoer’s bishop.47 Consonant with this coordination between outlawry and excommunication, they demand even more explicitly than had Louis the Pious that counts and missi aid bishops.48 All three provide similar instructions for compelling the recalcitrant. Thus, Quierzy specifies that those who are reputed as wrongdoers through infamy or public clamour are to be brought to the mallus; if they refuse to appear, then they are to be outlawed (banniantur) and their properties distrained

 42 Capitularia, no. 273, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, pp. 310–28, the capitulum on oaths being c. 33, pp. 324–25, discussed briefly by Esders, ‘Late Roman Military Law’, p. 16. See also the Capitulary of Servais (853), Capitularia, no. 260, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, pp. 270–76.  43 Nehlsen, ‘Zur Aktualität und Effektivität’; Innes, ‘Charlemagne, Justice and Written Law’.  44 Capitularia, no. 272, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, pp. 302–10.  45 Capitularia, no. 278, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, pp. 342–47.  46 Capitularia, no. 287, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, pp. 371–75.  47 For forbannitio, Capitularia, no. 272, cc. 3, 6, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, pp. 307, 313–14; Capitularia, no. 278, cc. 1, 3, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, pp. 343, 344; Capitularia, no. 286, c. 3, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, pp. 370–71. For excommunication, Capitularia, no. 272, cc. 2, 3–4, no. 287, cc. 5–6, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, pp. 305, 307–10, 372. Cf. also the Capitulare missorum Silvacense (853) and the Capitulare Carisiacense (857), which are sources for several of these later articles, in Capitularia, no. 260, cc. 6–7, no. 266, c. 7, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, pp. 272–73, 287. Both are strongly Hincmarian capitularies.  48 Capitularia, no. 287, c. 9, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, p. 374. Cf. Capitularia, no. 150, c. 25, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, p. 307, received by Ansegisus, Collectio Capitularium, ii. 23, ed. by Schmitz, p. 540.

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by the count.49 If those outlawed by counts or missi flee to other counties or missatica, the count or missus to whose territories they have fled shall take sureties (fideiussores) to force them to return to the area where they committed their offences.50 It further stipulates that if a wrongdoer still cannot be constrained, then the count should gather the king’s men living there (homines nostros) and the men of the bishops, abbots, and abbesses and pursue him until they capture him, and that anyone who kills him is not liable to vengeance.51 Pîtres specifies imprisonment of those who refuse to compensate those they harmed.52 Nevertheless, one is equally struck by how much these capitularies maintain the basic framework and tendencies of the earlier ones — and no wonder, since many of the articles are taken verbatim from previous capitularies. The wrongs committed remain broad and ill-defined: depraedationes, malefacta, rapinae, praesumptiones, assaliturae, testeiae.53 The king remains the source and ultimate guarantor of social and political order, not only in that the capitularies are issued in his name, but even more in that all failures of others to maintain order must be brought directly back to him. Those whom counts and missi cannot constrain or those who insist on exacting vengeance from someone who killed an outlaw are still to be brought into the king’s presence for correction.54 Counts who do not execute their ministries against evil-doers are still to be denounced to the king, ‘so that our authority can correct such things’.55 Outlawries pronounced by missi and counts are to be announced to the king.56 Having learned that ‘sorcerers and poisoners’ (maleficos et veneficos) are rife ‘throughout our kingdom’, the king ‘expressly orders’ (expresse praecipimus) that every count devote the greatest effort to investigating and capturing them, ‘because […] it pertains to the ministry of the king to purge the impious from the land’ (quoniam […] regis ministerium est impios de terra perdere).57 Since the king is the source of peace, the royal palace must be an embodiment of peace. Thus, all residing within the palace or going to and returning from it shall ‘live in peace’ (pacifice vivant). And all who ‘corrupt the peace by exercising rapine’ (corrupta pace rapinam exercuerit) shall be brought to the palace, to be punished by a three-fold payment of the ‘royal ban’ (dominicus bannus).58 Not least, the source of the obligation to

 49  50  51  52  53  54  55  56  57  58

Capitularia, no. 278, c. 3, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, pp. 343–44. Capitularia, no. 278, c. 1, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, p. 343. Capitularia, no. 278, c. 2, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, p. 343. Capitularia, no. 272, c. 4, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, p. 307. Capitularia, no. 272, cc. 2–4, no. 278, cc. 2–3, no. 287, proem and cc. 4–6, 8, 12, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, pp. 306–10, 343–44, 371–75. Capitularia, no. 272, c. 3, no. 278, c. 2, no. 287, c. 3, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, pp. 307, 343, 372. Capitularia, no. 272, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, pp. 309–10. Capitularia, no. 278, c. 1, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, p. 343. Capitularia, no. 278, c. 7, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, p. 345. Capitularia, no. 287, cc. 1–3, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, p. 372.

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implement and obey the orders stated in the capitularies remains fidelity, fidelity owed by Christians to God’s commandments, but also fidelity owed to the king by virtue of the oaths of fidelity sworn to him.59 Perhaps the only really obvious change in these capitularies is the heightened religious fever of their language. Many are prefaced by long pro­logues on the evils of the time, proems that are not so much admonitiones as impassioned jeremiads; and indeed, besides adopting the style of Jeremiah, they are composed as catenae of scriptural quotations (including from Jeremiah) on the evils that God will bring on an evil people. The capitulary of Ver, issued in 884 in the throes of Viking attacks, is an extreme illustration of the type.60 This may also explain why these same capitularies explicitly enjoin both outlawry and excommunication on those who refuse to amend their faults: the faults are regarded not simply as wrongs; they are sins, and to be punished as such, with excommunication, and with penance required for absolution.61 The long, fervent pro­logues stitched together from a select number of favourite scriptural citations; a language that is religiously charged but legally imprecise; the constant recycling of older royal capitularies that turns capitularies into a kind of law and Ansegis’s collection into a kind of law-book; the Gelasian treatment of kingship and priesthood as two separate but parallel offices, making secular and canonical punishments (such as outlawry and excommunication) into distinct but analogous punishments; the insistence on the royal palace as a place of nearly ecclesial purity: all these are hallmarks of Hincmar of Reims, who was closely involved in drafting important parts of Pîtres and Quierzy. Even the capitulary of Ver stands to Hincmar’s writings as Ephesians does to Paul’s Epistles: it reads so much like Hincmar that at least one distracted scholar attributed it to Hincmar, momentarily forgetting that Hincmar had died two years earlier.62 The same themes are also found in Hincmar’s capitulary collection of 857 — which, one might note, is preceded

 59 Capitularia, no. 278, cc. 4–6, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, pp. 344–45. Note also the converse associations in phrases such as ‘latronem vel malefactorem aut infidelem nostrum’, ‘forbannitus et ut infidelis’, ‘malefactor aut infidelis noster’, ‘infames vel clamodici […] de testeiis vel latrociniis et rapacitatibus et assalturis vel de infidelitate nostra’: Capitularia, no. 278, cc. 1–3, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, p. 343.  60 Capitularia, no. 287, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, pp. 371–72; cf. no. 272, pp. 303–04.  61 Capitularia, no. 272, c. 2, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, pp. 306–07, with its Hincmarian treatment of penance as medicine for sin, and c. 4, p. 307, with penance being enjoined for the ‘sacrilege’ of ‘rapine’ of church lands. Similarly, Capitularia, no. 287, cc. 5–6, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, p. 373. See also the ‘Edict’ of Pîtres (864), in which penance, pursuant or not to excommunication, is associated with oaths, perjury, and usury classed as sins: Capitularia, no. 273, cc. 9, 13, 20, 33, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, pp. 314–15, 318–19, 324–25.  62 Sadly, the reference is to Koziol, The Peace of God, pp. 22, 62. The occasion for the mistake was created by the fact that in manu­scripts Ver travels with some of Hincmar’s most distinctive works, including those under discussion here.

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by a jeremiad (the Collectio de raptoribus) very similar in style, motifs, and themes to the pro­logues of Quierzy and Ver.63 Recognizing Hincmar’s role in formulating, styling, and also transmitting capitularies, we can return to our earlier question: If some Carolingian capitularies could be legally precise, why were others often not? The first answer is that Hincmar was absolutely committed to the idea of law but not very concerned with its pragmatics.64 For him law in a Christian society was, first and foremost, a religious imperative. He also tended to compose capitularies (or contribute to their composition) as if they were continuations of his many tractates, homilies, and sermons; he therefore used them to press the same themes, in particular, the protection of church properties, where those who violated the rights of churches were rapaces, and ‘murderers of the poor’ because they stole lands that had been given to churches to sustain the poor (the poor including, by definition, monks and clerics). He also thought that kingship, modelled on the rule of the King of kings, really was the source and guarantor of order in society, where social order was that of a Christian society ruled conjointly by kings and their officials and bishops and their ministers. As a result, his solution for social ills was simply more and better kingship, more and better obedience to royal commands, more (and more committed) obedience to Christian commandments. In other words, Hincmar’s solution for social disorder was fidelity: kings who were more faithful to God, counts who were more faithful to kings, and a Christian populace that was more faithful to kings, counts, bishops, and God. Hincmar’s positions often departed from Carolingian norms, at least from the norms of many Carolingian lay elites and, often enough, from the policies of Charles the Bald himself.65 Yet in many respects Hincmar’s attitudes were quite typical. For all ninth-century elites shared certain assumptions; indeed, it is now recognized that such shared assumptions were one of the most important factors that bound together the Carolingian elite and made governance of empire and kingdoms possible.66 One of the most fundamental of these assumptions was that social and political order rested on fidelity, oaths of fidelity to the king being an exemplar and reinforcement of all other fidelities (including that to God), and therefore a linchpin of order.67 Thus, from Charlemagne’s capitularies of 789 and 802 through the capitularies of Charles the Bald to the capitulary of Ver in 884, rulers insisted on the swearing of fidelity to them and based social, political, military, and even religious obligations on those oaths.68 In this respect, the capitularies’ insistence that  63 Concilia, no. 38, ed. by Hartmann, pp. 392–94.  64 This point, too, was made by Devisse, Hincmar et la loi.  65 Koziol, The Politics of Memory and Identity, pp. 162–211, 365–81.  66 Costambeys, Innes, and MacLean, The Carolingian World, pp. 184–92, with citations.  67 De Jong, Epitaph for an Era, pp. 188–92, 215–21.  68 Nelson, King and Emperor, pp. 220–21, 264–67, 311, 395, 427–28; Depreux, ‘Les Carolingiens et le serment’; Becher, Eid und Herrschaft.

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the responsibilities of counts and comital officials for peace was part of their ministry was very Carolingian. This primacy of the oath of fidelity to the ruler also had a corollary: the incompatibility of such oaths with horizontal oaths of self-help organizations. It was not just groups of individuals who swore to uphold each other in acts of political rebellion that were condemned as coniurationes. Even when individuals in a locality swore oaths of mutual aid in the face of brigandage and local invasion, the Carolingians classed the oaths as coniurationes, conspirationes, and collectae, and prohibited them. This was true of Hincmar, who explicitly prohibited self-help coniurationes headed by priests, but again, it was not only true of him.69 Two years after Hincmar’s death, the capitulary of Ver remarked on the appearance of coniurationes among residents of the northern shores, who formed them as self-help fellowships against Viking incursions. The capitulary condemns them out of hand, suggesting that instead the peasants should appeal to the count’s local representative for military aid. The suggestion is entirely in keeping with all Carolingian legislation about peace and peace-keeping: its enforcement should remain in the control of royal ministers, as part of their royal ministry.70 In trying to understand their limited concern with detail, one should note one final aspect of capitularies on social and political order. In issuing them Carolingian rulers were usually not really concerned with the granular details that concerned local courts and local officials. They were enunciating broad governmental programmes regulating relations between rulers and their most senior officials and enunciating the rulers’ expectations for those officials. In a sense, characteristics that have been used to point to the capitularies’ lack of pragmatism might better be taken as pointing to a different pragmatism, suitable for this society. For Carolingian government to be successful, the trick was not for monarchs to rule locally. The trick was to foster close, cooperative ties between them and their counts. Whether issued within assemblies attended by counts or disseminated through copies obtained by counts and then recopied and read aloud in local assemblies, the capitularies helped accomplish this.71 When deliberated upon and issued within meetings, both the process of deliberation and the content of the capitularies reminded counts that their interests and the interests of their rulers were not opposed but

 69 Oexle, ‘Conjuratio und Gilde im frühen Mittelalter’, citing Hincmar’s capitulary of 852, which speaks of groups called guilds or brotherhoods (de collectis, quas geldonias vel confratrias vocant; Hincmar, ‘Erstes Kapitular’, c. XVI, p. 43). Oexle notes that Hincmar’s text also shows that guilds were established in hamlet settlements; that their membership included both clerics and laity, men and women alike; and that Hincmar’s goal was to replace these episcopally unauthorized guilds with ecclesiastical Vereinigungen that were linked to the parish and overseen by the bishop through deacons and parish priests.  70 Capitularia, no. 287, c. 14, ed. by Boretius and Krause, ii, p. 375.  71 On the transmission of capitularies: Patzold, ‘Normen im Buch’, pp. 345–47; Mordek, ‘Karolingische Kapitularien’, pp. 35–39; Innes, ‘Charlemagne, Justice and Written Law’; Possel, ‘Authors and Recipients of Carolingian Capitularies’.

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synergistic. In creating a corpus of rules in which the capitularies of Louis the Pious repeated those of Charlemagne, and those of Charles the Bald repeated those of Louis the Pious and Charlemagne, the very technique of repetition established the perception of an ongoing historical enterprise, commitment to which defined a common identity for the empire’s governing elite even better than did histories and the diverse ‘gentilic’ law codes.72 In any case, even if idealized, the capitularies’ pedagogical, admonitory character helped instil and maintain a code of conduct. Whether the code was realized in practice may have been less important than participating in the performative actions through which the code was elaborated and publicized.73 For good reason, therefore, the crisis of Carolingian government has been identified by at least one scholar not as a simple loss of power, but as a growing awareness that the interests of rulers and elites were no longer compatible.74 *** Everything about the Peace of God was different, beginning with the simple fact that it was not issued in the name of the king. Not even the Peace of Compiègne, issued in the presence of Robert the Pious and submitted to him for his approval, was issued in Robert’s name.75 This was also true of the five or so Burgundian Peaces organized to consolidate Robert’s newly won authority in Burgundy: only one, at Héry, was sworn in Robert’s presence, and none of the five was sworn to him. Rather, they were sworn in assemblies at the leading political and ecclesiastical centres of the duchy.76 More generally, in no Peace was the obligation to obey its injunctions predicated on the fidelity sworn to a ruler, whether king, count, or bishop. The authority of the Peace was founded on oaths — not oaths to a ruler, but rather oaths that appear to have been sworn directly to God himself.77 The articles of the Peace of God — that is, the actions they permitted and prohibited — were also defined with incomparably more precision and specificity than those of the capitularies collected by Hincmar of Reims or, for that matter, most Carolingian capitularies that dealt with social order (excluding, therefore, the capitularies amending the leges or implementing administrative decisions, which could be quite specific). To substantiate this point, take one of the two most influential Peaces, that of Compiègne (1023), beginning with its three initial articles:

 72 Reimitz, History, Frankish Identity; Heydemann, ‘The People of God and the Law’.  73 Costambeys, Innes, and MacLean, The Carolingian World, pp. 184–92, 296–303; Stone, Morality and Masculinity; Romig, Be a Perfect Man.  74 Innes, State and Society.  75 Bonnaud-Delamare, ‘Les institutions de paix’; Barthélemy, L’An mil et la paix de Dieu, pp. 435–39; Lemarignier, ‘Paix et réforme monastique’.  76 Koziol, ‘The Conquest of Burgundy’; Koziol, The Peace of God, pp. 52, 61; Les gestes des évêques d’Auxerre, ed. by Sot and others, i, pp. 250–53.  77 Koziol, The Peace of God, pp. 23–24.

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Eccesiam nullo modo infringam. Cellaria in circuitu ecclesiȩ causa salvamenti ejusdem non infringam, nisi propter illum malefectorem qui hanc pacem infregerit aut propter factum homicidium aut propter comprehensionem hominis aut caballi. Et si propter has res eadem cellaria infregero, nihil aliud ex eis traham nisi illum malefactorem aut ejus warnimentum me sciente.78 (I will not in any way violate a church. I will not violate the cellaria within the circuit of a church by reason of its salvamentum, unless on account of a malefactor who has broken this peace either by committing homicide or by seizing a man or a horse. And if I do violate that cellaria, I will knowingly bear nothing else away from it except that malefactor or his surety.) These articles are not content simply to enunciate broad injunctions protecting church property. They speak specifically of the storehouses of churches, and the circuit that defined a specifically protected space around a church. They speak specifically of the right of protection (salvamentum) by which a lord might claim the right to intervene within that circuit. They define the specific circumstances under which a lord might intervene there by virtue of the salvamentum — to remove an individual who has done harm or to remove that individual’s surety (and one should note that the mere mention of a surety implies a prior public legal procedure in which a surety has been named for some publicly attested legal obligation). Other articles of the Peace of Compiègne are even more specific and delimited. They do not simply speak programmatically of the need to protect ‘orphans, widows, and the poor’ or (an even broader term central to the Carolingian ideo­logy of ecclesial community) ‘the people’.79 They protect specific classes of people: serfs, servants, traders, and pilgrims. They protect clerics and monks and those travelling with them — with the specific proviso that in order to be protected by the Peace, these must not be bearing secular arms. Not just animals are protected but specific animals, both male and female: war horses (caballum), bulls, cows, pigs, sheep, lambs, goats, and asses. Not just depraedatio and rapina are prohibited but also redemptio — meaning the right of a lord to take the possessions of an individual who had not satisfied his legal obligations to the lord.80 And exceptions are repeatedly carved out, for as has long been recognized, one of the reasons the Peace of God worked is that it did not prohibit all taking of the property of the unarmed, but only the taking of such property from those unarmed whose lordship belonged to others. That is,  78 Serment pour le paix de Dieu, ed. by Bonnaud-Delamare, pp. 148–49.  79 Heydemann, ‘The People of God and the Law’.  80 Serment pour le paix de Dieu, ed. by Bonnaud-Delamare, pp. 148–53.

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what a lord could not do to the serfs and mercatores of others he could do to his own; and he could always take property from anyone when that property was stolen and guilt was clear and manifest, or when individuals were doing clear and manifest harm to the lord himself.81 The Peace of Compiègne was not an outlier. The same traits are found in nearly all statutes of the Peace and Truce of God, with the same precision of legal categories, and sometimes with much more precision, as in the highly influential Peace of Vienne (dating to the very early 1020s, probably shortly before the Peace of Compiègne).82 Many of its protected categories are identical to those of Compiègne, and identically defined in specific terms. In addition, one finds the oath-swearer’s pledge to not burn or destroy houses, with three specific exceptions: if an enemy of the swearer or a manifest thief is within, or if the house adjoins a castle ‘which really is a castle’ (quod in nomine castelli consistit). Further stipulations prohibit not only the cutting down of vineyards, woods, and fruit trees but also their damaging or uprooting. Mills and fishponds are protected. Hunters, fowlers, and fishermen are protected, with the additional proviso that anyone found hawking along riverbanks or in woods with goshawks, sparrowhawks, or falcons is protected as long as they are not accoutred as a warrior (uuarnimento). In addition, it is specified that the oath-swearer will not impose new exactions (malas consuetudines) on lands of the canons, monks, and nuns of Vienne, neither on lands now held jointly with the swearer nor on those that will be acquired subsequently. Demands for military provisions and lodging (albergarias) will not be made save in cases of necessity, in which case the swearer must send an agent to substantiate the need, and if the agent cannot substantiate the need, then the swearer must make amends within fifteen days. Similarly, on those church lands on which the oath-swearer exercises advocacy (comanda), he promises to take no more exactions than were rendered in the time of Archbishop Theutbald of Vienne (957–1001); and if he or any of his men do so, then a messenger will be sent to him to hear his justifications; and if the justifications are not accepted, he will make amends by repaying the difference between what he had taken and what had been taken in Theutbald’s time. Finally, the territory within which this Peace is to be observed is precisely defined: in episcopatu uiennensi & comitatu. & in episcopatu belicensi. siue comitatu. & in episcopatu lugdunensi sicut rodanus currit. usque ad episcopatum uiennense et belicense. et de uleuio’ usque ad montem altreium, & de monte altreio. & castellare que uocatur dorcas in ista parte. sicut aqua saueria est que lacurios exit. et intrat in rodanum. & sicut munitus est & ledisia. usque ad scalas. & sicut est Kalesius. & mons sancti martini. usque

 81 Koziol, The Peace of God, pp. 68–72.  82 De Manteyer, Les origines de la Maison de Savoie, pp. 91–98; Barthélemy, L’An mil et la paix de Dieu, pp. 417–27, provides a French translation and an excellent discussion.

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ad sanctum uincentium. usque in isera. & isera currit usque in rodanum & comitatu salmoriacensi.83 (in the bishopric and county of Vienne and in the bishopric and county of Belley, and in the bishopric of Lyon on this side of the Rhône up to the bishoprics of Vienne and Belley, and from Les Loyettes to Mont Outriaz, and from Mont Outriaz to the castle [or: to Châtelard, also] called Dorches to where the water of Savières leaves the Lavours and enters the Rhône, and from the fortification called the Leisse to Les Échelles, and from Kalesius and Mont-Saint-Martin to Saint-Vincent up to the Isère, and along the Isère to the Rhône and the county of Sermorens.) In its territorial specificity, this passage is akin to the clauses that appear in charters and notices recording the results of local commissions that defined boundaries between lands, lordships, and parishes by conducting inquests of local residents and by ‘beating the bounds’, perambulating a territory, and marking out boundaries by noting trees, streams, hedges, roads, farmsteads, and geo­logic formations.84 In its care to establish a delineated territory within which a particular set of rules apply, this Peace of Vienne is very similar to German Landfrieden. Both, however, are very different from treatments of peace in Carolingian capitularies, which are never territorially delimited — partly because counties (and even dioceses) were not well delimited territorially,85 but also because obligations to peace, ill-defined to begin with, were imagined as being identical throughout the empire or kingdom.86 However, the most important difference is this: Carolingian capitularies focus on the obligations of counts as sharers in a royal ministry. The articles of the Peace are engaged in the carving out of lordships. To be sure, lordships as territories have not yet been conceived; yet lordships exercised within territories are in the process of being established (the ‘sacred ban’ of Cluny being archetypal). The Peace of God at once issued from this process and accelerated it by confirming the right of lords (whether secular or ecclesiastical) over their own dependents while excluding the interventions of other lords.87 In effect, the Peace of God was legislating locally, establishing rules to govern disputes (including werra) that would be prosecuted within the

 83 The sole manu­script of this piece is hard to read, not so much because of sloppy copying as because it so often lapses into a highly vernacularized Latin farci and because punctuation and capitalization in the period are often ambiguous. The passage above was reproduced by de Manteyer in Les origines de la Maison de Savoie, p. 97.  84 Geary, ‘Land, Language and Memory in Europe’; Roberts, ‘Boundary Clauses’.  85 Mazel, L’Évêque et le territoire, pp. 159–306; West, Reframing the Feudal Revolution, pp. 139–45; Hummer, Politics and Power, pp. 60–61; Innes, State and Society, pp. 118–29.  86 Ubl, ‘The Limits of Government’.  87 Rosenwein, Negotiating Space, pp. 168–83; Méhu, Paix et communautés; Koziol, The Peace of God, pp. 66–72.

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locality, would affect the locality, would hopefully be settled within the locality, whether through adjudication in courts or through mediation or a combination of adjudication and mediation.88 The statutes of the Peace therefore needed to be specific and concrete in a way Carolingian capitularies did not. Such specificity and concern for the local practice of disputing is why the future of medi­eval European legislation in and after the twelfth century lay in the statutes of the Peace of God (and, even more obviously, the German Landfrieden) rather than in Carolingian capitularies, which were, legislatively, something of a dead-end. Indeed, despite the fact that the capitulary collections of Ansegis and Hincmar and the capitularies drafted by Hincmar for Charles the Bald have frequently been cited to demonstrate the similarities between Carolingian ordinances on peace and the Peace of God, in fact neither Hincmar’s nor Ansegis’s collections circulated much, if at all, in Aquitaine and Burgundy, where the Peace of God began and developed into maturity.89 The Peace of God was a purely regional initiative, based not on Carolingian precedents (written or institutional) but on contemporary local political and ecclesiastical ideas and practices, addressing local political and jurisdictional needs. This observation raises the most important difference between peace in the capitularies and peace in the Peace of God: their sanctions. Just as the Peace was not sworn to kings, princes, or bishops, so its enforcement did not rely upon these rulers or their agents. In a sense, the Peace of God was ‘self-enforcing’: that is, those who flouted the Peace lost the protection of the Peace. This was fundamental to all instantiations of the programme, from its beginnings in the later tenth century to its culmination in the later eleventh. What one could not ordinarily do under the terms of the Peace of God, one could do to those who violated the Peace.90 Thus, under the Peace of Compiègne, serfs, traders, women, clerics, monks, and all others who were ordinarily protected by the Peace could be seized and punished if they were manifestly guilty of crimes. Livestock grazing in meadows between March 1 and November 1 could not be seized unless they were doing damage; in that case, the person suffering the damage could seize them, even during those seven months. Houses were not to be burned or otherwise destroyed unless, as noted above, they were harbouring a thief or a manifest enemy of the oath-swearer, or unless the house was adjoined to a castle. Very similar stipulations appear in the Peace of Vienne. Though not mentioned in the Peaces of Compiègne and Vienne, a related exception appears in many others: one could not attack a fortification  88 See White, Feuding and Peace-Making, especially ‘Inheritances and Legal Arguments in Western France, 1050–1150’; ‘Feuding and Peace-Making’; and ‘Pactum legem vincit … et amor judicium’.  89 Koziol, The Peace of God, p. 22; Mordek, Bibliotheca capitularium, pp. 386–87, 488, 499–500, 454, 507, 513, 574, 587–88, 600–603, 730–31, 780, 1029–39; see Gerhard Schmitz’s critical commentary, Ansegisus, Collectio Capitularium, ed. by Schmitz, pp. 115–17, 130–32, 189–90.  90 Koziol, The Peace of God, pp. 70–72, 79–80; Barthélemy, ‘Paix de Dieu et communes’.

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attached to a church, unless that fortification were being used by violators of the Peace to commit acts in violation of the Peace, in which case the castle could be attacked, even in periods covered by the Truce of God. Those who were to do the attacking were those who had sworn the Peace. A second sanction created by the Peace of God were formal armed leagues to enforce its terms. Thus, one of the earliest Peaces, that of Poitiers (c. 1000), held that if anyone refused to accept a formal judgement against him by ‘the prince of his region or the judge of his pagus’, then the prince or judge would enforce judgement through distraint of the property and sureties of the condemned. If that did not work, then the prince or judge was to convene the ‘princes and bishops’ under whom the Peace had been instituted in councils, and all should join, unanimiter, in a military campaign against the offender ‘in destructionem et confusionem ipsius’ (to his destruction and ruin).91 Superficially, this may seem similar to the stipulation in the capitulary of Ver, that if an outlawed wrongdoer fled to another jurisdiction, the count or missus of that jurisdiction was to gather the king’s men and the men of the bishops, abbots, and abbesses and pursue him until they captured him. But in Ver, those who must pursue a recalcitrant wrongdoer are the king’s men, and those who hold a royal ministry, and their men — that is, they are the king’s fideles and the fideles of the king’s fideles, and their obligation is predicated on their fidelity to king or lord. In Poitiers, in contrast, the obligation falls on all those who have sworn to uphold the articles of the Peace, no matter what their office or their relationship with each other; and the one they pursue is pursued specifically because he had violated the articles of the Peace he had sworn. Extending this kind of precdedent, in 1038 the archbishop of Bourges and his suffragans established a Peace famous for its formal institution of an armed league, consisting of all males aged fifteen and older who had sworn the Peace, their oath requiring them to undertake military expeditions against those who either violated the Peace or refused to swear it. Such parochial Peace armies subsequently became a fixture in southern France, where they lasted well into the thirteenth century. In northern France they became a defining feature of the early communes and played an important role in Louis VI’s campaigns against Henry I and Thomas of Marle, and in the civil war that broke out in Flanders after the death of Charles the Good in 1127.92 In comparing these sanctions with those announced in Carolingian capitularies, one should note two essential differences. First, as already noted, in their capitularies the Carolingians did everything possible to prevent and delegitimate self-help.93 In contrast, the Peace of God was based on self-help,  91 Sacrorum conciliorum, c. 1, ed. by Mansi and others, xix, cols 265–68. For a discussion of the date of this council, see Koziol, The Peace of God, pp. 54–55, with references.  92 Koziol, The Peace of God, pp. 72–75, 81, 103–09; Barthélemy, ‘Paix de Dieu et communes’; Carraz, ‘Un revival de la paix de Dieu?’; Bisson, Assemblies and Representation in Languedoc, pp. 102–21, 132.  93 Innes, ‘Charlemagne, Justice and Written Law’.

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for the assumption that runs throughout its most developed instantiations is that if bishops, counts, and other lords and courts failed to bring two disputing parties to agreement, then the normal self-help remedies of law were permitted, from seizure of hostages to wasting of lands (including the unfree persons on those lands, together with their possessions, both, after all, being the property of their lords).94 Second — this being perhaps the most crucial difference of all — those who swore the oaths of Peace joined together in a kind of brotherhood, established by their oaths, in which the participants swore to aid each other against enemies both within and without the Peace. In other words, beyond the self-help the Peace allowed to individuals in prosecuting their disputes once attempts at reconciliation had failed, the Peace also established self-help groups, brought into being by the oath of their participants. Looking at these oaths, any Carolingian historian should immediately recognize a coniuratio — the very form of self-help fellowships the Carolingians outlawed. In all these respects, the Peace of God was nothing like Carolingian capitularies on peace. The very form of the articles of the Peace of God was nothing like that of Carolingian capitularies. And the mechanics of the Peace were not only significantly different, but in crucial respects even opposed to Carolingian principles of order. *** Out of this discussion of two sets of sources, one ninth century, one largely eleventh, one might expect the possibility of writing the history of a change (even a ‘mutation’) from one to the other. But history is never so straightforward. In the early seventh century, the grandiose assertions of royal authority expressed in the Edict of Clothar II and the acts of the Council of Clichy — redolent of a late Roman episcopal model of imperial justice — are absolutely contemporaneous with the densely packed statements of local legal practice enshrined in the Pactus legis Alamannorum — a distant echo of late Roman legal practices in the localities of the empire’s western provinces.95 And despite the difference of nearly five hundred years (with their equally vast social, political, and legal differences), Louis IX’s Grande Ordonnance of 1254 reads much like Charlemagne’s Admonitio generalis of 789. Yet, only a few years after Louis’s death, Beaumanoir completed his Coutumes de Beauvaisis, with its nearly two thousand para­graphs detailing the complexities of local legal procedures and rules.96 In other words, in the seventh century, the ninth

 94 In addition to the works cited in the previous note, see also Goetz, ‘Pacem et iustitiam facere’.  95 Capitularia, ed. by Boretius and Krause, i, pp. 20–23; Les canons des conciles mérovingiens, ed. by Gaudemet and Basdevant, ii, pp. 526–47; Pactus legis Alamannorum, ed. by Lehmann and Eckhardt. On the context, see Esders, Römische Rechtstradition; Schott, ‘Lex und Skriptorium’; Schott, ‘Pactus, Lex und Recht’.  96 Ordonnances des roys de France, ed. by Laurière, i, pp. 65–75, with Carolus-Barré, ‘La grande ordonnance de 1254’, and more recently, Krynen, ‘Saint Louis législateur’. Beaumanoir, Coutumes de Beauvaisis, ed. by Salmon.

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century, and the thirteenth century, grandiloquent programmatic statements of social and political order coexisted with pragmatic descriptions of and injunctions for legal processes. Given this constant, one might simply conclude that two registers of ‘legislation’ operated throughout the Middle Ages: one ‘high’, written from the standpoint of the king and elites and regulating relations between them; one ‘low’, regulating (or appearing to regulate) affairs locally. Nevertheless, between Carolingian capitularies and the statutes of the Peace of God there remains a difference both sharp and profound in the representation of legal and political order. Carolingian capitularies prohibited local and regional self-help associations based upon oaths. The Peace of God insisted on them. And in the early eleventh century and again in the early twelfth century, the Capetian kings not only accepted such associations but relied on them — Robert the Pious to underwrite his control of newly conquered Burgundy, Louis VI to provide the armies for his military campaigns on the edges of the royal domain.97 The very basis of rulership over far-flung dominions had changed, and with it changed the representation of the kingdom and political order, even as imagined by kings themselves.

 97 Koziol, ‘The Conquest of Burgundy’; Koziol, The Peace of God, pp. 72–75, 81, 103–09; Barthélemy, ‘Paix de Dieu et communes’.

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Possel, Christina, ‘Authors and Recipients of Carolingian Capitularies, 779–829’, in Texts and Identities in the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Richard Corradini, Rob Meens, Christina Pössel, and Philip Shaw, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Denkschriften, 344. Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 12 (Vienna: Österrreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2006), pp. 253–74 Reimitz, Helmut, History, Frankish Identity, and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, 550–850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) Roberts, Edward, ‘Boundary Clauses and the Use of the Vernacular in Eastern Frankish Charters, c. 750–c. 900’, Historical Research, 91.254 (2018), 580–604 Romig, Andrew J., Be a Perfect Man: Christian Masculinity and the Carolingian Aristocracy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017) Rosenwein, Barbara, Negotiating Space: Power, Restraint, and Privileges of Immunity in Early Medi­eval Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999) Schott, Clausdieter, ‘Lex und Skriptorium — Eine Studie zu den süddeutschen Stammesrechten’, in Leges – Gentes – Regna: Zur Rolle von germanischen Rechtsgewohnheiten und lateinischer Schrifttradition bei der Ausbildung der frühmittelalterlichen Rechtskultur, ed. by Gerhard Dilcher and Eva-Marie Distler (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2006), pp. 257–90 —— , ‘Pactus, Lex und Recht’, in Die Alemannen in der Frühzeit, ed. by Wolfgang Hübner (Bühl [Baden]: Verlag Konkordia, 1974), pp. 135–68 Smail, Daniel Lord, The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity, and Legal Culture in Marseille, 1264–1423 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003) Stone, Rachel, Morality and Masculinity in the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) Ubl, Karl, ‘Gab es das Leges-Skriptorium Ludwigs des Frommen?’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 70 (2014), 43–65 —— , ‘The Limits of Government’, in Wergild, Compensation and Penance: The Monetary Logic of Early Medi­eval Conflict Resolution, ed. by Lukas Bothe, Stefan Esders, and Han Nijdam (Leiden: Brill, 2021), pp. 240–60 —— , ‘Review: Law and Authority in the Early Middle Ages, by Thomas Faulkner’, H-Net Reviews ( June 2016), [accessed 23 February 2022] —— , ‘Die Stimme des Kaisers: Persönlichkeit und Persona in Dokumenten Ludwigs des Frommen’, Archiv für Diplomatik, Schriftgeschichte, Siegel- und Wappenkunde, 63.1 (2017), 47–69 Wadle, Elmar, Landfrieden, Strafe, Recht: Zwölf Studen zum Mittelalter, Schriften zur Europäischen Rechts- und Verfassungsgeschichte, 37 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2001), pp. 11–39 West, Charles, Reframing the Feudal Revolution: Political and Social Transformation between Marne and Moselle, c. 800–c. 1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) White, Stephen D., Feuding and Peace-Making in Eleventh-Century France (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005)

Warren Brown

Violence in Early Capetian v. Early Valois France Same Behaviour, Different Ideas of Order?

The classic model of the so-called ‘Feudal Revolution’ of the early Capetian period tells us that in the central and southern parts of France in the course of the tenth century, royal authority and a quasi-public order that had been built by the Carolingian kings broke down.1 Into the vacuum spread lordships imposed by warriors wielding violent force on their own behalves, on the principle that ‘might makes right’ (though they sometimes justified their actions with reference to usurped royal rights). This, among other things, forced churchmen at the end of the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh centuries to start convening the Peace of God councils, in which they sought to restore order by imposing on participants oaths to uphold it. This narrative has been strongly contested.2 Yet it has had a great deal of staying power, primarily because it explains very logically and coherently why the sources for this part of France from this period positively brim with violence, or accusations of violence, and why kings are notably absent. There is another period in French history when the same conditions could be said to apply: the second half of the fourteenth century.3 The rapid collapse of the Valois monarchy, in the wake of the French defeat at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356 and the capture of King John II by the English, created a power vacuum that was, to a large degree, filled by members of the warrior class and their followers acting as free agents. Some of these were

 1 See, e.g., Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century, esp. pp. 22–83, and ‘The “Feudal Revolution”’; Poly and Bournazel, La mutation féodale.  2 See, e.g., Barthélemy, La mutation de l’an mil; Barthélemy and White, ‘Debate: The “Feudal Revolution”: Comment 1, Comment 2’; Reuter, Wickham, and Bisson, ‘Debate: The “Feudal Revolution”: Comment 3, Comment 4, Reply’. See also Brown and Górecki, eds, Conflict in Medi­eval Europe, pp. 26–33, and West, Reframing the Feudal Revolution.  3 See Curry, ‘France and the Hundred Years War’.

Warren Brown ([email protected]) is Professor of History at the California Institute of Techno­logy. Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe: Studies on Cultural Identity and Power, ed. by Courtney M. Booker, Hans Hummer, and Dana M. Polanichka, CURSOR 41, pp. 287–306 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022)        10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.127585

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acting under the colour of authority, as leaders of parts of the royal army, or as commanders of castle or city garrisons. Others led bands or armies of unemployed mercenaries, now known as the Free Companies. Whether or not they could claim legitimacy, many of them set up what were essentially personal lordships maintained by force or the threat of force, which lasted as long as somebody else did not show up with more force or with enough money to make them go somewhere else. Both in time and in their respective historio­graphies, these two periods are worlds apart. I want to suggest, however, that there might be some value in bringing them together. On the surface, conditions and, in particular, the behaviour of the most visible political actors look very similar. But their mental worlds, in particular their ideas about what constituted order and disorder, were quite different. Many people in the tenth and eleventh centuries, in what was on its way to becoming France, did not see the personal resort to armed force as disordered. There were disruptions and violations of proper order, but to take violent action on one’s own authority, or to engage in warfare that was not sanctioned by a ruler, were not among them. In fourteenth-century France, it looks like the opposite is true. Most people appear to have believed that legitimate violence belonged to the king. Violence that lacked royal sanction — or, in the king’s absence, at least the sanction of some central figure perceived to stand in his place or represent his interests — was illegitimate. In neither period is the picture clear cut. In both we can see different ideas about proper order competing with each other or being contested. Yet comparing the two, I think, can help us see that early Capetian France, for all of its turbulence, did not witness a complete breakdown of order. Many of its inhabitants in fact thought they lived in an ordered society, if one that was ordered quite differently than a Carolingian-style, king-centred idea of order, or a modern Western one, would lead us to expect (or want). In early Valois France, in contrast, it appears that many, if not most, contemporaries thought that order had indeed broken down. The idea that order flowed from the king, though contested, was entrenched enough that what happened in the decades after Poitiers was widely perceived, even by those who were profiting from the situation, as a collapse of order whose remedy rested with the revival of royal power. To begin with, I need to say what I mean by ‘order’.4 I assume that political and/or social order is fundamentally a mental process. Groups of people develop models, standards, or patterns of behaviour that are acceptable or expected of their members. These models, standards, or patterns reflect a shared sense of the ‘right thing to do’; it is through them that actors or witnesses justify their own actions or evaluate or criticize the behaviour of others. I identify such standards as ‘norms’, whether they are tacit and implicitly expressed in stories about people’s behaviour or explicitly expressed in some authoritative  4 For an extended discussion, see Brown, Violence in Medi­eval Europe, pp. 9–12, 18–23.

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form, as in law. Whenever people behave according to norms — that is, to paraphrase Neil MacCormick, whenever they conduct themselves in relation to others on the basis of an opinion about the right thing to do that they believe is (or ought to be) mutual — there is order (assuming a critical mass of people who agree about what the right thing to do is; there is hardly order if everyone is behaving according to different norms).5 The world of norms is never, however, black and white. There are always disagreements, differences in circumstances, interests, and opinions, that generate different norms or sets of related norms (i.e. normative frameworks). Norms can compete, and they can clash; a given society’s sense of ‘the right thing to do’ can appear to observers in some cases to be crystal clear but in others to be quite muddy. When a given normative framework appears to win out, that is, when it appears to dominate most or all of our sources, I call it ‘dominant’. The model of the ‘Feudal Revolution’ with which I opened assumes that an idea of a public order, that is, a set of norms regulating people’s behaviour whose authority rested with and which was enforced by a central authority, was transmitted to tenth- and eleventh-century France from the Carolingian period. At the basis of this order was the king: when the Capetian kings could no longer uphold it, order broke down. In his famous 1994 article on the Feudal Revolution, for example, Thomas Bisson, when talking about conditions in the tenth century, states that ‘Violence […] was as normal and enduring as the public order it afflicted. That it was dis-order, none who placed their hope in legitimate authority doubted’.6 A number of authors from the period count among those ‘who placed their hope in legitimate authority’. As far as I can tell, these were of a particular kind: bishops and monks. Their idea of order is visible in several different kinds of texts. In his popular compilation of canon law, Bishop Burchard of Worms divided society into ‘iis qui praesunt, ut imperatoribus, regibus, principibus’ (those who preside, such as emperors, kings, princes) and ‘his qui horum imperio subjecti sunt’ (those who are subject to their imperium).7 The abbot Adso of Montier-en-Der complained in the Miracles of St Waldebert that under the tyranny of Duke Richard of Burgundy, the possessions of the church were being invaded and everywhere seized by the ungodly; ‘rex non esset et judex, qui verae intuitu justitiae huic impiorum pravitati vellet ex toto resistere’ (there was no king or judge who wished at all to resist with the gaze of true justice the depravities of the impious).8 Abbot Odo of Cluny, in his life of St Gerald of Aurillac, described how Gerald was forced against his will to use violence to defend his property from the depredations of evil men, because the local marquises were trying to subject  5 Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v, ‘norm, n. 1’, i. 1. b; MacCormick, Institutions of Law, pp. 11, 20.  6 Bisson, ‘The “Feudal Revolution”’, p. 13; see also Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century, pp. 25–53.  7 Burchard of Worms, Decretorum libri viginti, ed. by Migne, col. 895.  8 Adso Dervensis Abbas, De Miraculis S. Waldeberti, c. 13, ed. by Migne, col. 695.

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the vassals of the king to their own power.9 The erstwhile monk of Aurillac who became pope, Gerbert, wrote in a letter to another monk of Aurillac in 987 that in the arena of public affairs (in publicis causis), divine and human laws were confused because of the avarice of wicked men, and only that was considered right which passion and force extorted ‘more ferarum’ (after the manner of wild beasts).10 Bishop Thietmar of the Saxon diocese of Merseburg, looking westwards in the 1010s from an empire where kings remained strong, levied a similar charge that weak kings had condemned France to disorder. In his chronicle of the Ottonians, in an aside about Empress Theophanu, he declared that ‘Haec occidentales tunc inhabitat regiones, quae hoc nomine merito dicuntur, quia ibidem sol et omnis equitas cum obediencia et caritate mutua in occasum se vergit […]. Hic predicatores sancti in vanum laborant, hic reges et caeteri principes modicum valent, predones et iusti persecutores dominantur’ (She was then residing in the regions of the setting sun, rightly referred to as such because there not only the sun but all justice, obedience, and mutual love decline towards extinction […]. Holy preachers labor here in vain, kings and other great men have little power, thieves and law breakers rule).11 Many of the sources from France in this period at which I have looked, however, do not project images of complete disorder. They display little to no concern with royal authority as a source of norms, or of legitimation; violence wielded without royal sanction, when used in the right way for the right reasons, appears as right, proper, and ordered. There were disruptions and violations of order, but as far as these sources are concerned, order itself had not disappeared. A good place to see this is in the famous record from the 1020s of an agreement between the castellan Hugh IV of Lusignan and Duke William V of Aquitaine, the Conventum inter Guillelmum aquitanorum comes et Hugonem chiliarchum. The pretentious title ‘chiliarch’ (meaning ‘leader of a thousand’) notwithstanding, Hugh was a low-level castellan trying to assert his claims to lands and castles, with the help of his troop of armed horsemen. The Conventum, which is written from Hugh’s point of view and very much in his interests, recounts his repeated efforts to get what he believed to be his due, in the face of what he claimed was William’s opposition, obstruction, and betrayal. It culminates in Hugh swearing fidelity to William and his son and giving up all of his prior claims, in exchange for a castle and its associated properties that had belonged to his uncle and a promise that the pair would

 9 Odo of Cluny, De vita sancti Geraldi Auriliacensis comitis, i. 7–8, ed. by Migne, cols 646–47, and ‘The Life of Saint Gerald of Aurillac’, trans. by Sitwell, pp. 301–03.  10 Gerbert of Reims, Die Briefsammlung, no. 92, ed. by Weigle, pp. 120–22; Gerbert of Reims, The Letters, Letter 105, trans. by Lattin, pp. 140–41.  11 Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, ed. by Buchner, iv. 14, pp. 130–31; Thietmar of Merseburg, The Chronicon, trans. by Warner, pp. 160–61.

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bear faith to Hugh ‘sine malo ingenio’ (without evil trickery).12 The narrative is rife with violence: castles are built, besieged, taken, and destroyed; people are killed or captured (and in one instance deliberately maimed); buildings are plundered and burned. Since it gives us Hugh’s side of the story, it naturally presents the violence that Hugh carries out as acceptable, even necessary. The Conventum presents us in fact with a remarkably ordered world view. It loudly broadcasts a set of norms about the obligations of lords and vassals to help each other and uphold each other’s interests, about who had legitimate claims to lands and castles and on what basis, and about keeping promises — norms that it says William kept violating. Hugh’s world, the Conventum claims, was disordered only insofar as William was not playing by the rules; William’s breaches of what Hugh claimed were a lord’s proper obligations, and the damage that Hugh suffered as a result justified Hugh’s resort to violence on his own behalf. The order he thought William was duty bound to uphold had nothing to do with upholding a public peace. It had to do with William upholding Hugh’s peace, and Hugh upholding William’s. When Hugh used violence (which he did not always do), he did so to defend his honour, both literally, in terms of the castle and lands he thought William owed him, and figuratively, in terms of his reputation. That his world had rules governing when one could use violence is revealed both tacitly, by what does not happen (there is surprisingly little actual killing), and explicitly, when the text notes that, while fighting on William’s behalf, Hugh himself committed a wrong against someone that led that someone to take justified revenge.13 Monastic charters from the eleventh century talk about equally turbulent relationships between local aristocratic families. But they too tell us that there were limits. The game of pursuing one’s interests against one’s enemies, and fighting one’s competitors, had rules that were enforced by the danger of losing the support of your kin and allies, and ultimately by the threat of violent revenge. We see these pressures at play in the charters when, for example, someone who faced vengeance, and who could not muster support through the normal channels, managed to buy peace by endowing a monk to pray for someone he had killed, or to gain a monastery’s help in negotiating with his enemies by ceding to it disputed property that he had been holding.14 Perhaps most interesting is a text that one might expect to echo clerical critiques of aristocratic disorder: the collection of stories about the miracles of St Foy titled the Liber miraculorum sancti Fidis.15 This collection is roughly

 12 Conventum inter Guillelmum aquitanorum comes et Hugonem chiliarchum, ed. by Martindale, p. 548; ‘Agreements between Count William of the Aquitanians and Hugh of Lusignan (1028)’, trans. by Greene and Rosenwein, p. 193.  13 Conventum inter Guillelmum aquitanorum comes et Hugonem chiliarchum, ed. by Martindale, p. 543; ‘Agreements between Count William of the Aquitanians and Hugh of Lusignan (1028)’, trans. by Greene and Rosenwein, p. 192.  14 See Brown, Violence in Medi­eval Europe, pp. 106–10; White, ‘Feuding and Peace-Making’.  15 Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis, ed. by Robertini; The Book of Sainte Foy, trans. by Sheingorn;

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contemporary with Hugh of Lusignan’s Conventum. It was compiled first by Bernard, a teacher at the school at Angers, and then by the monks of St Foy’s monastery at Conques. This text projects an intensely local world around Conques, inhabited by, among others, lords in castles with troops of warrior horsemen. Sometimes the interests of the warriors align with those of the monks; sometimes their interests clash. When they clash, there is no lamenting for a lost public order upheld by kings. The monks see the world in the same way as the warriors do: they play by the same rules, with a vengeance. The prime evidence for this is St Foy herself. The saint takes quite violent vengeance for insults and injuries to herself, to her followers, and to those under her protection. She uses violence and the threat of violence to extort property (as when she uses threatening visions and painful illnesses to get everyone within range to cough up gold for the frontal of a new altar in her church).16 She looks with favour on pious warriors who use violence in her interests.17 In short, the people in and around the monastery of Conques who were telling and writing these miracle stories were thinking about the world in fundamentally the same terms as Hugh of Lusignan; the personal resort to violence was fine, even laudable, as long as it was carried out in the right way by the right person for the right reasons. Theirs was a world with a recognizable, though highly subjective, order. When someone violated that order, violence was one of the means one could use to restore the world to its proper state — as defined, of course, by the one telling the stories. The Peace of God councils do project the view that the world had fallen into disorder.18 They are concerned in particular with things that the Carolingian kings had made their business: not only protecting the space, rights, and people of the churches and monasteries, but also proper religious practice and the morals and behaviour of both the clergy and the laity. To this degree, then, they are focused on combating what they see as disorder, and restoring a general state of peace that had previously depended on kings. The council acts in general do not, however, single out the absence of effective kings as the root cause of the problems they sought to address. The trigger for the councils appears instead to have been the sense that mankind’s sins had drawn God’s wrath. At Charroux in 989, the council was called to eradicate the offences that had sprung up because of the long delay in calling councils. Adhemar of Chabannes, writing in his Chronicon about the first council of Limoges in 994, says that it was a response to pestilence. The council at Elne-Toulouges in 1027 acted because the bishops’ previous decrees were not being followed. Brown, Violence in Medi­eval Europe, pp. 111–16.  16 Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis, i. 17–22, ed. by Robertini, pp. 117–23; The Book of Sainte Foy, trans. by Sheingorn, pp. 82–88.  17 See, e.g., Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis, i. 26, ed. by Robertini, pp. 128–31; The Book of Sainte Foy, trans. by Sheingorn, pp. 93–97.  18 Koziol, The Peace of God; Head and Landes, eds, The Peace of God; Brown, Violence in Medi­ eval Europe, pp. 116–24.

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Ralph Glaber, in his Historiarum libri quinque, says that the councils called in 1033 were a response to a plague.19 Only Bishop Gerard of Cambrai, who had more than one foot in the Empire, said (according to his bio­grapher in the Gesta Episcoporum Cameracensium) that the condition of the realm was tottering because of the incompetence of kings as well as the sins of men, and that the bishops of Soissons and Beauvais were trying to salvage the public interest when they unwisely followed their Burgundian colleagues in summoning peace councils.20 The ‘peace’ that the councils project is not one based on an absence of personal violence, or on the Carolingian tradition that kings had the right to tightly regulate and control all acts of violence that they themselves had not authorized. The council acts acknowledge, respect, and even incorporate the right of the aristocracy to wield violence on their own, without royal sanction. They are mainly concerned to protect church spaces from unjustified invasion, church property from uncompensated seizure, and defenceless people such as peasants and merchants from uncompensated assault and plundering. Warrior aristocrats are allowed to fight each other, to plunder land as long as it is their own, to devastate the property of legitimate enemies. Peasants, merchants, even women, who owed compensation for something or had committed some offence were fair targets. Also legitimate targets were armed clerics, which reinforces evidence provided by a warrior bishop in Hugh’s complaint and a warrior monk in St Foy’s Miracles that plenty of clergy participated in this normative world.21 Duke William V of Aquitaine at the turn of the millennium did use the council at Poitiers to assert a very Carolingian image of central authority operating through courts to resolve disputes. William summoned five bishops and twelve abbots to the council for the purpose of restoring peace and justice. The resulting council acts cast peace and justice in terms of secular judicial authority. For example, whenever someone claimed that his possessions had been usurped during the five years preceding the council, or at any time afterwards, the parties involved were to stand trial in the presence of a prince or a judge. Should one party to the dispute refuse to do so, and the prince or judge be unable to compel him, the princes and bishops who had summoned the council were to ‘destroy and trouble’ the holdout (omnes unanimiter in destructionem et confusionem ipsius pergant) until he agreed to do proper justice.22  19 Head and Landes, eds, The Peace of God, pp. 327, 329–30, 334, 338.  20 Head and Landes, eds, The Peace of God, pp. 335–36.  21 See, e.g., Charroux 989, in Head and Landes, eds, The Peace of God, p. 327, and ElneToulouges 1027, in Head and Landes, eds, The Peace of God, p. 334; Conventum inter Guillelmum aquitanorum comes et Hugonem chiliarchum, ed. by Martindale, p. 545; ‘Agreements between Count William of the Aquitanians and Hugh of Lusignan (1028)’, trans. by Greene and Rosenwein, p. 193; Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis, i. 26, ed. by Robertini, pp. 128–31; The Book of Sainte Foy, trans. by Sheingorn, pp. 93–97.  22 Concilium Pictavense, ed. by Mansi and others, col. 268; Head and Landes, eds, The Peace of God, p. 330.

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This too tells us that this idea of a king- or prince-based order was still out there, in this case to be picked up and used to legitimate a duke’s power. On the other side of the coin, when Bishop Warin of Beauvais proposed a peace oath to King Robert the Pious in 1023, the oath very much validated the use of violence independent of royal authority as long as it stayed in bounds. It permitted violence by warriors and their followers against their enemies: houses were not to be destroyed unless there were an enemy horseman inside and unless the house were joined to a castle. The oath also protected access to the supplies needed to carry out this violence. One could not destroy a mill, or seize the grain in it, unless one were on a cavalcade or with the royal army, or the mill were on one’s land; while one was building or besieging a castle, in the host of the king or a bishop or on cavalcade, one could not break into the protected areas of a church unless the church in question refused to sell one what one needed to live.23 Among those whom the peace councils sought to protect were members of the peasantry. These are often projected, with good reason, as the primary victims of aristocratic violence in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Both documentary and narrative sources tell us that a great many peasants suffered from newly imposed exactions, uncompensated plundering, and the death and destruction that came from being caught in the crossfire of enmities among the aristocracy.24 However, peasants were not always helpless or defenceless; they were at times perfectly capable of wielding violence themselves. One of the stories in the Miracles of St Foy, for example, tells of a lord and his men who attacked a village belonging to St Foy’s monks, with the aim of killing the monk who oversaw the village; the peasants of the village fought back and ended up driving the lord and his men away.25 A priceless text written at about the same time as the Miracles suggests that when they wielded violence, some members of the lower order of society acknowledged and worked within the same normative framework as many of their betters. The text is the so-called Law of the Episcopal Familia at Worms. It was compiled sometime between 1023 and 1025 by Bishop Burchard of Worms to set limits on the behaviour of the members of his household, which included the clergy who served under him, his knights and officials, the townspeople of Worms,

 23 ‘Serment pour la paix de Dieu’, ed. by Pfister, p. lxi; Head and Landes, eds, The Peace of God, pp. 332–34.  24 See inter alia a charter from Noyers c. 1074, in which one party to a guerra burns a house down on top of a group of peasant refugees: White, ‘Feuding and Peace-Making’, Case 1, pp. 214–21; or the vignette from the Miracles of St Foy, in which warriors plunder peasants who had fled from fighting and taken refuge in a church: Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis, iii. 21, ed. by Robertini, pp. 211–12; The Book of Sainte Foy, trans. by Sheingorn, pp. 158–59. Perhaps the best evocation of this side of the equation, albeit for Catalonia for a somewhat later period, is Bisson, Tormented Voices.  25 Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis, iii. 10, ed. by Robertini, pp. 197–98; The Book of Sainte Foy, trans. by Sheingorn, pp. 158–59.

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and the tenants and unfree servants (servi) who worked his manors. Among Burchard’s major complaints were the killings (homicidia) of servi by other servi that took place ‘quasi cottidie fiebant infra familiam sancti Petri more beluino’ (daily among the familia of St Peter as though among wild beasts).26 The servi killed each other, Burchard charged, either for no reason, or because one party was driven by insane rage, drunkenness, or pride. The perpetrators, instead of being handed over for penance, were more often glorified and exalted by their peers. To combat the killings, Burchard threatened with mutilation those who killed for any other reason than defence of self, family, or goods and mandated that they pay wergeld and make peace with the victim’s kin. The victim’s kin in turn had to accept compensation; if they insisted on taking vengeance against the killer and/or his kin, they too faced mutilation. If the killer fled, his kin were to be safe from retaliation. Should the kin of the victim, in an effort to get around this law, try to stir up allies from outside the familia, they would be forced either to fight a judicial duel or to undergo the ordeal of boiling water with the accused killer’s kin; the losers would be subject to mutilation. If someone from another familia, who was nevertheless working the bishop’s land, killed someone from within the bishop’s familia, and they were not caught, they were left open to reprisals by members of the bishop’s community or his advocates. In short: it appears that the bishop’s servi, who included people who worked the land, killed when they were drunk, angry, or suffered from injured pride. Sometimes their community approved and celebrated the killings. Even if we were to chalk this picture up to a stereotyped view of servi on Burchard’s part, it still appears that kinsmen of homicide victims normally sought vengeance when they felt wronged; Burchard had to try to impose composition and settlement. Some kindreds resisted the bishop’s efforts to regulate their use of violence, to the point of looking for allies in other familia who were not subject to the bishop’s law. Finally, when a killer was not a member of his familia, and he was not caught, even Burchard let vengeance take its course. In sum, what we have in early Capetian France is a somewhat messy picture. Some of our sources lament the absence of royal order. However, other sources — I would venture in fact to say most of them — project not disorder, but rather an order that was simply governed by a different set of norms, namely those that permitted and regulated the personal resort to violence. These norms are quite old; they were dominant for much of the Merovingian period, and they persisted under the surface of Carolingian efforts to suppress them. The ‘public’ order projected by the peace councils acknowledges and incorporates them, directing violence away from certain targets but nevertheless respecting the personal right to wield violent force in one’s own interests or defence.

 26 Burchard of Worms, Lex familiae Wormatiensis ecclesiae, c. 30, ed. by Weiland, pp. 643–44.

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Things are quite different in France in the middle of the fourteenth century. By this point, the French kings were asserting something very close to a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, distinguishing in particular between royal and therefore legitimate war and the personal and therefore illegitimate use of force in private disputes. They were helped along by the fact that because of the way Europe had developed economically and socially, more people, especially merchants, citizens of the towns, and the lawyers who gave their interests legal expression, had an interest in investing in a king-centred idea of order. Many aristocrats (and many members of the upper bourgeoisie who mimicked their culture) fought to defend the old idea of order, according to which they had the right to wield violence on their own behalf and in their own interests.27 But how much the attitude that right order depended on kings had become normalized by the fourteenth century is revealed by what happened when royal authority in France well and truly collapsed. After the second major land battle of the Hundred Years War ended on 19 September 1356, with a French army shattered and the Valois king John II in English custody, the French monarchy fell apart.28 Power in France was left to be fought over by an array of competing parties: the Dauphin, Charles, duke of Normandy, who would eventually become Charles V; Charles ‘the Bad’, king of Navarre, who had his own claim to the throne; the major towns and cities (chief among them Paris); and smaller towns and villages trying simply to survive. Alongside all of these were the members of the warrior aristocracy and bands of mercenaries who had been engaged by both the French and the English. It is these latter men who moved most forcefully into the power vacuum, in the form of what became known as the Free Companies. They gathered in groups both small and large; they took castles and towns that could not be defended and used them as bases to extort money from the surrounding population and to conduct raids. Or they gathered into larger armies to capture castles and larger towns and shared the profits. They spread outwards from two sources: from the marches of Brittany and Normandy into the northern plains, and from Gascony up the river valleys into the Massif Central. Even outside of these areas, however, where the writ of the central government still ran, the behaviour of the armed did not look much different. Commanders of castle garrisons were forced by, or took advantage of, the absence of clear orders and supplies to behave essentially as freebooters in order to keep their men together, fed, and paid (and ideally make a profit). I cannot pretend that my survey of the sources is comprehensive, but according to those I have looked at, people from a variety of backgrounds, looking at events from a variety of perspectives, perceived what was going on as absolute disorder. The English knight Sir Thomas Gray, a participant in the

 27 See Brown, Violence in Medi­eval Europe, pp. 255–61, as well as Kaeuper, War, Justice, and Public Order, esp. pp. 134–268.  28 See Sumption, The Hundred Years War.

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war, says in his memoirs that ‘lez plusours dez gentz Engles, qe vesqerent sure la guere […] sez mistrent en Normendy, emblerent chasteaux, afforcerent manoirs, mouerent tiel riote de guere hu pays, par suppuail dez gentz de commune Dengleter, qi lez vindrent de iour en autre, contre defens le Roy. En alerent espessement a meruail, tout saunz cheuetain de lour test demene’ (Many of the English who lived off the war set out for Normandy, took castles, fortified manors, and caused other such warlike mayhem in the county, with the support of men of the community of England, who came to [join] them day by day against the king’s orders. They came in astonishing numbers, all of them on their own account without any leader).29 A Carmelite friar of peasant origin named Jean de Venette, who was in Paris throughout the 1350s, wrote in his chronicle of the years 1340–1368 that after an effort by the three estates (i.e. the nobility, the clergy, and the bourgeoisie) to work together failed, ‘ex tunc enim regni negotia male ire, et res publica deperire, [latrones] et praedones per totam patriam insurgere […]. Viae et itinera quasi ubique dubia et periculosa propter pedites et latrones’ (from that time on, all went ill with the kingdom and the state was undone. Thieves and robbers rose up everywhere in the land […]. Highways and roads were almost everywhere uncertain and dangerous on account of freebooters and robbers).30 The historian to the aristocracy Jean Froissart wrote in his Chronicles ‘Ainsi étoit le royaume de France de tous lez pillé et dérobé, ni on ne savoit de quell part chevaucher que on ne fût rué jus’ (that the kingdom of France was plundered and pillaged in every direction, so that it became impossible to ride anywhere without being attacked).31 The antidote was the return of the king. De Venette writes that when the Dauphin first came to Paris after Poitiers, ‘considerabat enim plebs tota quod per dominum Karolum et ipsius auxilium pater reverteretur, et tota patria [Francorum] salvaretur’ (the people were confident that through him and his aid his father would return and the whole country of France would be saved). When Edward III and John II negotiated a peace, ‘doluerunt etiam falsi proditores et notorii raptores, timentes ne postea in patibulis, pro suis sceleratis actibus et demeritis, accusati et cogniti [finaliter] alligarentur’ (false traitors and notorious thieves lamented the peace because they now feared that they would be accused of all their crimes and misdeeds, be brought to trial, and finally be hanged on a gibbet).32 The citizens of Paris, he said, longed for the return of King John, that at his coming the wicked noblemen who were molesting the land and all other robbers might be brought to justice.33

 29 Gray, Scalacronica, ed. and trans. by King, p. 153.  30 Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis, ed. by Géraud, pp. 244–45; Jean de Venette, Chronicle, ed. by Newhall, trans. by Birdsall, p. 66 (text in brackets added by Birdsall from a manu­script to which Géraud did not have access).  31 Jean Froissart, Chroniques, i. 2. 91, ed. by Buchon, i, p. 401; Chronicles, trans. by Brereton, p. 161.  32 Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis, ed. by Géraud, pp. 242, 312; Jean de Venette, Chronicle, ed. by Newhall, trans. by Birdsall, pp. 65, 104.  33 Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis, ed. by Géraud, pp. 314–15; Jean de Venette,

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As for Jean Froissart, whose overwhelming allegiance to the culture of the military aristocracy has led him to be called ‘the Secretary to Chivalry’, one might expect him to downplay the connection between kings and order.34 He too, however, regarded the king as essential. Writing of the mental illness of the French king Charles VI in the 1390s, Froissart says, ‘l’infirmité que le roi prit au voyage de Bretagne […] abattit grandement la joie et le revel de France […] et pour ce que il étoit chef, le devoient mieux toutes gens sentir, car quand le chef a mal, tous les membres s’en sentient’ (the whole of the French nation was saddened by the illness which the king contracted […] because he was the head, the distress was all the more deeply felt. When the head of a body is sick, all the limbs suffer).35 Most revealing is something he says while narrating the decline of the English king Richard II at the end of the century. In 1399, Richard closed the courts in England, ‘les vaillans hommes les prélats et les paisibles qui ne vouloient que paix, simplesse et amour, et payer ce qu’ils devoient, se commencèrent grandement à ébahir’ (to the dismay of honest men who asked only for tranquility and fair dealing, with the payment of their honest debts). These honest men then began to be attacked by people who roamed the country in troops and gangs. Merchants feared to ride out on their business for fear of being robbed, and did not know where to turn for protection or justice. Farmers were plundered of their grain and livestock. People complained of King Richard’s idleness and contrasted the sorry state of affairs with the reign of ‘bon roi Édouard de bonne mémoire’ (good King Edward of happy memory).36 It is striking that the Free Companies apparently preferred to serve under some king’s banner — or at least tried to legitimate their activities by tying them to a king whenever they could. In his charming fireside interview from 1388 of the Gascon freebooter the Bascot de Mauleon, for example, Froissart has the Bascot occasionally drop a comment to justify some set of actions, such as ‘et celle guerre faisions lors au vu et au titre du roi de Navarre’ (we were carrying on that war with the knowledge of the King of Navarre and in his name). If we accept Froissart’s account, the Bascot and his companions seem to have felt that royal sanction made what they were doing more acceptable (though they did not of course stop doing it without royal cognizance).37 Royal sanction was important enough to be a useful tool. As Charles VI tried to recover the situation in France, some members of the Companies began to Chronicle, ed. by Newhall, trans. by Birdsall, p. 106.  34 Ainsworth, Jean Froissart and the Fabric of History, inter alia, pp. 31, 77.  35 Jean Froissart, Chroniques, iv. 30, ed. by Buchon, iii, p. 173; Contemporary Chronicles of the Hundred Years War, ed. and trans. by Thompson, p. 226.  36 Jean Froissart, Chroniques, iv. 70, ed. by Buchon, iii, pp. 338–39; Chronicles, trans. by Brereton, pp. 441–42.  37 Jean Froissart, Chroniques, iii. 15, ed. by Buchon, ii, p. 408; Chronicles, trans. by Brereton, pp. 283–84. Cf. Firnhaber-Baker, ‘A son de cloche’, pp. 374–75, on members of mercenary com­ panies attempting to avoid execution for brigandage by arguing they had actually been fighting under the legitimate authority of the English or Navarrese kings, or of some other lord.

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sign on as (or allow themselves to be bought as) ‘good and loyal Frenchmen’, and promptly used that legitimacy to validate and gain resources for attacks on each other. Froissart has the Bascot tell a story about a man who seduced his best friend’s mistress and got stripped to his underwear and flogged through the town by his friend in response. The man went and made his peace with a former lord who was working for the king, promised to be a ‘bon et loyal François’ (good and loyal Frenchman), and promptly betrayed his former friend, who was on the royal most-wanted list.38 Royal authority gave him the perfect tool to take his revenge. It is also important to note how successful resistance to the Free Companies worked. Jonathan Sumption, in his massive history of the Hundred Years War, presents Languedoc as the paradigm of a successful, locally organized defence. This defence, he argues, was based on local assemblies with tax-gathering power, culminating in the Estates of Languedoc, which met separately from those of the rest of France. Local alliances among members of the local nobility, and a common concern among townsmen for security and trade, allowed the region’s power brokers to construct a functioning central authority that could tax and thus could hire and field armies. In contrast, in the Île-de-France, which depended for its administration entirely on the kings, there was no provincial organization that could step in. People everywhere were forced to put faith in walls and ditches; fortifications sprang up in the form of hastily restored small castles, fortified houses, fortified churches, and monasteries. This in turn, argues Sumption, caused more problems, because the number of people required to garrison all of these fortifications spread resources too thinly for effective defence. In other words, they did not form the basis for a decentralized, castle-based order such as developed in the early Capetian period; they made it still harder for the dominant, centralized order to work.39 Here too the big sufferers were the members of the lower orders: the peasants and the inhabitants of the towns and villages. But here, in contrast to the tenth and eleventh centuries, some of these fought back in a serious way. It is hard to characterize precisely the so-called Jacquerie that broke out in northern France in 1358; it was almost certainly understood differently by different participants and observers, depending on their perspectives and interests.40 Most of the extant sources treat the rebellion as a symptom of the general breakdown of order in France that followed Poitiers. Indeed, some — most famously Froissart — cast it as disorder personified: an irrational, disorganized rage that was directed at the nobility by leaderless peasants who were little better than animals.41 Even with the benefit of sober hindsight, it is  38 Jean Froissart, Chroniques, iii. 17, ed. by Buchon, ii, pp. 411–13; Chronicles, trans. by Brereton, pp. 290–93.  39 Sumption, The Hundred Years War, pp. 352–53, 385–89.  40 Sumption, The Hundred Years War, pp. 327–36; Firnhaber-Baker, ‘The Eponymous Jacquerie’.  41 Jean Froissart, Chroniques, i. 2. 65, ed. by Buchon, i, pp. 375–78, and Chronicles, trans. by Brereton, pp. 151–55; Brown, Violence in Medi­eval Europe, pp. 269–71.

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clear that, if not from the beginning, then certainly as the revolt progressed, the rank-and-file Jacques saw themselves as attacking a social system that privileged the nobility — a nobility that was singularly failing to protect them from the depredations of the English, of French royal garrisons and officials, and of the Free Companies (to the degree that it was possible to distinguish them).42 It is nevertheless possible to see the Jacquerie not as disorder, but rather as a reaction against disorder. In particular, it looks from the inside-out like an attempt to defend or maintain an order different from the royally sponsored order that was so singularly failing. Justine Firnhaber-Baker has pointed out that two meetings of the Estates, in 1355 and 1357, authorized people in the localities to resist plundering by soldiers, including mercenaries hired by the crown; they could do so without prior authorization, and assemble and help each other as they thought best. These provisions essentially gave the sanction of central government to the practice of local self-help, not just against freebooters, but against soldiers hired by the crown, and therefore the crown officials who represented them. They made public order, in admittedly dire circumstances, the responsibility not of central authority but of local communities.43 With this as a background, the Jacquerie appears as a combined set of local responses to the threats posed not only by the Free Companies but also — after the Dauphin and the members of the nobility broke away from the Estates, Paris went into rebellion, and Charles of Navarre began to manoeuvre to realize his own claim to the throne — by the soldiers of the competing parties for power. One might argue, in other words, that the absence of effective central authority forced town and country people to behave according to the norms of local and personal self-help, and that the Jacquerie reflected the irruption of those norms back onto the scene in a major way. The members of the Jacquerie nevertheless still seem to have assumed that order depended on at least some functioning central authority, and that the root of that authority was the king. There is a strong case to be made that the revolt was planned and organized in advance by allies of the reform party in Paris as a response to the Dauphin’s effort, in cooperation with the nobility, to retake the city.44 A great deal of the Jacques’ activity was focused, in cooperation with the Parisians, on destroying castles and strong points that threatened Paris’s access to the outside world. This was a fight over control of the organs and symbolic heart of royal government. The Jacques seem to have understood justice as a hierarchically organized process: individual groups, when deciding what to do with captives, were in general very careful to wait for a judgement from the rebellion’s leader, Guillame Carle, before carrying

 42 Firnhaber-Baker, ‘The Eponymous Jacquerie’, pp. 66–68.  43 Firnhaber-Baker, ‘A son de cloche’, esp. pp. 360–67.  44 Firnhaber-Baker, ‘Soldiers, Villagers, and Politics’.

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out a death sentence.45 Finally, the Jacques displayed a remarkable loyalty to the Crown. Among the complaints attributed to them were not only that the nobility was failing to protect the country people, but that it had failed to protect the king.46 None of the attacks that they carried out were aimed at the royal family or royal properties.47 Finally, the Chronique des quatre premiers Valois, in its description of a battle between the Jacques and the forces of the king of Navarre outside Clermont, describes the Jacques loudly giving voice to the royal battle-cry Montjoie and bearing flags painted with the fleur-de-lys.48 This declaration of loyalty to the king, or at least to the crown, by the rebels evokes the similar stance taken by the leaders of the English revolt of 1381, who openly declared that they sought a regime based on a direct connection between the commons and the king, without the intermediary of the nobility.49 The noble reaction to the Jacquerie, in contrast, was not at all aimed at restoring a royally sponsored order. After the defeat of the rebel army at Mello in June of 1358, the killing of Jacques or supposed Jacques by bands of nobles was savage and indiscriminate; the nobles were much more interested in carrying out summary executions of their captives on the spot than they were in waiting for judicial approval. Their reaction was so savage at least in part because the Jacquerie, with its armed and organized bands of peasants and bourgeoise, posed a profound threat to their self-image as, among other things, the sole legitimate purveyors of violence.50 In short, the old idea of order, based on the principle that members of the armed classes had the right to wage private war, was still out there. The idea is clearly expressed in a normative source written by one of the nobility’s high priests, namely, the Livre de Chevalerie by the knight Geoffroy de Charney, who was killed at Poitiers defending King John II.51 For de Charney, worth lay with displaying martial prowess in causes that any knight would find just: these included defending your own land and rights and those of your kin, as well as those of defenceless maidens or widows or orphans. Froissart lets slip indirectly that this culture still lived when he notes that John II finally surrendered at Poitiers to a man named Denis de Morbecque from St Omer; de Morbecque was serving the English because he had been banished from France in 1351 for killing a man in a private war (guerre d’amis).52 This comment not only reveals such wars to have been alive and well, however; it also indicates that at least prior to Poitiers they were being controlled and punished by royal justice.  45  46  47  48  49  50  51  52

Bommersbach, ‘Gewalt in der Jacquerie’, pp. 56–57. Firnhaber-Baker, ‘The Eponymous Jacquerie’, p. 67. Bommersbach, ‘Gewalt in der Jacquerie’, p. 59. Firnhaber-Baker, ‘The Eponymous Jacquerie’, p. 60; Bommersbach, ‘Gewalt in der Jacquerie’, p. 59. See also Cazelles, ‘The Jacquerie’. See inter alia Dunn, The Great Rising of 1381. Cazelles, ‘The Jacquerie’, pp. 81–82. Geoffroi de Charny, A Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry, trans. by Kennedy. Jean Froissart, Chroniques, i. 2. 44, ed. by Buchon, i, p. 356; Chronicles, trans. by Brereton, pp. 140–41.

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The norms articulated by de Charney do not seem to have been what motivated the Free Companies. They seem to have been driven not by norms that impelled some actions and discouraged others, but rather by simple calculations of profit and loss. Froissart tells a wonderful little story about the English knight and captain of freebooters Sir Jean Aimery being ambushed, captured, and ransomed for 30,000 francs. Sir Jean was furious, and swore that he would not return to his castle until he had regained what he had lost. He gathered a company, not to take revenge on those who had humiliated him, however, but to attack someone completely different, simply because that person had money and made a good target.53 The Valois continued throughout all of this to project the idea that public order and legitimacy rested with the Crown. When John II returned from England in 1361, he promulgated an ordinance that reiterated the priority of royal justice over the personal resort to arms (though he left the door open to the latter with royal permission).54 The power of the norms associated with royal order emerges from the way that some weaker members of the aristocracy used them to resist the claims of those more powerful. A classic case is the so-called ‘Last Duel’ written about by Eric Jager, a case that spanned the years 1386 and 1387.55 A knight named Jean de Carrouges came home from an overseas expedition to find that his wife had been raped by a squire named Jacques Le Gris. The knight first approached the man who was lord to both of them, Count Pierre d’Alençon. The alleged rapist Le Gris was a favourite of the count, so the count ordered Sir Jean to drop the matter. Sir Jean refused and appealed to the Parlement in Paris. The count was furious at Sir Jean for disobeying orders; according to Froissart’s account of the affair, ‘l’eût par trop de fois fait occire, si ce n’eût été ce que ils se étoient mis en parlement’ (there were many times when he would have had him killed, but for the fact that they had already gone to court).56 In other words, the fact that the case was in a royal court protected Sir Jean from the count’s vengeance. In a very dramatic denouement, the pair eventually fought the last judicial duel ever ordered by the Paris Parlement, a duel that Sir Jean won. *** In both early Capetian and early Valois France, ideas about order are moving targets. Different ways of understanding proper order, and the norms that flowed from them, jostled against each other, competed, came into conflict, and were advanced by different people with different interests in different  53 Jean Froissart, Chroniques, iii. 16, ed. by Buchon, ii, pp. 408–10, and Chronicles, trans. by Brereton, pp. 284–87; Brown, Violence in Medi­eval Europe, p. 274.  54 Ordonnances des roys de France, ed. by Secousse, pp. 525–27; Firnhaber-Baker, ‘A son de cloche’, pp. 373–74.  55 Jean Froissart, Chroniques, iii. 49, ed. by Buchon, ii, pp. 534–38, and Chronicles, trans. by Brereton, pp. 309–15; Jager, The Last Duel.  56 Jean Froissart, Chroniques, iii. 49, ed. by Buchon, ii, p. 536; Chronicles, trans. by Brereton, p. 313.

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contexts. But comparing these two periods in French history highlights some important differences between them.57 It is hard to see what happened in early Capetian France as a complete breakdown of order. Two normative frameworks were rather competing with each other. The norms associated with a Carolingian-style, king-centred order are still visible, but they appear to be almost completely submerged. The dominant idea of order does not at all aspire to do away with violence, or restrict the right to legitimize it to a central authority. It assumes rather the individual’s right to wield violence, in order to redress subjectively perceived wrongs and to protect and advance his own rights and interests and those of his kin, friends, followers, and allies. This idea of order appears, if the evidence from Burchard of Worms is at all representative, to have been shared by at least some members of the lower orders of society as well as by the aristocracy. The protests of Burchard and churchmen like him notwithstanding, it also seems to have been embraced by much of the clergy, if the assumptions underlying the Miracles of St Foy and some of the Peace of God councils are anything to go by. In early Valois France after the Battle of Poitiers, that same idea of order, and the norms associated with it, are still there. However, it is much easier to argue here, than it is for the early Capetian period, that most people understood what was happening as the collapse of a dominant order. Most of our sources for the decades after Poitiers describe, or assume, a state of profound disarray caused by the capture of John II and the ensuing failure of the remaining power-brokers to cooperate. Even those who moved into the power vacuum and sought to profit from it tried when they could to ‘order’ their behaviour within the framework of royal legitimacy. The old norms associated with the personal right to violence are broadcast in chivalric manifestoes like that of Geoffrey de Charney. They are implicit in the terrible vengeance wreaked by members of the nobility on those who had — or who the nobles decided had — participated in the Jacquerie. The Jacquerie itself looks to have emerged at least in part from a tradition that promoted individual and communal responsibility for order and that sanctioned violent self-help to assert or defend it. But in the latter case, that tradition was refracted through a visible assumption that legitimacy and order ultimately flowed from the centre, in the authorizing proclamations of the Estates, in control of the city of Paris, in the judicial opinions of the rebel leader Guillame Carle, and ultimately in the king whose emblem graced the banners that the Jacques displayed and whose battle cry they chanted. This same assumption also emerges when the nobility’s supreme propagandist, Jean Froissart, characterized what happened when kings were incapacitated or refused to do their job as disorder.

 57 Cf. Stuart Airlie’s eloquent argument about the value of comparisons between sources anchored in different periods and historio­graphies, which he illustrates by comparing Hugh of Lusignan’s Conventum with the record of an enquiry in 802 by Carolingian missi into local misgovernment in Istria: Airlie, ‘After the Fall’, pp. 101–03.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Adso Dervensis Abbas, De Miraculis S. Waldeberti, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, Patro­logiae cursus completus: series latina, 137 (Paris: Garnier, 1879), cols 687–700 ‘Agreements between Count William of the Aquitanians and Hugh of Lusignan (1028)’, trans. by Thomas Greene and Barbara H. Rosenwein, in Reading the Middle Ages: Sources from Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic World, ed. by Barbara H. Rosenwein, 3rd edn (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2018), pp. 189–93 The Book of Sainte Foy, trans. by Pamela Sheingorn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995) Burchard of Worms, Decretorum libri viginti, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, Patro­logiae cursus completus: series latina, 140 (Paris: Garnier, 1880), cols 537–1058 —— , Lex familiae Wormatiensis ecclesiae, ed. by Ludwig Weiland, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Constitutiones et acta publica imperatorum et regum, 1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1893), pp. 639–44 Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis de 1113 à 1300: Avec les continuations de cette chronique de 1300 à 1368, ed. by Hercule Géraud, vol. ii (Paris: Jules Renouard et Cie, 1843) Concilium Pictavense, ed. by J. D. Mansi and others, in Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, vol. xix (Venice: Zatta, 1774; repr. Berlin: Reinecke Nachf., 1902), cols 265–68 Contemporary Chronicles of the Hundred Years War: From the Works of Jean le Bel, Jean Froissart, and Enguerrand de Monstrelet, ed. and trans. by Peter E. Thompson (London: Folio Society, 1966) Conventum inter Guillelmum aquitanorum comes et Hugonem chiliarchum, ed. by Jane Martindale, in ‘Notes and Documents: Conventum inter Guillelmum aquitanorum comes et Hugonem chiliarchum’, English Historical Review, 84 (1969), 528–48 (pp. 541–48) Geoffroi de Charny, A Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry, trans. by Elspeth Kennedy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005) Gerbert of Reims, Die Briefsammlung Gerberts von Reims, ed. by Fritz Weigle, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Die Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit, 2 (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1966) —— , The Letters of Gerbert: With his Papal Privileges as Sylvester II, trans. by Harriet Pratt Lattin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961) Gray, Sir Thomas, Scalacronica, 1272–1363, ed. and trans. by Andy King (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005) Jean de Venette, The Chronicle of Jean de Venette, ed. by Richard A. Newhall, trans. by Jean Birdsall (New York: Columbia University Press, 1953) Jean Froissart, Chronicles, trans. by Geoffrey Brereton (New York: Penguin Books, 1968)

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—— , Les Chroniques de sire Jean Froissart, ed. by J. A. C. Buchon, new edn, 3 vols (Paris: Delagrave, 1879) Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis, ed. by Luca Robertini (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1994) Odo of Cluny, De vita sancti Geraldi Auriliacensis comitis libri quatuor, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, Patro­logiae cursus completus: series latina, 133 (Paris: Garnier, 1881), cols 629–703 —— , ‘The Life of Saint Gerald of Aurillac’, trans. by Gerard Sitwell, O.S.B., in Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints’ Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Thomas F. X. Noble and Thomas Head (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), pp. 293–362 Ordonnances des roys de France de la troisième race, ed. by Denis-François Secousse, vol. iii (Paris: Hachette Livre BNF, 2012; repr. of the original, Paris, 1732) ‘Serment pour la paix de Dieu que Warin, évêque de Beauvais, soumet au roi Robert’, in Études sur le régne de Robert le Pieux (996–1031), ed. by Christian Pfister (Paris: F. Vieweg, 1885), no. XII, pp. lx–lxi Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, ed. by Rudolf Buchner (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1957) —— , Ottonian Germany: The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg, trans. by David A. Warner (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001) Secondary Works Ainsworth, Peter F., Jean Froissart and the Fabric of History: Truth, Myth, and Fiction in the ‘Chroniques’ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990) Airlie, Stuart, ‘After the Fall: Lives of Texts and Lives of Modern Scholars in the Historio­graphy of the Post-Carolingian World’, in Using and Not Using the Past after the Carolingian Empire, c. 900–c. 1050, ed. by Sarah Greer, Alice Hicklin, and Stefan Esders (London: Routledge, 2020), pp. 94–108 Barthélemy, Dominique, La mutation de l’an mil, a-t-elle eu lieu? Servage et chevalerie dans la France des xe et xie siècles (Paris: Fayard, 1997) Barthélemy, Dominique, and Stephen D. White, ‘Debate: The “Feudal Revolution”: Comment 1, Comment 2’, Past & Present, no. 152 (1996), 196–223 Bisson, Thomas N., The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008) —— , ‘The “Feudal Revolution”’, Past & Present, no. 142 (1994), 6–42 —— , Tormented Voices: Power, Crisis, and Humanity in Rural Catalonia, 1140–1200 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998) Bommersbach, Bettina, ‘Gewalt in der Jacquerie von 1358’, in Gewalt im politischen Raum: Fallanalysen vom Spätmittelalter bis ins 20. Jahrhundert, ed. by Neithard Bulst, Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey, and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2008), pp. 46–81 Brown, Warren C., Violence in Medi­eval Europe (London, 2011; repr., Abingdon-onThames: Routledge, 2014)

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Brown, Warren C., and Piotr Górecki, eds, Conflict in Medi­eval Europe: Changing Perspectives on Society and Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003) Cazelles, Raymond, ‘The Jacquerie’, in The English Rising of 1381, ed. by Rodney H. Hilton and Trevor H. Aston (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 74–83 Curry, Anne, ‘France and the Hundred Years War, 1337–1453’, in France in the Later Middle Ages, ed. by David Potter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 90–116 Dunn, Alastair, The Great Rising of 1381: The Peasants’ Revolt and England’s Failed Revolution (Stroud: Tempus, 2002) Firnhaber-Baker, Justine, ‘A son de cloche: The Interpretation of Public Order and Legitimate Authority in Northern France 1355–1358’, in La comunidad medi­eval como esfera pública, ed. by Hipólito Rafael Oliva Herrer and others (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 2014), pp. 357–76 —— , ‘The Eponymous Jacquerie: Making Revolt Mean Some Things’, in The Routledge History Handbook of Medi­eval Revolt, ed. by Justine Firnhaber-Baker and Dirk Schoenaers (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 55–75 —— , ‘Soldiers, Villagers, and Politics: The Role of Mercenaries in the Jacquerie of 1358’, in Routiers et mercenaires pendant la guerre de Cent ans: Hommage à Jonathan Sumption, ed. by Guilhem Pépin, Françoise Lainé, and Frédéric Boutoulle (Bordeaux: Ausonius, 2016), pp. 101–14 Head, Thomas F., and Richard Landes, eds, The Peace of God: Social Violence and Religious Response in France around the Year 1000 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992) Jager, Eric, The Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal, and Trial by Combat in Medi­eval France (New York: Broadway, 2004) Kaeuper, Richard W., War, Justice, and Public Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988) Koziol, Geoffrey, The Peace of God (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2018) MacCormick, Neil, Institutions of Law: An Essay in Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) Oxford English Dictionary Online (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021),

Poly, Jean-Pierre, and Eric Bournazel, La mutation féodale: xe–xiie siècle, 3rd edn (Paris: Nouvelle Clio, 2004) Reuter, Timothy, Chris Wickham, and Thomas N. Bisson, ‘Debate: The “Feudal Revolution”: Comment 3, Comment 4, Reply’, Past & Present, no. 155 (1997), 177–225 Sumption, Jonathan, The Hundred Years War, ii: Trial by Fire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999) West, Charles, Reframing the Feudal Revolution: Political and Social Transformation between Marne and Moselle, c. 800–c. 1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) White, Stephen D., ‘Feuding and Peace-Making in the Touraine around the Year 1000’, Traditio, 42 (1986), 195–263

Cosmin Popa-Gorjanu

Anti-Corruption Measures in the Legislation of Thirteenth-Century Hungary Introduction In fact, the history of anticorruption is often the history of how to deal with and restrain a variety of political problems — bribery of officials, nepotism, embezzlement, patronage and so on — and how to develop certain governmental (or para-governmental) structures intended to curb and punish those practices.1 An allegedly modern interpretation of corruption, which centered on malfeasance as the misuse of public office that harms the general interest, can in fact be traced back to the various historical cultures under scrutiny. Conceived in this manner, the fight against corruption is not an exclusive attribute of modernity […]. This explains why efforts to reduce corruption have systematically relied on a recurrent set of measures, from antiquity until our time, including criminalization of certain corrupt practices, judicial prosecution, rules designed to open offices to the best and most suitable candidates and public campaigns demanding individual soul-searching and the moral regeneration of society.2 Historians’ interest in the phenomenon of corruption has increased recently, particularly after the World Bank signalled at the beginning of the third millennium that corruption deterred development. However, medi­evalists and modernists alike have hesitated to use corruption as an analytical concept for exploring how premodern or preindustrial societies functioned, since the theoretical distinctions between public and private interests were not sufficiently well delimitated at the time. Corruption, either political or judicial, has been understood as the betrayal of public interest/trust by an official who abuses an office for private gain.

* Research for this paper was kindly supported by an Elizabeth and J. Richardson Dilworth Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ.  1 Kroeze, Vitória, and Geltner, ‘Introduction’, p. 15.  2 Kroeze, Vitória, and Geltner, ‘Introduction’, p. 17.

Cosmin Popa-Gorjanu ([email protected]) is Associate Professor at ‘1 Decembrie 1918’ University, in Alba Iulia, Romania. Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe: Studies on Cultural Identity and Power, ed. by Courtney M. Booker, Hans Hummer, and Dana M. Polanichka, CURSOR 41, pp. 307–332 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022)        10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.127586

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I have used the above quotations from a recent volume of studies exploring anti-corruption in order to show that I am not the only one who rejects the notion that it is anachronistic to conceive that corruption existed and was dealt with during the Middle Ages. I say this, keeping in mind the well-intended and sincere feedback of colleagues who have expressed doubts about the usefulness of the concept of corruption for exploring how medi­eval governments functioned. Perhaps, before I defend my approach with the works of other medi­evalists, I should state at the outset that corruption was a concern of those who drafted the regulations or decrees in thirteenth-century Hungary that I shall examine in the following pages, even if it was not voiced, defined, or expressed as such. In stipulations in different laws, these writers complained about the misconduct or abuses of office by royal officials to various degrees. While a coherent or ongoing policy against corruption is difficult to demonstrate, we can identify similarities between the measures adopted in the laws of medi­eval Hungary in 1222, 1231, 1267, 1290, and 1298 and those adopted in other contemporary western European realms. It is impossible in this short essay to delve into deeper aspects of political and administrative organization and practices, and for this reason most of my observations will only scratch the surface of the intricacies of their history. William Chester Jordan’s research on the development of institutions of government has demonstrated that in the second half of the thirteenth century a series of measures were undertaken that were designed to prevent and combat corruption at court and in government at the provincial and municipal levels.3 The measures consisted of a set of criteria for the selection of administrators with good reputation, including the supervision of their activities, the prohibition of accepting gifts, the compensation of their services through salaries, the auditing of administrative accounts, the setting of limitations on office holding, the conducting of inquiries into the behaviour and honesty of office holders, and the rewarding of those found honest and effective.4 The model of administration developed in France during the reign of King Louis IX was not replicated elsewhere, but there are striking resemblances between the French institutional developments and those found in contemporary England, Aragon, and some Italian cities, which justify their general characterization as anti-corruption campaigns.5 The state-building process, which developed in the late twelfth century, generated among other effects the distinction between licit and illicit income for government officials. By the early thirteenth century, standards of conduct for court officials started to take shape, just as definitions of good versus bad government were being delineated in the

 3 Jordan, ‘Anti-Corruption Campaigns’.  4 Jordan, ‘Anti-Corruption Campaigns’, pp. 210–13.  5 For a brief assessment of the measures adopted in France, England, Aragon, and the Italian cities, see Jordan, ‘Anti-Corruption Campaigns’, pp. 215–17; see also Vitória, ‘Late Medi­eval Polities and the Problem of Corruption’.

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literary genre of the mirrors of princes. While Jordan argued that the notion of corruption appropriately captures medi­eval administrative malfeasance, Giorgio Chittolini has pointed out that the concept of a regulated public sphere seems to be belied by the toleration in the political arena of unofficial structures (kinship groups, factions) whose private practices — such as venality of office, influence on justice, favouritism, and nepotism — persisted.6 Other scholars have also noted the tensions among private interests, cultural and social practices, and the development of later medi­eval administrative and judicial institutions.7 In a paper dealing with the problem of corruption in late medi­eval France, England, and Portugal, André Vitória observed that in western Europe anti-corruption legislation was elaborated roughly from 1250 to 1350. He pointed in particular to the ordinances from 1254, 1303, and 1389 in France, the measures adopted by the Parliament from Oxford in 1258, the statutes of Westminster from 1275 and 1285, and the legislation adopted in Portugal in the first half of fourteenth century under Kings Dinis and Alfonso IV. He argued that these reforms created a legislative medium for combating corruption. Anti-corruption stipulations were ‘accountability procedures and rules for office’ that distinguished ‘permissible from non-permissible conduct’ in order to prevent abuse, or allowed the penal prosecution of culprits.8 France had the most advanced anti-corruption policy, adopting the principle of paying salaries to local administrators and implementing procedures for the supervision and punishment of abusive officials. In Portugal, the provincial administrators appointed by the king, the so-called corregedores, were subjected to a procedure of assessment carried out by the next corregedor, who had the obligation to inquire about bribes, extortions, and favouritism.9 Vitória divided the anti-corruption efforts into two parts. The first part consisted of the creation of a normative structure regarding the exercise of public authority, the adoption of rules of conduct by the royal officials, the institutional mechanisms of supervision, and the penal framework for the prosecution of officials’ derelictions. The second part consisted of punishing corrupt officials based on information obtained through administrative supervision, such as inquiries, auditing, and judicial  6 Chittolini, ‘The “Private”, the “Public”, the “State”’.  7 Dodd, ‘Corruption’; Watts, ‘Tackling Corruption’.  8 Vitória, ‘Late Medi­eval Polities and the Problem of Corruption’, p. 80: ‘the anticorruption provisions in these laws define accountability procedures and rules for office and distinguish between permissible and non-permissible conduct; their aim was naturally preventive, but they also created a penal framework for the prosecution of corruption’. The anti-corruption legislation sought to ‘establish procedures for appointing and replacing royal officers and define the duration of their terms of office, implement record keeping and accounting practices and limit some interactions that might be detrimental to royal office — for example restrictions on property transactions or stipulations regarding the need for secrecy in administrative and judicial business’.  9 Vitória, ‘Late Medi­eval Polities and the Problem of Corruption’, p. 82.

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activity. As Vitória noticed, the latter is still insufficiently investigated in historio­graphy. In the same volume dedicated to the history of anti-corruption, John Watts examines anti-corruption in late medi­eval England (1250–1500). In his view, in the late Middle Ages corrupt behaviour involved ‘the seeking of private interest at the cost of the public interest and breaking the rules of exercising official power in exchange for bribe or affection’.10 He recognized the problems in defining what ‘public’ meant in that period, and pointed to the definition of corruption put forth by socio­logists as a ‘competition of norms’ or ‘normative plurality’. Corruption in the pre-modern period reflected a tension between the official sphere and the legitimate dissatisfactions and expectations of individuals in the social hierarchy, as well as ties of affinity and clientelism. After this discussion of Robert Harris’s idea about modern corruption, Watts proposed his own working definition. Corruption, he wrote, ‘could be understood as a situationally-defined excess in one or more of the grey areas of public life. Actors judged “corrupt” were thought to have gone too far in the pursuit of practices which were normally accepted, even though these practices contravened principles that were also accepted’.11 The grey areas in the late medi­eval English context were generated by expectations that the royal authority had to share power with other groups — the nobility, the gentry, the Church, and urban communities. There were serious discrepancies between ideals and practices because royal authority had to be applied by officials who largely used their own resources and connections when operating in the name of the king. As kings expanded the scope of their authority, they had to accept compromises and make concessions to delegated officials pursuing their private interests. Watts invoked what he called the deep ambivalence of the society regarding law and rules. One cause of the ambivalence was that clerical and secular legislators ignored reciprocity as a fundamental value in human society. Reciprocity is the underlying principle of creating the obligation of compensation for services, favours, or gifts offered by an individual to another. The offering of gifts to officials functioned as bribes when favourable attitudes, decisions, and so forth were expected by the gift giver from the receiver of the gift when the latter was an official who could in one way or another decide upon a matter of concern for the giver. Trying to win over an official by offering food, beverages, objects, or pleasures was part of both hospitality rituals as well as techniques of creating an obligation of responding to these offerings in a way advantageous to the giver.12

 10 Watts, ‘Tackling Corruption’, p. 91.  11 Watts, ‘Tackling Corruption’, p. 93.  12 For a critique of the various interpretations of the gift from the point of view of anthropo­ logy and socio­logy, see Groebner, Liquid Assets, Dangerous Gifts, pp. 6–10, and on the criminalization of acceptance of gifts (miet) in Strasbourg in the fifteenth century, pp. 71–75. I am thankful to Gábor Klaniczay for drawing my attention to this book.

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Having considered the investigation of corruption within the broader context of state building and its operation in various realms of western Europe, I now wish to discuss the provisions included in the legislation of thirteenth-century Hungary that seem to pertain to what Vitória and other scholars before him have described as anti-corruption measures or policies. In this stage of my research I am interested in identifying and describing the elements of a legislative framework for how royal officials exercised their duties and how their behaviour was verified. I will be focusing on the meaning of specific articles in the royal decrees or charters of privileges from 1222, 1231, 1267, 1290, and 1298. My primary question is to what extent these measures add up to an ‘anti-corruption campaign’, as did the policies adopted by King Louis IX in France in the second half of the thirteenth century. I will focus on some of the measures designed to prevent or to punish administrative or judicial malfeasance, as expressed in the stipulations of royal decrees adopted in 1222, 1231, 1267, 1290, and 1298. The Golden Bull, adopted in 1222, not only denounced self-serving officials guilty of diminishing the rights of servientes regis, but also dealt with the abuse of power, established norms of judicial procedure in the prosecution of nobles, prohibited extortions by royal officials, provided for the dishonourable dismissal of abusive counts, and forbade county counts from defrauding royal revenues. These provisions aimed to address various grievances of the nobility, but at the same time they represented attempts to discipline and create rules of conduct for officials. The royal decree of 1231 confirmed and augmented the measures adopted in 1222. The decree addressed the problem of excessive exactions committed by members of the royal household, prelates, or royal officials during travels on account of the obligation of lodging (descensus), requiring that no food should be accepted without payment of the right price.13 New provisions regulated the judge royal’s attributes and addressed the grievance regarding false pristaldi (that is, bailiffs who attended judicial procedures and were called upon to testify about the outcomes). In 1267, a royal decree repeated some of the earlier provisions regarding the judicial procedures in a charter of liberties granted by Kings Béla IV and his sons, Stephen and Béla, dukes of Transylvania and Slavonia to the servientes regis. In the context of a deep political crisis, in 1290 King Andrew III adopted new administrative measures designed to address a wide spectrum of issues, such as the rules of appointment to royal offices, the prohibition of farming out of administrative offices by barons or the transfer of judicial authority to ignoble persons, the obligation of lay courts to make summonses to trial only with the witness of cathedral chapters, and the forbidding of the county count to judge without the participation of four noble magistrates. Likewise, the  13 Baldwin, ‘The Medi­eval Theories of the Just Price’.

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palatine was to be assisted by four delegated judges, who were to impede him if he intended to proceed unjustly, and to inform the king. The procedure for inspecting the barons’ behaviour in their counties during the annual assembly of the realm in Székesfehérvár, adopted in 1291, appears to some extent similar to the inquiries into officials’ conduct known in the West. Lastly, in 1298, a royal decree aimed to restore ecclesiastical and noble properties that had been usurped by aristocrats and provided the institutional framework necessary for the investigation and certification of properties unjustly seized. In each county, four nobles were to inquire about such acts under the supervision of a royal appointee. If out of favour, fear, or bribery the four nobles concealed their findings, they were to be excommunicated. To be sure, in the confines of this short essay, it is not possible to discuss satisfactorily the contexts of the adoption of each of these laws. The Golden Bull of 1222, its confirmation in 1231, and the confirmation for the servientes regis in 1267 by King Béla IV were issued as charters of privileges at the request of assemblies of nobles and royal servants.14 The first decree of King Andrew III was issued at his coronation in 1290, and then reissued the next year in Alba Iulia during his visit to Transylvania. The 1298 decretum was characterized as ‘a highly developed, though utopian, program of the clergy and nobility to put an end to the excesses of oligarchs in power’.15 Although issued as a royal privilege, the decree from 1298 was the result of the work of a representative assembly of prelates, nobles, Saxons, and Cumans. Another general observation regarding the nature of legislation in the thirteenth century is that ‘these were expressions of political programs of factions and not records of legal reality’.16 The modern editors of the laws also state that those laws were privileges that did not ‘establish royal institutions or claims, but rather attempted to define the rights and duties of magnates, nobles, and free warriors, on the one hand, and of the crown on the other’.17 This was certainly the case for many stipulations of the Golden Bull. However, I contend that among those same concerns were also expectations regarding the conduct of officials which seem to have arisen from a broader interest in combating or preventing corruption. While it is enticing to think that ideals and expectations regarding the good government practices that underpinned the stipulations were articulated to anticipate abuses or excesses, it is more likely that undocumented but real abuses prompted the authors of decrees to address problems. The genesis of the stipulations I am dealing with is at this stage a matter of interpretation that unfortunately is open to speculation, so I will abstain from hypothesizing

 14 For an analysis of the composition of the groups demanding the charter from 1222, see Rady, ‘Hungary and the Golden Bull of 1222’.  15 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. lii.  16 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. l.  17 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. l.

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overly much. Legislation could be regarded as a remedy to bring comfort to a fallen world preyed upon by powerful, greedy, and abusive officials. I would not generalize beyond that without supporting evidence, but I do not consider the notion gratuitous either. It is fruitful to think of the legislation from various angles ranging from, for example, legally minded clerks attempting to keep up with their colleagues elsewhere in articulating high standards of official behaviour, to aggrieved victims protesting and voicing their discontent against officials’ abuses and somehow finding support in a sympathetic royal court. While I take my cues from the secondary literature I have discussed above, and think about the possible connections between the measures imagined in the royal decrees of thirteenth-century Hungary and the contemporary ones adopted in the Western realms, I do not think that these were a result of imitation or expressions of ideals devoid of connections with direct experience of the inhabitants of the realm. The fact that some measures were repeatedly undertaken is more likely a sign of the persisting behaviour of officials and at the same time an indicator of the effectiveness of the laws. The Golden Bull was issued in 1222 following a revolt of the nobility, who forced King Andrew II to dismiss his barons and appoint new ones. A charter of liberties containing thirty articles was issued.18 The preamble of the charter declared that the liberties of the nobility granted by King Stephen had been diminished by certain kings, who either sought vengeance or had followed ‘the evil counsel of wicked and self-seeking men’.19 The charter recorded the privileges of the nobility, such as the exemption from royal taxes, including lodging (descensus); that although the king could not force royal servants to follow him in military expeditions outside the kingdom without pay, they were still obligated to come to the defence of the country; that royal servants were to be granted immunity from the jurisdiction of counts; that their cases could only be judged by the king or the palatine; and that they could not be arrested without a valid indictment. A final provision stated that if the king or his successors would seek to oppose the terms of the agreement, the bishops, the baronial retainers, and other nobles should have the right to resist and speak against the king without the charge of high treason.20 In 1231, the prelates forced the king to issue another royal decree, which repeated most of the articles of the Golden Bull and added a few more para­graphs in favour of the Church. The right of resistance of the nobility was replaced by the right of the archbishop of Esztergom to excommunicate any king who should disregard the privilege. This second charter was not used in the later confirmations of the Golden Bull, but it was preserved in  18 See Engel, The Realm of Saint Stephen, pp. 93–95; Blazovich, ‘The Origins of the Golden Bull’, pp. 188–90.  19 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 32.  20 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 35, ‘liberam habeant harum auctoritate sine nota infidelitatis tam episcopi quam alii iobagiones ac nobiles, […] resistendi et contradicendi nobis et nostris successoribus in perpetuum facultatem’.

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two authenticated copies made by Giacomo Pecorara, cardinal-bishop of Palestrina, papal legate in Hungary (1232–1234).21 The Golden Bull was later confirmed in 1351 by King Louis of Anjou, and subsequently by each king of Hungary until the modern period. These two charters contain a number of provisions that can be interpreted as indicative of anti-corruption measures adopted in thirteenth-century Hungary.

Protection against Arbitrary Incarceration and Confiscation of Goods without Judicial Process The measures against abuses of power of royal officials seem not to have been motivated by good government standards, but by the demand of such practices’ victims, who pressed the adoption of the principle of due process in order to preclude abusive arrests and spoliation by the magnates.22 We find that this principle was first adopted in 1222, and later repeated in the decrees from 1231, 1267, and 1298. Article 3 of the Golden Bull of 1222 stated that: ‘Volumus eciam quod nec nos nec posteri nostri aliquo tempore servientes capiant vel destruant favore alicuius potentis, nisi prius citati fuerint et ordine iudiciario convicti’ (It is our further wish that neither we nor our successors should at any time seize or cause the ruin of any serviens for the benefit of some magnate, unless they first be summoned and duly sentenced by judicial process).23 The provision guaranteed that royal servants could not be incarcerated, and their property confiscated, without a judicial procedure, namely summons, trial, and sentencing. This provision was important for ruling out the practices of abusive incarceration, punishment, and despoiling of royal servants in favour of the magnates. The principle of due process seems to be opposed here to the arbitrary actions carried out ‘favore alicuius potentis’ (for the benefit of the powerful). Nine years later, in the confirmation of the Golden Bull in 1231, Article 2 was repeated, with the addition that because the king and the magnates had confirmed the provisions against arbitrary incarceration and spoliation of goods, all those who were deprived of their property by the king, the king’s sons, or anyone else without judicial sentence since the year 1222 will receive restitution.24 This addition reveals that the practices of arbitrary imprisonment and confiscation of property without judicial sentence continued after the adoption of the Golden Bull as well.  21  22  23  24

The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 122. Balogh, ‘The Place of the Golden Bull’, pp. 213–14. The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 32. The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 36: ‘Volumus, quod nec nos nec posteri aliquos unquam capiant vel destruant, nisi prius ordine iudiciario conveniantur. Et cum ista sacramento nostro et principum nostrorum fuerint confirmata, si qui per nos vel per filios nostros, vel per quoscumque post idem tempus, scilicet decimo septimo anno regni nostri sine iudicio sunt spoliati, plene restituantur’.

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Article 3 of the royal decree from 1267, a charter of liberties that King Béla IV and his sons Stephen and Béla granted to the nobles (servientes regis), stipulated the following: Item ordinavimus, quod nullus ex nobilibus propter malam suggestionem debeat sine strepitu iudicii per nos captivari, incarcerari vel dampnari rebus seu persona, sed tractus in iudicium presentibus baronibus, exclusis ira, odio vel favore iudicetur iuris ordine observato. (Further, we ordered that no noble on account of evil counsel should be arrested, imprisoned, or harmed in his person or goods without a judicial hearing, but having been brought into court he should be judged in the presence of barons without wrath, hatred, or favor according to the rule of law.)25 The stipulation repeats the principle of following due process, instead of arbitrarily arresting, imprisoning, or confiscating the goods of nobles. The nobles should be brought to trial before the barons and be judged without ‘ira, odio, vel favore’ (wrath, hatred, or favor). Article 8 of the same decree regulated the annual assembly in which three nobles from each county would bring the petitions before one of the kings so that satisfaction would be done for all who suffered damages or injuries. Item, ordinavimus, quod singulis annis in festo sancti regis unus ex nobis Albam venire debeat et de quolibet comitatu duo vel tres nobiles debeant convenire, ut in eorum presentia de omnibus dampnis et iniuriis per quoscunque datis et illatis omnibus querelantibus satisfiat. (Further, we ordered that each year at the feast of the holy king one of us shall come to Székesfehervár and two or three nobles from each county shall gather so that in their presence satisfaction shall be given to all petitioners for all damages and injuries caused and committed by anyone whatsoever.)26 Article 13 in the decree of 1298 echoes the articles from both the Golden Bull and the decree from 1267, which call for the dismissal of judges who should arrest noblemen or landowners. Statuimus etiam, quod iudex curie regie vel alii quicunque iudices nobilem aliquem possessionatum ratione iudicii vel iudiciorum captivare non presumpmant; quod si fecerint, honore vel iudicatu, quo funguntur, ipse facto sint privati. (We also decree that neither the royal judge, nor any other judge, should presume to arrest any noblemen or landowner for judgment

 25 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 40.  26 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 41.

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or judgments, but if they should, they shall be deprived immediately of the office or judicial commission which they exercise.)27 Are we to understand the repeated stipulations regarding the arrest of nobles or confiscation of their goods without following the due process as evidence that royal officials and dignitaries were persistently abusive? This should not be a surprise. Already in 1231, arrests and confiscations of goods committed by the king, the sons of the king, or the barons were acknowledged by the very repetition of the same stipulation. But what is important to note here is the attempt at creating an institutional framework or a basic set of rules that could have precluded such practices. The articles themselves indicate that the benefits of such arbitrary practices were collected by the potentes. As Martyn Rady has pointed out, many of the articles included in the Golden Bull originated in a petition of the royal servants, to which the royal chancellery added demands of the nobles.28 The demands of the victims of abuses committed by members of the royal government prompted, first, the acceptance of the principle of fair judgement instead of quick punishment. This provision must be read in connection with the first article of the Golden Bull, in which the king promised to participate at the annual assembly organized on the feast of Saint Stephen at Székesfehérvár, where royal servants could freely gather and could have their cases heard by the monarch or the palatine. The authors of the petitions demanded the organization of an institutionalized framework where the king or the palatine could hear their complaints. In 1267, the charter issued by King Béla and his sons, Stephen and Béla, repeated the principle of due process and also that of the hearing of cases of nobles in an assembly where the king was to judge together with three representatives of the nobles sent from each county.29 Only in 1298 was a sanction for those officials committing  27 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 50. The 1999 edition of the The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, as well as the online edition (Bak, ‘Online Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungariae’, p. 210) have mistakenly rendered Article 13 by replacing the last clause ‘quod si fecerint, honore vel iudicatu, quo funguntur, ipse facto sint privati’, with the ending clause of Article 14 ‘quod ulterius ad alios consurgere etiam non possit honores’. However, the English translation of Article 13 remained unaltered (Bak, ‘Online Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungariae’, p. 219).  28 Rady, ‘Hungary and the Golden Bull of 1222’, p. 92. The preamble of the Golden Bull men­ tioned the numerous petitions for reformation and restoration of privileges granted by King Stephen I.  29 The final provision of the decree of 1267 conceded that the cases of the nobles could be judged without petitions. The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 41, ‘Item cause nobilium sine petitionibus debeant expediri’. The system of petitions to the royal court was introduced by King Béla IV to the dismay of the nobles, who were exasperated by the slow functioning and growing costs caused by this bureaucratized justice before the Mongol onslaught in 1241. It also frustrated them as the new system was no longer one that allowed direct contact and presentation of their complaints to the king. Master Roger considered this the fourth source of enmity between the nobility and the king before the Mongol invasion. An echo of perceptions of the arbitrariness of these chancellors was that in their judgements, they ‘cast down some and raised up others at their whim, since they could not talk to

Anti-Corruption Measures in the Legislation of 13 th -Century Hungary

such abuses adopted. In this case, it was indicated that these could be the royal judge or other judges, who could be dismissed from their positions for the undue imprisonment of a nobleman.

Protection of the Poor against Excessive Demands from Royal Dignitaries The descensus was a traditional form of taxation consisting of the obligation of providing food, fodder, and shelter to the king and his retinue, as well as to his dignitaries, during their travels through the realm. The rules adopted in 1222 imply that the royal dignitaries were expected to moderate their demands from the poor. Articles 13 and 15 stipulated limitations on the descensus: XIII. Iobagiones ita sequantur curiam vel quocumque proficiscantur, ut pauperes per eos non opprimantur nec spolientur. XV. Agasones, caniferi et falconarii non presumant descendere in villis servientium. (XIII. Baronial retainers shall follow the court or travel anywhere so long as they do not oppress or despoil the poor. XV. Grooms, houndsmen, and falconers shall not presume to descend upon the villages of servientes regis.)30 These regulations seem to have been generated by complaints regarding excessive burdens. However, the fact that excessive demands were not criminalized, and no punishment was legislated against those who oppressed or deprived the poor, indicates a rather ambiguous approach. Around the same time, privileges granted to various communities included protections against an excessive descensus by indicating per diem values in money or

the king without asking them’ (Nam cancellarii, ut dicebant, pro eo, quod nisi per ipsos requisitos regi loqui poterant, deprimebant et sublevabant aliquos, ut volebant). See ‘Master Roger’s Epistle’, trans. by Bak and Rady, pp. 145–46. Further, Master Roger explained that the king tried to reform the various customs and find a feasible solution to the impossibility of judging all cases himself. Thus, he introduced the system of petitions on the model of the papal curia. The chancellors were expected to solve themselves unimportant cases while the important ones were to be judged by the king. The final explanation was that in spite of the king’s intention of finding quick and correct solutions to the cases, ‘evil minded people turned to evil what was invented for the good of the oppressed and mendaciously tried to find a knot on a rush and a hair in an egg’ (Hoc ideo faciebat, ut negotia finem debitum velociter sortirentur. Sed malivoli, quod ad levamen oppressorum fuerat adinventum, ad iniquum compendium retorquentes nodum in stupa, et pilum in ovo invenire mendaciter satagebant). ‘Master Roger’s Epistle’, trans. by Bak and Rady, pp. 152–53.  30 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 33.

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services provided to officials.31 This provision was not connected with the rights of servientes regis, whose villages were exempt from this obligation, but forbade deprivation of the poor, which should be understood as a population that was not protected from these demands by royal privilege. The Golden Bull from 1231 had an entire provision that dealt not only with the exemption of the villages belonging to the servientes, but also included the obligation of paying the fair price for all goods or food taken on account of the descensus. Super domos servientum vel villas, nec nos, nec agasones, nec falconarii, nec caniferi, nec curriferi nostri descendant ipsis invitis; ubicumque autem alibi nos vel dictos officiales nostros descendere contingerit, iustam extimationem solvi faciemus, sicut continetur in sequentibus. Et quia preterea tam propter descensus nostros et domine regine ac filiorum nostrorum, quam etiam archiepiscoporum, episcoporum, baronum et nobilium nostrorum intolerabilia dampna et gravamina per totum regnum fieri videbamus, districte statuendo precipimus, ut nichil recipiatur ad coquinam nostram vel nostrorum, nisi dato iusto precio. Similiter de annona et de vino, et aliis necessariis nichil recipiant, nisi dato iusto precio. (Neither shall we, nor our grooms, nor falconers, nor houndsmen, nor teamsters descend upon the houses or villages of the servientes against their will; if, however, it should happen that we or our said officers should descend anywhere, we shall pay the just value as described below. And since on account of our descensus [— or] that of the lady queen and our sons as well as that of the archbishops, bishops, and our nobles [—] we appear to have caused intolerable damage and hardship throughout our whole kingdom, we decree that it be strictly established that nothing should be received by our kitchen or theirs unless a just price has been paid. Similarly, no cereals, wine, or other necessities shall be received unless a just price has been paid.)32 By 1231, as the king acknowledged, the descensus had caused such ‘intolerable damage and hardship’ that a new rule was adopted that no food or goods should be accepted at the kitchen of the king or by other dignitaries and officials unless a fair price had been paid. The formulation does not indicate who was in charge of making the purchases, or the mechanisms for deciding the right price and how payment could be proven. Nevertheless, the principle seems

 31 An example of rationalization of royal officials’ demands, by indicating per diem in precise sums, appears in the charter of privileges granted by King Andrew II to the community of Transylvanian German guests (hospites nostrum Theuthonici Ultrasilvani, later known as Saxons) in 1224: ‘Nunciis vero, quos regia maiestas ad dictam pecuniam colligendam statuerit, singulis diebus, quibus ibidem moram fecerint, tres lotones pro eorum expensis solvere non recusent’, Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte, ed. by Zimmermann and Werner, p. 34.  32 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 37.

Anti-Corruption Measures in the Legislation of 13 th -Century Hungary

fair. Was the food offered to the king’s kitchen as gifts? It is not clear who was in charge of the provisioning of the itinerant royal or baronial retinues.33 The formulation suggests that from the excessive demands, which could have been moderated, there was a jump to an extreme, namely that of paying the right price for the food prepared in the king’s or other dignitaries’ kitchen. William Chester Jordan discussed a similar measure adopted by King Louis IX in the 1260s, who sought to ease the burden imposed on villages during royal visits by purchasing the food from villages.34 A like measure had been adopted a couple of decades earlier in the kingdom of Hungary, even though we have no details about its enforcement.

Dismissal of Counts Article 14 of the Golden Bull used the same vocabulary of ruin and destruction when perpetrated by the excessive or dishonourable conduct of counts and their reckless exercise of authority. Si quis comes honorifice se iuxta comitatus sui qualitatem non habuerit vel destruxerit populos castri sui, convictus super hoc coram omni regno dignitate sua turpiter spolietur cum restitutione ablatorum. (If any ispán does not honorably conduct himself according to the character of his comital office or brings ruin to those attached to his castle, and if this is proven, he shall make good the damage and be dishonorably deprived of his office in front of the whole kingdom.)35 Unlike the provision regarding the avoidance of excessive demands of royal officials during their travels for which no sanction was included, the counts who brought ruin to the castle folk — namely, the population under the jurisdiction of the counts — were to be dismissed. The count who was condemned for dishonourable conduct or for excessively taxing the population under his jurisdiction was to pay back the damages and then be dishonourably deprived

 33 There are no extant records from this period comparable to the late medi­eval and early modern urban registers detailing the public costs incurred during the visits of important lay or ecclesiastical persons and their retinues. For a suggestive image, albeit from a later period, of the mobilization of local resources, procurement of goods, and services required for the maintenance of the princely court during its visits to Brașov, see Cziráki, ‘Prince Gábor Bethlen’s Visits to Brassó’.  34 Jordan, ‘Anti-Corruption Campaigns’, p. 213, ‘To make his itinerary and visitations more palatable to the localities, he prodigiously cut the amounts of customary hospitality (in French, gîte; in Latin gista) that he himself would otherwise have legitimately collected. One could not even, as it were, give him a gift. The kind of demands that in previous reigns could devastate a locality during a royal visit and could prompt locals to bribe officials to be free from them was therefore eliminated’.  35 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 33.

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of his office. What kind of actions could be considered below the dignity of a count was not clarified; however, the ‘ruining’ of the people seems to indicate excessive taxation. And one condition for dismissing an abusive count was that the accusations had to be proved. As mentioned, this was a principle condemning counts who caused damages to the people they governed. This provision might have functioned for preventing excessive taxation or exactions, but considering the realities of the medi­eval administration described by Watts, how it was applied in practice demands appropriate sources or identification of specific instances. Nevertheless, the adoption of the measure of punishing abusive officials belongs to the creation of the normative structure and rules of conduct of royal officials and prosecution of derelictions, as sketched by Vitória.

Appointment to Offices One of the elements of the anti-corruption policy enacted by King Louis IX in France was the selection, rewarding, and promotion of officials based on good character and reputation. Article 10 of the Golden Bull reflects another stance, namely that the administrative elites in Hungary aspired to pass down their honours and thus maintain the positions of their families in the royal administration: ‘Si quis iobagio habens honorem in exercitu fuerit mortuus, eius filius vel frater congruo honore sit donandus et si serviens eodem modo fuerit mortuus, eius filius — sicut regi videbitur — donetur’ (If one of the baronial retainers who holds an honor should die in a campaign, his son or brother is to be granted the same honor; and if a serviens dies in the same way, his son shall receive whatever appears appropriate to the king).36 Honor referred in general to royal offices. By agreeing to the request of the petitioners, the king was implicitly promising to confer offices to the members of families of previous holders who had died in battle. Whether this rule was indeed observed might be revealed by future prosopo­graphical and genealogical study of administrative elites.

Conditions for Initiating Litigations before the Judge Royal and the Length of Service of Bailiffs (pristaldi) Regulations regarding the procedure of judgement and the length of service for bailiffs were adopted in 1222. These appear to be part of an anti-corruption policy. Article 9 in the Golden Bull gave the royal judge the authority to judge all cases while he resided in the royal court, and if a case were started in the court, he could pass the sentence anywhere. However, he could not initiate and send a summons to judgement from his own estates or residence:  36 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 35.

Anti-Corruption Measures in the Legislation of 13 th -Century Hungary

Curialis comes noster, donec in curia manserit, omnes possit iudicare et causam in curia incohatum ubique terminare, sed manens in predio suo pristaldum dare non possit nec partes facere citari. (Our royal judge shall be able to judge all while he resides in our court and shall have the right to pass sentence anywhere in cases initiated at the court, but when he stays on his estates he shall not be able to dispatch bailiffs or cite parties to a suit.)37 The exclusivity of the royal court as the only place for the initiation of suits seems to be defended by this provision. Is this an anti-corruption measure? It is not immediately obvious why the royal judge could pass sentences while residing on his own estates, but could only initiate a lawsuit from the royal court. However, this provision seems to be an effort to enforce a new rule that the royal court should be the only place for initiating litigation. The 1231 decree maintained the condition that the royal judge could begin new judgements in court only, but it went on to change the procedure in the case of bailiffs (pristaldi), a term deriving probably from the Slavic pristav, which signified an executive officer of a judge who delivered summonses and assisted in the process of trial and punishment. The decree also took note of complaints against false bailiffs: Curialis comes noster, dum in curia nostra manet, omnes iudicet, et causam inchoatam in nostra curia ubique possit terminare: set existens in predio suo vel alibi extra curiam nostram, nec dare prestaldos, nec partes possit citari facere. Et quia multi in regno leduntur per falsos prestaldos, citationes vel testimonia eorum non valeant, nisi per testimonium diocesis episcopi vel capituli; nec falsificatus prestaldus possit se iustificare, nisi eorundem testimoniis in factis maiorum; in factis minorum vicinorum conventuum vel claustrorum testimoniis. Pristaldum nullus per annum vel biennium, vel ultra secum detineat, nisi usque ad decisionem cause, ad quam impetravit. Our judge royal shall be able to judge all while he resides in our court and shall have the right to pass sentence anywhere in cases initiated at our court, but when he stays on his estates or elsewhere outside our court, he shall not be able to dispatch bailiffs or cite parties to a suit. And because many people suffer harm from false bailiffs, their summons or testimony shall not be valid without the witness of the diocesan bishop or the chapter. The accused bailiff should clear himself in major matters only by their testimony; in minor matters by the testimony of neighboring convents or monasteries. No one shall keep a bailiff with him for a year or two or longer, but only until the case for which he was commissioned was completed.)38

 37 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 35.  38 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 38.

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The provision signalled the change from a procedure based on the oral testimony of the pristaldus to one that involved the participation of a witness from the bishop or chapter (later, homo testimonio fidedignus). The issue of the false bailiffs might shed light on the restriction of initiating litigation outside the royal court, the sending of bailiffs, or citing parties to suits. Possibly it was a response to doubts or contestation of the credentials of such officials. Were these bailiffs those who were appointed outside royal courts? It is impossible to decide without examining additional sources. The solution provided in Article 10 of the 1231 decree consisted in doubling the number of persons involved in carrying out a procedure by adding the obligation of pristaldi to carry out their duties in the company of a witness sent by the bishop or the cathedral chapters. This measure changed the procedure of delivering summonses or giving testimony in trials by coupling the pristaldus with a trustworthy witness. In cases of accusations of falsity, a pristaldus could clear himself with the testimony of witnesses from a cathedral chapter in major cases or from monasteries and monastic houses in minor cases. This set of regulations regarding the operations of the bailiffs addressed concerns regarding procedural dysfunctions produced through the corruption of the expected behaviour of the bailiffs, who could be bribed or intimidated to change their testimonies.39

The Count’s Revenues A special provision in the Golden Bull, and repeated in legislation of 1231, concerns the revenues of the county count. According to Article 21 from 1231: Comites iure sui comitatus sint contenti cetera ad regem pertinencia, scilicet cibriones, tributa, boves et due partes castrorum ad regis voluntatem, cui volet, distribuantur. (Ispánok shall be content with the rights of their office, the royal income, namely, the bucket tax, tolls, the ox-tax, and two-thirds of the castle dues shall be distributed according to the wish of the king.)40 This provision repeated Article 29 in the Golden Bull, which added that specific taxes as well as two-thirds of the castle revenues would be used by the king as he desired. This division of the castle revenues between the king and the counts implies that accounting and record keeping were current practice in the administration.41 However, the counts probably had attempted to keep shares or wanted to decide how to spend other royal taxes. There is a  39 For a description of the duties and the evolution of pristaldi up to the 1230s, see Rady, Nobility, Land and Service, pp. 65–66.  40 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 39.  41 For a recent discussion of the development of administrative practices based on accounting

Anti-Corruption Measures in the Legislation of 13 th -Century Hungary

whiff of uneasiness about the counts, who perhaps were demanding higher shares of other taxes. The 1222 version mentioned that they ‘shall enjoy only the rights of their office’, implying a limitation of the rights of the counts, while in 1231 the formulation is that they ‘shall be content with the rights of their office’. This provision attempted to settle an important aspect regarding the compensation of officials. It did not establish salaries and did not try to discipline greedy officials, but stated the principle of division of the shares of revenue protecting the shares of the king. This relates to the issue of corruption and offered a possible measure meant to curb the abuse of office for private gain. It is true that honest counts might have used more than one-third of the revenues collected from the county for legitimate purposes, but that would take us too far into crediting good behaviour. The regulation stating the shares from the revenues was probably deemed necessary as a result of otherwise undocumented situations of counts helping themselves to more than the customary one-third of the royal revenues. Whether such tendencies were singular or represented a pattern of behaviour among counts is difficult to estimate, but the repetition of this regulation suggests that infringements of this rule had occurred. These minute details regarding legal procedures or rules to be observed by royal officials in either their judicial or administrative capacities are difficult to understand without envisioning the causes prompting the formulation of principles of conduct or exercise of authority. While the normative framework seems to have received a certain shape, the actual application of these regulations or the reality of day-to-day administrative or judicial business is still poorly documented in order to construct a more advanced interpretation of these measures.

The Royal Decree of 1290 The decree of 1290 was adopted in an assembly held in Obuda and contained twenty-eight articles.42 Article 2 stipulated how dignities and offices were granted, while making concessions to requests of the nobility. Thus, the king excluded newcomers, guests, pagans, or lowborn from dignities or becoming counts, as well as from participation in the king’s council. The exclusions express the nobility’s opposition to foreigners, non-Christians, and non-nobles holding offices of any kind. Furthermore, the king promised to disallow magnates from farming out their dignities for fixed sums of money, and went even further by promising to prohibit the barons from appointing non-nobles as deputies or judges in their counties.43 The king accepted these

and rise of accountability, see Epurescu-Pascovici, ‘From Auditing of Accounts to Institutional Accountability’.  42 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, pp. 42–45.  43 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 42: ‘II. Item nullum comitatum regni nostri

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demands, a fact which reflects the strength of the nobility in the assembly.44 But the restrictions imposed on the access to offices are a sign of the tendency to reserve them for the members of nobility. Its discussion is relevant in the context of the anti-corruption campaigns that excluded certain individuals or groups from the exercise of authority. The king also promised not to accept in his council members of the aristocracy known for having committed violence in the kingdom. Article 3 stipulated that the citation for trial before a castle count or deputy count without a letter of attestation from a chapter (testimonio) was not possible, while the counts were forbidden to carry out judgements without ‘quatuor nobilibus nominatis’ (four elected noblemen).45 In 1231, the need for a witness sent by a bishop or a monastic institution to assist the procedures carried out by the pristaldus and testify in case of accusations of falsity was already accepted. This new form of citation before the count or the castellan involving a letter of attestation from a place of authentication (locus credibilis) imposed the supplementary step of requesting such a letter and replaced an earlier procedure consisting in displaying the royal or a judge’s seal to the one summoned.46 The fourteenth-century procedure consisted in the plaintiff presenting his plaint before a place of authentication and initiating in this form the litigation.47 From the point of view of anti-corruption measures, the involvement of a representative of a cathedral chapter in the judicial process, as well as the obligation of the counts to carry out judgements only with elected nobles from that county, are moves in the direction of a more complex system of oversight that was likely to impose some deterrents to abusive or corrupt judicial practices.

 44

 45  46  47

ecclesiis vel earum prelatis, baronibus vel nobilibus, alicui vel aliquibus imperpetuum conferemus, imitantes in hoc sanctorum progenitorum nostrorum, regum illustrium Hungarie vestigia pro modulo et pro posse. Promittimus etiam, quod dignitates seu comitatus regni nostri seu castra advenis vel hospitibus, aut paganis vel ignobilibus et hiis, qui in regno nostro nocumenta frequenter intulerunt, nullatenus conferemus, nec consiliis nostris interesse permittemus. Nec etiam barones suas dignitates in certa quantitate pecunie locare permittemus, nec vices suas sive iudicatus in parochia conferri ignobilibus patiemur’. The editors of the decree commented that the practice of farming out offices by dignitaries is not substantiated in the medi­eval kingdom of Hungary. They supposed that the target of this stipulation was the practice of appointing their sometimes non-noble familiares in various county offices. See The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 110 n. 6. The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 42: ‘Item nullus sine testimonio capitulorum vel conventuum ad presentiam curialium comitum vel vicecomitum citari possit, nec comes iudicium recipere aut iudicare presumat absque quatuor nobilibus nominatis’. The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 110 n. 8. For a description of the development and functions of the places of authentication, see Rady, Nobility, Land and Service, pp. 70–74.

Anti-Corruption Measures in the Legislation of 13 th -Century Hungary

The Procedure for Overseeing and Restraining an Unjust Palatine

The eighth article described a new procedure of the palatine’s circuit court prescribing that the palatine would deliver sentences together with the count and four judges (iudices deputati). The count’s share from the judicial fees was to be paid fully to him. A possible explanation of the reconfiguration of the procedure of the palatine’s court might be offered by the next stipulation that indicated the obligation of the four men and the count to resist the palatine who ‘wanted to proceed incorrectly’ (sinistre procedere intenderet) and report him to the king.48 To some extent, this institutional solution seems logical. Multiplication of the number of persons involved in the judicial process seems to have been instituted to combat corruption, bias, or injustice. The editors of the laws commented on this aspect that ‘the charging of the county magistrates with checking the arbitrary judgment of the palatine creates the formal procedure for restraining him’, which did not appear in previous laws.49 Assessment of the Conduct of Officials at the Annual Assembly of Székesfehérvár

The Golden Bull and the decree of 1267 called for an annual assembly where all servientes could bring their complaints to the attention of the king and palatine, but in 1290 the stipulation added just how the behaviour of the baron was to be judged: qualiter quilibet ipsorum in suis comitatibus processerint et conservaverint iura regni, et secundum sua merita premia et demerita vel commissa suplicia ipso die secundum iudicium nostrum et consiliariorum nostrorum recepturi. (how each behaved in his county and how he maintained the rights of the kingdom — and to receive on the same day their rewards for their merits or punishments for omissions and misdeeds in accordance with our judgments and that of our councilors.)50 The assessment of the performance of royal officials was part of the anti-corruption measures adopted in various realms in the thirteenth century. While it was of course necessary to punish abuses, or perhaps incompetence, as well as to reward good administrative practices, there is no extant example of a single

 48 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 43: ‘Item si palatinus in regno nostro ad faciendum iudicium processerit, in qualibet provincia quatuor iudices deputati cum comite parochiali ire et iudicare debeant et ius, quod comitem parochialem in iudiciis contingit, ipsi comiti d[ari] plene volumus et persolvi. Si vero palatinus sinistre procedere intenderet, iidem quatuor homines cum comite ipsorum prohibere et nobis intimare tenentur’.  49 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 112 n. 28.  50 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 44.

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assessment of this kind. In the administrative system of thirteenth-century Hungary, appointment and dismissal from office depended on the king, who must have been informed about scandals or the virtuous behaviour of his officials. Competition among aristocrats for positions in the royal court and for honores must always have been rife. Thus, hearsay or scandals about unjust behaviour or abuses could have been collected by aristocrats and brought to the attention of the king. In other words, while this provision belongs to an advanced stage of combating corrupt administrative behaviour, its application in practice has yet to be investigated and determined. Forbiddance of Protection of Convicts by the Powerful

The ineffectiveness of the justice system against culprits protected by the powerful was one of the characteristic features of late medi­eval polities. For example, in fourteenth-century England magnates perpetrated crimes through middlemen and were capable of impeding the prosecution of their own men.51 The stipulation of Article 21, that if a criminal convicted by a judge escaped, the king would not protect him and would not tolerate it if the barons protected him, seems to be an attempt at curbing such practices.52 Article 21 annulled all documents on sales of properties made through intimidation or under the pressure of the powerful by any of the landed residents. Article 25, although preserved only fragmentarily due to damage to the original, still states that whoever felt oppressed by the count could retract his suit and bring it to the judgement of the king.

The Decree of 5 August 1298 This decree was adopted in an assembly of prelates, barons, Saxons, and Cumans at the monastery of the Minorite friars in Pest in order to restore royal, church, and noble properties usurped by the oligarchs. The preamble stated clearly that many rights were trampled ‘iniquis hominibus et cupiditate excecatis pravitatibus intervenientibus minime fuerunt observate et ex tepiditate domini regis fuere penitus et postposite’ (by the evil and wicked men blinded by greed and entirely neglected through the laxity of the lord king).53 The decree was approved by the king, and the assembly was authorized by the king and barons, but was the result of the work done by the archbishop of Kalocsa and ten other bishops of Hungary, with nobles, Saxons, and Cumans.

 51 Hanawalt, ‘Fur-Collar Crime’; Walker, ‘Lordship and Lawlessness’.  52 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 45: ‘Item, si quis malefactorum coram aliquo iudice convictus aufugerit, nullatenus ipsum recipiemus, nec etiam defensamus, et similiter per barones nolumus nec patiemur defensari’.  53 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 46.

Anti-Corruption Measures in the Legislation of 13 th -Century Hungary

Article 3 of the decree from 1298 ordered that within three months all goods stolen or robbed should be restored to their owners by the perpetrators of such deeds. Those who used force to obtain remission and would not return stolen goods would be excommunicated, be judged by the king for high treason, and have their properties confiscated. The article then describes the task of a commission to inquire into past and future accusations of usurpation. A man of the king sent to the county was to inquire together with four nobles in each county and find out the truth about past and future accusations. They were to report their findings to the king with the confirmation of the chapters from the area where the robberies were committed.54 Those who conceived the decree were aware that the activity of such commissions might be influenced by fear, favour, or money in fulfilling their mission; and if the four nobles hid the truth, they could be excommunicated and punished at the king’s discretion: Si vero dicti quatuor nobiles ob favorem vel timorem aut recepto premio recusare vel huiusmodi depredationem false sugerere de hiis, que resciverunt, presumpserint, excommunicationem incurrant exnunc latam ipso facto, nichilominus domini regis cedant iudicio pena [debi]ta puniendi. (And if the said nobles due to fear or favor or money received shall have dared to decline to report or to report falsely of robbery committed by someone whom they know, they shall be subject to the now decreed excommunication and be punished with the proper penalty by the judgment of the king as well.)55 The fourth article indicated that the four men were to be elected in every county and had to report properly to the diocesan bishop, who was to excommunicate those who had committed robberies since the beginning of the assembly. There is a striking resemblance between these three factors of fear, favour, and bribes, and the so-called Ciceronian triad responsible for the vitiation of justice: gratia, potentia, pecunia.56 As the legal historian Michael H. Hoeflich explained in his examination of ancient and early medi­eval judicial corruption, gratia meant the favouring of one party in a judgement because of the judge and the litigant’s political or social ties, potentia referred to the intimidation of the judge or that of the litigant, while pecunia was the bribe accepted by the judge for issuing a favourable sentence for the payer of the bribe.57 Article 7 established a commission composed of two bishops, one from each archdiocese, and two nobles elected in the assembly, who would ensure

 54 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 48: ‘dummodo per hominem domini regis ad hoc specialiter transmissum ac quatuor nobiles in qualibet provincia ad inquirendas et sciendas spoliationes preteritas et futuras deputatos domino regi fides fiat sub testimonio capitulorum, ubi hec damnatione digna fuerint commissa vel fuerunt’.  55 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 48.  56 Hoeflich, ‘Regulation of Judicial Misconduct’.  57 Hoeflich, ‘Regulation of Judicial Misconduct’, p. 82.

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the more honourable governing of the royal court and the better administration of the kingdom of Hungary. Thus, the king was to have these four people with him every three months. It is important that to these people, who were to counsel the king in ‘conferring important grants and dignities’, the king had to pay salaries from the royal treasury. It was the first indication of payment of wages for officials.58 The modern editors of the laws of Hungary observe that the creation of this council of prelates, magnates, and lesser noblemen ‘was the most far-reaching objective in the short-lived corporatist episode of the late thirteenth century’.59 Article 13 echoes the similar provisions from the Golden Bull and the decree from 1267 about the arrest of noblemen or landowners by sanctioning such a deed with immediate dismissal from office.60 The measures included in the royal decrees cannot be assigned to a systematic policy against corruption; rather, they are specific responses to complaints of those who benefited from the charters of liberties that limited abuses or regulated the behaviour of officials. *** I stated at the beginning of this study that ‘corruption was a concern of those who drafted the regulations or decrees in thirteenth-century Hungary’. Having presented the instances of adopting various rules and regulations, I should conclude with how they relate to the problem of corruption and how they were supposed to combat the phenomenon. The Golden Bull of 1222 addressed complaints against abusive arrests, incarceration of servientes regis, and confiscation of their goods for the benefit of the powerful by prescribing a judicial procedure to be followed before such an individual could be harmed. The ‘powerful’ referred to in the stipulation were most likely the members of the royal government, especially those in the higher echelons, who were the first layer of royal favourites who could have benefitted from confiscations. The formulation encapsulates a wide array of possible activities harmful for the weaker servientes, who might have felt that they were preyed upon by the more powerful. While the lack of contextualizing examples impedes a documented conclusion, the interpretation of this stipulation as a measure meant to restrict the ability of the powerful to arrest and seize the wealth of servientes without trial seems most logical. These new conditions were, at least theoretically, crafted to protect the weak against abuses of the powerful. As I noted above, these new conditions should be understood in the context of the regulation

 58 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 49: ‘Item statuimus, ut curia domini regis honorificentius regi possit et regnum Hungarie decentius gubernari, dominus noster rex singulis tribus mensibus singulos duos episcopos secundum exigantiam ordinis unum de suffraganeis Strigoniensis et alterum de suffraganeis Collocensis ecclesie, totidemque et quasi omnes nobiles regni, quos et nunc elegimus, secum habeat congruis stipendiis de bono regio sustentandos’.  59 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 116.  60 The Laws, ed. and trans. by Bak and others, p. 52.

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of the annual assembly where servientes could freely gather and present their cases to the king or the palatine. These stipulations point to the conclusion that in 1222 lower-level royal servants were voicing grievances against abuses perpetrated for the benefit of a superior category of government members. The solutions contained in the first article provided a place and time where the servientes could bring their cases before the king or the palatine, while the second article imposed the procedure of proper trial before members of the servientes regis category could be arrested. How effective the Golden Bull was in the ensuing years is debatable. As the confirmation of 1231 observed, the king promised to restore all properties of servientes confiscated without proper trial, which suggests that the unjust seizure of property by the king, his sons, or the magnates continued to be an issue. The restoration of properties confiscated after 1222 was to be pursued not because it was the right thing to do, but because the king and his magnates had taken an oath to apply that principle. Thus, in this formulation, the king and the magnates were bound by their oath to apply the principle of fair trial, which was not enforced in the previous years, but it introduced a set of conditions and regulations that could have diminished abusive practices. In the confirmation of the privileges of the servientes from 1267, a new element was added to the annual assembly from Székesfehérvár where the king and one of his sons were to judge in the presence of two or three representatives sent by the counties. It is not clear what role these representatives were supposed to play in the judgement of petitions. Were they to assist the king in the judgement by providing local knowledge about persons, events, and so forth? An active role is not stipulated; however, the presence of such county noble representatives seems to have been a response to demands for greater representation. Incarceration without trial persisted throughout the thirteenth century, or so it would seem from the repetition of the measures against this practice; but only the decree from 1298 adopted the measure of dismissing from office the judge royal or any judge as a punishment for such an abuse. The stipulations in the Golden Bull establishing limits on the demands of the king or his officials on account of the descensus can be ascribed to anti-corruption measures inasmuch as they provided rules of conduct for the members of the upper echelon of government. The clarifications added in 1231 disclosed to some extent the practice of collecting wine, cereals, and other necessities without pay or without paying the fair price. The grievance regarding foods and beverages suggests dissatisfaction with the system and the king’s willingness to heed the complaints. A similar complaint was probably the origin of the article in the Golden Bull exhorting all royal dignitaries and servants to abstain from the spoliation of the poor on account of descensus. The provision from the Golden Bull regarding the dismissal of counts who abused the population of their counties belongs to what was recognized as efforts to build a normative structure for the activity of officials and a system for the prosecution of wrongdoing. Also, the stipulations regarding the revenues of the counts as differentiated from those of the king seem to indicate the

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intention to enforce the customary right of the king to two-thirds of the taxes. This regulation did not introduce accounting in the administration of royal income, which is implied already by the late eleventh-century laws, but was probably intended to limit tendencies of spending more than the customary one-third allocated to counts. The regulation of the activity of pristaldi in 1231 stipulated that the summonses to court or testimonies of judgement would be valid only if the bailiff was accompanied by a witness sent by a cathedral chapter or a bishop. This measure was presented as a solution to damages caused by ‘false bailiffs’ and addressed procedural dysfunctions affecting the credibility of these officials. The presence of two or three nobles sent by each county at the annual assembly from Székesfehérvár seems to have been the concern of Article 8 in the decree from 1267. Whether they had an active or passive role in the judgements of complaints is not clear, but the tendency to staff the judicial seats with representatives of the nobility was confirmed by the royal decree from 1290. Of course, this is usually read as a sign of the growing influence of the local nobility, and indeed, the obligation of the count to organize all judicial procedures assisted by four elected noble magistrates (iudices nobilium) became a rule in the fourteenth century. The condition that a letter of testimony for a citation to trial by a count should be issued at a place of authentication seems to continue the regulation regarding the witnesses necessary for the pristaldi in 1231. The role of the four iudices deputati with their count in restricting and denouncing to the king a palatine who intended to proceed wrongly, as prescribed by Article 8 in the decree from 1290, attests to the expanding circle of individuals involved in the prevention and combating of corruption, bias, or favour. The awareness of possible distortion of judicial proceedings and sentences either by ‘wrath, hatred, or favor’, or concealing the truth learned in inquiries out of ‘fear or favor or money received’ is perceivable in the decrees of 1267 and 1298. Also, the procedure of evaluation stipulated in 1290 that rewarded and punished barons in the annual assembly appears as part of the same trend of constructing a normative framework to regulate the activities of officials. The examples extracted from the legislation of thirteenth-century Hungary illustrate developments in the organization of the administrative and judicial authorities and the adoption of various regulations at different moments. The concern with corruption of officials at various levels, from that of county counts, to the bailiffs of judges (pristaldi), or even the palatine or elected judges or noble magistrates is perceivable in the promulgations of procedures and regulations. While a complete analysis of the context, causes, and aims of the adoption of each regulation and the correlation of similar measures known in Europe requires a much broader and lengthier investigation, the concern for administrative and judicial corruption, and the attempts at combating it, seem to be sufficiently suggestive to stimulate further research in these aspects of the institutional history of medi­eval Hungary and Europe.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Bak, János M., ‘Online Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungariae: The Laws of the Medi­eval Kingdom of Hungary’, All Complete Mono­graphs, 4 (Logan, UT: USU Libraries, 2019), [accessed 26 April 2021] The Laws of the Medi­eval Kingdom of Hungary, i: 1000–1301, ed. and trans. by János M. Bak and others, 2nd rev. edn (Idyllwild, CA: Charles Schlacks, Jr., 1999) ‘Master Roger’s Epistle to the Sorrowful Lament upon the Destruction of the Kingdom of Hungary by the Tatars’, in Anonymous and Master Roger, trans. by János M. Bak and Martyn Rady (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2010), pp. 131–227 Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der Deutschen in Siebenbürgen, i: 1191 bis 1342, ed. by Franz Zimmermann and Carl Werner (Hermannstadt [Sibiu]: Franz Michaelis, 1892) Secondary Works Baldwin, John, ‘The Medi­eval Theories of the Just Price: Romanists, Canonists, and Theo­logians in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s., 49.4 (1959), 1–92 Balogh, Elemér, ‘The Place of the Golden Bull in Hungarian Constitutional History’, in De Bulla Aurea Andreae II Regis Hungariae MCCXXII, ed. by Lajos Besenyei, Géza Érszegi, and Maurizio Pedrazza Gorlero (Verona: Edizioni Valdonenga, 1999), pp. 203–24 Blazovich, László, ‘The Origins of the Golden Bull, and its Most Important Provi­ sions as Reflected in Hungarian Constitutional and Legal History’, in De Bulla Aurea Andreae II Regis Hungariae MCCXXII, ed. by Lajos Besenyei, Géza Érszegi, and Maurizio Pedrazza Gorlero (Verona: Edizioni Valdonenga, 1999), pp. 181–90 Chittolini, Giorgio, ‘The “Private”, the “Public”, the “State”’, Journal of Modern History, 67: Supplement: The Origins of the State in Italy, 1300–1600 (Dec. 1995), 34–61 Cziráki, Zsuzsanna, ‘Prince Gábor Bethlen’s Visits to Brassó as Reflected in the Town Account Books’, Hungarian Historical Review, 2.4 (2013), 901–28 Dodd, Gwilym, ‘Corruption in the Fourteenth-Century English State’, International Journal of Public Administration, 34.11 (2011), 720–30 Engel, Pál, The Realm of Saint Stephen: A History of Medi­eval Hungary, 895–1527, trans. by Tamás Pálosfalvi, ed. by Andrew Ayton (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001) Epurescu-Pascovici, Ionuț, ‘From Auditing of Accounts to Institutional Accountability in Late Medi­eval Europe’ in Account and Accountability in Late Medi­eval Europe: Records, Procedures, and Socio-Political Impact, ed. by Ionuț

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Epurescu-Pascovici, Utrecht Studies in Medi­eval Literacy, 50 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 1–19 Groebner, Valentin, Liquid Assets, Dangerous Gifts: Presents and Politics at the End of the Middle Ages, trans. by Pamela E. Selwyn (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2002) Hanawalt, Barbara A., ‘Fur-Collar Crime: The Pattern of Crime among the Fourteenth-Century English Nobility’, Journal of Social History, 8.4 (1975), 1–17 Hoeflich, Michael H., ‘Regulation of Judicial Misconduct from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages’, Law and History Review, 2 (1984), 79–104 Jordan, William Chester, ‘Anti-Corruption Campaigns in Thirteenth-Century Europe’, Journal of Medi­eval History, 35.2 (2009), 204–19 Kroeze, Ronald, André Vitória, and Guy Geltner, ‘Introduction: Debating Corruption and Anticorruption in History’, in Anticorruption in History: From Antiquity to the Modern Era, ed. by Ronald Kroeze, André Vitória, and Guy Geltner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 1–17 Rady, Martyn, ‘Hungary and the Golden Bull of 1222’, Banatica, 24.2 (2014), 89–108 —— , Nobility, Land and Service in Medi­eval Hungary (London: Palgrave, 2000) Vitória, André, ‘Late Medi­eval Polities and the Problem of Corruption: France, England and Portugal, 1250–1500’, in Anticorruption in History: From Antiquity to the Modern Era, ed. by Ronald Kroeze, André Vitória, and Guy Geltner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 77–89 Walker, Simon K., ‘Lordship and Lawlessness in the Palatinate of Lancaster, 1370–1400’, Journal of British Studies, 28.4 (1989), 325–48 Watts, John, ‘Tackling Corruption in Later Medi­eval England, 1250–1550’, in Anticorruption in History: From Antiquity to the Modern Era, ed. by Ronald Kroeze, André Vitória, and Guy Geltner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 91–102

Memories, Texts, and Identities

Maya Maskarinec

Invoking Gregory on the Caelian in Medieval Rome A Study of an Inscription at SS. Giovanni e Paolo This essay takes its starting point from a premise of Patrick Geary’s Phantoms of Remembrance, namely that ‘how one stores the past affects what is remembered’.1 It explores the implications of this deceptively simple observation, so characteristic of Geary’s work, with respect to an anomalous composite inscription found in the church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo on the Caelian Hill in Rome. I argue that by means of this inscription, the early twelfth-century clerics of SS. Giovanni e Paolo sought to inscribe themselves into the late antique past of the Caelian Hill — a shrewd attempt to latch onto an authoritative past.

A Christian City of Inscriptions In the Middle Ages Rome’s sacred topo­graphy abounded with inscriptions.2 Overwhelmingly, the inscriptions that survive (or which are documented by medi­eval, early modern, or modern transcriptions) are epitaphs, but inscriptions in churches served many other purposes than to commemorate the dead.3 Inscriptions on the lintels of doors welcomed the faithful; golden letters on early medi­eval apse mosaics proclaimed the presence of the divine and reminded viewers who was responsible for the splendour of the mosaics they were experiencing.4 Words written within or accompanying images made

 1 Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance, p. 10.  2 The fundamental collection of Rome’s medi­eval inscriptions remains Iscrizioni delle chiese, ed. by Forcella; valuable too is the collection of photo­graphs in Monumenta epi­graphica christiana, ed. by Silvagni. For the early Middle Ages, see De Rubeis, ‘Epigrafi a Roma’; and Cardin, Epigrafia a Roma nel primo medioevo.  3 For an overview of the functions of medi­eval inscriptions, see Favreau, ‘Fonctions des inscriptions au Moyen Âge’. Regarding Rome’s medi­eval epitaphs, see Kajanto, Classical and Christian.  4 Thunø, ‘Inscription and Divine Presence’.

Maya Maskarinec ([email protected]) teaches History at the University of Southern California. Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe: Studies on Cultural Identity and Power, ed. by Courtney M. Booker, Hans Hummer, and Dana M. Polanichka, CURSOR 41, pp. 335–356 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022)        10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.127587

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Figure 14.1. Composite Inscription, SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Rome. c. eighth century/twelfth century (?). Photos by author.

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sense of, or provided commentary on, these pictures. Inscriptions on altars commemorated their consecration; plaques set up inside or outside churches recorded their dedication, celebrated the relics assembled therein, or, from the twelfth century onward, advertised the indulgences that the pious might obtain at these holy sites.5 Relatively common in Rome were also so-called ‘lapidary charters’, that is, decrees or other ‘documents’ usually pertaining to a church’s privileges or properties that were inscribed on stone or other durable material.6 An inscription of this type is the focus of the present essay. Lapidary charters were more durable and more ‘public’ versions of the document in question. But inscriptions were not only there to be read. They had meaning that transcended the words themselves.7 They called attention to themselves and emanated authority.

A Composite Inscription The inscription that is the focus of this essay is well known (Figure 14.1).8 It is found on two marble plaques of roughly equal size, today tucked away inside the church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, but which were formerly located outside the church, presumably in a more visible location.9 The composite text consists of an older inscription, on what is now the second plaque (with the exception of the last five lines of text), and a newer inscription (on the first plaque and the last five lines of the second plaque). Based on the letter forms and the language, the older part of this inscription has been judged to date from approximately the early eighth century.10 On the left side (from the perspective of the viewer), a vertical inscription labels the

 5 Blennow, The Latin Consecrative Inscriptions.  6 Petrella, Le carte lapidarie di Roma. See also Von Pflugk-Harttung, ‘Papsturkunden auf Marmor’. For a well-founded critique of Pflugk-Harttung’s conclusions, see Kallenberg, ‘Papsturkunden auf Marmor und Metall?’. For this type of inscription more generally, see Banti, ‘Epigrafi “documentarie”’.  7 For an introduction to the multitude of ways in which inscriptions communicate, see Eastmond, ed., Viewing Inscriptions.  8 Favreau, Épi­graphie médiévale, pp. 33–39 (with transcription and French translation); Grisar, Analecta Romana, pp. 163–67, no. 16, pl. 4, no. 8; Monumenta epi­graphica christiana, ed. by Silvagni, pl. 36, no. 6 (older inscription), pl. 20, no. 6 (newer inscription); De Rossi, ‘Diploma pontificio inciso in marmo’. Grisar, Silvagni, and Favreau each provide images of the inscriptions in SS. Giovanni e Paolo; De Rossi provides an image of the fragmentary unfinished inscription.  9 Mondini references a mid-seventeenth-century source (Bruzio) who reports that the inscription had recently been moved from the porch of the basilica to inside the church: Mondini, ‘SS. Giovanni e Paolo’, p. 75 n. 34. That this was also the medi­eval location of the inscription is further suggested by comparison to analogous inscriptions, such as the Gregory inscriptions at S. Paolo fuori le Mura and at St Peter’s, mentioned below.  10 See, most recently, De Francesco, ‘Partizioni fondiarie’, p. 60.

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document as a ‘list’ (notitia) of the properties belonging to the titulus.11 On the right, another vertical inscription names Constantine, ‘servus seroorum [read: servorum] ’ (servant of the servants ).12 The main text lists rural estates (fundi), primarily located to the south-east of the city, along the via Appia, via Latina, and via Praenestina.13 What we have here is a catalogue of properties belonging to the church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo at the time of a certain Constantine, very plausibly Pope Constantine (708–715).14 This type of property inscription finds clear parallels in other early medi­eval Roman inscriptions, such as from the titular church of S. Susanna and the monastery of S. Erasmo, located, like SS. Giovanni e Paolo, on the Caelian Hill.15 At a significantly later point in time, certainly after the year 1000, a new inscription was carved to accompany and frame the older inscription; this inscription begins on a separate plaque, then incorporates the older inscription, and finally concludes with five lines added to the older plaque. The result is the — rather visually awkward — composite inscription. The newer inscription presents a decree issued by ‘† Gregorius episcopus servus servorum / Dei’ (Gregory, bishop, servant of the servants of God), directed to the cardinal Deusdedit and the archpresbyter John, of the titular church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, and confirming the church’s property holdings.16 After a preamble, the inscription refers to the fundi located in the territorio Bellitrinensi and in other locations (in aliis locis). Thereupon the viewer is intended to consult the older inscription, which begins with the properties located in the territorio Bellitrinensi.17 The newer inscription concludes with one additional property, then confirms the church’s possession of these properties, and anathematizes anyone who should contravene the decree. Before turning to the purpose of this inscription, one further piece of evidence needs to be mentioned. This is a fragmentary, incomplete inscrip  11 ‘† Notitia fundorum iuris tituli huius’ (inscribed to the left of the older inscription).  12 ‘† Constantinus servus seroorum [read: servorum] ’, inscribed to the right of the older inscription. This is the reading proposed by De Rossi, ‘Diploma pontificio inciso in marmo’, p. 54.  13 For discussion, see De Francesco, ‘Partizioni fondiarie’, pp. 57–71.  14 De Rossi, ‘Diploma pontificio inciso in marmo’, p. 58, suggested that Constantine might merely have been the stonecutter or notary responsible for the document; Grisar, Analecta Romana, p. 164, suggests some patron or administrator of the church. However, more recently, Favreau and De Francesco have argued for the interpretation of this as Pope Constantine, especially on the basis of the prominent placement of the name and his designation as ‘servant of the servants ’: Favreau, Épi­graphie médiévale, p. 38; De Francesco, ‘Partizioni fondiarie’, p. 59.  15 In an inscription from the titular church of S. Susanna, Pope Sergius (687–701) assigned properties to the church; a Greek inscription from S. Erasmo listing properties has been conventionally dated to the time of Pope Adeodatus (672–676). Regarding both inscriptions, see De Francesco, ‘Partizioni fondiarie’. Neither inscription survives in its entirety; their texts have been reconstructed on the basis of later transcriptions.  16 ‘† Gregorius episcopus servus servorum / Dei. dilectissimis in Christo filiis Deusdedit cardinali / et Johanni archipresbytero’ (lines 1–3 of the newer inscription).  17 ‘† Territorio Beltrensi milliario XXII’ (line 1 of the older inscription).

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tion discovered in the late nineteenth century (Figure 14.2). It demonstrates that SS. Giovanni e Paolo’s clerics had conceived of a more ambitious project: a single inscription that would have incorporated both Gregory’s decree and the text of the older inscription. As suggested by Hartmann Grisar, errors made in recopying the first lines of the older inscription may have led to the abandonment of this project.18 If nothing else, this aborted enterprise attests to the clerics’ intense interest in creating a composite text and the thought that went into how to present this text in a visually effective manner. Despite, or rather, so I propose, precisely because of this effort, the composite inscription leaves many basic questions about its context and purpose unexplained.

A Decree of Gregory the Great?

Figure 14.2. Incomplete Inscription, SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Rome. Twelfth century (?). Image reproduced from De Rossi, ‘Diploma pontificio inciso in marmo’, pl. 4, no. 3.

Most noticeably, the newer part of the composite inscription provides no explicit indication of its date. Not specified is when the decree was issued nor when the stone was inscribed. Grisar hypothesized that perhaps the date was omitted because of lack of space.19 However, there remains free space on both of the two plaques; medi­eval epi­graphic culture in and around Rome did not require or even prefer text to be framed by free space. For example, a

 18 Grisar, Analecta Romana, p. 166.  19 Grisar, Analecta Romana, p. 166.

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close comparandum in terms of date, type of inscription, and workmanship, a 1052 inscription from the monastery of Subiaco which records the monastery’s property in the fourth year of the pontificate of Pope Leo IX (‘Leoni noni pape’), entirely fills the plaque.20 Moreover, in addition to the lack of date, the bishop Gregory in question is not further identified. At first glance, then, a viewer might be inclined to regard this as the Gregory, Pope Gregory the Great, and, indeed, scholarship prior to Giovanni Battista De Rossi (d. 1894) typically interpreted this as a decree issued by Gregory the Great.21 Epi­graphically and linguistically this identification cannot be correct; both the text and letter-forms of the newer part of the inscription have been judged to date from around the eleventh century.22 De Rossi proposed that the Gregory in question was Gregory VII (1073–1085), and later scholarship has accepted De Rossi’s hypothesis.23 I return to this question below, arguing for a somewhat later date, in the first decades of the twelfth century. But, first, let us consider the question of how this newer inscription was originally intended to be interpreted by its viewers. Was its text intended to be read as a decree issued by Gregory VII (or Gregory V or VI)? I suggest that it was

 20 Rosati, ‘I confini dei possessi’, pp. 52–55, with image at fig. 8.  21 Martinelli, Roma ex ethnica sacra sanctorum, p. 278; Rondinini, De sanctis martyribus Johanne et Paulo, pp. 78, 107–09; Borgia, Istoria della chiesa e città di Velletri, pp. 136–37; Inscriptiones Romanae, ed. by Galletti, i, pp. 7–8, no. 11; Marinus, in Scriptorum veterum, ed. by Mai, v, pp. 211–12 (prints inscription as transcribed by Stephano Borgia in 1778). An exception is Suarès, Praenestes antiquae, p. 20, who refers to the inscription as a decree of Gregory II.  22 Favreau, Épi­graphie médiévale, p. 39. The newer inscription is clearly distinguishable from the older in terms of its letter forms and the more frequent use of abbreviations. Linguistically, Favreau points, inter alia, to the term ‘in perpetuum’, in use from the time of Leo IX (1049–1054).  23 De Rossi, ‘Diploma pontificio inciso in marmo’. De Rossi bases his theory on the fact that Gregory VII’s pontificate falls within the period to which the inscription, on epi­graphic and linguistic grounds, may be roughly assigned; in addition, he points to Pope Gregory VII’s reputation for defending the Church. In support of De Rossi’s theory, Favreau points to the use of the decree’s opening phrase (‘Credite speculationis inpellimus cura’) in papal bulls of 938, 998, and 1075: Favreau, Épi­graphie médiévale, p. 39. However, the date of the papal bull said to be issued in 1075 is not certain. This bull is found in Subiaco’s cartulary, and as explained by the editors, the compilers of the cartulary left three lines blank for the title of this document (neither the pope nor the abbot in question is specified); later scholarship attributes the decree to Gregory VII: JL 4916a; Il regesto, ed. by Allodi and Levi, pp. 105–06, no. 63. Moreover, the bull in question is modelled on the papal bull issued in 938 by Pope Leo VII to Subiaco (another of Favreau’s examples), which unites the monastery of S. Erasmo on the Caelian to the monastery of Subiaco: JL 4916a; Il regesto, ed. by Allodi and Levi, pp. 105–06, no. 63. I interpret this evidence to indicate that the formula ‘Credite speculationis inpellimus cura’, used in Pope Leo VII’s 938 bull to Subiaco, was subsequently used by compilers of the cartulary to create another spurious bull that was never completed. It may be no coincidence, then, that this same formula was also used by the clerics of SS. Giovanni e Paolo in constructing their spurious papal privilege (especially given the proximity of SS. Giovanni e Paolo to the monastery of S. Erasmo).

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not. What we have instead, I propose, is an inscription that was conceived of, by the clerics of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, as a decree issued by the Gregory, Gregory the Great. The first and, as I have already noted, most obvious argument in favour of this interpretation is the absence of a date on either plaque and the absence of a specific designation of the bishop Gregory as anyone other than Gregory I. If this were a pope other than Gregory I, we would expect the inscription in some way to specify the Gregory in question. While it is usual for papal bulls to begin with the name of the pope in question without specifying the pope by number, such decrees conventionally conclude with a date — thereby allowing later readers to identify the pope. Moreover, medi­eval inscriptions relating to papal involvement in churches in Rome tend to specify the pope by number and provide a date as well.24 For example, inscriptions from S. Pudenziana, S. Maria in Portico, and S. Cecilia specify Pope Gregory VII by number.25 This indicates a widespread practice of including the information necessary to distinguish later popes of the same name. The lack of such information on our Gregory inscription points to it being intended to be interpreted literally, that is, as a decree of the Gregory. Even more suggestive of the inscription’s intent are the names of the individuals to whom this papal decree is directed, a Cardinal ‘Deusdedit’ and an archpresbyter ‘John’ (Iohannes). These are commonly found names in late antique and medi­eval Rome.26 Nevertheless, despite their frequency, it is striking and appears more than a mere coincidence that, as was well known, both a ‘Deusdedit’ and a ‘Iohannes’ served as presbyters of the titulus of SS. Giovanni e Paolo under Pope Gregory the Great.27 To my mind, this  24 It is especially unusual for inscribed decrees not to include either the pope in question or a date. Cf. Petrella, Le carte lapidarie di Roma; Kantola, ‘Time Set in Stone’.  25 S. Pudenziana inscription, commemorating the restoration and dedication of the basilica: ‘Tempore Gregorii septeni praesulis almi’: Monumenta epi­graphica christiana, ed. by Silvagni, pl. 21, no. 3. S. Maria in Portico inscription (now located in the church of S. Galla, in Ostiense), recording the consecration of the church: ‘Gregorii VII P(a)p(e)’: Blennow, The Latin Consecrative Inscriptions, pp. 19–26, no. 2 with figs 2–4; S. Cecilia inscription, recording the consecration of an altar: ‘Gregoriu(m) P(a)p(am)VII’: Blennow, The Latin Consecrative Inscriptions, pp. 33–35, no. 4 with fig. 7.  26 Well attested, for example, is Cardinal Deusdedit (d. c. 1099), a close acquaintance of Gregory VII. Favreau, Épi­graphie médiévale, p. 39, associates the inscription with this Cardinal Deusdedit; however, this Deusdedit was the cardinal priest of S. Pietro in Vincoli and does not appear to have had any association with SS. Giovanni e Paolo, nor are the saints John and Paul ever mentioned in the hymns that he wrote: Die Carmina des Kardinals Deusdedit, ed. by Jacobsen. Regarding Deusdedit, see Zimmermann, ‘Deusdedit’. Also well known is Giovanni (‘Iohannes’) of Sutri, who became the cardinal priest of SS. Giovanni e Paolo in 1150: his name appears (‘Presbiter Iohannes’) in the monumental inscription above the entrance to the church: Di San Stanislao, La casa celimontana, pp. 396–97.  27 Both are mentioned as being among the presbyters who attended a council in Rome in 595: Gregory the Great, Registrum, v. 57a, ed. by Ewald and Hartmann, i, p. 367 (this document is not edited in Norberg’s newer edition of Gregory’s Registrum); and as attending a council in Rome in 601: Sacrorum conciliorum, ed. by Mansi and others, x, col. 488. Both are also

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suggests that the newer text was crafted so as to present the whole composite inscription as a decree issued by Gregory the Great, directed to the clerics of the church at that time (whom this decree anachronistically refers to as a cardinal and an archpresbyter, a hierarchy that would not have made sense in the time of Gregory the Great).28 This is not to say that contemporaries failed to recognize the new inscription as recently carved (or failed to recognize the language of the inscription as contemporary). But older texts could be recopied and their language ‘modernized’, and fragmentary or missing texts could be reconstituted.29 This process has been explored most extensively in terms of the recopying of older documents: because of the ephemeral nature of paper and parchment it was common practice to recopy records written on such materials. For example, as discussed below, the donation document issued by Gregory for his monastery on the Caelian (as it survives in a sixteenth-century transcription) presents itself as a later medi­eval copy of the original, made on account of the poor condition of the older document.30 It was not unusual for such recopying to involve more (and less) subtle intervention into the text of a document; most scholars have accepted the core authenticity of Gregory’s donation to his monastery, but some of the wording of the text (such as the unabbreviated form of the datatio at the end of the donation) suggests it was revised as it was recopied.31 And when a document did not exist, it could be found. ‘Copies’ of this sort do not identify themselves as distinct: they are what modern scholars usually term ‘forgeries’, though in many cases it is unclear if contemporaries understood them as such.32 Stone and other epi­graphic mentioned (as members of a council) in a document of Gregory the Great from 600: Gregory the Great, Registrum, xi. 15, ed. by Norberg, ii, p. 881; ed. by Ewald and Hartmann, ii, p. 275. Scholarship has long been aware of the existence of these presbyters under Gregory the Great. See, for example, ‘‘La “Notitia fundorum” du titre des SS. Jean et Paul à Rome’; Di San Stanislao, La casa celimontana, p. 486. Di San Stanislao, who follows De Rossi’s dating of the inscription to the time of Pope Gregory VII, concludes that there must have been priests named Deusdedit and Iohannes associated with the church in the time of both Gregory I and Gregory VII. As to why these latter priests are not otherwise attested, he hypothesizes that a later transcriber of the list of cardinal priests of the church found the coincidence of two priests with the same names under both Gregories implausible and thus erased the latter from the list. Accordingly, in his catalogue of cardinal priests of the church, Di San Stanislao includes a Deusdedit and Iohannes under both Gregory I and Gregory VII: p. 530.  28 De Rossi drew attention to the ordering of these individuals as evidence that SS. Giovanni e Paolo’s ‘Gregory’ inscription did not date to the time of Gregory the Great: De Rossi, ‘Diploma pontificio inciso in marmo’, p. 57. Regarding the evolving roles and positions of cardinals and archpresbyters in Rome, see Di Carpegna Falconieri, Il clero di Roma nel medioevo, pp. 109–28 and 148–72.  29 For the ‘modernizing’ of older texts (in the context of cartularies), see, for example, Bouchard, ‘Monastic Cartularies’, pp. 30–31; and more generally, on the reliability of cartularies, Morelle, ‘De l’original à la copie’.  30 See below, notes 49 and 53.  31 Tjäder, Die nichtliterarischen lateinischen Papyri Italiens, p. 256.  32 For an introduction with further biblio­graphy, see Herde, ‘Fälschungen, II’.

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material were more durable, but inscriptions too were damaged or lost, and recopied or ‘rediscovered’.33 Two inscriptions from the church of SS. Quattro Coronati offer a comparandum (Figure 14.3).34 One of these inscriptions (Figure 14.3b) is dated to 1111 (by year from the incarnation of the world, indiction, and year of the pope’s pontificate) and describes how Pope Paschal II (‘Papa Paschalis Secundus’) gave orders for the restoration of the crypt. The other inscription does not provide a date. However, because it is palaeo­graphically identical to the 1111 inscription, it must also date to the early twelfth century. It describes how the blessed Pope Leo IV (847–855), ‘beatus Leo IIII Papa’, placed the saints’ relics under the altar. The text of this second inscription is a passage from the ninth-century Life of Pope Leo IV.35 The inscription, however, does not indicate that this is a text recopied from an earlier document (or earlier inscription), nor does it specify when the inscription was carved. We are presented with an inscription that purports to be an authentic document from the time of Pope Leo IV but which is a later copy thereof; the details of its manufacture are deemed unimportant. Similarly, the church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo need not have claimed that these plaques dated from the time of Gregory the Great in order to present their contents as an authentic decree issued by Gregory the Great. The difference between these examples lies only in the modern assessment of the authenticity of the text; whereas the SS. Quattro Coronati inscription presents an early twelfth-century copy of a text that reliably derives from the time of Pope Leo IV, the SS. Giovanni e Paolo inscription does not derive from an authentic text of Pope Gregory the Great.

Invoking Gregory Throughout early medi­eval Rome (as more generally throughout the medi­eval West), the figure of Gregory the Great was invoked to defend monasteries’ rights and, more specifically, monasteries’ property-holdings. For example, an inscription, formerly located in front of the church of S. Paolo fuori le Mura, reproduces a letter of Gregory the Great in which he directs that certain

 33 Neumüllers-Klauser, ‘Zur Problematik epi­graphischer Fälschungen’.  34 Monumenta epi­graphica christiana, ed. by Silvagni, pl. 22, no. 1; the inscriptions are transcribed by Hippolyte Delehaye in his discussion of the cult of the SS. Quattro Coronati, in De sanctis quattro coronati, ed. by Delehaye, pp. 755–56.  35 Liber Pontificalis, cv. 41, ed. by Duchesne, ii, p. 115, lines 28–116. The text has been slightly reorganized so as to render the sentence more coherent and grammatically accurate. Delehaye suggested that both this inscription and the text of the Liber Pontificalis could have been copied from an older inscription, but to my knowledge there is no evidence to support this theory, De sanctis quattro coronati, ed. by Delehaye, p. 756.

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a Figure 14.3. Inscriptions, SS. Quattro Coronati, Rome. Twelfth century. Photos by author.

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Figure 14.4. Gregory Inscription, S. Paolo fuori le Mura, Rome. Seventh century. Photo by author.

Figure 14.5. Gregory Inscription, St Peter’s, Rome. Eighth century. Photo by author.

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papal properties should be assigned to the church of S. Paolo fuori le Mura to provide for its illumination (Figure 14.4).36 Similarly, according to an inscription at St Peter’s, a Pope Gregory assigns properties, primarily olive groves, to the church (Figure 14.5).37 The Gregory in question must be Gregory II (715–731) or Gregory III (731–741), and is most probably Gregory II, but was interpreted by medi­eval (and early modern) scholars to be a decree of Gregory the Great.38 John the Deacon (writing in the 870s) appears to specify that St Peter’s and S. Paolo fuori le Mura had marble inscriptions on display (in front of each basilica) that recorded olive groves acquired for the churches by Gregory the Great.39 Since the Gregory inscription at St Peter’s refers primarily to olive groves, we may, following De Rossi, interpret this as a reference to the Gregory II/III inscription at St Peter’s.40 And Petrus Mallius, who transcribed the inscription in question in the twelfth century, refers to it as a ‘privilegium beati Gregorii primi’.41 In the later eleventh and early twelfth centuries, the figure of Gregory the Great took on increasingly authoritative proportions. Let me provide several examples from Italian monasteries with close ties to Rome. A forged decree ascribed to Gregory the Great, ‘Quam sit necessarium’, which in very broad terms defended the privileges of monasteries, began to circulate widely in monastic circles from the late eleventh century onward.42 It is the first

 36 Museo Lapidario Paolino, Section iii (part b), SP 665; Filippi, Indice della raccolta epigrafica, fig. 153, no. 665; Monumenta epi­graphica christiana, ed. by Silvagni, pl. 12, no. 1; Grisar, Analecta Romana, pp. 158–60, no. 13, pl. 3, no. 2; Inscriptiones, ed. by Silvagni, no. 4790; Story, ‘Lands and Lights’, pp. 318–23. Regarding ecclesiastical illumination, see Fouracre, ‘Eternal Light and Earthly Needs’, pp. 68–78.  37 Monumenta epi­graphica christiana, ed. by Silvagni, pl. 14, no. 1; Inscriptiones, ed. by De Rossi, ii, pp. 411–12 n. 7, and p. 413; Story, ‘Lands and Lights’, pp. 324–28.  38 As it survives, the inscription does not preserve a date, nor does it specify the Gregory in question. However, a piece of the inscription that does not survive today but was transcribed by Petrus Mallius in the twelfth century referenced an Emperor Leo (identified as Leo III, 717–741), thus dating the inscription to the pontificate of either Gregory II or Gregory III; for the arguments in favour of Gregory II, see Story, ‘Lands and Lights’, p. 327. Nevertheless, Petrus Mallius ascribes the text to Pope Gregory the First: Inscriptiones, ed. by De Rossi, ii, p. 209, no. 39. The transcription of this inscription made by Petrus Sabinus (1494) likewise refers to it as an ‘Epigramma beati GREGORI primi’: Inscriptiones, ed. by De Rossi, ii, p. 411, no. 7. In his Annales ecclesiastici, Baronio discusses the Gregory the Great inscription at S. Paolo fuori le Mura, and he also notes that there exist at least two other inscriptions (at St Peter’s and SS. Giovanni e Paolo) attesting to donations made to Roman churches by Gregory the Great: Baronio, Annales ecclesiastici, 604, viii, p. 176.  39 John the Deacon, Vita Gregorii, ii. 20, col. 94: ‘Super corpora beatorum Petri et Pauli apostolorum missarum solemnia celebrari decrevit, acquisitis numerosissimis olivetis, quorum summam in tabulis marmoreis prae foribus eiusdem basilicae annotavit’. Grammatically, the text refers to a single basilica here, but the reference to the bodies of both Peter and Paul, who were believed to be buried in their respective basilicas, suggests that John means to refer to both.  40 Inscriptiones, ed. by De Rossi, ii, p. 412 n. 7.  41 See above, note 38.  42 Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, ed. by Jaffé and others, no. 1366: this text circulated primarily

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document included in Montecassino’s twelfth-century cartulary (as compiled by Peter the Deacon).43 A different, likewise forged decree ascribed to Gregory the Great was included by Peter the Deacon in his compilation of texts and documents related to St Placidus.44 And written in a twelfth-century hand in Subiaco’s cartulary is another forged Gregory decree, in which Gregory the Great confirms the monastery’s properties.45 Invoking Gregory in defence of property claims was not, then, an unexpected move for a medi­eval ecclesiastical institution. Moreover, in the case of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, there is further reason to suspect a desire for Gregorian authority.

Gregory on the Caelian The church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo is located on the Caelian Hill, immediately adjacent to the monastery of SS. Andrea e Gregorio. In the thirteenth century, the abbot of SS. Andrea e Gregorio leased to SS. Giovanni e Paolo five ancient retaining walls on the clivus Scauri, the road leading up the Caelian Hill in between the church and monastery, and then a century later conceded to the church the right to construct arches to support their church (which was apparently in danger of collapse), on the condition that no new buildings be constructed on top of these arches except with the permission of SS. Andrea e Gregorio.46 These, then, were neighbours who were painfully aware of each other’s every move. And nowhere in Rome had stronger Gregorian associations than the monastery of SS. Andrea e Gregorio, which traced its origins back to Gregory himself. The Liber Pontificalis’s bio­graphy of Pope Gregory reports that Gregory ‘established his own house as a monastery’ (Hic domum suam constituit monasterium),47 and John the Deacon’s ninth-century Life of Gregory describes the foundation in greater depth, specifying that the monastery was located ad clivum Scauri, next to the basilica of SS. Giovanni e Paolo.48 Additionally, and

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as part of the canon law collection known as the Collection in Seventy-Four Titles, ed. by Gilchrist, p. 39, § 39; for discussion, see further Rolker, ‘The Collection in Seventy-Four Titles’. The monastery of Montecassino possessed an eleventh-/twelfth-century manu­script whose contents included the Collection in Seventy-Four Titles: Montecassino, Archivio della Badia, MS 522; for a description of this manu­script, see Collection in Seventy-Four Titles, ed. by Gilchrist, pp. xxxii–xxxiv. Registrum Petri Diaconi, ed. by Martin and others, i, pp. 45–47, no. 1. This privilege confirms the monastery’s properties donated by Tertullus (specifically against any kings or bishops who might attempt to infringe on the monastery’s rights), as well as the monks’ right to choose their abbot freely: ‘Privilegium sancti Gregorii papae’, Montecassino, Archivio della Badia, MS 518, fols 119v–120v, ed. in Chronica sacri Casinensis coenobii, fols 211r–212r; Italia Pontificia, ed. by Kehr, p. 117, no. 8. Il regesto, ed. by Allodi and Levi, pp. 252–54, no. 216: Egidi, ‘Di alcuni falsi’, pp. 188–96. Il regesto, ed. by Bartòla, ii, pp. 589–91, no. 153 (1218); pp. 592–93, no. 154 (1311). Liber Pontificalis, lxvi. 5, ed. by Duchesne, i, p. 312; The Book of Pontiffs, trans. by Davis, p. 60. John the Deacon, Vita Gregorii, i. 6, col. 65: ‘Septimum, intra Romanae urbis moenia, sub

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most importantly for my argument here, three documents conserved at the monastery upheld this tradition and mobilized it to secure the monastery’s prestige and property-holdings: a donation charter issued by Gregory the Great,49 a decree issued by Gregory the Great confirming his donations,50 and a donation charter issued by Gregory’s mother, Sylvia.51 The transmission history of these texts is complex; we are dealing with documents that were recopied and reauthenticated throughout the Middle Ages. (In the sixteenth century, one of these, Gregory the Great’s confirmation of his donations to the monastery, was inscribed on marble, in the form in which it had been reconfirmed by Pope Gregory IX in 1240, and erected at the monastery, where it survives to this day.)52 More specifically, we may identify a peak of interest in these documents at the Caelian monastery in the early to mid-twelfth century — at roughly the same time at which, as I have already mentioned, forged privileges in the name of Gregory the Great appear in the cartularies of Subiaco and Montecassino. In the 1120s, the secretary (scriniarius) Falconius, at the request of SS. Andrea e Gregorio’s abbot, Robert, recopied Gregory’s donation document to the monastery; this was done, so we are told, on account of the poor condition of the older document.53 Another document likewise written by Falconius, in 1115, describes how, in a controversy regarding fishing rights, the monks of SS. Andrea e Gregorio produced a document issued by Gregory’s mother,

 49

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honore sancti Andreae apostoli, iuxta basilicam sanctorum Ioannis et Pauli ad clivum Scauri, monasterium in proprio domate fabricavit’. Il regesto, ed. by Bartòla, ii, pp. 3–8, no. 1; Gregory the Great, Registrum, v. 57a, ed. by Ewald and Hartmann, ii, pp. 437–39 (Appendix I). This document survives only in the form in which it was transcribed by the sixteenth-century scholar Onofrio Panvinio. As argued by its most recent editor, Alberto Bartòla, the language of this charter corresponds to that of sixthcentury documents: Il regesto, ed. by Bartòla, ii, pp. 3–4. Regarding the transmission of this document, see further below. Gregory the Great, Registrum, ed. by Norberg, ii, pp. 1094–95 (Appendix 2); Gregory the Great, Registrum, i. 14a, ed. by Ewald and Hartmann, i, pp. 14–15. This diploma survives in the form in which it was reconfirmed by Gregory IX in the mid-thirteenth century. Il regesto, ed. by Bartòla, ii, pp. 59–70, no. 11. The document recording Sylvia’s donation purports to be a faithful copy of the original made in 1297. Various aspects of the text of this document render its authenticity, at least in its extant form, doubtful: see the discussion in Il regesto, ed. by Bartòla, ii, pp. 59–60. The inscription is located on the wall in front of the oratory of S. Sylvia: Inscriptiones Romanae, ed. by Galletti, iii, pp. 450–52, no. 2; discussion in Marini, I papiri diplomatici, p. 214, no. 2. Il regesto, ed. by Bartòla, ii, pp. 7–8, no. 1: ‘Falconius scriniarius sancte Romane Ecclesie hec que superius leguntur ex antiquiori thomo quod Deusdedit sancte Romane Ecclesie scriniarius descripserat, compleverat et absolverat, quatenus emarcuerant et fere iam deperierant, rogatu domini Ruberti venerabilis abbatis monasterii Sanctorum Andree et Gregorii de Clivo Scauri, ne ex tomo consumeretur, descerpsi et in hanc transferre curavi’. As discussed by Bartòla, both Robert and Falconius are attested by other documents from SS. Andrea e Gregorio (and Falconius also from documents from S. Maria in Via Lata), allowing us to date this copy to the 1120s.

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Sylvia, in defence of their claims.54 This is our earliest surviving reference to the donation document, which, as it survives, is very clearly a forged or at least heavily interpolated document, according to which Sylvia had donated properties to the monastery.55 Moreover, it was again Falconius who recopied a monastic document that, I propose, was intimately related to the Gregory inscription in SS. Giovanni e Paolo.

A Property Dispute? The document in question dates to the mid-tenth century but survives in the form of an early modern transcription of a text that had been recopied and authenticated multiple times. The first of these copies was made, so the text specifies, in the early twelfth century by Falconius.56 According to the text of the charter, in 945, the princeps and senator Alberic, together with members of his family, donated properties to the abbot of SS. Andrea e Gregorio. Among the properties mentioned are two enclosures (clusure) of vineyards located within the fundus Proclis.57 This reference is of interest in that the fundus Proclis is included in the older SS. Giovanni e Paolo inscription, as belonging to the church in its entirety.58 Even more intriguing is that the location of this property (as given on the older SS. Giovanni e Paolo inscription), thirteen miles from Rome on the via Appia, is the same as the location of the one new property, the fundus Casacellensis, that was added to the older inscription.59 Given the  54 Il regesto, ed. by Bartòla, ii, 128–31, no. 34, p. 130: ‘dominus abbas protulit instrumentum quod sancta Sylvia mater beati Gregorii fecit predicto monasterio’; p. 131: ‘Ego Falconius scriniarius sancte Romane Ecclesie complevi et absolvi’.  55 See above, note 51.  56 Il regesto, ed. by Bartòla, ii, pp. 295–305, no. 68, p. 296: ‘Hoc est exemplum cuiusdam publici instrumenti sive transumpti exemplati et renovati per me Nicolaum Celli civem Romanum Dei gratia imperiali auctoritate notarium, scripta, transumpta et renovata per quondam Falconium scriniarium sancte Romane Ecclesie ex quoddam publico instrumento scripto per quondam Leonem scriniarium et tabellionem urbis Rome, cuius tenor talis est: […]’; p. 302: ‘Et ego Falconius scriniarius sancte Romane Ecclesie sicut inveni in quadam cartula, que et thomus cognominabatur, scripta a Leone scriniario, sed quoniam vetustate fere iam tota consumpta videbatur, proinde ego antedictus Falconius scriniarius ex preceptione domini Anastasii abbatis venerabili monasterio Sanctorum Andree et Gregorii in Clivo Scauri, ne ex toto corrumpetur, renovare curavi’.  57 Il regesto, ed. by Bartòla, ii, pp. 298–99, no. 68: ‘verum etiam et due clusure de vinea cum arboribus earum in integrum que infra eiusdem clusure via publica per medium ducit et cum omnibus ad eas generaliter et in integrum pertinentibus, positas territorio Albanense miliario ab urbe Roma plus minus quintodecimo, iuris cui existit, in fundum qui vocatur Procli’. For the term ‘clusura’/‘clausura’ as a ‘terreno chiuso’, see Sella, Glossario latino italiano, pp. 157 and 161.  58 ‘Fund[us] Proclis in integro via Appia milliario. XIII’ (line 6 of the older inscription).  59 ‘Fundum Casacellensem. via Apia. milliario. XIII’ (line 21 of the older inscription). This line is more difficult to distinguish as a medi­eval addition to the older inscription than those

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identical location of these two properties, we may wonder whether the fundus Casacellensis was at all related to the fundus Proclis, that is, whether it was a different, newer name for the same property, or whether one property was a part of the other. Certainly, if nothing else, the two properties must have been in close vicinity to each other. We are thus presented with the following sequence of events. In the early eighth century, the clerics of SS. Giovanni e Paolo laid claim to the fundus Proclis in its entirety. In 945, Alberic donated vineyards within the fundus Proclis to the monastery of SS. Andrea e Gregorio. In the first decades of the twelfth century, the abbot of SS. Andrea e Gregorio saw to it that Alberic’s donation document, with its evidence that a piece of the fundus Proclis belonged to the monastery, was recopied and authenticated. At the same time, the monks were also engaged in recopying (and likely actively crafting) documents that associated the monastery’s property-holdings with Gregory the Great. Meanwhile, at some point after the year 1000, the clerics of SS. Giovanni e Paolo undertook to create the elaborate composite inscription, which, invoking Gregory, both reasserted the clerics’ older claim to the fundus Proclis and laid claim to the fundus Casacellensis located at, or near, the fundus Proclis. These circumstances do not conclusively prove that there was a property dispute over the fundus Proclis, but I think the evidence is suggestive. And while an early twelfth-century date for the composite inscription is, on epi­graphical grounds, somewhat late, this is less of a problem if we postulate that the newer inscription was intended to look old. Furthermore, there is at least one piece of evidence that possibly bespeaks tension in the relationship between SS. Giovanni e Paolo and SS. Andrea e Gregorio in the early twelfth century. A fourteenth-century chronicle from the monastery of SS. Andrea e Gregorio claims, referencing an inscription from the monastery as its source, that in 1108 Paschal II, in the context of renovations at SS. Andrea e Gregorio, transferred the bodies of John and Paul to the monastery.60 This might have been a gesture of goodwill on the

that follow. However, as previous scholars have noted, in addition to certain letter forms (for example the ‘M’) that indicate that this line was carved by the newer hand, also anomalous is that this fundus is in the accusative case (‘fundum Casacellensem’), while all the fundi listed in the older inscription are in the nominative case. The choice to render this property in the accusative case corresponds to the grammar of the newer inscription, which confirms these properties, leading one to expect all the fundi to be in the accusative case. Furthermore, it should be noted that this last property is out of order, in that the properties in the older inscription had been grouped by the roads on which they were located, but this property is not among the other via Appia properties.  60 The chronicle is transmitted in BAV, MS Vat. lat. 600; ‘Cronichetta inedita’, ed. by Carini, pp. 26–27: ‘Reverendus pater dominus papa Pascalis secundus, vir per cuncta laudabilis, predictum venerabile monasterium beati andree apostoli vetustate attritum processu temporis reparavit; et quia a Roberto Guiscardo tynrano (sic) perfido fuerat fedatum reconciliavit eumdem, transferrens corpora sanctorum Ioannis et Pauli martyrum de titulo Pamachii per manus Petri presbyteri cardinalis ad monasterium supradictum, nec non

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part of the clerics of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, or a temporary measure as a result of damage done to SS. Giovanni e Paolo by the troops of Robert Guiscard in the late eleventh century. Yet it is somewhat difficult to imagine that the clerics of SS. Giovanni e Paolo were pleased to lose relics of their patron saints.

Conservatism and Innovation in Early Twelfth-Century Rome In short, I propose that SS. Giovanni e Paolo’s composite inscription was crafted in the early twelfth century, invoking Gregory the Great to defend the church’s property claims, at a time of tension or competition with its neighbour, the eminently Gregorian monastery of SS. Andrea e Gregorio. By doing so, the clerics of SS. Giovanni e Paolo were latching onto SS. Andrea e Gregorio’s most formidable source of authority, Gregory the Great, thereby shaping memories of the past and memory-practices on stone. Medi­eval Rome, as scholars have noted, was a ‘conservative’ place.61 Whether in terms of the saints venerated, in the architectural styles employed for new churches, or in the uses of the inscribed word, there was a marked preference for older traditions and forms, especially those that hearkened back to the glory days of Peter and Paul and such quintessentially Roman figures as Pope Gregory the Great. The composite inscription at SS. Giovanni e Paolo must be seen in this long trajectory of Romans latching onto pieces of their past. Yet the twelfth century was characterized by both a heightened attentiveness to Rome’s early Christian and late antique past and a predilection for new innovations. This was a period that saw the concerted use of early Christian motifs in church decoration, but also the increasing proliferation of church bell towers, previously relatively uncommon in Rome.62 The backdrop for this heady mix of studied attention to the past and new experimentation was a sense of instability that derived, as Chris Wickham has argued, from the ‘informality and uncertainty of the political structures of the period’.63 In the composite inscription from SS. Giovanni e Paolo we see clearly how these impulses could feed into each other: reactivating the past also required taking a new approach to it.

corpus beate virginis Cecilie de cimiterio pretaxati sub altare beati Andree recondendo corpora supradicta […] Nam et memoriale sculti lapidis, in secretario prefacti monasterii positum, qualiter corpora supradictorum martyrum Iohannis et Pauli sint translata ad monasterium supradictum, indicat et declarat […] Actum sub anno domini millesimo centessimo et octavo’. I follow Mondini, ‘SS. Giovanni e Paolo’, pp. 75–76, esp. n. 40, in interpreting this as evidence for competition between the church and monastery.  61 See, for example, with regard to church planning, Krautheimer, Rome, Profile of a City, p. 176.  62 For the use of early Christian motifs, see the classic account by Toubert, Un art dirigé; for bell towers, see Priester, ‘The Belltowers of Medi­eval Rome’.  63 Wickham, Medi­eval Rome, p. 32.

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We may return once again to Geary’s observation with which I began this essay, ‘how one stores the past affects what is remembered’, and go one step further. By means of this composite inscription, the clerics of SS. Giovanni e Paolo not only revised the content of their past, but also the very praxis of its memory: the church’s early medi­eval past became framed within a newly fashioned, older Gregorian past.

Works Cited Manu­scripts and Archival Sources Montecassino, Archivio della Badia, MS 518 Montecassino, Archivio della Badia, MS 522 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 600 Primary Sources The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis), trans. by Raymond Davis, 3rd edn, Trans­ lated Texts for Historians, 6 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010) Die Carmina des Kardinals Deusdedit, ed. by Peter Christian Jacobsen (Heidelberg: Winter, 2002) Chronica sacri Casinensis coenobii (Venice: per Lazarum de Soardis, 1513) Collection in Seventy-Four Titles, ed. by John Thomas Gilchrist, Diuersorum patrum sententie siue Collectio in LXXIV titulos digesta (Vatican: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1973) ‘Cronichetta inedita del monastero di Sant’Andrea ad clivum Scauri’, ed. by Isidoro Carini, Il Muratori: Raccolta di documenti storici inediti o rari tratti dagli archivi italiani pubblicati e privati, 2 (1893), 5–58 De sanctis quattro coronati, ed. by Hippolyte Delehaye, in Acta Sanctorum, November iii (Brussels: Apud Socios Bollandianos, 1910), pp. 748–65 Gregory the Great, Registrum, ed. by Dag Norberg, 2 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 1982) —— , Registrum epistolarum, ed. by Paul Ewald and Ludwig Hartmann, Monu­ menta Germaniae Historica: Epistolae, 1–2 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1891–1899) Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae septimo saeculo antiquiores, ed. by Giovanni Battista De Rossi, 2 vols (Rome: Pont. Institutum archaeo­logiae christianae, 1857–1888) Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae septimo saeculo antiquiores, nova series, vol. ii, ed. by Angelo Silvagni (Rome: Befani, 1935) Inscriptiones Romanae infimi aevi Romae extantes, ed. by Pierluigi Galletti, 3 vols (Rome: Salomoni, 1760) Iscrizioni delle chiese e d’altri edificii di Roma dal secolo xi fino ai nostri giorni, ed. by Vincenzo Forcella, 14 vols (Rome: Tipografia delle scienze matematiche e fisiche, 1869) Italia Pontificia, viii: Regnum Normannorum – Campania, ed. by Paul Fridolin Kehr (Berlin: Weidmann, 1935)

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John the Deacon, Vita Gregorii, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, Patro­logiae cursus completus: series latina, 75 (Paris: Garnier, 1849), cols 61–242 Liber Pontificalis, ed. by Louis Duchesne, 3 vols (Paris: E. Thorin, 1886–1892; repr. Paris: de Boccard, 1955; vol. iii with additions and corrections by Cyrille Vogel, 1957) Monumenta epi­graphica christiana, ed. by Angelo Silvagni, vol. i (Vatican: Pontificium institutum archaeo­logiae christianae, 1943) Regesta Pontificum Romanorum ab condita ecclesia ad annum post Christum natum 1198, ed. by Philipp Jaffé and others, vol. i (Leipzig: Veit, 1885) Il regesto del monastero dei SS. Andrea e Gregorio ad clivum Scauri, ed. by Alberto Bartòla, 2 vols (Rome: Società romana di storia patria, 2003) Il regesto sublacense del secolo xi, ed. by Leone Allodi and Guido Levi (Rome: Reale società romana di storia patria, 1885) Registrum Petri Diaconi (Montecassino, Archivio dell’Abbazia, Reg. 3), ed. by JeanMarie Martin and others, Fonti per la storia dell’Italia medi­evale: Antiquitates, 45, 4 vols (Rome: École française de Rome, 2015) Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, ed. by Giovan Domenico Mansi and others, 31 vols (Paris: H. Welter, 1901–1927) Scriptorum veterum nova collectio, ed. by Angelo Mai, 10 vols (Rome: Typis Vaticanis, 1825–1838) Secondary Works Banti, Ottavio, ‘Epigrafi “documentarie”, “chartae lapidariae” e documenti (in senso proprio)’, in Scritti di storia, diplomatica ed epigrafia, ed. by Silio Pietro Paolo Scalfati (Ospedaletto [Pisa]: Pacini, 1995), pp. 133–48 Baronio, Cesare, Annales ecclesiastici, 12 vols (Rome: Typo­graphia Vaticana, 1588–1607) Blennow, Anna Holst, The Latin Consecrative Inscriptions in Prose of Churches and Altars in Rome, 1046–1263, Miscellanea della Società romana di storia patria, 56 (Rome: Società di storia patria, 2011) Borgia, Alessandro, Istoria della chiesa e città di Velletri (Nocera: Per Antonio Mariotti, 1723) Bouchard, Constance Brittain, ‘Monastic Cartularies: Organizing Eternity’, in Charters, Cartularies, and Archives: The Preservation and Transmission of Documents in the Medi­eval West. Proceedings of a Colloquium of the Commission internationale de diplomatique (Princeton and New York, 16–18 September 1999), ed. by Adam J. Kosto and Anders Winroth (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2002), pp. 22–32 Cardin, Luca, Epigrafia a Roma nel primo medioevo (secoli iv–x) (Rome: Jouvence, 2008) De Francesco, Daniela, ‘Partizioni fondiarie e proprietà ecclesiastiche nel territorio romano tra vii e viii secolo: Prospettive di ricerca alla luce dei dati epigrafici’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Moyen Âge, 110 (1998), 29–77 De Rossi, Giovanni Battista, ‘Diploma pontificio inciso in marmo’, Bullettino della Commissione archeo­logica comunale di Roma, 1 (1872), 54–58, pl. 4, no. 3; repr. in Bullettino di archeo­logia cristiana, 2nd ser. (1873), pp. 36–41; French translation in

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‘Chartes lapidaires de l’église S. Jean et S. Paul à Rome’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 34 (1873), 260–66 De Rubeis, Flavia, ‘Epigrafi a Roma dall’età classica all’alto medioevo’, in Roma dall’antichità al medioevo: Archeo­logia e storia nel Museo Nazionale Romano Crypta Balbi, ed. by Maria Stella Arena and others (Milan: Electra, 2001), pp. 104–21 Di Carpegna Falconieri, Tommaso, Il clero di Roma nel medioevo: istituzioni e politica cittadina (secoli viii–xiii) (Rome: Viella, 2002) Di San Stanislao, Germano, La casa celimontana dei SS. Martiri Giovanni e Paolo (Rome: F. Cuggiani, 1894) Eastmond, Antony, ed., Viewing Inscriptions in the Late Antique and Medi­eval World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) Egidi, Pietro, ‘Di alcuni falsi del Regesto Sublacense’, in I monasteri di Subiaco (Rome: Ministero della pubblica istruzione, 1904), i, pp. 187–202 Favreau, Robert, Épi­graphie médiévale, L’atelier du médiéviste, 5 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997) —— , ‘Fonctions des inscriptions au Moyen Âge’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 32 (1989), 203–32 Filippi, Giorgio, Indice della raccolta epigrafica di San Paolo fuori le Mura, Inscrip­tio­ nes Sanctae Sedis, 3 (Vatican: Monumenti, Musei e Gallerie Pontificie, 1998) Fouracre, Paul J., ‘Eternal Light and Earthly Needs: Practical Aspects of the Development of Frankish Immunities’, in Property and Power in the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Wendy Davies and Paul J. Fouracre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 53–81 Geary, Patrick J., Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) Grisar, Hartmann, Analecta Romana (Rome: Desclée, Lefebvre e C.i, 1899) Herde, Peter, ‘Fälschungen, II. Fälschungen im weltlichen und kirchlichen Recht des MA; Papstkanzlei’, in Lexikon des Mittelalters, 10 vols (Stuttgart: Metzler, [1977]–1999), iv, cols 247–49 (accessed via Brepolis Medi­eval Encyclopaedias – Lexikon des Mittelalters Online) Kajanto, Iiro, Classical and Christian: Studies in the Latin Epitaphs of Medi­eval and Renaissance Rome (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1980) Kallenberg, Ludwig Schmitz, ‘Papsturkunden auf Marmor und Metall?’, Historisches Jahrbuch, 26 (1905), 588–90 Kantola, Urpo, ‘Time Set in Stone: Temporal References in the Non-funerary Epi­graphy of Rome (1000–1527 ad)’, in Time in the Eternal City: Perceiving and Controlling Time in Late Medi­eval and Renaissance Rome, ed. by Tuomas Heikkilä (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 106–58 Krautheimer, Richard, Rome, Profile of a City, 312–1308 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980) Marini, Gaetano, I papiri diplomatici (Rome: Stamperia della Sac. congr. de prop. fide, 1805) Martinelli, Fioravante, Roma ex ethnica sacra sanctorum (Rome: Typis Romanis Ignatii de Lazaris, 1653)

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Mondini, Daniela, ‘SS. Giovanni e Paolo’, in Die Kirchen der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter, 1050–1300, iii: G–L (Corpus Cosmatorum II, 3), ed. by P. C. Claussen and others, Forschungen zur Kunstgeschichte und christlichen Archäo­logie, 22 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2010), pp. 69–128 Morelle, Laurent, ‘De l’original à la copie: Remarques sur l’évaluation des transcrip­ tions dans les cartulaires médiévaux’, in Les cartulaires: Actes de la table ronde organisée par l’École nationale des chartes, 1991, ed.  by Olivier Guyot­jeannin, Laurent Morelle, and Michel Parisse (Paris: École des chartes, 1993), pp. 91–104 Neumüllers-Klauser, Renate, ‘Zur Problematik epi­graphischer Fälschungen’, in Ex ipsis rerum documentis: Beiträge zur Mediävistik. Festschrift für Harald Zimmermann zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Klaus Herbers, Hans-Henning Kortüm, and Carlo Servatius (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1991), pp. 173–84 ‘La “Notitia fundorum” du titre des SS. Jean et Paul à Rome’, Analecta Bollandiana, 16 (1897), 69–74 Petrella, Enrico Donato, Le carte lapidarie di Roma (Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1912) Priester, Ann Edith, ‘The Belltowers of Medi­eval Rome and the Architecture of Renovatio’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 1990) Rolker, Christof, ‘The Collection in Seventy-Four Titles: A Monastic Canon Law Collection from Eleventh-Century France’, in Readers, Texts, and Compilers in the Earlier Middle Ages: Studies in Medi­eval Canon Law in Honour of Linda Fowler-Magerl, ed. by Martin Brett and Kathleen G. Cushing (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2009), pp. 59–72 Rondinini, Filippo, De sanctis martyribus Johanne et Paulo (Rome: F. Gonzaga, 1707) Rosati, Paolo, ‘I confini dei possessi del monastero Sublacense nel medioevo (secoli x–xiii)’, Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria, 135 (2012), 31–62 Sella, Pietro, Glossario latino italiano, stato della chiesa: Veneto, Abruzzi, Studi e testi, 109 (Vatican: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1944) Story, Joanna E., ‘Lands and Lights in Early Medi­eval Rome’, in Italy and Early Medi­eval Europe: Papers for Chris Wickham, ed. by Ross Balzaretti, Julia S. Barrow, and Patricia Skinner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 315–38 Suarès, Joseph Marie, Praenestes antiquae libri duo (Rome: Angeli Bernabo, 1655) Thunø, Erik, ‘Inscription and Divine Presence: Golden Letters in the Early Medi­eval Apse Mosaic’, Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry, 27.3 (2011), 279–91 Tjäder, Jan-Olof, Die nichtliterarischen lateinischen Papyri Italiens aus der Zeit 445–700 (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1955–1982) Toubert, Hélène, Un art dirigé: Réforme grégorienne et icono­graphie (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1990) Von Pflugk-Harttung, Julius, ‘Papsturkunden auf Marmor’, Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 4 (1902), 167–83 Wickham, Chris, Medi­eval Rome: Stability and Crisis of a City, 900–1150 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) Zimmermann, Harald, ‘Deusdedit’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, xxxix (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1991), pp. 504–06

John Eldevik

(Re)Visions of the World Prester John in Twelfth-Century Bavaria

More than forty years ago, in 1977, the UCLA Center for Medi­eval and Renaissance Studies and Harvard’s Committee on Medi­eval Studies organized a conference to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Charles Homer Haskins’s landmark study, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century.1 In the still-essential volume of essays produced from that conference, Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, edited by Giles Constable and Robert L. Benson, the great German intellectual historian Peter Classen drew our attention to a distinctive trend in twelfth-century historio­graphy, seen particularly in the work of chroniclers like Orderic Vitalis: ‘It is not the chrono­logy, the order of events that is essential’, Classen observed, ‘but the narration itself, which leads inevitably from one then to another — whether on the basis of written or of oral sources — because the relationships and associations are found to exist everywhere’ (my emphasis).2 Indeed, Orderic’s so-called Historia ecclesiastica is really a much more ambitious project than its anodyne title suggests, beginning with the global spread of Christianity under the apostles and culminating in the Christianization of Normandy, the absorption of the English kingdom into that community, and the events that drew the kings and peoples of western Europe into the Crusades.3 Orderic is of course not unique in this regard, and ‘narration’ could take on many forms and structures, not merely as a single stream of written discourse by an individual author. It was a conscious construction of associations that created meaning. Encyclopaedic compilations like the Liber Floridus of Lambert of St Omer from around the same period, for example, reflect a similar methodo­logy and historio­graphical vision, using excerpts from larger

 1 Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century.  2 Classen, ‘Res Gestae, Universal History, Apocalypse’, p. 390.  3 On Orderic’s historio­graphic vision, see now, in addition to Classen’s remarks, Hingst, The Written World.

John Eldevik ([email protected]) is Professor of History at Hamilton College, Clinton, New York. Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe: Studies on Cultural Identity and Power, ed. by Courtney M. Booker, Hans Hummer, and Dana M. Polanichka, CURSOR 41, pp. 357–377 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022)        10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.127588

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works of history and theo­logy, rather than just a single-author narrative, to respond to a contemporary set of concerns about the Crusades and their meaning within salvation history and End Times theo­logy.4 Albert Derolez has drawn attention to this particular feature of Lambert’s achievement, which he, echoing Classen, terms ‘associative content’ — diverse, and, at first glance, often heterogeneous, works brought into dynamic relationship with each other that create new narrative structures through intentional practices of compilation and copying.5 Practices of creating knowledge through compilation and association can be perceived in many so-called miscellany manu­scripts.6 Although miscellanies were often previously overlooked, or dismissed as random notebooks or assemblages containing poor or defective copies of larger works, scholars have now come to recognize that many were, like the encyclopaedic works they often mirrored, consciously edited, and that they represent important ways of ordering and transmitting knowledge.7 While literary miscellanies have received the bulk of scholarly attention in this regard, many other kinds of textual production would repay the same kind of attention to their associative content. In his seminal essay on ‘Saints, Scholars, and Society’ reprinted in his Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages volume, for example, Patrick Geary admonished researchers of hagio­graphical texts to remain attuned to these exact same issues of context, production, and reception, as opposed to just a single, stand-alone text in a critical edition.8 The large body of what one might call Latin Orientalia — the natural histories, geo­graphies, and other historical, hagio­graphical, and speculative literature about the wonders of the East and wider world more generally — is yet another textual tradition transmitted largely in miscellany, but whose associative content has received relatively little attention. This is significant, because interest in how Western writers in the Middle Ages depicted the geo­graphic and religious Other has grown considerably over the past two decades, and received sustained attention in the works of scholars like Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Ian Macleod Higgins, Sharon Kinoshita, Suzanne Conklin Akbari, and Geraldine Heng, just to name a few.9 One will immediately notice, however, that these researchers are  4 Rubenstein, Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream, ch. 3.  5 Derolez, The Auto­graph Manu­script of the Liber Floridus, p. 161; on the universal encyclo­ paedia in the high and later Middle Ages, see now Franklin-Brown, Reading the World.  6 Nichols and Wenzel, The Whole Book. For historical background, see too Petrucci, ‘From the Unitary Book to the Miscellany’.  7 The past several years have seen a proliferation of studies, particularly by scholars of vernacular literary traditions, on various aspects of the manu­script miscellany, including Pratt and others, eds, The Dynamics of the Medi­eval Manu­script; Connolly and Radelescu, eds, Insular Books; Doležalová and Rivers, eds, Medi­eval Manu­script Miscellanies. A seminal study of a work of Latin historio­graphy from the perspective of its associated content within the manu­script tradition is Crick, Dissemination and Reception in the Later Middle Ages.  8 Geary, ‘Saints, Scholars, and Society’.  9 Cohen, Hybridity, Identity, and Monstrosity in Medi­eval Britain; Akbari, Idols in the East;

( r e ) vi si o ns o f t he wo rld

primarily working in the domain of comparative literature, and the objects of study remain largely individual texts, or discourses instantiated within a certain set of texts, and less the contexts of production, distribution, and uses of those texts.10 A major desideratum for historians as we move forward in both these fields is to bring the methods and questions raised by Geary in his hagio­graphical studies, as well as by other codico­logists and scholars of manu­script miscellanies, to bear upon the kinds of subjects and discourses being investigated by Akbari, Heng, and others. Unpacking how medi­eval copyists and readers situated geo­graphic lore and other Orientalia within individual codices, as well as within libraries more broadly, has the potential to dramatically enhance our understanding of the production, reception, and — most significantly — uses of this knowledge.11 One of the more fascinating bits of medi­eval lore about the East and its wealth and marvels comes down to us in the so-called Letter of Prester John, the mid-twelfth-century forgery purporting to be a diplomatic missive from the eponymous ruler of the ‘Three Indias’ to Manuel I Comnenus of Byzantium.12 While the contents of the Letter itself, which were imaginatively augmented in a series of later redactions, are certainly of great and ongoing interest, its reception and the associative content of the manu­scripts that transmit it shed valuable light on the way it was understood by medi­eval copyists and audiences. The legend of Prester John seems to have predated the appearance of the Letter itself, however. Otto of Freising (c. 1114–1158) mentioned this mysterious ruler in Book vii of his Chronicle, or History of the Two Cities (De duobus civitatibus) — composed in the early 1140s and then revised between 1146 and 1157 — claiming to have heard a Latin bishop from Syria, Hugh of Jabala, describe a Nestorian ‘priest and king’ far to the East, named John, who had defeated two Seljuk princes in Persia and had tried to reach Jerusalem, but was unable to ford the Tigris River and was forced to return home.13 Otto adds, apparently based on his own knowledge, that this ‘Presbyter John’ was said to have been descended from the Magi and possessed a great emerald sceptre.14

Kinoshita, Medi­eval Boundaries; Heng, Empire of Magic; Higgins, Writing East.  10 Geary, ‘Saints, Scholars, and Society’, p. 28. Cf., however, Higgins, Writing East, who comes closest to this in his analysis of the Book of John Mandeville in terms of its variants and transmission.  11 Eldevik, ‘Saints, Pagans, and the Wonders of the East’. See too the seminal article by Rubenstein, ‘Putting History to Use’.  12 The standard edition is still ‘Epistola Presbyteri Iohannis’, ed. by Zarncke. On the manu­ scripts and transmission, see now Wagner, Die ‘Epistola presbiteri Johannis’. A reprint of Zarncke’s edition and new English translation of the Letter in its various redactions is now available in Brewer, Prester John, pp. 67–91.  13 Otto of Freising, Chronica sive Historia, ed. by Hofmeister, pp. 363–65.  14 Otto of Freising, Chronica sive Historia, ed. by Hofmeister, p. 365. ‘Fertur enim iste de antiqua progenie illorum, quorum in Evangelio mentio fit, esse magorum eisdemque, quibus et illi gentibus imperans tanta gloria et habundantia frui, ut non nisi sceptro smaragdino uti dicatur’.

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As historians have long recognized, an actual historical event in Central Asia most likely lay behind Bishop Hugh’s story, as relayed by Otto. At the Battle of Qatwān, near Samarkand, in 1141, the Qara Khitai (or Western Liao dynasty in Chinese historio­graphy) and their gürkhan Ye-lü Dashi (r. 1087–1143) defeated the Seljuk sultan Sanjar, bringing much of what is today Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia under their control.15 News of such a historic defeat did not take long to travel along the Silk Road to the West, where it no doubt quickly found an audience among anxious Christians eager to know if anyone — even a Nestorian — could possibly challenge Muslim power in the region. Not long after Otto’s chronicle was completed, however, an enterprising author took the idea of this purportedly Christian king and his eastern realm and used it as the basis for a fictional letter addressed to the Byzantine emperor. In it, John proclaims himself the supreme ruler of the ‘three Indias’ and describes in grandiloquent terms his religious piety, wealth, and power, particularly his bejewelled palaces and the gold and marvel-filled lands subject to him across his vast empire. He notes that he has vowed to journey west from his homeland to help his fellow Christians defend Jerusalem. Being that the attendants at his court are already of the highest ecclesiastical and secular ranks imaginable — kings, archbishops, and patriarchs — and there being nothing higher, he has humbly taken the title of ‘priest’ or ‘presbyter’, which was assimilated to ‘Prester’ in later English versions. The extraordinary popularity of this letter, its marvellous imagery, its impact on perceptions about the East, and the potential it suggested for discovering a lost Christian realm far beyond the lands of Islam have attracted considerable scholarly (and popular) attention over the past century and a half.16 Nonetheless, we seem no closer to determining for certain who may have written it or why. Current scholarly opinion seems to have settled around the idea that it was a piece of propaganda produced in the chancellery of Frederick Barbarossa in the 1160s, during the Alexandrine schism, and was intended to be a critique of Alexander III’s, and possibly also Manuel Comnenus’s, pretentions vis-à-vis Frederick Barbarossa’s claims of sovereignty over Italy and Rome.17 The politico-religious harmony of John’s utopian realm contrasted harshly with the endemic divisions plaguing Latin Europe in the  15 Biran, The Empire of the Qara Khitai, p. 43; cf. an older overview in Zarncke, Der Priester Johannes, pp. 850–58.  16 The secondary literature on the Letter and its possible origins and interpretations from Zarncke onwards is too vast to list here. Gosman, La lettre du Prêtre Jean, pp. 23–31, examines several important vernacular traditions of the Letter and provides a good overview of the key twentieth-century interpretations. Robert Silverberg, a noted science fiction author, offers a readable, accessible history of the subject in The Realm of Prester John. Uebel, ‘Imperial Fetishism’, offers a trenchant postcolonial reading of the text, but with a strong psychoanalytic perspective.  17 Hamilton, ‘Prester John and the Three Kings of Co­logne’; Franco, ‘La Construction d’une Utopie’. On Alexander, Barbarossa, and the politics of the papal schism in the empire, see Johrendt, ‘The Empire and the Schism’.

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1160s and 1170s. Indeed, the most notable features of Prester John’s realm are his near-supernatural sovereignty and wealth, and the subordination of all other kings and ecclesiastical figures to him.18 Over time, however, Prester John would come to figure prominently in a number of literary and historical contexts, particularly those related to the Crusades, apocalyptic theo­logy, and geo­graphy.19 Prester John may have been the marvellous ruler of the Three Indias, but his true home was in (principally) monastic libraries of western Europe between the later twelfth and sixteenth centuries. It was in these scriptoria that Prester John lived and was studied among diverse theo­logical, geo­graphical, historical, homiletic, and hagio­graphical texts, some of which suggest that being read as an intervention in contemporary papal-imperial politics was only one of many lenses through which it could be viewed. The fact that so many versions of the Letter exist, particularly from the thirteenth century onward, during which scribes added extensive passages elaborating upon the marvellous flora and fauna and wealth of John’s kingdom, is itself an indication that the primary allure of the text may, in fact, have been its cataloguing of the wonders and riches of the East, rather than John’s character or powers alone.20 But knowing what people copied and read the text with can tell us as much, if not more, about the ways Western audiences both assimilated and produced knowledge about the wider world, than the content of the Letter on its own.21 Scholars today still rely on the edition of the Letter in Latin published in 1879 by the German philo­logist Friedrich Zarncke, who collated dozens of manu­scripts to establish what he believed to be the earliest version, as well as the several later interpolated versions, or redactions (labelled A to E).22 More recently, however, Bettina Wagner has shown that the transmission suggests a somewhat different filiation of the work than Zarncke originally deduced, and that what he presumed to be the original, or Urtext, was likely only one of several contemporaneous variants descended from a now-lost archetype.23 Among the earliest of these appears to be one Zarncke labelled Kurzfassung-u, assuming it was a truncated version of the Urtext.24 It contains the opening salutation of John’s letter to Manuel (§ § 1–7), but the rest digresses into not a first-person, but a third-person narrative about the wonders of India that is only

 18 This has been noted in particular by Marco Giardini. See especially Giardini, ‘“Ego, Presbiter Iohannes, Dominus Sum Dominantium”’; Giardini, ‘Mirabilia orientis et royauté universelle’. See too Gosman, ‘Otton de Freising et le Prêtre Jean’.  19 On this, see now, in addition to Giardini, above, Rouxpetel, ‘La figure du Prêtre Jean’.  20 Wagner, Die ‘Epistola presbiteri Johannis’, pp. 14–131, offers a complete conspectus of the medi­eval manu­script tradition of the Latin letter. See too the inventory in Brewer, Prester John, Appendix 2, pp. 299–311.  21 Wagner, Die ‘Epistola presbiteri Johannis’, pp. 305–21.  22 See above, note 12.  23 Wagner, Die ‘Epistola presbiteri Johannis’, pp. 167–74.  24 Wagner, Die ‘Epistola presbiteri Johannis’, pp. 158–63.

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Table 15.1. Twelfth-century (est.) witnesses to the Letter of Prester John.

Manu­script

Provenance (if known)

Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 382 D

South England

Arras, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 528

Arras, St.-Vaast (OSB)

Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod. 458

Northern France

Brussels, Bibliothèque royale, MS 5541–42

Gembloux (OSB)

Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys MS 2808

England (?)

Graz, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. 433

Bavaria, St Lamprecht (OSB)

London, British Library, MS Cotton Titus A XXVII

Canterbury, St Augustine’s (OSB)

London, British Library, MS Harley 3099

Belgium, Munsterbilzen (OSB)

Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 1001

Freising, Weihenstephan (OSB)

Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 5251

Bavaria, Herrenchiemsee (CR)

Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 19411

Bavaria, Tegernsee (OSB)

Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 30004

Bavaria

Oxford, Oriel College, MS 2

England (?)

Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 379

Paris, St.-Victor (CR)

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS lat. 1673

France, Corbie (OSB)

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS lat. 2342

France, Le-Bec-Hellouin (OSB)

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS lat. 3858 A

France, Fécamp (OSB)

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS n.a.l. 310

Bavaria, Tegernsee (OSB)

Reims, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 142

Rheims, St.-Thierry (OSB)

Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 1343

Normandy, Saint-Evroult-NotreDame-du-Bois, Ouche (OSB)

Valenciennes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 207

Belgium, Saint-Amand-en-Pevcle, Elna (OSB)

Vatican City, BAV, MS Ottob. lat. 1555

France, Amiens, St.-Jean Baptiste (OPraem)

Vatican City, BAV, MS Reg. lat. 1658

France?

Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 951

Bavaria, Windberg (OPraem)

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LPJ a near-contemporary supplement? (Redaction)

Associated content (major works)

Yes (B)

Henry of Huntington, Historia Anglorum

Yes (Urtext)

Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs

Yes (Urtext)

Guibert of Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos

363

Yes (Urtext, incompl.)

Gregory the Great, Moralia, bks xi–xxii

Yes (B, § 100 missing)

Isidore of Seville, Etymo­logiae

Uncertain (B); poss. same exemplar as Munich, Clm 30004

Otto of Freising, Chronica sive Historia

No (B)

Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae; Marbod of Rennes, Liber lapidum; Valerius, Gesta Alexandri Magni

Yes (Urtext)

Isidore, Etymo­logiae; Ps.-Bernard

Yes (B, incompl.); copy of Paris, MS n.a.l. 310

Otto of Freising, Chronica sive Historia

Yes (B, incompl.); copy of Paris, MS n.a.l. 310

Augustine, De civitate Dei

Yes (Kurzf., §§ 1–7 only)

Tegernseer Briefsammlung; Ludus de Antichristo

No (B); poss. same exemplar as Graz, 433

Ps.-Jerome’s Quindecim signis ante iudicium; various sermons; prayers

Yes (B, § 100 missing)

Isidore, Etymo­logiae; Mirabilia Romae; account of the siege of Acre

Yes (end of 1st MS section (A) in a 3-part MS) (B)

A MS: Penitential; list of popes (to 1181); genealogy of the French kings (to 1180)

Yes (Urtext)

Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae; Bellum Judaicum

Yes (B)

Anonymus Beccensis, treatises on monastic life; biblical commentaries

Yes (B)

Canon law, incl. Ivo of Chartres, Decreta

No (B, incompl.)

Orosius; Eutropius; Alexander Romance; Karlskompendium; Robert of Rheims, Historia Hierosolymitana

Yes (Kurzfassung-u)

Exegetical works on the Song of Songs

Yes (Kurzfassung-u)

Theo­logical/hagio­graphical miscellany belonging to Orderic Vitalis

Yes (B)

Hugh of St Victor, De sacramentis; Letter of Odo of Rheims to Count Thomas on visit of an Indian patriarch to Rome

Yes (Urtext)

Hugh of Fleury, Chronica

Yes (Urtext)

Solinus, Collecteana rerum memorabilium

No (B)

John Cassian, Collationes; privileges of Alexander III and Frederick Barbarossa for Windberg

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about a third as long as in the fuller versions of the Letter.25 It also concludes with a description of several other territories not mentioned in the Letter of Prester John, including a land called ‘Baccara’ ruled by the sultan, and another called ‘Cinomanci’, governed by an ‘optimus’ Christian named Scoca.26 Three exemplars of this Kurzfassung, or portions thereof, which appear not to be directly related to one another, survive.27 Another version of the other early redaction, dubbed ‘B’, which Wagner argues also descended from the lost archetype, circulated widely in Bavaria in the second half of the twelfth century and beyond, and it is this tradition I will focus upon here.28 The B-redaction of the Letter is mostly similar to the Urtext, but — somewhat like the Kurzfassung-u — features several additions, including a section at the end describing a second palace of Prester John built by his father, Quasideus, that contains a number of wonders and magical properties.29 This section, like the descriptions of Baccara and Cinomanci in the Kurzfassung, was omitted in the family of Urtext witnesses, something Wagner astutely observes was probably due to the fact that the earliest exemplars were transmitted fragmentarily or at the back of manu­scripts, which increased the chances of a final leaf being lost or rendered illegible.30 Thus the archetype of the original Letter was likely a text that lacked some of the expanded sections of the full B-recension (being closer in scope to the ‘Urtext’), but which may have also included the excursus on Baccara and Cinomanci preserved in the Kurzfassung and which contained some variant readings shared by the Kurzfassung and B against the Urtext.31 The manu­script contexts for the transmission of the earliest witnesses may provide some broad clues about the Letter’s origins and who wrote it, but more importantly, what significance its earliest audiences attached to it. How did they catalogue it, so to speak? One interesting feature of nearly all twelfth-century copies of the Letter of Prester John is that they are contemporary or near-contemporary additions at the ends of manu­scripts, suggesting that the text was something the copyist came across, or was sent, and had to decide where to insert it in an already-completed codex. This presents us with an interesting opportunity to see the construction of associated content as an ongoing process.

 25 See the edition in Wagner, Die ‘Epistola presbiteri Johannis’, pp. 346–50.  26 Wagner, Die ‘Epistola presbiteri Johannis’, p. 349.  27 Rheims, Bibl. Mun., MS 142, fols 85v–86v (s. xii; prov. St.-Thierry, Rheims) (Wagner, Die ‘Epistola presbiteri Johannis’, pp. 102–03); Rouen, Bibl. Mun., MS 1343, fol. 186r–v (s. xii; prov. St.-Évroult-Notre-Dame-du-Bois) (Wagner, Die ‘Epistola presbiteri Johannis’, p. 103); Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 19411, fol. 9r–v (s. xii (c. 1160–1186); prov. Tegernsee) (Wagner, Die ‘Epistola presbiteri Johannis’, p. 77).  28 ‘Epistola Presbyteri Iohannis’, ed. by Zarncke, pp. 890–92.  29 ‘Epistola Presbyteri Iohannis’, ed. by Zarncke, pp. 883–90.  30 Wagner, Die ‘Epistola presbiteri Johannis’, pp. 163–64.  31 Wagner, Die ‘Epistola presbiteri Johannis’, p. 162.

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Figure 15.1. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 1001 (s. xii), fol. 30r. Reproduced by permission of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.

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One option was to place it at the end of a gathering of an ongoing copying job of an important work. One of the monks of Weihenstephan in Freising who was working on a copy of Otto of Freising’s De duobus civitatibus sometime after 1157 — Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 1001 — decided to shoehorn his copy of the Letter into the last several pages of the third gathering in the manu­script containing Book ii of Otto’s chronicle, in a section covering the history of Cambyses, the son of Cyrus (Table 15.1).32 The Weihenstephan Letter is a version of the B-redaction that lacks the full description of Quasideus’s palace found at the end of most other B copies. The hand, a skilled mid- to late twelfth-century minuscule bookhand, is the same as, or very similar to, that which copied the rest of the gathering, as well as several other major sections of the manu­script. There are no special notes or marginalia that cross reference the Letter earlier in the manu­script, though a later hand in the left margin by the interpolation advises readers, perhaps somewhat annoyed, to skip ahead three pages if they wish to pick up the rest of Otto’s chapter. It is also not noted in the contemporary index to the work, so the Letter must have been inserted on the copyist’s own initiative. As noted above, Book vii of Otto’s chronicle contains the first mention of Prester John outside the Letter itself; it may have been that the gatherings containing Book vii had no space left for such an excursus, whereas Book ii had not yet been completed and presented a convenient space for inserting the Letter. It is worth recalling, however, that Otto writes that Prester John was descended from the Magi. If that were the case, then inserting the Letter into the Chronicle’s discussion of Cambyses may not have merely been an issue of whether some extra space was by chance available. In §§ 15–16 of Book ii, Otto writes — citing Josephus and Eusebius — that following Cambyses’ death, the Magi rose to dominate Persia for a period of three years before being deposed by Darius III, who himself was eventually overthrown by Alexander the Great.33 This places Prester John’s ancestry in a broader world-historical context while laying the groundwork for Otto’s later assertions about John’s heritage. In Book vii, Otto does not indicate from where he knew his information about Prester John’s descent, nor can we identify any specific source. His knowledge must have relied on an oral tradition — perhaps something he was told by one of the emissaries from the Latin Kingdom to Italy in 1145, or perhaps while he himself was on Crusade in 1147–1148.34 An early medi­eval exegetical work known as

 32 Otto of Freising, Chronica sive Historia, ii. 15, ed. by Hofmeister, pp. 83–85. A digitized copy of the codex, with complete cataloguing information, can be viewed at [accessed 5 September 2019].  33 Otto of Freising, Chronica sive Historia, ii. 15, ed. by Hofmeister, pp. 84–85.  34 On Otto’s life and career, see Deutinger, ‘Bischof Otto I. von Freising’. If Otto heard this while on Crusade, it suggests that the excursus on Prester John was added to the revision of the Chronica, which he made after returning from the East and presented to Frederick Barbarossa in 1157. On the history of the Chronica’s composition, see Hofmeister, in Otto of Freising, Chronica sive Historia, ed. by Hofmeister, pp. xiii–xiv.

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the Opus imperfectum in Mattheum, however, attributed to John Chrysostom, transmitted a story that the Magi had been baptized by the apostle Thomas as he journeyed east on his apostolic mission.35 This may in turn have given rise to the notion of a Christian dynasty somewhere in the East descended from their line. One of the earliest witnesses to the Opus happens to be a Freising manu­script, now Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 6282, from the late seventh century.36 Given its association with Otto, the Chronicon, and Weihenstephan, it may be tempting to wonder if we are not looking perhaps at an originary point for the Letter in Otto’s own see of Freising. Unfortunately, this appears not to be the case. Clm 1001 is in fact a copy of the Letter found in another twelfth-century Bavarian codex, now BnF, MS n.a.l. 310, originally from Tegernsee Abbey, a foundation that, ironically, often fought to retain its independence from the diocese of Freising while Otto was bishop.37 The canons of Herrenchiemsee also obtained a copy of the Letter from MS n.a.l. 310, and appended it to Augustine’s De civitate Dei in Clm 5251. MS n.a.l. 310 may ring a bell for those familiar with Matthias Tischler’s magisterial study of the manu­script tradition of Einhard’s Vita Karoli.38 MS n.a.l. 310 is a key witness for what Tischler terms the ‘Karlskompendium’, an assembly of texts focusing on the reign of Charlemagne and Frankish history that originated in Bavaria — either Regensburg or Bamberg — and which proved to be an important vector for the transmission of Einhard’s work and memory of Charlemagne more generally.39 Indeed, MS n.a.l. 310 is a historio­graphical compilation whose contents betray a clear and coherent set of associations and relationships: a survey of history from the Fall of Man all the way to the capture of Jerusalem in the First Crusade. More specifically, however, it situates that narrative arc within the larger, global context of translatio imperii, drawing upon the (often fabulous) history of Alexander in India, and linking it to images of a (purported) present-day Christian India under Prester John, who vows in his letter to march to Jerusalem with a great army and humble the enemies of the Cross.40 The Crusades and the hoped-for arrival of Prester John thereby created potent apocalyptic potentialities.41

 35 Oden, ed., Incomplete Commentary on Matthew, p. 32.  36 Lowe, Codices Latini Antiquiores, ix, no. 1260.  37 Deutinger, ‘Engel oder Wolf?’.  38 Tischler, Einharts Vita Karoli. A full catalogue description of the manu­script and digital reproduction are available at [accessed 5 September 2019].  39 Tischler, Einharts Vita Karoli, pp. 849–65.  40 ‘Epistola Presbyteri Iohannis’, § 11, ed. by Zarncke, p. 910: ‘In voto habemus visitare sepulchrum domini cum maximo exercitu, prout decet gloriam maiestatis nostrae humiliare et debellare inimicos crucis Christi et nomen eius benedictum exaltare’.  41 Rubenstein, Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream, p. 235 n. 58, notes a number of key examples of crusade chronicles and accounts being copied together with apocalyptic material.

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This manu­script is also one of only several mid-twelfth-century manu­ scripts in which the Letter of Prester John was not clearly a later addition, but was rather carefully integrated into the project from the beginning, situated between the two vitae of Charlemagne and the Crusade chronicle of Robert of Rheims — a work upon which the Tegernsee monk Metellus later based his German verse translation.42 An index of the contents on the last folio in a contemporary hand confirms that this was likely the original arrangement of the codex. Although copied in several similar, contemporary hands, the consistent ruling and codico­logy of the book point to it being conceived and executed by the monks of Tegernsee as a single project around the themes of kingship, salvation history, and crusading. The intentionality of this placement and the scope of the manu­script’s thematic vision provides some additional context for the theory that contemporaries initially understood the Letter of Prester John principally as a response to the Alexandrine schism, or papal-imperial politics more generally. That it spoke to issues of imperial sovereignty is quite clear; what agency Barbarossa or his circle (especially his imperial chancellor Rainald of Dassel) may have had in its propagation, however, is complicated by the reception history still available to us. Other early exemplars of the B-text are suggestive, but less conclusive in this regard. Clm 30004 is a small miscellany in which a mid-twelfth-century copy of the Letter (full B-redaction) was bound to Ps.-Jerome’s Quindecim signis ante iudicium, an apocalyptic treatise, the Legenda et miraculum de s. Gerdruda, and some sermons and prayers in a much later medi­eval hand.43 While the first gathering with the Letter (fols 1–13) appears to be of the twelfth century on palaeo­graphical grounds, when, under what circumstances, and by whom the codex was given its final form is unknown. Graz, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. 433 (Rec. B, saec. xii/xiii), another copy of Otto’s Chronica, appears to share the same exemplar of the Letter of Prester John as Clm 30004. Here, the Letter follows immediately upon Otto’s chronicle, but in a different hand, and with less precise ruling, extending onto an extra leaf added to the last quaternion of the Chronica. Gatherings containing the Visio Tnugdali, the Vita Pachomii, and a chronicle of the abbey’s history were later added to this as well.44 Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. 951, from the Premonstratensian abbey of Windberg, near Regensburg, and dated to the abbacy of Gebhard of Bedenburg (1146–1191), transmits the full B-redaction in a codico­logical unity with the Collationes of John Cassian, a bull of Alexander III (1177) confirming the statutes of the Premonstratensian order, a privilege of Frederick Barbarossa for Windberg from 1173, and a sermon of Bernard delivered to the bishops (ad episcopos) at

 42 On Metellus, see Metellus of Tegernsee, Expeditio Ierosolimitana, ed. by Jacobsen.  43 Klemm, Die romanischen Handschriften, no. 325, p. 220.  44 I thank the special collections department of the Universitätsbibliothek Graz for supplying me with a detailed collation and photos of the relevant sections.

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the Council of Rheims in 1148.45 Here we do see an association with material connected to both Frederick and Alexander, though not explicitly the schism or any of Barbarossa’s more extravagant claims to power.46 The significance of the Collationes, a popular monastic devotional work, is less clear, although the Letter does appear in at least one other manu­script with Cassian (BnF, MS lat. 18324 (Red. E, s. xiii)). By contrast, a good deal of information — relatively speaking — can be gleaned from the collation of MS n.a.l. 310. Table 15.2. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS n.a.l. 310; fol. ii+228+ii; s. xii; prov. Tegernsee Abbey.

1. Fols 1–2 – Fragments from the preface of Ivo of Chartres’s Panormia 2. 3r–27v – Excerpts from Orosius’s Libri historiarum contra paganos 3. 28r–96v – Eutropius, Historia Romana, with the continuations of Paul the Deacon 4. 96v–103r – Sextus Rufus, Gesta Romanorum 5. 103v–142v – Liber Alexandri Magni (= Alexander Romance translated by Leo Presbyter) 6. 143r–155r – Einhard, Vita Karoli (abridged) 7. 155r–164v – Notker, De virtutibus Karoli (abridged) 8. 164v–167v – Epistola Iohannis presbyteri (Rec. B, shorter version) 9. 167v–226r – Robert of Rheims, Historia Hierosolymitana 10. 226r–v – Epistola patriarchae 11. 227r–228r – Fragments of a breviary (s. xii–xiii?)

The inclusion here of the famous Latin adaptation of the Alexander Romance by Leo the Presbyter is particularly noteworthy. It was copied, along with the other Roman histories, from the exemplar found in the famous compilation of classical historio­graphy in Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Hist. Misc. 3 presented to the cathedral by Henry II.47 The history of Alexander, including his campaigns in Persia and India, was, as Mark Cruse reminds us, viewed as recording key events in salvation history and the creation of a global oecumene over which Christianity could eventually spread.48 The Liber Floridus included extensive excerpts from the Alexander tradition as well, particularly his legendary dispatches to Aristotle describing many of the marvels he encountered in India.49 The collection of texts surrounding another contemporary witness  45 Hermann, Die deutschen romanischen Handschriften, no. 42, pp. 66–67. This copy of the Letter, according to Wagner, appears to be related to the one in Paris, BnF, MS lat. 2342 (see Table 15.1), but in contrast to Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. 951, the Paris copy is a later addition (late twelfth century?) in the manu­script.  46 Cf. Freed, Frederick Barbarossa, ch. 8.  47 Kretschmer, Rewriting Roman History, is an in-depth study of this manu­script and its contents.  48 Cruse, Illuminating the Roman d’Alexandre, p. 142. See too Caullier-Bougassas, L’historio­ graphie médiévale d’Alexandre.  49 Derolez, The Auto­graph Manu­script of the Liber Floridus, pp. 131–33.

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of the B-redaction in London, British Library, MS Cotton Titus A XXVII reflects as well a keen interest in the intersection of Alexander, Prester John, and other royal histories in three textual clusters that appear to have been joined together at an early stage.50 Table 15.3. London, British Library, MS Cotton Titus A XXVII (s. xiiex).

Cluster 1 (fols 2v–88r)

Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae with add. notes on British genealogies and place-names.

Cluster 2 (fols 89r–174v)

Quadripartitus; Instituta Cnuti aliorumque regum Anglorum

Cluster 3 Marbod of Rennes, Liber lapidum; Letter of Prester John (fols 176r–217v) (Red. B); Anonymous chronicle of England; Julius Valerius, Gesta Alexandri Magni; Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem; Epitaphium Alexandri; Epigram on Alexander

The version of the B-redaction in the Cotton manu­script, albeit of slightly later date, shows some affinity with other Bavarian witnesses, including Weihenstephan and Tegernsee, but contains what has come to be considered the ‘full’ version of the B text. As Wagner surmises, they probably descend, perhaps several stages removed, from a common archetype.51 More significantly, however, the content of MS Titus A XXVII demonstrates that the Letter travelled, if not in the exact same, then in a very similar convoy of related texts as MS n.a.l. 310 concerned with the legacy of Alexander and the marvels of the East. Just as the editors of MS n.a.l. 310 came to be interested in how the Alexander legend placed more recent imperial and crusade history in a broader context, the monks of Canterbury who assembled the Cotton manu­script apparently also saw the Letter’s relevance to English royal history and its legal traditions, in particular. These contextual threads, however, keep leading us back to Bavaria in the mid-twelfth century as the source of this tantalizing new image of Christian power in the East. MS n.a.l. 310, much like the Liber Floridus, is an attempt to weave a historical discourse around Christian history and Christian rulership that bookends two key works of great interest to twelfth-century readers: Orosius’s universal history and the Crusades. Within this, the empires of Alexander, Charlemagne, and finally Prester John reminded its audience that that history was in some sense a global one, and ancient histories could serve as blueprints for the Church’s future. The exact moment of the codex’s creation cannot be determined precisely, but was likely executed during the abbacy of Rupert (1155–1183), during which time Tegernsee enjoyed a reputation as one of the leading literary and intellectual centres in the German  50 See complete catalogue description at [accessed 8 October 2019].  51 Wagner, Die ‘Epistola presbiteri Johannis’, p. 170.

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kingdom.52 Tegernsee’s advocate beginning in 1157 was the powerful Bavarian count and confidant of Frederick Barbarossa, Berthold III of Andechs, whose younger brother, Otto, became bishop of Bamberg in 1177.53 Moreover, we know that contemporaries also viewed it as an important locus of Crusade historio­graphy and memory. The monk Metellus, perhaps the most celebrated writer in Tegernsee’s twelfth-century heyday, composed (as noted above) a versified history of the First Crusade and may have even taken the copy in MS n.a.l. 310 as his exemplar.54 The Charlemagne bio­graphies and Robert’s crusade chronicle in MS n.a.l. 310 likewise appear to have served as the exemplars for those texts in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 17134, a codex from Schäftlarn abbey, which in turn became the exemplar for one of the most famous crusade chronicle manu­scripts of the twelfth century, the copy of Robert’s Historia Hierosolymitana in Vatican, BAV, Cod. Vat. lat. 2001, personally dedicated to Frederick Barbarossa by the Schäftlarn provost Henry.55 The Letter of Prester John was not included in these later iterations and copies of the Karlskompendium or the Historia Hierosolymitana, but they do underscore the possible significance of MS n.a.l. 310 as a compilation whose contents reached a broad audience across Bavarian monastic communities and, as we have seen, perhaps even as far as England. It is also worth noting that Tegernsee was the only literary centre known to have possessed both a copy of the full Letter of Prester John as well as part of the so-called Kurzfassung-u. The main textual cluster in Clm 19411 is the Tegernseer Briefsammlung, a collection of example-letters compiled under Abbot Rupert between about 1177/78 and 1186.56 The letters, or excerpts thereof, reflect correspondence between the monastery and other elites throughout the empire, including Barbarossa, during some of the key inflection points of the papal-imperial feud. As John B. Freed notes, the Briefsammlung preserves some important correspondence related to the diplomacy that preceded the Peace of Venice in 1177, where Frederick reconciled with Alexander.57 The version of the Kurzfassung-u preserved in Clm 19411 is only the opening salutation of the Letter (§§ 1–7); however, the two northern French witnesses noted above contain fuller versions of the text, including the descriptions of Baccara and Cinomanci. Whether the Tegernsee copy predates the French or whether its copyist was ever in possession of a more complete text cannot be determined; the transmission of the Prester John corpus demonstrates, however,

 52 Buttinger, Das Kloster Tegernsee, esp. pp. 87–88; see too, Wild, ‘Tegernsee’.  53 Buttinger, Das Kloster Tegernsee, pp. 145–49.  54 Tischler, Einharts Vita Karoli, p. 861; Schmeidler, Studien zur Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 81–85; Metellus of Tegernsee, Expeditio Ierosolimitana, ed. by Jacobsen, pp. 239–45. Metellus’s work is preserved primarily at Admont Abbey, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 227.  55 Kempf, ‘Towards a Textual Archaeo­logy’, pp. 123–24; Tischler, Einharts Vita Karoli, pp. 866–67.  56 Plechl, ‘Die Tegernseer Handschrift Clm 19411’. The text is edited in Die Tegernseer Brief­ sammlung, ed. by Plechl, no. 9, pp. 13–14.  57 Freed, Frederick Barbarossa, p. xxxi.

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that, over time, material tended to accrete to the tradition, rather than be removed from it. In one place, the Kurzfassung in Clm 19411 does contain an interesting variant that might give it some precedence, however. One of the more enigmatic lines of the Kurzfassung, as well as the later recensions of the Letter, is § 7 (Zarncke’s numbering) wherein Prester John offers a diplomatic gift of some kind in return for the emperor having sent him a token of his regard (in this case, a lechitus, or small jar or phial). In the Urtext and B-redaction, John offers Manuel some ieracha, or ierarchia, and invites him to admire another object, rendered variously as thima, tigna, or pegma in the manu­script witnesses.58 Vsevolod Slessarev suggested that ieracha might have originally been hieracia, or hawkweed, a well-known, but not particularly exotic, medicinal herb.59 A more likely possibility, and one keeping with the idea of an exchange of exotic diplomatic gifts, may be hieraca, a Latinization of the Greek ἱέραξ/hierax — a falcon or hawk — which featured prominently among the kinds of luxurious gifts offered to kings and emperors by envoys from a fellow-ruler.60 The Kurzfassung has yeracha (Clm 19411) or iherarcha (Reims, MS 142), whereas the word has already become sexarcha in MS n.a.l. 310 and its descendants. Translators and editors have also struggled to make sense of how to understand tigna (a board or piece of lumber) or pegma (a wooden stage set) in this context. The Kurzfassung-u in Clm 19411 has tinna (against thima in the Rouen and Reims copies), however, which is likely a variant of thyina, mentioned in i Kings 10. 11 as one of the exotic treasures presented by the Queen of Sheba to Solomon (‘attulit ex Ophir ligna thyina multa nimis, et gemmas pretiosas’). Misreading or miscopying the jugate ligna tinna or thyina would probably explain how later witnesses came to have some variation of tigna or pegma. The transmission of tinna in Clm 19411 naturally does not prove that it was a fragment of the ‘original’ Letter, but would seem to suggest that its exemplar was perhaps closer to it than any of the other surviving witnesses. If this is the case, then it is also possible that the earliest interest in the Letter — or portions thereof — in monastic circles was not necessarily its contemporary ecclesio-political resonances, but its value as a source of epistolary rhetoric, keeping in mind that many of the other letters preserved in the Tegernseer Briefsammlung concerned high-level imperial politics. As the more elaborate redactions of the Letter emerged and came into focus, however, this naturally changed. MS n.a.l. 310, likewise does not appear to be what we would consider

 58 ‘Epistola Presbyteri Iohannis’, ed. by Zarncke, p. 925 n. 6.  59 Slessarev, Prester John, p. 44. Less likely is that the word is a reference to hieracium, which Pliny, Natural History, xxxiv. 27, trans. by Rackham, pp. 211–12, describes as a compounded salve efficacious for infections of the eyes, lips, or mouth.  60 This translation is suggested by Helleiner, ‘Prester John’s Letter’. A key source for diplomatic gift exchange, including exotic animals, in the Mediterranean and Middle East is al-Zubayr, Book of Gifts and Rarities (Kitāb al-Hadāyā Wa al-Tuḥaf), trans. by al-Qaddūmī. See too Drocourt, ‘Les animaux comme cadeaux’, p. 71.

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to be the ‘original’ form of the Letter, or even of the B-redaction, but its intentional integration in a codex with such resonant associative content makes it likely that Tegernsee, if not the source of the Prester John tradition itself, was very close to its epicentre. These are but a few examples of an applied method that could be iterated across the hundreds of manu­scripts in the Prester John tradition, and its results thus far are more suggestive than conclusive. Much more detailed codico­ logical collations and comparisons of scribal hands across a scriptorium, or even a larger region, particularly using digital tools, could yield more robust results about how these manu­scripts were copied and constructed. Interest in the Prester John story in the Middle Ages lasted for centuries, and even as more accurate knowledge about Asia made it evident that a real Prester John or his dynasty were unlikely to have existed as imagined in the Letter, it continued to serve as a lens through which Europeans thought about, and remembered, Christianity’s apostolic legacy and global reach.61 If scholars like Bernard Hamilton and others are right that the Letter originated somewhere in Staufen chancellery circles, it left that context very quickly and entered a much wider field of resonances and meanings we see reflected in the works with which it was copied, or where monastic copyists chose to insert it. As Geary observed in the conclusion of his ‘Saints and Scholars’ essay, by using a comprehensive, contextualized approach to texts like saints’ lives — or Prester John’s Letter — we ‘find not “the medi­eval mind”, but a variety of minds’ who engaged with a particular tradition and, like Orderic Vitalis or Lambert of St-Omer, used a vast array of textual resources at their disposal to answer their own questions about it and the wider world.62 The insights of scholars such as Kinoshita, Akbari, and Heng about the way medi­eval attitudes towards, for example, race and ethnicity were inflected in medi­eval travel literature and romances have foregrounded a number of important new questions about the construction of identity and categories of difference. Our task going forward is to take these new questions and begin seeking ways to answer them as expressions of multiple minds and multiple readers engaging complex manu­scripts and manu­script traditions, as well as various iterations of texts that transcend one version or one author’s vision. After all, as Prester John himself writes at the close of his letter, ‘Si potes dinumerare stellas caeli et harenam maris, dinumera et dominium nostrum et potestatem nostram’ (If you can count the stars of the sky and the sand of the sea, count our dominion and our power as well).63 To be sure, this was an invitation to a creative expansion of a tradition whose extent and potential for shedding light on practices of medi­eval worldmaking we can only begin to imagine.

 61 See now Knobler, Mytho­logy and Diplomacy, on the long-term impact of the Prester John legend on European mentalities about travel, exploration, and colonialism.  62 Geary, ‘Saints, Scholars, and Society’, p. 28.  63 ‘Epistola Presbyteri Iohannis’, § 100, ed. by Zarncke, p. 924; trans. by Brewer, Prester John, p. 91.

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Works Cited Manu­scripts and Archival Sources Admont Abbey, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 227 Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Hist. Misc. 3 London, British Library, MS Cotton Titus A XXVII Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 1001 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 6282 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 17134 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 19411 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 30004 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fonds latin 18324 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS nouvelles acquisitions latin 310 Rheims, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 142 Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 1343 Vatican City, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 2001 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 951 Primary Sources ‘Epistola Presbyteri Iohannis’, ed. by Friedrich Zarncke, in Friedrich Zarncke, Der Priester Johannes, Abhandlungen der sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philo­logisch-Historische Klasse, 17 (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1879), pp. 872–934 Metellus of Tegernsee, Expeditio Ierosolimitana, ed. by Peter Christian Jacobsen, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur lateinischen Philo­logie des Mittelalters, 6 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1982) Otto of Freising, Chronica sive Historia de duabus civitatibus, ed. by Adolf Hofmeister, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum, 45 (Hanover: Hahn, 1912) Pliny, Natural History, ix: Books 33–35, trans. by Harris Rackham, Loeb Classical Library, 394 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952) Die Tegernseer Briefsammlung des 12. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Helmut Plechl, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Die Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit, 8 (Hanover: Hahn, 2002) al-Zubayr, Aḥmad ibn al-Rashīd Ibn, Book of Gifts and Rarities (Kitāb al-Hadāyā Wa al-Tuḥaf), trans. by Ghāda al-Ḥijjāwī al-Qaddūmī (Cambridge, MA: Harvard CMES, 1996)

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Secondary Works Akbari, Suzanne Conklin, Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009) Biran, Michael, The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History: Between China and the Islamic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) Brewer, Keagan, Prester John: The Legend and its Sources, Crusade Texts in Translation, 27 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015) Buttinger, Sabine, Das Kloster Tegernsee und sein Beziehungsgefüge im 12. Jahrhundert, Studien zur altbayerischen Kirchengeschichte, 12 (Munich: Verlag des Vereins für Diözesangeschichte von München und Freising, 2004) Caullier-Bougassas, Catherine, L’historio­graphie médiévale d’Alexandre le Grand (Turnhout, Brepols, 2011) Classen, Peter, ‘Res Gestae, Universal History, Apocalypse: Visions of Past and Future’, in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. by Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable, with Carol D. Lanham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 387–417 Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, Hybridity, Identity, and Monstrosity in Medi­eval Britain: On Difficult Middles, New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) Connolly, Margaret, and Raluca Radelescu, eds, Insular Books: Vernacular Manu­ script Miscellanies in Late Medi­eval Britain, Proceedings of the British Academy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) Crick, Julia C., Dissemination and Reception in the Later Middle Ages: The ‘Historia Regum Britannie’ of Geoffrey of Monmouth, 4 vols (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1991) Cruse, Mark, Illuminating the Roman d’Alexandre: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264: The Manu­script as Monument, Gallica, 22 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011) Derolez, Albert, The Auto­graph Manu­script of the Liber Floridus: A Key to the Encyclopedia of Lambert of Saint-Omer (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998) Deutinger, Roman, ‘Bischof Otto I. von Freising (1138–1158): Ein Lebensbild’, in Otto von Freising, Rahewin, Conradus Sacrista, ed. by Ulrike Götz (Freising: Historischer Verein von Freising, 2010), pp. 15–26 —— , ‘Engel oder Wolf? Otto on Freising in den geistigen Auseinandersetzungen seiner Zeit’, in Ars et Scientia im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Cora Dietl and Dörte Helschinger (Tübingen: Francke, 2002), pp. 31–46 Doležalová, Lucie, and Kimberly Rivers, eds, Medi­eval Manu­script Miscellanies: Composition, Authorship, Use, Medium Aevum Quotidianum, 21 (Krems: Institut für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, 2013) Drocourt, Nicolas, ‘Les animaux comme cadeaux d’ambassade entre Byzance et ses voisins (viie–xiie) siècle’, in Byzance et ses périphéries, ed. by Bernard Doumerc and Christophe Picard (Toulouse: CNRS, Université de Toulouse-le Mirail, 2004), pp. 67–93 Eldevik, John, ‘Saints, Pagans, and the Wonders of the East: The Medi­eval Imaginary and its Manu­script Contexts’, Traditio, 71 (2016), 235–72

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Franco, Hilário, ‘La Construction d’une Utopie: L’Empire de Prêtre Jean’, Journal of Medi­eval History, 23.3 (1997), 211–25 Franklin-Brown, Mary, Reading the World: Encyclopedic Writing in the Scholastic Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012) Freed, John B., Frederick Barbarossa: The Prince and the Myth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016) Geary, Patrick J., ‘Saints, Scholars and Society: The Elusive Goal’, in Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 9–29 Giardini, Marco, ‘“Ego, Presbiter Iohannes, Dominus Sum Dominantium”: The Name of Prester John and the Origin of his Legend’, Viator, 48.2 (2017), 195–230 —— , ‘Mirabilia orientis et royauté universelle dans la version latine de La Lettre du Prêtre Jean (xiie siècle)’, in Aspetti del Meraviglioso nelle Letterature Medi­ evali / Aspects du merveilleux dans les littératures médiévales, Culture et Société Médiévales, 29 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. 93–104 Gosman, Martin, La lettre du Prêtre Jean: Les versions en ancien français et en ancien occitan, textes et commentaires (Groningen: Bouma’s Boekhuis, 1982) —— , ‘Otton de Freising et le Prêtre Jean’, Revue belge de philo­logie et d’histoire, 61 (1983), 270–85 Hamilton, Bernard, ‘Prester John and the Three Kings of Co­logne’, in Studies in Medi­eval History Presented to R.H.C. Davies, ed. by Henry Mayr-Harting and R. I. Moore (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 1985), pp. 177–91 Haskins, Charles Homer, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927) Helleiner, Karl F., ‘Prester John’s Letter: A Mediaeval Utopia’, Phoenix, 13.2 (1959), 47–57 Heng, Geraldine, Empire of Magic: Medi­eval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003) Hermann, Hermann J., Die deutschen romanischen Handschriften (Beschreibendes Verzeichnis der illuminierten Handschriften in Österreich, ii: Die illuminierten Handschriften und Inkunabeln der Nationalbibliothek in Wien, pt. 2: Die deutschen romanischen Handschriften (Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1926) Higgins, Iain Macleod, Writing East: The ‘Travels’ of Sir John Mandeville (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997) Hingst, Amanda Jane, The Written World: Past and Place in the Work of Orderic Vitalis (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009) Johrendt, Jochen, ‘The Empire and the Schism’, in Pope Alexander III (1159–81): The Art of Survival, ed. by Peter D. Clarke and Anne J. Duggan, Faith, Church, Culture in the Medi­eval West (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 99–126 Kempf, Damien, ‘Towards a Textual Archaeo­logy of the First Crusade’, in Writing the Early Crusades: Text, Transmission, and Memory, ed. by Marcus Bull and Damien Kempf (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014), pp. 116–26 Kinoshita, Sharon, Medi­eval Boundaries: Rethinking Difference in Old French Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006) Klemm, Elisabeth, Die romanischen Handschriften der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, ii: Die Bistümer Freising und Augsburg, verschiedene deutsche Provenienzen (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1988)

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Knobler, Adam, Mytho­logy and Diplomacy in the Age of Exploration (Leiden: Brill, 2017) Kretschmer, Marek Thue, Rewriting Roman History in the Middle Ages: The ‘Historia Romana’ and the Manu­script Bamberg, Hist.3, Mittellateinische Studien und Texte, 36 (Leiden: Brill, 2007) Lowe, Elias Avery, Codices Latini Antiquiores: A Paleo­graphical Guide to Latin Manu­scripts Prior to the Ninth Century, 12 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934–1971) Nichols, Stephen G., and Siegfried Wenzel, The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medi­eval Miscellany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996) Oden, Thomas C., ed., Incomplete Commentary on Matthew (Opus Imperfectum), trans. by James A. Kellerman (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010) Petrucci, Armando, ‘From the Unitary Book to the Miscellany’, in Writers and Readers in Medi­eval Italy: Studies in the History of Written Culture, trans. by Charles M. Radding (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 1–18 Plechl, Helmut, ‘Die Tegernseer Handschrift Clm 19411’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 18 (1962), 418–501 Pratt, Karen, and others, eds, The Dynamics of the Medi­eval Manu­script: Text Collec­ tions from a European Perspective (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2017) Rouxpetel, Camille, ‘La figure du Prêtre Jean: Les mutations d’une prophétie souverain chrétien idéal, figure providentielle ou paradigme de l’orientalisme médiéval?’, Questes, 28 (2014), 99–120 Rubenstein, Jay, Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream: The Crusades, Apocalyptic Prophecy, and the End of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019) —— , ‘Putting History to Use: Three Crusade Chronicles in Context’, Viator, 35 (2004), 131–68 Schmeidler, Bernhard, Studien zur Geschichtsschreibung des Klosters Tergernsee vom 11. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert, Schriftenreihe zur bayerischen Landesgeschichte, 20 (Munich: Kommission für bayerische Landesgeschichte, 1935) Silverberg, Robert, The Realm of Prester John (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972) Slessarev, Vsevolod, Prester John: The Letter and the Legend (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1959) Tischler, Matthias M., Einharts Vita Karoli: Studien zur Entstehung, Überlieferung und Rezeption, Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 48, 2 vols (Hanover: Hahn, 2001) Uebel, Michael, ‘Imperial Fetishism: Prester John among the Natives’, in The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), pp. 261–82 Wagner, Bettina, Die ‘Epistola presbiteri Johannis’ lateinisch und deutsch: Überlieferung, Textgeschichte, Rezeption und Übertragungen im Mittelalter: mit bisher unedierten Texten (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000) Wild, Joachim, ‘Tegernsee’, in Germania Benedictina, ii: Die Männer- und Frauen­ klöster der Benediktiner in Bayern, ed. by Michael Kaufmann (St Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 2014), pp. 2249–98 Zarncke, Friedrich, Der Priester Johannes, Abhandlungen der sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philo­logisch-Historische Klasse, 17 (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1879)

37 7

Courtney M. Booker

An Alleged Oratio of Boniface to Pippin in 751 The anointing of Pippin ‘the Short’ in 751 and the consequential replacement of the Merovingian dynasty by the Carolingians has in recent years attracted considerable scholarly attention.1 Yet, despite this recent interest, there has been relatively little written on the historical memory of this momentous event. Olaf Schneider and Helmut Reimitz have done an admirable job in surveying the places, times, and ways in which the change of dynasty was remembered, and the uses to which these memories were put, during the Carolingian era itself, while Hans-Werner Goetz has scrupulously extended this survey to the thirteenth century.2 Yet, the hard work of collection, contextualization, and explication of attestations about the event of 751 beyond Goetz’s terminus has yet to be done. In what follows, I wish to make a small contribution to this later history of remembrance by introducing a curious piece of evidence from the late sixteenth century about Pippin’s elevation. In the process, I hope to show some of the relationships among evidence, history, and truth that are central to the historian’s craft, the pitfalls that await those who neglect to practice this craft with care, and the unforeseen bridges to ‘new vistas’ of the past that its disciplined application can build.3 ***



* Research for this article has benefitted from generous assistance by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, and discussions with Daniela Boccassini, Elizabeth A. R. Brown, Jérôme Delatour, Paul Dutton, Patrick Geary, Meg Leja, Clementine Oliver, Richard Pollard, Richard Rouse, Eugene Sheppard, and the students of my annual Medi­eval Studies 200 course who offered many helpful suggestions.  1 See Close, ‘Le sacre de Pépin de 751?’; Becher and Jarnut, eds, Der Dynastiewechsel von 751; and Semmler, Der Dynastiewechsel von 751, as gateways into the vast literature on this topic. For two good treatments in English, see Jacobson, ‘Sicut Samuhel unxit David’; and Miller, ‘Sacral Kingship’.  2 Schneider, ‘Die Königserhebung Pippins’; Reimitz, ‘Der Weg zum Königtum’; Goetz, ‘Der Dynastiewechsel’. See also Kehl, ‘The Veneration of Boniface’.  3 Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, p. 93.

Courtney M. Booker ([email protected]) teaches History at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe: Studies on Cultural Identity and Power, ed. by Courtney M. Booker, Hans Hummer, and Dana M. Polanichka, CURSOR 41, pp. 379–420 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022)        10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.127589

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Between 1535 and 1598, France was wracked with a seemingly never-ending series of vicious battles and skirmishes, plots and treacheries, between Roman Catholic and newly Protestant or ‘Huguenot’ factions. A central part of the problem was the power wielded by two rival aristocratic families of opposing faiths, the houses of Guise (Roman Catholic) and Condé (Calvinist Protestant), which continually sought to influence the monarchy towards their religious beliefs. The Valois kings Francis I (d. 1547) and Henry II (d. 1559) were hostile to the Protestants, but Catherine de Medici, the Italian, Roman Catholic queen regent, tried to negotiate with this rapidly growing, powerful religious minority. In 1561, she and the French Parlement passed the July Edict, thereby recognizing Roman Catholicism as the state religion but forbidding persecution of French citizens on the basis of creed. Unfortunately, hatred, religious zealotry, and the rush of events would overtake these efforts at reconciliation. Civil war erupted on three different occasions between 1562 and 1570. In another attempt to cement peace between the two religious parties, Catherine planned to marry her daughter Margaret to the Protestant prince Henry of Navarre (the future King Henry IV) in Paris in August 1572. Numerous Protestants gathered in the midst of a hostile Roman Catholic Parisian populace in order to witness the ceremony. Within this tense environment, an assassination attempt was made on Gaspard de Coligny, a leading Protestant figure, which quickly led to Catholic fear of reprisals. Paranoid and assuming the worst, the Catholics took pre-emptive action and hunted and killed Huguenots in the city for five straight days, slaughtering men, women, and children and ransacking their homes. Inspired and emboldened by these developments, Catholics undertook similar massacres in other French towns in the weeks following — attacks that would collectively come to be known as the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. In the wake of the carnage, Huguenots converted to Catholicism, fled to Protestant countries, or gathered in a small number of cities where they formed a safe majority. These seemingly endless ‘Wars of Religion’ would carry on for nearly three more decades before finally coming to a close in 1598 with the Edict of Nantes, which offered Huguenots toleration and certain rights and privileges. In 1573, outraged by the shocking St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of the previous year, the learned jurist François Hotman (1524–1590), himself a newly radicalized Huguenot, published his inflammatory treatise on the constitutional history of France, Francogallia.4 Wounded deeply from witnessing more than a decade of civil war consume his country, and observing that many stood by unconcerned while others fanned the flames with ‘the bellows of their speeches and libels’, Hotman asserted that it was a patriotic service for one, however low  4 On the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, see Jouanna, The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre; Diefendorf, The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. On Hotman, see Kelley, François Hotman, and for his radicalization, pp. 227–38. For a critical edition of the text of Francogallia, see Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon. The work was originally published in Geneva in 1573.

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their station, to ‘throw a bucket of water on the conflagration’. Having already gathered, during relatively quieter times, several hundred quotations from medi­eval historical sources to serve as precedents and proof texts, Hotman now deployed them as his ‘bucket of water’ to show that the realm, by way of the Franks’ and Gauls’ traditional love of liberty, had flourished as a commonwealth for more than a thousand years, from the Merovingian through the Capetian dynasties, and that ‘a most certain remedy’ for his country’s present afflictions could thus be found in its ancient, ‘natural’ constitution.5 By following such ‘Franco-gallican’ tradition of placing governing power in the hands of the public assembly, or in its contemporary manifestation as the Estates General, the way would be opened to the expression of popular sentiment, to elective rather than hereditary (and thus often tyrannous) kingship, and thereupon to religious toleration — or so Hotman and his fellow Huguenots hoped.6 In his estimation, the realm’s ills were largely the product of Roman interference: of either ‘papimania’ — a slavish worshipping of the pope as if he were ‘some god cast down from heaven’ — or the pernicious rule of women, here using murderous Merovingian queens as rather transparent stand-ins for Catherine de Medici.7 Never had a bucket of water been so explosive. After receiving severe criticism from Catholic defenders of the monarchy, Hotman defiantly published a second edition of his work in 1576, fortified with additional historical evidence, and a third edition in 1586 that was now nearly twice the volume of the first.8 This last edition contained among its many new textual citations an especially striking supplement. It appeared as the sole addition to Hotman’s provocative chapter on ‘Whether Pippin was made king by the authority of the Pope or by that of the Francogallican council’, a chapter in which he had already cited on the issue numerous medi­eval authors, including Ado of Vienne, Regino of Prüm, Landulphus Sagax, Aimon of Fleury, Lampert of Hersfeld, Walramus of Naumburg, Sigebert of Gembloux, Otto of Freising, Godfrey of Viterbo, and Marsilius of Padua. As Hotman explains, while many Frankish kings were elected and

 5 Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, pp. 140–43, for the quotations. See Salavastru, ‘Historical Imaginary’.  6 Kelley, François Hotman, pp. 238–52; Wood, The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages, pp. 11–12. Cf. Giesey, ‘When and Why Hotman Wrote the Francogallia’, who argues that Hotman did not intend to write Francogallia as a polemical work, but that it was quickly read and received as one.  7 Kelley, François Hotman, pp. 242–43.  8 Critics included Antoine Matharel (1536–1586) and Jean-Papire Masson (1544–1611). For a discussion of their attacks (Matharel, Ad Franc. Hotomani Franco-galliam; Masson, Papirii Massoni responsio ad maledicta), and the ripostes by Hotman (Hotman, Matagonis de Matagonibus; Hotman, Strigilis Papirii Massoni), see Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, pp. 76–81; Kelley, François Hotman, pp. 252–60. The 1576 edition of Francogallia was published in Co­logne, the 1586 edition in Frankfurt. For an analysis of Hotman’s expansion of the work, see Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, pp. 81–107; Garnett, ‘Scholastic Thought in Humanist Guise’.

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deposed, not one had ever been appointed to or deprived of his kingdom by the authority of the pope; rather, it had always been the ‘solemn council of the people’ that exercised this right. Thus, all the medi­eval sources noted above that described the deposition of Childeric and ascension of Pippin in 751 had in fact long been and still were impudently misinterpreted by the ‘dishonest, malicious’ Roman Church for its own benefit, argued Hotman, a point which he demonstrated by explicating several of the sources to show what they actually proved: ‘Non si Franci Pipinum exquisita Papae sententia Regem crearunt, iccirco illum Papae imperio atque auctoritate creatum fuisse’ (although the Franks created Pippin king after seeking the opinion of the pope, he was not created so by the sovereignty and authority of the pope).9 And it is here, in the 1586 edition of Francogallia, that Hotman then added the following para­graph to punctuate this point: Proferam etiam testimonium insigne, quod mihi ex veteri quodam manu­scripto incerti auctoris libro missum est, in quo haec Archiepiscopi Maguntinensis ad Pipinum oratio profertur: ‘Galli omnium ordinum consensu hoc diadema regium cum oneris, tum honoris insigne capiti tuo mea manu inferunt: teque spoliis Childerici exornant, cuius non familiam aut maiorum memoriam, sed perditissimos mores oderunt, tuae virtutis lucem suspiciunt et amant. Quod si tantum lumen in te extingui superbia, aut obscurari ignavia senserint, quid de te illos facturos putas, quorum beneficio stabis, qui in eum qui suo iure, non alieno beneficio regnum obtinebat, tam severum exercuerunt iudicium? Disce igitur Pipine, alieno exemplo, atque periculo, regem agere, hoc est omnem curam et cogitationem in salute populi tui collocare’. (I shall also offer a remarkable piece of evidence that was sent to me from a certain ancient manu­script of undetermined authorship, in which is presented this address to Pippin by the archbishop of Mainz: ‘By my hand, the Gauls, with the consent of all the orders, place this diadem of kings, a symbol not only of their burden but of their honor, upon your head, and they adorn you with the accoutrements of Childeric. They did not hate his family or the memory of his ancestors, but rather his [own] most profligate habits. They esteem and love the light of your virtue. But if they should perceive that the great light in you has been extinguished by pride or shrouded by sloth, [then] what do you think that they, who exercised such harsh judgment upon him who obtained the kingdom by his own right without anyone’s help, would do about

 9 Hotman, Francogallia, p. 133; Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, pp. 364–65. See McKitterick, History and Memory, pp. 134–36. Hotman quotes, as the earliest attestation of such misinterpretation of the sources, Pope Gelasius from the twelfthcentury Corpus iuris canonici; as the latest, his critics Matharel and Masson. See Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, p. 360 n. 1; p. 370 nn. 27–28; and note 8 above.

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you who are established with their help? Therefore, learn, Pippin, by another’s example and also another’s peril [how] to act as king, that is, to place every concern and thought in the welfare of your people’.)10 This is an astonishing source about the royal elevation of Pippin, for, as Janet Nelson has noted, scholars of Carolingian Europe are unanimous in their belief that the Frankish clergy left no contemporary record of their understanding of the 751 ritual.11 Apparently unaware of Hotman’s ‘remarkable piece of evidence’, modern historians have long depended on only three retrospective, relatively laconic, and largely contradictory reports: (1) That commissioned by Childebrand in a section of the Continuations of the Chronicle of Fredegar, composed by an anonymous author sometime between 768 and 786: Quo tempore una cum consilio et consensu omnium Francorum missa relatione ad sede apostolica auctoritate praecepta praecelsus Pippinus electione totius Francorum in sedem regni cum consecratione episcoporum et subiectione principum una cum regina Bertradane, ut antiquitus ordo deposcit, sublimatur in regno. (At that time [in 751] it happened that together with the advice and consent of all the Franks the most excellent Pippin submitted a proposition to the Apostolic See, and having first obtained his sanction, was made king, and Bertrada queen. In accordance with that order anciently required, he was chosen king by all the Franks, consecrated by the bishops, and received the deference of the great men.)12 (2) That given by an anonymous annalist sometime between the late 780s and early 790s in what are now generally referred to as the Royal Frankish Annals: Pippinus secundum morem Francorum electus est ad regem et unctus per manum sanctae memoriae Bonefacii archiepiscopi et elevatus a Francis in regno in Suessionis civitate. Hildericus vero, qui false rex vocabatur, tonsoratus est et in monasterium missus.

 10 Hotman, Francogallia, pp. 133–34; Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, pp. 364–67. This is the only addition made to this chapter in the 1586 edition. In the Latin text, I have retained the punctuation from Hotman’s 1586 edition, and have used Salmon’s English translation of the text with modifications. The Oratio ad Pipinum would also appear in the posthumous edition of Francogallia published in 1600: Hotman, Franc. Hotmani Iurisconsulti, p. 60; and in 1665: Hotman, Francisci Hotomanni ICti celeberrimi, pp. 200–201. On these editions, see Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, pp. 110–15.  11 Nelson, ‘The Lord’s Anointed and the People’s Choice’, p. 152.  12 Fredegar, Chronicorum Liber Quartus cum Continuationibus, 33, ed. and trans. by WallaceHadrill, p. 102. On the date of its composition, see McKitterick, ‘The Illusion of Royal Power’, pp. 5–7. On the text and its transmission, see Collins, Die Fredegar-Chroniken.

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(Pippin was, according to the custom of the Franks, chosen king and was anointed by the hand of Archbishop Boniface of blessed memory and was elevated to the kingship by the Franks in the city of Soissons. Childeric [III, 743–751], who was falsely called king, was tonsured and sent to a monastery.)13 (3) That given in the so-called Clausula de unctione Pippini, whose anonymous author purports to be writing in 767, but who may in fact have composed it in the 830s or even as late as the 880s: Nam ipse praedictus domnus florentissimus Pippinus rex pius per auctoritatem et imperium sanctae recordationis domni Zachariae papae et unctionem sancti chrismatis per manus beatorum sacerdotum Galliarum et electionem omnium Franchorum tribus annis antea in regni solio sublimatus est. (This most prosperous lord and pious King Pippin had, three years previously, been raised to the throne of the kingdom by the authority and commandment of the lord Pope Zacharias of holy memory, and by unction with the holy chrism at the hands of the blessed priests of Gaul, and election by all the Franks.)14 As Rosamond McKitterick observes, ‘all three texts […] were written at best nearly two decades after the events they describe, and none survives in a manu­script close in date to the proposed dates of composition’.15 And as Hans-Werner Goetz has shown, nearly all subsequent accounts ultimately rely on the brief report given in the Royal Frankish Annals.16 Consequently, it is little wonder that the text of Hotman’s Oratio ad Pipinum at first glance appears so remarkable and so seductive, for through it one becomes party to an event customarily considered one of the great turning points in the political history of the West.17  13 Annales regni Francorum, s.a. 750, ed. by Kurze, pp. 8, 10; trans. by Dutton, Carolingian Civilization, p. 12. On the date of its composition, see McKitterick, ‘The Illusion of Royal Power’, p. 8. On the text and its transmission, see Reimitz, ‘Der Weg zum Königtum’; Tischler, ‘Der doppelte Kontext’.  14 Clausula de unctione Pippini, ed. by Krusch, p. 15; trans. by Dutton, Carolingian Civilization, p. 13. On the date of its composition, see McKitterick, ‘The Illusion of Royal Power’, pp. 7–8. Its transmission and reception have yet to be fully analysed; see Goetz, ‘Der Dynastiewechsel’, p. 358; Stoclet, ‘La Clausula’, pp. 722–23.  15 McKitterick, ‘The Illusion of Royal Power’, p. 8.  16 Goetz, ‘Der Dynastiewechsel’. See especially Goetz’s diagram of the relationships among the medi­eval sources, at p. 363, which demonstrates the predominant influence of the Annales regni Francorum on the historical memory of 751. See also the chart on pp. 366–67, which displays a corollary of this influence: the great predominance throughout the medi­eval historical record of Boniface (rather than the pope or bishops) as the specific agent of Pippin’s elevation.  17 Such an opportunity is made all the more appealing by the often-contradictory information provided by the three earliest sources reviewed above, which has led to much uncertainty about the event. See, for example, Koziol, The Politics of Memory and Identity, p. 325,

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a Figure 16.1. Rear fly-leaf, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Réserve des livres rares, Rés. L45.1 (= Pierre Pithou, Annalium et historiae Francorum ab anno Christi DCCVIII ad annum DCCCCXC scriptores coaetanei XII […] (Paris, 1588), Pithou’s personal copy). Reproduced with permission of Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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Apart from Hotman’s quotation, the Oratio ad Pipinum is also extant in at least four handwritten copies of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and was reproduced once in print. All these appearances are associated with a close group of Parisian jurists and scholars, and evince their networks, their patterns and methods of information exchange, and the immediate causes to which they put their extensive knowledge of the past.18 (1) On a rear flyleaf of his personal copy of his published collection of Carolingian historical texts, Annalium et historiae Francorum ab anno Christi DCCVIII ad annum DCCCCXC scriptores coaetanei XII […] (Paris, 1588), the great French jurist and scholar Pierre Pithou (1539–1596) copied with his own hand the address to Pippin, perhaps with the intention of adding it to a future edition of the book (Figure 16.1a).19 The text, here entitled ‘Oratio ep[iscop]i Moguntinensis ad Pipinu[m]’, matches that published by Hotman, apart from some minor differences in punctuation and contraction that likely reflect Pithou’s own parsing of its syntax. In the upper left margin Pithou flagged the text with a psi (for ‘pseudes’?) and an — alas — largely illegible cross reference (‘fictia Carpe[n]terio 157’?20) (Figure 16.1b), which is clear enough to determine that it does not correspond to Hotman’s volume.21

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‘Even when not intentionally mendacious, Carolingian “collective memory” was still breathtakingly careless with the simplest, most straightforward declarative facts, like Zacharias’ being the pope who authorised Pippin’s anointing and Boniface the bishop who performed it’. On the question of Boniface’s presence at Pippin’s unction in 751 and the possible reasons for his inclusion in or omission from the Carolingian sources, see McKitterick, ‘The Illusion of Royal Power’, pp. 15–17; Schneider, ‘Die Königserhebung Pippins’, pp. 255–57. On 751 as a turning point, see Hatch, ‘751 C.E.’. See Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship, pp. 245–49, who underscores this point with respect to these ‘érudits du roi’. See BnF, Réserve des livres rares, Rés. L45.1 (= Pierre Pithou, Annalium et historiae Francorum ab anno Christi DCCVIII ad annum DCCCCXC scriptores coaetanei XII [. . .] (Paris: Chappelet, 1588)), Pithou’s personal copy, with the ex-libris of Étienne Baluze (1630–1718) on the title page (accessible online at [accessed 20 April 2021]). Another note on the title page states that the book first passed from Pithou to his nephew Charles Labbé, and then to Étienne Baluze. A second hand adds that the book subsequently came into the possession of Louis de Targny (1659–1737). De Targny was garde des manuscrits of the Bibliothèque du Roi between 1726 and 1737, which is likely how the book came to the Bibliothèque nationale. On Pithou, see Grosley, Vie de Pierre Pithou; de Rosanbo, ‘Pierre Pithou’; Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship, pp. 241–70; McKitterick, ‘The Study of Frankish History’, pp. 559–61; Malettke, ‘Pierre Pithou als Historiker’; Fragonard and Leroy, eds, Les Pithou. Perhaps here Pithou is referring to Pierre C(h)arpentier (d. 1612), an ostensible Protestant and former law professor of Geneva, who by 1570 was living in Paris and in 1572 would become infamous as a traitor for publicly blaming the more militant Huguenots for the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. See Kingdon, Myths about the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacres, pp. 112–18; and Viénot, ‘Un Apo­logiste’. In March 1573, Hotman wrote of his outrage regarding the ‘wretch’ Carpentier, so it is unlikely that he later acquired the Oratio from him; see Dareste, ‘François Hotman’, pp. 367–68. This cross-reference may refer to the original source of Pithou’s copy of the Oratio (i.e.

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Pithou must have written all this between the termini of 1588, the publication date of the book in which he copied the Oratio ad Pipinum, and his death on 1 November 1596.22 At the bottom of the page a colophon was added by a seventeenth-century hand, perhaps that of Charles Labbé (1582–1657), Pithou’s nephew, who inherited the book. This note states that the Oratio can also be found in ‘the first volume of [records] called the Collection of M. Dupuis, which is currently at the house of M. le President de Menard’.23 (2) The reference given in the colophon to Pithou’s copy of the Oratio leads to the second handwritten copy of the text. It appears within a volume of miscellaneous notes and texts relating to the history of France between 636 and 1482, some copied by the famed Dupuy brothers Pierre (1582–1651) and Jacques (1591–1656), some copied by other scholars or scribes, but all compiled by the Dupuys.24 According to the colophon, that miscellany volume was once at the home of the Dupuys’ contemporary François de Maynard (1583–1646), president of Aurillac and member of the Académie française.25 Still extant, it is now housed in the Bibliothèque nationale de France and conveniently retains the shelfmark ‘Collection Dupuy 1’.26 The text of the Oratio ad Pipinum, copied alone on a single leaf and mounted in the volume as folio 8 (Figure 16.2), is exactly as it appears both on the flyleaf of the Pithou volume and in Hotman’s 1586 edition of Francogallia, apart from a few slight differences in punctuation and contraction (again likely the product of its copyist’s parsing of the syntax).27 someone other than Hotman), or it perhaps reflects Pithou’s later discovery of the Oratio’s forger, whom he noted beside text that he had earlier copied from Hotman’s Francogallia. Pithou was well acquainted with Hotman; in 1566, he even served as Hotman’s legal representative in the latter’s attempts to have his French fiefs returned. See Kelley, François Hotman, p. 182. In 1585, Hotman referred to Pithou in terms of highest praise; see Langer, Perfect Friendship, p. 71 n. 17.  22 Because the Oratio was not incorporated in the second edition of Pithou’s source collection, published in Frankfurt in 1594, it may be — depending on the extent of Pithou’s involvement in the publication of the second edition — that he recorded the addendum and subsequently ascertained its fraudulence sometime between 1588 and 1594. However, errors that Pithou noted within his author-copy of his 1588 edition were not emended in the 1594 edition, which suggests that his involvement in the latter was negligible.  23 The colophon appears as follows: ‘Ce discours se trouve au premier volume des inscrit appellés, la Collection de M. Dupuis, laquelle est

résentement chez M. le President de Menard’. Since it notes that Maynard has present possession of the volume, the colophon must have been recorded sometime before his death in 1646 (and sometime after 1633; see note 27 below). Pithou’s illegible marginal note is clear enough to determine that it does not refer to Dupuy (or the Latinized version ‘Puteanus’).  24 On the Dupuy brothers and their library, see Delatour, ‘Le cabinet des frères Dupuy’; Delatour, ‘Les frères Dupuy et leurs correspondances’; Delatour, ‘De Pithou à Dupuy’.  25 On Maynard, see Maynard et son temps; Drouhet, Le poète François Mainard.  26 See Dorez, Catalogue de la Collection Dupuy, pp. 1–3.  27 Dorez, Catalogue de la Collection Dupuy, p. 1, notes that a ‘Discours de l’eveque de Mayence a Pepin’ appears on fol. 8r of vol. i. (The manu­script is accessible online at [accessed 20 April 2021].)

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Figure 16.2. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Dupuy 1, fol. 8r. Reproduced with permission of Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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Figure 16.3. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 10303, p. 204. Reproduced with permission of Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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(3) Another contemporary (in addition to Labbé and Maynard) also saw the Dupuys’ miscellany: the courtier and scholar Pierre de L’Estoile (1546–1611). In a detailed diary entry, L’Estoile records that he borrowed the Oratio ad Pipinum from Jacques Dupuy on 30 June 1607, together with numerous other texts on loose sheets assembled in a dossier, and that he returned it after himself making a copy (shortly after 13 July 1607).28 L’Estoile’s copy of the Oratio is extant: BnF, MS français 10303, p. 204 (Figure 16.3).29 (4) Still another copy of the Dupuy miscellany, including the Oratio ad Pipinum, was made in the mid-seventeenth century: BnF, MS français 3910, fol. 2v (Figure 16.4). Not only do the manu­script’s contents demonstrate that its source was clearly Collection Dupuy 1, but on its title page it states ‘Collection de divers antiens tiltres servans la plus grande partie à l’Histoire de France. Jusques au Roy Louis XI. Ce volume est cotté I. en L’inventaire de Monsr. Du Puy’. Precisely when, for whom, and why this copy was made is unknown. There are a handful of variants in its text of the Oratio ad Pipinum: ‘major’ for ‘maiorum’; ‘perinde’ for ‘periculo’; and ‘cognitionem’ for ‘cogitationem’. The volume had been in the possession of the de Mesmes family, until it was sold with the rest of their library to the Bibliothèque du Roi in 1731.30

He provides a detailed list of the other texts and documents contained in the volume, which largely date from the later Middle Ages. It is unclear precisely when the Dupuys compiled the volume, but a terminus post quem is 8 March 1633, as it contains a letter written on this date from Jean Besley to Peiresc (fol. 16), and a terminus ante quem is 1646, the year of Maynard’s death (see note 23 above).  28 L’Estoile, Mémoires-Journaux, pp. 311–14, ‘Ce jour, M. Du Pui m’a apporté et mis entre les mains les Traictés suivans, que j’avois cottés sur son inventaire:’** [**Note in the margin: ‘Escrits que M. Du Pui le jeune m’a presté, ce samedi dernier juing 1607’]. There follows a list of forty-five titles of texts, including the ‘Episc. Mogunt. Oratio ad Pipinum’, each of which is glossed by one of the following annotations: ‘Rendu sans copié’, ‘R. s. c’., ‘Bon, rendu’, ‘B. r’., ‘Rendu’, ‘R’. The Episc. Mogunt. Oratio ad Pipinum is marked with an ‘R’. After the list, L’Estoile concludes: ‘Il y en avoit plusieurs aultres en la liasse, que ledit Du Pui m’apporta, mesmes la Thoulouze de Rouaddes, qui est une bonne pièce; mais, pour estre longue et n’avoir tant de loisir d’escrire, lui ay rendue avec les autres, aiant retenu seulement les susescrites, que j’ay trouvées les meilleures, pour en tirer copie, à ma commodité, ou du tout ou d’une partie’. The presence of an ‘R’ written in the top left corner of the folio containing the Oratio within the Collection Dupuy volume (Fig. 16.2) strongly suggests that this is the very sheet that L’Estoile had seen. On this exchange of texts between Dupuy and L’Estoile, see Hamilton, Pierre de L’Estoile and his World, pp. 175–77. On L’Estoile, see Greffe and Lothe, La vie, les livres et les lectures. L’Estoile was also a friend of Pithou, colleague of Hotman, and sympathetic to Francogallia; see Kelley, François Hotman, pp. 238, 252; Greffe and Lothe, La vie, les livres et les lectures, pp. 233, 290–91, 716–17.  29 On the creation of this manu­script, see Hamilton, Pierre de L’Estoile and his World, p. 176. (The manu­script is accessible online at [accessed 20 April 2021].)  30 For a list of the manu­script’s contents (previous shelfmarks = Anc. 8542(6); de Mesmes 113), see Catalogue général des manuscrits français, p. 133. For a brief account of the fate of the de Mesmes library, see Delisle, Le cabinet des manuscrits, pp. 397–400. I thank Claudia Rabel for her generous assistance in examining this manu­script.

Figure 16.4. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 3910, fol. 2v. Reproduced with permission of Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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co u rtn e y   m . b o o ke r Figure 16.5. Detail, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Dupuy 1, fol. 8r. Reproduced with permission of Bibliothèque nationale de France.

In review, the Dupuys possessed a copy of the Oratio from an unknown exemplar for some time before briefly lending their copy to Pierre L’Estoile (in June–July 1607), who himself made a copy. The Dupuys then later compiled their copy of the Oratio within their Collection volume of miscellaneous papers sometime between 1633 and 1646, when someone — perhaps Charles Labbé – knew of the volume’s presence at the house of François de Maynard (as noted in the colophon to the Oratio in Pithou’s book).31 At some point in the mid- to late seventeenth century the Dupuys’ Collection volume was again copied, this time in its entirety. (5) At the top left corner of folio 8r in the Collection Dupuy volume (Figure 16.5), another hand noted that the Oratio can also be found in ‘Fauchet livre vi ch. i’. Following this marginal annotation leads to the 1610 reprint of French courtier and historian Claude Fauchet’s (1530–1602) work Fleur de la maison de Charlemaigne.32 Here, in remarks originally published in 1601, Fauchet refers to Hotman’s alleged discovery of fifteen years earlier with a great deal of suspicion: I’ay autresfois veu une Harangue, qu’un homme de sçavoir et de qualité, mais mal affectionné à nos Rois, ainsi qu’il a monstré par effet, m’a dit avoir extrait d’un tres-ancien livre, laquelle, encore que ie la tienne pour suspecte, ce neantmoins semble estre digne d’estre recitee: quand ce ne seroit que pour admonester les Rois de leur devoir: Ioint qu’elle s’accorde à l’Epistre du Pape Zacharie, dont Aventin nous a laissé un eschantillon en ses Annales de Bavieres. Ceste remonstrance ou Harangue, est sous la personne de Boniface: lequel presentant la Couronne à Pepin, luy dit. ‘Que les Gaulois du consentement de tous Estats, par ses mains, posoient ceste Couronne sur sa teste pour marque de sa charge et dignité: et le paroient des despoüilles du Roy Childeric, la maison duquel ils ne hayssoient pas,  31 Charles Labbé was a close friend of the Dupuy brothers and L’Estoile; see Hamilton, Pierre de L’Estoile and his World, p. 177; Greffe and Lothe, La vie, les livres et les lectures, pp. 444, 631–32, 637. On the chrono­logical parameters of the Collection volume’s assembly, see note 27 above. I am unaware if Maynard ever made a copy of the Oratio or any other text from the Collection Dupuy volume while it was in his possession (unless BnF, MS français 3910 was in fact made by or for him).  32 See Fauchet, Les Antiquitez, fol. 198r–v (Book vi, Chapter 1). The text originally appeared in Fauchet, Fleur de la maison de Charlemaigne, pp. 3–4 (Book i, Chapter 1). On Fauchet, see Espiner-Scott, Claude Fauchet, esp. pp. 282–322, for his historical work. For Fauchet’s library, see Bisson, ‘Claude Fauchet’s Manu­scripts’; Holmes and Radoff, ‘Claude Fauchet and his Library’.

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ne la memoire de ses ancestres, ains ses moeurs lasches: aymans et portans honneur à la vertu et lustre de sa race: lesquels si une fois ils appercevoient s’esteindre en lui par orgueil, ou se ternir par lascheté, que devoit il penser que feroient ceux qui auroient à le iuger, ayans ja donné un tant severe Arrest contre celuy qui possedoit le Royaume de son Chef! Que Pepin donc apprist à l’exemple et danger d’autruy, d’estre et faire le Roy: c’est à dire de mettre tout soing et son entente à procurer le repos et le salut du peuple’. Portant honneur et reverence à Dieu, qui l’avoit eslevé par dessus le sang Royal: luy (disoit-il) qui en estoit totalement esloigné. Mais ceste remonstrance est suspecte: non tant pour le langage Latin, plus net que le temps ne portoit: que pour ces mots, Gaulois, et tous Estats. Car il est certain, que les François (principalement Austrasiens) estoient si jaloux de leur nom, qu’ils ne s’assembloient que sous le tiltre de François: Tant s’en faut qu’ils eussent enduré d’estre appellez Gaulois; et en ceste qualité donner à Pepin la Couronne de leur Royaume. Encores me font douter ces mots Latins, omnium ordinum. Car lors il ne se parloit d’Estats, ne d’ordres; N’y aiant que les Evesques, Abbez, Comtes et Nobles, qui se trouvassent aux Sânes, Plaids generaux, ou Parlemens, et les Comtes, Commissaires ou Advouez, pour rapporter les plainctes du common de leur territoire. (I saw some time ago a Harangue which a man of knowledge and quality but of ill-affection for our kings (as he has in effect demonstrated) told me that he had taken from an ancient book, and which — although I deem it suspect — nevertheless seems worthy of being reproduced here, if for no other reason than to admonish kings of their duty. In addition, it concurs with the Epistle of Pope Zacharias, of which Aventinus has left us a sample in his Annals of Bavaria.33 This remonstrance or Harangue is [delivered] in the person of Boniface, who presented the crown to Pepin, saying to him:34 ‘That the Gauls, with the consent of all the Estates, by his hands were placing this crown on his head to indicate his responsibility and his dignity and were adorning him with the spoils of King Childeric, whose house they did not hate, nor the memory of his ancestors, but they did hate his cowardly manners because they loved and honored the virtue and resplendence of his race. Thus, if they were ever to perceive that these had been extinguished in him by pride, or tarnished by cowardice, what ought he think that they would do who would judge him, having already given such a severe arrest against him who possessed the kingdom from his ruler [i.e. father]! That Pepin, therefore, should learn from the example of,  33 See Aventinus, Annales Ducum Boiariae, ed. by Riezler, pp. 402–03 (lib. iii, cap. 9); Jaffe, ed., Bibliotheca rerum Germanicarum, pp. 226–27, no. 81.  34 As Fauchet only prints the text of the Oratio in French translation (though he clearly knew the Latin, to which he briefly refers and quotes below), this was not the source of the Latin text found in the Collection Dupuy volume. On Fauchet’s decision to publish his works in French, see Espiner-Scott, Claude Fauchet, pp. 286–87.

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and danger from, others to be and to act as king: that is, to put all his care and his understanding into obtaining the peace and welfare of the people’, honoring and revering God, who elevated him over the royal blood — him who, as he said himself, was totally removed from it. But this remonstrance is suspect: not so much for the quality of the Latin, which is clearer than that of the time; but for these words Gauls and all the Estates. Because it is certain that the French (principally the Austrasians) were so jealous of their name that they would not assemble unless under the title of ‘The French’: They were far from deigning to endure being called ‘Gauls’; and in this quality to give Pepin the crown of their kingdom. The Latin words omnium ordinum add to my doubts, because at that time one did not speak of Estates or of orders, as there were only the bishops, abbots, counts, and nobles who were members of the synods, assemblies of justice, or parlements, and the counts, commissioners, or lawyers, who could relate the complaints of the populace about their realm.)35 After this astute critique by Fauchet, the Oratio ad Pipinum disappears entirely from the historical record (except — as we have seen — as part of a copy of the Collection Dupuy miscellany, made first by L’Estoile in 1607 and then again by an anonymous scribe sometime in the mid- to late seventeenth century). Interest in the text seems to have been confined to the brief period between 1586, with its mysterious reception by Hotman, and the first decade of the seventeenth century, with men like Pithou, the Dupuy brothers, L’Estoile, and Fauchet taking note of it, and others later supplying cross-references to it. Whether Hotman’s printed text was their mutual source remains unclear.36

 35 Fauchet, Fleur de la maison de Charlemaigne, pp. 3–4 (Book i, Chapter 1).  36 An investigation of whether there exist any marginal annotations on the Oratio left by contemporary readers of Hotman’s and Fauchet’s books would likely pay dividends.

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Since, to my knowledge, no one refers to the text again, it is impossible to say for certain that Fauchet was responsible for the subsequent lack of attention paid to the Oratio ad Pipinum. On the one hand, such neglect may rather stem simply from the fact that later interest in Hotman’s Francogallia almost always focused on the first (1573) and second (1576) editions of the work (which lacked the Oratio) due to their fiery prose and powerful arguments, which were mitigated and distorted in the later editions.37 Hence, the Oratio’s first appearance in the 1586 edition was likely often overlooked. On the other hand, the Oratio contains several overt anomalies and anachronisms that strongly suggest it to be a forgery, and not only those examples given by Fauchet. Let me quickly review a few of its conspicuous irregularities. While Fauchet’s estimation of the use of the terms Galli and omnium ordinum as anachronistic in an allegedly eighth-century text is arguable, there are other elements of the Oratio ad Pipinum that raise greater suspicion.38 First, Fauchet recognized that the text clearly betrays a rhetorical structure that mirrors the ‘remonstrance’, a genre that was extremely popular in sixteenth-century France, but bears little resemblance to early medi­eval coronation ordines.39 As Paul-Alexis Mellet observes, the remonstrance was a collective, anonymous expression that presented itself as the true voice of the people; it sought to inform everyone — the king in particular — of the realm’s concerns and complaints, and had particular currency in the context of the Estates General, which met frequently during the period (1560–1561, 1576–1577, and 1588–1589).40 It typically consists of three main parts: an ‘act of allegiance to the addressee, which serves as a recognition of his power, but

 37 See Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, pp. 107–28, at p. 107, ‘Whatever Hotman’s intentions in making the revisions of 1586, it was in the spirit of the 1573 and, more particularly, of the 1576 editions that the Francogallia was remembered’.  38 Boniface is known to have used the term Galli in distinction from Franci; e.g. Boniface, Epistolae, ed. by Tangl, no. 32 (p. 56), ‘sacerdotes per totam Franciam et per Gallias’; no. 78 (p. 165), ‘principum Francorum et Gallorum’. He was hardly exceptional in doing so; see Lugge, ‘Gallia’ und ‘Francia’ im Mittelalter. It is not clear to me how Fauchet was so certain that ‘the French’ (Austrasians) in the time of Boniface jealously guarded their name, and would take it as an insult to be called Galli; see the remarks of Lugge, ‘Gallia’ und ‘Francia’ im Mittelalter, pp. 208–15, on ‘Francia, Gallia, Germania und der Humanismus’. The expression ‘omnium ordinum’ was also used in the early Middle Ages: e.g. Hincmar of Reims, De divortio, ed. by Böhringer, praefatio (p. 113), ‘omnium ordinum personas’; Anhang responsio 2 (p. 236), ‘universus ordo et omnium ordinum homines’. Fauchet’s estimation that the Latinity of the Oratio was too good for its purported time was likely due in part to his assumptions about the barbarity of the Middle Ages and its ‘corrupt’ Latin. Yet, his judgement of its relative quality notwithstanding, Fauchet was correct in discerning in the text of the Oratio a distinct difference in style between its Latinity and that of the eighth century. On Boniface’s Latin prose style, see Herren, ‘Boniface’s Epistolary Prose Style’; Orchard, ‘Old Sources, New Resources’.  39 For Fauchet’s remarks, see note 35 above. On early medi­eval coronation ordines, see Jackson, ed., Ordines Coronationis Franciae.  40 Mellet, ‘Les remontrances’.

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also opens up the possibility (at least in theory) of his receiving criticism. This is followed by the remonstrance itself, which is a more or less strong complaint (in some cases limited to a simple expression of regret), sometimes delivered before the king orally (for instance, in the case of the Estates General or of the ambassador)’.41 It then usually concludes with a proposed solution, in the form of an exhortation or supplication. As a form of discourse, the remonstrance ‘not only summarizes or describes the current state of affairs’, adds Jeff Kendrick, ‘but also calls on its addressee to take action in a patently confrontational way. The option of neutrality does not remain on the table’. Throwing the condition of the realm into sharp relief, it ‘push[es] the king to action, shapes and defines the identity of opposing parties, and opens the door to later resistance while maintaining a veneer of loyalty’.42 The Oratio manifestly displays every one of these constitutive elements. A close inspection of the Oratio’s vocabulary only strengthens the suspicion of its being an early modern creation. Many of the words in the text do not appear in any extant work of Boniface (diadema, spolium, odisse, ignavia, stare, severus, collocare).43 Indeed, when Boniface did speak of a king being established (in a monitory letter to King Aethelbald of Mercia, c. 746–747), he used terms such as merita, pietas, and constituere to emphasize the role of God over man in the process;44 the Oratio, in striking contrast, makes no mention whatsoever of the sacred or divine, but focuses on the transactional, strictly terrestrial relationship between a sovereign and his people. Moreover, the collocations in the Oratio of ‘mores od(isse)’ and ‘disc(ere) […] alieno exemplo’ both occur with frequency in works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but rarely any earlier.45 The classical expression ‘maiorum memoria’ is used by Hotman himself in Francogallia three times.46 But most damning of all is the appearance

 41 Mellet, ‘Les remontrances’, p. 247. See also Mellet, ‘L’expression politique de la plainte’.  42 Kendrick, ‘Reprimanding the King’, pp. 70–71.  43 Men such as Fauchet, Pithou, and Hotman would not have been able to make such broad, intertextual analyses, as the works of Boniface had not yet been published. The editio princeps of Boniface’s letters would appear in 1605 (Serarius, Epistolae S. Bonifaci martyris). See C.A.L.M.A., pp. 478–79.  44 See Boniface, Epistolae, 73, ed. by Tangl, pp. 149–50 (my emphasis), ‘et memor sis, quia inde­cens esse conprobatur, ut imaginem Dei, quae in te creata est, per luxoriam ad imaginem et similitudinem maligni diaboli convertas et tu, quem non propria merita, sed larga pietas Dei regem ac principem multorum constituit, te ipsum per luxoriam servum maligno spiritui constituas, quia iuxta dictum apostoli quodcumque peccatum fecerit homo, huius servus est’.  45 For ‘mores od(isse)’, see, e.g., de Mariana, Historiae de rebus hispaniae, p. 10; Zwinger, Methodus apodemica, p. 56; Lindanus, Panoplia Evangelica, p. 314; Sabellico, Rapsodiae historiarum Enneadum, p. 165. For ‘disc(ere) […] alieno exemplo’, see, e.g., Malvenda, Commentaria in Sacram Scripturam, p. 180; Illyricus, Clavis scripturae, p. 97; de Mariana, De rege et regis institutione, p. 210.  46 Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, pp. 268, 288, 372. Cf. Tacitus, Annales, xiv. 40. 2, whose use would inspire many imitators during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Hotman quotes other passages from the Annales four times in Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, pp. 146, 162, 168, 178.

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in the Oratio of the phrase ‘suo iure non alieno beneficio’ (by his own right [and] not by the gift/help of another). This is a technical legal clause, whose source is the Digest of Justinian (ii. 1. 5): ‘More maiorum ita comparatum est, ut is demum iurisdictionem mandare possit, qui eam suo iure, non alieno beneficio habet’ (By the custom of our ancestors it has been brought to pass that he who can delegate his jurisdiction can only be one who possesses it by his own right and not by the gift of another).47 While the Digest was largely unavailable in the early Middle Ages (a point made elsewhere by Hotman himself),48 many early modern jurists — including Hotman — were extremely knowledgeable of it, and even discussed this particular bit of Roman law in relation to its application in their own time (a point to which I shall return).49 Whether consciously or unconsciously, whoever wrote the Oratio ad Pipinum had not only the Royal Frankish Annals’ account of Pippin’s elevation at the hand of Boniface in mind, but the diction of the Digest as well, and expressed himself in its distinctive legal idiom. Hotman stressed two other legal principles from abstruse sources in Francogallia that also have suspicious parallels in the Oratio ad Pipinum.50 The first is the ‘salus populi’ formula of ancient Roman law — ‘salus populi suprema lex esto’ (Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law) — a Ciceronian dictum that Hotman quotes six times and always offsets in small capitals for special emphasis.51 This is strikingly reminiscent of the Oratio ad Pipinum’s concluding command to Pippin regarding proper royal behaviour: ‘hoc est omnem curam et cogitationem in salute populi tui collocare’ (to place every

 47 Digesta Iustiniani Augusti, ii. 1. 5 ( Julian), ed. by Mommsen, p. 40 (my emphasis). On this passage, see Harries, Law and Empire, pp. 101–02; Perrin, ‘“Legatus” in Medi­eval Roman Law’, pp. 364–67.  48 For an exhaustive treatment of the fate of Justinian’s Corpus in the early medi­eval West, see Radding and Ciaralli, The Corpus Iuris Civilis in the Middle Ages. See, for example, p. 47: ‘The Justinianic codification simply fell from sight and from use, in Italy and everywhere else, between the end of the sixth century and the end of the eighth’. By the ninth century, the only citations of the Justinianic Code are in a few papal letters. See Müller, ‘The Recovery of Justinian’s Digest’; Fiori, ‘Roman Law Sources and Canonical Collections’. On Boniface and his use of law, see Moore, ‘Canon Law and Royal Power’; Glatthaar, Bonifatius und das Sakrileg. On Hotman’s views about the Code in the early Middle Ages, see Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, p. 36.  49 See Lee, Popular Sovereignty, pp. 79–157, esp. pp. 85, 91, 104–09, 111. Throughout Francogallia Hotman quotes from the Digest by name no less than twenty times, and refers to iurisdictio three times: Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, pp. 158, 162, 248, 250, 260, 344, 346, 476, and for iurisdictio, pp. 511, 513, 521. For his discussion of the ‘suo iure non alieno beneficio’ concept, see Hotman, Commentarius in quatuor libros, p. 279; Hotman, Novus Commentarius, p. 226 (s.v. ‘More maiorum’).  50 On these principles, Kelley, François Hotman, p. 246.  51 Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, pp. 296, 300, 316, 342, 414, 450. The maxim is from Cicero, De legibus, iii. 3. 8. As Giesey notes (p. 89 n. 3), the maxim had already been used in the fifteenth century to support the right of resistance. See Rueger, ‘Gerson, the Conciliar Movement and the Right of Resistance’.

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concern and thought in the welfare of your people). The second dictum is the so-called Aragonese Oath, a Spanish ceremonial formula according to legend allegedly sworn by the ancient people of the realm of Aragon when they elected a new king. Hotman quotes the Oath with admiration in both Spanish and Latin, and again offsets it in small capitals: ‘Nos qui tanti sumus, quanti vos, et plusquam vos possumus, Regem vos eligimus, his atque his conditionibus’ (We, who are worth as much as you and can do more than you, elect you as king upon such and such conditions).52 In the 1586 edition of Francogallia, Hotman added nine lengthy para­graphs of genuine historical parallels to shore up the unknown origin and questionable authenticity of the Aragonese Oath.53 And it was in this same edition that he also added the Oratio ad Pipinum, with its parallel rhetorical structure of conditions tendered by a fearsome people, the Galli, to their new, probationary sovereign. Although there is no evidence of Hotman himself forging texts outright, scholars have long identified his tendency in Francogallia of twisting and distorting the sources that he does quote in order to make them suit his arguments. A notorious example is the subtle alteration in his book’s second edition of a passage from Ado of Vienne’s chronicle, in which Hotman changed ‘erigunt’ to read ‘eligunt’ — with the rather expedient result that the Frankish king, Theuderic III, had not simply been ‘raised up’ in 673, but was now explicitly ‘elected’, thereby attesting to Hotman’s thesis.54 Other passages invoked by Hotman are often abbreviated or quoted out of context, while inconvenient evidence is at times left in abeyance.55 Unlike his contemporary critics, who seized on these practices, Hotman’s modern editors interpret such distortions charitably — that ‘he may often have bent his sources unconsciously’ on account of his fervid belief ‘that he had discerned an essential truth about the nature of the French constitution to which others were blind’.56 Yet, Hotman himself was acutely aware of the practice of distortion and forgery; in Francogallia he warns that the records documenting Pippin’s succession of Childeric should be read with caution, since Pippin and his sons ‘sought out men of ingenuity’ (homines ingeniosi), such as Einhard, to

 52 Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, pp. 306–09.  53 Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, pp. 309–17. The Aragonese Oath was a topic of considerable interest among a number of Huguenot scholars during the last quarter of the sixteenth century; see Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, pp. 102–03, as well as Giesey, If Not, Not, pp. 20–24.  54 See Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, p. 230. The change was noticed by Hotman’s critics, to whom Hotman responded with additional evidence; see Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, p. 56 n. 1. Note that the editors supply an erroneous citation for the original source of the passage (rightly PL, cxxiii, col. 116; not PL, cxiii), and elsewhere mistakenly attribute the passage to Aimon of Fleury (p. 56).  55 Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, pp. 55–58; Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, p. 318, for examples.  56 Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, p. 57. For Hotman’s contemporary critics, see note 8 above.

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doctor the accounts by ‘exaggerat[ing] the inactivity of Childeric and the slothfulness of the earlier kings’.57 Practising what he has preached regarding reading warily, two para­graphs after his quotation of the Oratio ad Pipinum, Hotman reproduces and pillories the famous letter of Pope Stephen II on his divine vision at Saint-Denis in 754, his subsequent anointing of Pippin and his sons, and his concluding anathema to the Frankish nobles and their descendants ‘never to take upon themselves in any way the constituting of a king from any other stock through all the following ages’.58 Here, thunders Hotman, is certain proof of the Roman Church’s dishonesty, for the ‘stupid and mad old fox’ Pope Stephen clearly tailored his letter to fit the ‘fabula’ that the pope alone has the right to appoint or depose kings. This scathing charge of papal ‘folly’ (ridicula vesania) is rather jarring, coming as it does on the heels of Hotman’s seemingly credulous, nonchalant quotation of the Oratio ad Pipinum. Of course, the content of the Oratio supported his argument, while Stephen’s letter undermined it, which would seem to account for the differing degrees of scrutiny paid, and credibility given, to each text. In a letter to a friend more than a decade earlier, Hotman had anticipated such suspicions about his tendentious handling of the evidence, and threw down a gauntlet to any who would voice them; Francogallia ‘is a historical book, the history of a fact’, he explained. ‘Hardly three propositions are set forth without the clearest evidence and documents. If [my critics] complain that I have set anything forth improperly, or invented anything, or advanced as true some forgery, let them bring it forth in a public writing. I will submit to a debate even at the risk of my own head’ (Ep. to Jacob Cappel, 2 March 1575).59 For the modern reader who traces Hotman’s process of revision and augmentation through the editions of Francogallia, it is difficult not to read such a statement as Hotman protesting too much. In addition to the anachronisms of its Latin style in general and some of its termino­logy in particular, the Oratio ad Pipinum appears in Hotman’s work preceded by what Anthony Grafton has called ‘one of the great topoi of Western forgery, the motif of the object found […], then copied, and now lost’.60 Recall that, according to Hotman, the ‘remarkable piece of evidence’ was sent to him ‘from a certain ancient manu­script of undetermined authorship’.61 It is the only source text in all editions of Francogallia to which the normally quite careful Hotman ascribes such a vague, unverifiable origin.62

 57 Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, p. 355. See McKitterick, ‘The Illusion of Royal Power’, p. 3.  58 Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, pp. 369–71.  59 Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, p. 76; Kelley, François Hotman, p. 254.  60 Grafton, Forgers and Critics, p. 9.  61 Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, p. 364.  62 In Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, p. 364 n. 22, the editors do not supply a source for the Oratio ad Pipinum (in the critical apparatus Giesey states ‘Non invenio’, a statement he maintained in a personal communication, 7 January 2005). On p. 47

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His enigmatic description of how he acquired it was presumably meant to suggest that a reader of an earlier edition of Francogallia — someone who was sympathetic to Hotman’s views about the monarchy being elective and beyond the authority of the pope, and who had come across the Oratio ad Pipinum within some old manu­script — had sent the text to him in order to help support his argument. And indeed, between the editions of Francogallia, Hotman did in fact solicit the suggestions and contributions of friends in order to help fortify his work’s thesis.63 Yet, why he decided to employ such a doubtful text, one bearing such incriminating consonance with Hotman’s own language and style, to strengthen his argument against papal sovereignty is difficult to understand. Hotman’s use of the Oratio is even more perplexing when one realizes that it only suited his needs rather awkwardly, for by the 1586 edition of Francogallia his argument had in fact radically changed. Recall that in the book’s first edition of 1573, Hotman sought to show that the people, not the papacy, have the right to choose their sovereign. In light of the recent massacre and persecutions of Huguenots by the Roman Catholic French monarch, the urgent need of the Huguenots was to check the royal power — a need for which Hotman laboured with his polemical compilation of historical and constitutional precedents that underscored the liberty and primacy of the ‘Franco-gallican’ people. By 1584, however, events had taken a dramatic turn: the French king Henry III’s brother and presumptive heir, Francis, duke of Anjou, died, throwing the realm into a crisis over the succession, since the next legitimate heir was Henry of Navarre, an unrepentant Protestant. In short order, Pope Sixtus V excommunicated the ‘heretic’ Henry in 1585. Given this new state of affairs, in the 1586 edition of Francogallia, Hotman rapidly remade the past to fit the desired, Henrican future. Hotman heavily edited his text so that on the one hand its original arguments for the people’s sovereignty were now twisted and reversed in support of royal hereditary right, and on the other hand its arguments against the interference of the Roman Church were fortified.64 The inclusion of the Oratio contributed to these efforts only clumsily, as the new text undermined not just the case for papal primacy of their editorial introduction, Giesey and Salmon note, without further comment, that ‘the 1586 version [of Francogallia] included yet another authority, a manu­script purporting to give the substance of an address to Pepin by the archbishop of Mainz’. The Oratio ad Pipinum is not the only text whose source Giesey and Salmon were unable to identify in the work (despite Hotman’s attributions); see Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, pp. 168 n. 42; 184 n. 9; 204 n. 11; 224 n. 15; 250 n. 21; 258 nn. 9–10; 278 n. 7; 344 n. 36; 346 n. 38; 356 n. 14; 376 n. 18; 418 n. 9; 444 n. 10; 474 n. 37; 486 n. 19; 488 n. 22; 502 n. 12; 516 n. 33.  63 See Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, pp. 81–82.  64 See Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, pp. 99–107; Garnett, ‘Scholastic Thought in Humanist Guise’. In 1585, Hotman had published a vitriolic attack on Pope Sixtus V over his excommunication of Henry, entitled Brutum fulmen. It went through four editions in two years, and prompted the pope to offer a reward of two thousand crowns for Hotman’s assassination. See Kelley, François Hotman, pp. 303–06; Yates, ‘Giordano Bruno’, p. 189.

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(from the mouth of an archbishop, no less), but the case for the hereditary right of the monarchy as well. Perhaps treating the matter compartmentally, Hotman felt the benefit that the Oratio’s remarkable, first-hand testimony imparted to his argument against papal sovereignty outweighed the cost of its simultaneously subverting the notion of hereditary right to succession (a right that Hotman’s man, the Protestant heir-apparent Henry of Navarre, currently claimed), to say nothing of the text’s overall reek of fraudulence. *** At this stage in my research, I was prepared to charge Hotman himself with forging the Oratio, due to the sheer mass of circumstantial evidence outlined above. Hotman frequently used vocabulary and diction within Francogallia and his other works that also appear in the Oratio; he was familiar with the remonstrance genre, even once having written one himself under a pseudonym;65 he focused on elements of law, jurisdiction, and sovereignty in his published work that are all manifest in the Oratio — especially the use of the Justinianic Digest; he was known to be manipulative with his evidence to make it suit his polemical needs; he blatantly avoided giving any critical scrutiny to the Oratio, while treating other texts with care; and finally, he offered an explanation for the origin of the Oratio that was long a forger’s cliché — that the text came from an ancient, anonymous manu­script that he had obtained from an unidentified source. All this circumstantial evidence was assembled slowly, as I conducted research on the Oratio ad Pipinum in fits and starts over the many years since discovering it in the back of Pithou’s book in 2002.66 Yet, while it became increasingly clear that Hotman certainly had the means, motive, and opportunity to create the Oratio, the awkward fit of the text for his immediate purposes in 1586 was persistently troubling (as was Pithou’s illegible cross-reference). Why forge and brandish a text that partly undermined one’s own argument, and whose anachronistic form and content gave even contemporaries pause? Fortunately, these niggling doubts, my snail’s pace, and a stroke of luck together saved me from the fate of another scholar, who had once accused Hotman of forgery on similar circumstantial grounds, only to witness his hundred pages of labour made ‘instantly worthless’ by the subsequent discovery of new evidence.67 For just as I was at long last preparing my case against Hotman for publication, I learned of a new witness of the Oratio that had recently come to light, one that pushed the text’s existence back by more than fifteen years. Caveat iudex.  65 Vuallemand, Remonstrance. See Mellet, ‘Les remontrances’, p. 262.  66 I first called attention to the Oratio ad Pipinum in Booker, ‘A New Pro­logue of Walafrid Strabo’, p. 93.  67 See Giesey, If Not, Not, pp. vii, 3–30, and p. 18 for the quotation. However, I was not as fortunate when I rashly treated as genuine another early modern French forgery, the Narratio de morte Bernardi Septimaniae ducis, ed. by Bouquet, pp. 286–87, allegedly written by an eleventh-century French monk and chronicler ‘Odo Ariberti’. See Booker, Past Convictions, p. 81. For the demonstration of its fraudulence, see Lacger, ‘La collection de faux’.

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Figure 16.6. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, B 9 inf., fol. 131r. Image © Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana; courtesy of Mondadori Portfolio and Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana.

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*** In a letter of 4 November 1570, the Italian humanist Jacopo Corbinelli (1535–1590?) mentions a manu­script containing an ‘Oratio episcopi Maguntinensis ad Pipinum’.68 In voluntary exile in Paris since 1568 (due to his family’s associations with a failed assassination plot against Cosimo de Medici), Corbinelli quickly landed on his feet and within a year was called by Catherine de Medici to court to serve as tutor, counsellor, and steward to her children.69 All the while, Corbinelli also acted as an agent and book-buyer for the great bibliophile Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, who resided in Padua.70 As Corbinelli notes in his letter (Figure 16.6), during a recent attempt to procure new items for Pinelli’s collection, he encountered, among other works, the Oratio:71 Molto magnifico Signor G[i]o Vince[nzo] La nota de’ libri s’è data all’Amico, et sarà difficile, ma si troverà q[ua]lcosa in ogni modo. Poi che V. S. vuole sborsaro’ li danari della biblia, harò caro paghi al S.or Abbate Del Bene scudi 7 d’oro in oro, se cosi’ resterò poi con la compera de questi altri libri haver altro niente ne l’aviserò. Acciò che questa non sia vacua, io ne mando un’esemplo della incoronatione di quel Re trovato in cartapecora manuscr. et vien di buon luogo, Oratio Episcopi Maguntinensis ad Pipinum. Galli omnium ordinum consensu hoc diadema Regium cum oneris tum honoris insigne capiti tuo mea manu inferunt, teque spoliis Childerici exornant, cuius non solum familiam aut maiorum memoriam, sed perditissimos mores oderunt, tuae virtutis lucem suspiciunt, et amant. Quod si tantum lumen in te extingui superbia, aut obscurari ignavia senserint, quid de te illos facturos putes, quorum beneficio stabis, qui in eum qui suo iure, non alieno beneficio regnum obtinebat,

 68 Bianchi, ‘Jacopo Corbinelli lettore’, p. 247 n. 164. Bianchi provides an exhaustive biblio­graphy on Corbinelli, but for his time in Paris all modern works build on the foundational study of De Marchi, Jacopo Corbinelli.  69 See De Marchi, Jacopo Corbinelli, p. 47.  70 On Pinelli and his famous library, see Nuovo, ‘The Creation and Dispersal of the Library’; Grendler, ‘Book-Collecting’. On the kinds of texts that Corbinelli presumed would be of interest to Pinelli, see Bianchi, ‘Jacopo Corbinelli lettore’; Yates, ‘Giordano Bruno’.  71 I give below a partial transcription and translation of Corbinelli’s letter (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, B 9 inf, fol. 131r), which continues for another six lines that are mostly written vertically within the left margin, and that describe personal matters of Corbinelli (accessible online at [accessed 20 April 2021]). I thank Julia Hairston and Sandro La Barbera for their generous assistance with the letter, which was written in a hand recognized by Corbinelli’s contemporaries and even Corbinelli himself as especially difficult to read; see De Marchi, Jacopo Corbinelli, p. 16 n. 2, citing this very letter as an example. Bianchi, ‘Jacopo Corbinelli lettore’, p. 198 n. 2, states that she is currently preparing an edition of Corbinelli’s correspondence between 1566 and 1578.

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tam severum exercuerunt iudicium? Disce igitur Pipine alieno exemplo, atque periculo Regem agere, hoc est omnem curam et cogitationem in salute populi tui collocare. Vorrei potere havere copia d’una scritt[ura] che io ho visto in fran-zese elegantissima, De voluntaria servitute, che Bruto stesso non harebbe detto meglio; io l’ho letta et è cosa dotta et recondita, ma per questi tempi pericolosa. Havrei caro sap[er] che V.S. havesse ricevuto più mie. V.S. non si scordi far le mie raccomandationi a ms. […] (Very Magnificent Sgr. Gian Vincenzo — The note of books [to acquire] has been given to our friend, and it will be difficult but something will be found. Since Your Lordship wants to pay for the Bible, then I will take care that seven scudi be disbursed to Abbé Del Bene.72 If I need anything else for those other books, I will let Your Lordship know. In order for this [letter] not to be useless, I am sending an example of the coronation of that king found in a parchment manu­script, and it comes from a good place. [The Latin text of the Oratio then follows]. I would like to have a copy of a writing that I have seen in the most elegant French, de voluntaria servitute, which Brutus himself could not have said better. I have read it, and it is learned and deep, but dangerous for these times. I wish Your Lordship had received more from me. Let Your Lordship not forget to give my recommendations to Mnsr. […]) Despite Corbinelli’s maddeningly guarded reference, his testimony still contributes much to the history of the Oratio ad Pipinum’s transmission. First, his transcription of the text presents two minor variants that do not appear in any of the later copies of the Oratio, namely: ‘non solum familiam’ for ‘non familiam’, and ‘putes’ for ‘putas’. These variants slightly suggest that the various later copies by Hotman, Pithou, and the Dupuys may derive from a common archetype that was different from Corbinelli’s source (I shall return to this point below).73 Second, like Hotman, Corbinelli refers to his having found the Oratio in a (parchment) manu­script, and also like Hotman is equally discreet about its source — it came from a ‘good place’ (buon luogo).74 This discretion is perhaps related to what Corbinelli mentions immediately after his transcription of the Oratio in the letter — that he had also read a text entitled De voluntaria servitute, which in his estimation was beautifully written, contained ideas against tyranny that were deep and powerfully expressed (as  72 On Del Bene, see Anglo, Machiavelli–The First Century, p. 24 n. 24; Yates, ‘Giordano Bruno’.  73 Curiously, in the seventeenth-century copy of the Oratio made from the Collection Dupuy volume (BnF, MS français 3910, fol. 2v; see note 30 above), someone has noted in the right margin, using the siglum ‘=’, the lines where the text differs at these words. There is a third line marked in this fashion where the text differs in its punctuation (‘exercuerunt. Iudicium disce’ for ‘exercuerunt iudicium? Disce’). See Fig. 16.4 above.  74 On Corbinelli’s discretion, see Yates, ‘Giordano Bruno’, pp. 179, 185.

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shown by his reference to Brutus), but was therefore ‘dangerous for these times’.75 Here, Corbinelli reveals that he had encountered the controversial, anti-tyrannical text by French judge, political philosopher, and close friend of Montaigne, Étienne de La Boétie (1530–1563), who apparently wrote De voluntaria servitute in the 1550s, but which only existed covertly in manu­ script form until being published partially in 1574 and entirely in 1577.76 The trepidation that Corbinelli felt about De voluntaria servitute may have also informed his deliberate ambiguity regarding where he found the Oratio ad Pipinum. As Maria Grazia Bianchi notes, between 1568 and 1580, Corbinelli displays in his letters a consistent interest — one hardly unusual for the day — in texts ‘dedicated to reflection on the legitimacy of the prince’s power and the legitimacy of the resistance or rebellion against the tyrant’.77 Certainly the Oratio relates directly to this theme of the nature of royal sovereignty and the legitimacy of resistance. That Corbinelli did not make any explicit remark about the Oratio’s potential danger may be on account of its purporting to be a historical document related to a specific moment long past, and consequently its seeming less immediately hazardous than a general philosophical, and thus presently applicable, disquisition on the right of resistance like the De voluntaria servitute.78 As Warren Boucher observes, Corbinelli read the latter text ‘as one that at that particular moment, in the hands of the wrong readers, the hands of the growing Huguenot “resistance”, could be very dangerous for the Valois monarchy’.79 Scholars have ascertained that Corbinelli very likely saw the De voluntaria servitute in the library of either Henri de Mesmes (1532–1596) or Claude Dupuy (1545–1594).80 Given the Oratio’s similarity in theme to the De voluntaria, as  75 See Bianchi, ‘Jacopo Corbinelli lettore’, pp. 219–20 n. 69.  76 Scholars have paid much attention to this particular letter by Corbinelli due to his mention of his encounter with the De voluntaria servitute (though they almost never note the presence of the Oratio ad Pipinum within the same letter), for it is a valuable early attestation of the famous text’s circulation. See Boutcher, The School of Montaigne, pp. 253–54; Ragghianti, Rétablir un texte, pp. 15–16, 60–62; Carta, ‘Les exilés italiens’, p. 110; Girot, ‘Une version inconnue’, pp. 552–53. For an English translation of the text, see La Boétie, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, trans. by Atkinson and Sices.  77 Bianchi, ‘Jacopo Corbinelli lettore’, p. 219. As Bianchi observes, the books that especially aroused Corbinelli’s curiosity are three texts emblematic of the anti-tyrannical thought of the era: La Boétie’s De voluntaria servitute, the Anti-Machiavel (1577) by Innocent Gentillet, and the Vindiciae contra tyrannos (1579) by ‘Étienne Junius Brutus’. Corbinelli himself was prudent yet open-minded in his estimation of the politics of his day; as Bianchi notes (p. 198 n. 3), in his letters Corbinelli displayed both admiration for some of the Huguenot leaders and fidelity to the cause of the king and the Catholic faith.  78 Unlike Claude Fauchet, Corbinelli was not the best judge of a text’s authenticity; see De Marchi, Jacopo Corbinelli, pp. 219–21; Grafton, Forgers and Critics, pp. 45–48.  79 Boutcher, The School of Montaigne, p. 254. On the relative import of Frankish history to contemporary politics, see Salmon, ‘Clovis and Constantine’.  80 See De Marchi, Jacopo Corbinelli, p. 191 n. 1; Trinquet, ‘Montaigne et la divulgation’; and the works in note 76 above. Manu­script copies of the De voluntaria servitute owned by each man are extant: that of de Mesmes = BnF, MS français 839; that of Dupuy = BnF,

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well as its being mentioned in the same letter, perhaps it was also discovered by Corbinelli in the library of either de Mesmes or Dupuy. Noteworthy is the fact that Hotman and de Mesmes were close friends dating back to the 1560s, and that Hotman has been linked to the first, partial publication of the De voluntaria servitute in 1574.81 Perhaps this friendship is also how the ‘ancient manu­script’ containing the Oratio ad Pipinum came into Hotman’s possession. Yet, if de Mesmes’s library was its source, and if Corbinelli had already seen it there in 1570, then why did Hotman only become aware of the Oratio in 1586? Alternately, if Claude Dupuy’s library is where Corbinelli saw the De voluntaria servitute, it may be where he saw the Oratio as well. Recall that Dupuy’s sons Pierre and Jacques possessed a copy of the Oratio, whose origin is unknown; perhaps it formed a part of their father’s library, which they inherited and which Corbinelli had once visited. A slight problem with either hypothesis is that the texts of the Oratio possessed by Hotman and the Dupuys (and Pithou, for that matter) are identical, suggesting they have a common archetype, whereas the text of Corbinelli contains variants (notably the presence of the word ‘solum’), which suggests that his source was different than theirs. Whatever the case, Corbinelli’s letter provides a new terminus ante quem for the Oratio ad Pipinum’s existence: 4 November 1570.

Collection Dupuy 239. On Henri de Mesmes, see Espiner-Scott, ‘Note sur le cercle de Henri de Mesmes’; Delisle, Le cabinet des manuscrits, pp. 397–400; Fremy, ed., Mémoires inédits de Henri de Mesmes, pp. 109–15; and for contemporary remarks on his library, Montgomery, ‘The Libraries of France’, pp. 156–60. On Claude Dupuy, see Raugei, ed., Gian Vincenzo Pinelli et Claude Dupuy; Delatour, Une bibliothèque humaniste; McCuaig, ‘On Claude Dupuy’.  81 See Iagolnitzer, ‘Montaigne, Francois Hotman et le Discours’; Iagolnitzer, ‘La publication du Discours’. Also, Lyons, ‘Conceptions of the Republic’.

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But why all the fuss about this text in the first place? If Ralph Giesey could already state with disdain in 1961 that ‘it is no longer worth the trouble to show [that Hotman] misinterpreted historical evidence in order to uphold positions that were favorable to the Huguenots; that is too easily done’, then why bother?82 It should be clear by now that, for me at least, the thrill of recovering and tracing the fortunes of a long-forgotten text as it briefly circulated among a close group of impassioned scholars and jurists has certainly remained a compelling reason. But a more sober, historical reason, I think, is found with the legal passage that the author of the Oratio lifted from Justinian’s Digest. Recall that the original purpose of the passage was to establish that iurisdictio — the power to render decisions — can only be delegated by one who possesses it through his own right and not by the gift of another. Here, one’s ‘own right’ of iurisdictio derived from one’s transpersonal office and its place within the larger Roman imperial state. In the Oratio, this same legal passage is deployed rhetorically, to demonstrate the even greater power of the people in the determination of sovereignty — that although Childeric, as a Merovingian monarch with blood-right to the throne,83 possessed it suo iure, non alieno beneficio, he was nevertheless severely judged and deposed by the Galli. How much the more, then, could this same powerful people judge and dispose of a sovereign of their own making? For the Oratio ad Pipinum’s a fortiori argument to have its desired effect, it relies on the reader’s prior understanding of the Roman ‘suo iure’ claim to sovereignty as an almost self-evident, natural principle (although here Childeric’s own, sovereign right derives not from a transpersonal office, but from his distinct heredity).84 That the Galli could surmount this seemingly inviolable principle of blood-right not only demonstrated their great, quasi-divine power (which, as we have seen, Claude Fauchet would prudently reattribute to God alone85), but also  82 Giesey, ‘The Juristic Basis of Dynastic Right’, p. 31.  83 Here, the author of the Oratio ad Pipinum is touching on matters later treated in detail by Hotman, who used the fifteenth-century neo­logism of ‘suitas’ to describe such personal blood-right; see Giesey, ‘The Juristic Basis of Dynastic Right’, pp. 32–39; Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, p. 98.  84 See, for example, Hotman’s teacher Dumoulin, Prima pars tractatus, p. 54, who contends that, even without his election by the people, Pippin still had (distant) hereditary right to the throne. There is an interesting parallel between the Oratio ad Pipinum’s description of 751, and that given by Dumoulin (my emphasis): ‘prout nec regni, nec gentis Franciae fuit interruptio, quando Pipinus brevis consensu omnium ordinum, vel statuum Regni factus est Rex Francorum propter lasciviam Childerici huius nominis quarti, et ultimi de stirpe Merovaei, qui Merovaeus erat tertius Francorum Rex a Pharamundo. Quandoquidem etiam absque dicta statuum regni electione, regnum iure optimo eidem Pipino spectabat’ (first published in French as Dumoulin, La premiere partie du Traicté, p. 28). This is not to suggest that Dumoulin necessarily authored the Oratio — indeed, he was renowned for being a scrupulous critic, who took a malicious pleasure in exposing anachronism and forgery. See Kelley, ‘Fides Historiae’, p. 372.  85 Note the qualification that Fauchet appends to the end of the Oratio ad Pipinum in his reproduction of the text (note 35 above; my emphasis): ‘Portant honneur et reverence à

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evinced their legal self-determination — that, at their pleasure, the Galli could establish their own laws and make their own way along the path of virtue in accordance with their particular needs and desires.86 In other words, within the purportedly eighth-century Oratio ad Pipinum, one can see traces of a much broader, sixteenth-century debate about the political consequences of privileging either the artificial, top-down universalism of Roman law or the organic, bottom-up particularism of French customary law (out of which larger, national principles might be discerned).87 This was a dispute that raged in the mid-sixteenth century and came to a head in the bitter legal struggles over royal succession in France in the 1580s, but hardly within the dynastic turmoil of the regnum Francorum in the 750s. *** Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis — ‘Everything is changing and so are we’. In 1612, Matthias Borbonius, physician to three emperors, attributed this motto to Lothar I (795–855), a great-grandson of Pippin, demonstrating that monarch’s own diagnostic reflection on the historical transformation of his tumultuous age and the mutability of its human parts.88 Yet, as Paul Dutton has noted, ‘the line is too perfect and too literary, too self-conscious in reflection and too resigned in thought ever to have sprung from Lothar’s active mind’.89 It does, however, perfectly capture the volatile late sixteenth-century context in which that other Carolingianesque forgery, the Oratio ad Pipinum, was read and deployed. While the Oratio itself did not change, the times in which it was encountered and used certainly did, which makes it an excellent index for historical analysis. Indeed, this is why the demonstration of affinities and differences made above between Hotman’s various works and the

Dieu, qui l’avoit eslevé par dessus le sang Royal: luy (disoit-il) qui en estoit totalement esloigné’ (honouring and revering God, who elevated him [= Pippin] over the royal blood — him who, as he said himself, was totally removed from it). See Espiner-Scott, ‘Les theories de Claude Fauchet’.  86 Lee, Popular Sovereignty, pp. 142–55, refers to this as ‘the monarchomach theory of constituent power’.  87 See Fouracre, ‘Francia and the History of Medi­eval Europe’, p. 3, ‘This broadening was part of a larger reaction against the ultra-montane historical thinking of the Renaissance that placed the origins of European law in the Justinianic Digest and which, by giving precedence to Roman law, privileged the leadership of Rome and the papacy’. See also Kim, ‘Custom, Community, and the Crown’; Kelley, ‘Civil Science in the Renaissance’, pp. 70–78. But note the important objections and qualifications of Brown, ‘On 1500’, pp. 699–702, who argues that rather too much has been made of this alleged irreconcilability of legal traditions; nevertheless, she concedes (at p. 700) that ‘French patriots, lawyers included, sometimes inveighed against the Roman law, but they did so because they rejected the notion that France was necessarily bound by the Roman law and hence subject to the empire’.  88 Delitiae poetarum Germanorum , ed. by Gruterus, i, p. 685.  89 Dutton, The Politics of Dreaming, pp. 195, 309 n. 1. There is a clear echo of Augustine, Sermones, 80. 8, ed. by Migne, col. 498, ‘Nos sumus tempora: quales sumus, talia sunt tempora’ (We are the times: such as we are, such are the times). I thank Josh Timmermann for this reference.

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Oratio is still useful, rather than becoming ‘instantly worthless’ upon the discovery of Corbinelli’s earlier witness of the text. They attest not only to the sixteenth-century context of the Oratio’s creation, but also to how such affinities themselves often reflect just one moment of correspondence between a static text and the unpredictable vagaries of a person’s career over time. Although the Carolingian succession of 751 was remembered tendentiously by an unknown, likely sixteenth-century forger to highlight and strengthen the power of the Estates vis-à-vis the monarchy (a memory Hotman would have vehemently endorsed after 1572), by the time Hotman used the Oratio in 1586 he was invoking it rather strictly and ineptly as part of his legal-historical argument for hereditary succession of the monarchy — a position that he himself had so powerfully attacked over the previous decade. This dramatic volte-face was not lost on Hotman’s Catholic enemies, who would use the earlier editions of Francogallia, with their formidable arguments for an elective monarchy (but lacking the Oratio), to undermine the new Huguenot push for Henry of Navarre’s hereditary right of succession.90 Borbonius’s historically self-conscious Lothar would have appreciated the irony.91 Although François Hotman was the only one known to have used the Oratio ad Pipinum with the explicit, polemical intention of connecting it to present affairs — of proving that papal authority had not had and should still not have any part in the establishment of French kings — others of his day invoked the text within contexts that also suggest a contemporary motive for its engagement. As we have seen, Jacopo Corbinelli referred to the Oratio, with its great emphasis on the power of the (Gallic) people over their kings, alongside a French anti-tyrannical work that he believed was dangerous for his time.92 Pierre Pithou, who laboured to prohibit papal interference in the Gallican Church and its relationship with the monarchy, appended the pro-Gallican Oratio to an antho­logy of Carolingian texts that he had explicitly compiled to use as lessons for the present and future French patria.93 Claude Fauchet assembled for his present king, Henry IV, a chrono­logical history of the Carolingian dynasty in order to illustrate the character, conduct, and deeds of past sovereigns who were worthy of imitation; within this didactic narrative, Fauchet included the Oratio — despite strong doubts

 90 Hotman, Francogallia, ed. by Giesey, trans. by Salmon, pp. 95–108, esp. pp. 107–08; Giesey, ‘The Juristic Basis of Dynastic Right’, p. 32; Lee, Popular Sovereignty, p. 156.  91 Cf. Jenkinson, ed., Bayle: Political Writings, pp. 124–27.  92 Though, as Anglo, Machiavelli–The First Century, pp. 24, 341 n. 34, notes, Corbinelli’s own political commitments are difficult to pin down; see note 77 above.  93 As expressed within the authorial preface to his Annalium et historiae Francorum. See Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship, p. 264. See also Davidson, ‘Divine Guidance’, p. 121, ‘Pithou insisted that the pope had no temporal authority in France, while his spiritual authority over the French people was limited by those canons and decrees of the ancient church councils which had been recognized in the French kingdom. In a popular treatise entitled The Liberties of the Gallican Church [1594], Pithou made his position very clear’.

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about its authenticity — for its value as an edifying ‘remonstrance’, one that exhorted the French king present and future to be ever mindful of his duties to his people.94 Pierre de L’Estoile selected the Oratio for copying as part of a miscellany of texts relating to French history that he compiled for his reference, as would Jacques Dupuy several years later (who then lent it to François de Maynard).95 In sum, these men were delighted to discover the Oratio because the text spoke to their immediate needs and interests, rather than to some dispassionate, innocent commitment to fill in gaps and narrate more accurately the historical record. Indeed, such delight is likely what the Oratio’s forger hoped to induce by crafting a seductive text that would directly appeal to his readers’ immediate desires, the force of which would overcome any doubts or misgivings. Similarly, the succession crisis of 1584 would spur another contemporary French jurist to look with urgency to the Carolingian past. On 1 January 1588, in the midst of seemingly endless civil war, the accomplished poet and avocat in Parlement Claude de Marteau (d. 1595) wrote a despondent letter to his brother-in-law, Pierre de L’Estoile. Accompanying the letter was a small book that Marteau had copied from an ancient manu­script, whose little-known text had struck him as precociously revelatory of the realm’s current troubles.96 In his letter, Marteau explained specifically why he thought the old text to be valuable, and thus why he was sending a copy to L’Estoile. The author of the text in the little book provides us with a special opportunity, observes Marteau, since he offers us ‘another type’ (alterum typum) of our conflicts to compare with those of our own time. As then, so now, people set private concerns ahead of the public good. No one values oaths that are sworn and confirmed publicly between brothers and friends — ‘nay, rather’, laments Marteau, such oaths ‘are treacherously broken by a Machiavellian rule’ (quin potius Machiavellitico praecepto perfide violantur).97 He concludes the letter by recognizing that some might mistrust this ‘little commentary written at the command of Charles the Bald’ (hoc commentariolum Caroli Calvi iussu videlicet exaratum) due to its author’s obvious partiality, but that they would be wrong to do so, since the author had been present at and a participant in many of the events he describes and recorded them with diligent accuracy. Although Marteau never identifies the work or its author (whose name was

 94 See the prefatory epistle to Henry IV in Fauchet, Fleur de la maison de Charlemaigne. Also, Espiner-Scott, Claude Fauchet, pp. 311–13; Espiner-Scott, ‘Les theories de Claude Fauchet’.  95 Hamilton, Pierre de L’Estoile and his World, pp. 175–76; discussed in greater detail in Hamilton, ‘Pierre de L’Estoile and his World’, pp. 217–21.  96 On Marteau and his letter to L’Estoile, see Hamilton, Pierre de L’Estoile and his World, pp. 118–23; discussed in greater detail in Hamilton, ‘Pierre de L’Estoile and his World’, pp. 157–63. For the letter itself, which remains unpublished, see BnF, MS français 10303, pp. 415–16 (accessible online at [accessed 20 April 2021]).  97 Cf. Kelley, ‘Murd’rous Machiavel in France’.

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obscured in the text due to a careless scribe), it is clear that it was the Historiae of Nithard on the Carolingian civil war of the early 840s.98 Like the forger of the Oratio ad Pipinum and François Hotman, Claude de Marteau readily projected his era’s political philosophy back onto the Carolingian past in order to make it serve his need for a historical comparandum that could offer hope for the present. Signing off his letter, he implored that, just as peace among the royal Carolingian brothers had finally been established by the consent of the people after three years of conflicts and catastrophes, he and L’Estoile should pray that God will also spare their present people, as they now entered their fourth year of calamities, and bring them peace and everlasting concord. While Nithard’s text would continue to be read with varying degrees of interest over the following centuries, the Oratio quickly faded into obscurity, passing from momentary historical significance during the late sixteenth century into a dead letter, a fragment of cultural memory ‘lingering in a state of latency’.99 Probing why the former text was trusted and continued to be the focus of attention while the latter was forgotten, despite the timeliness of each text’s sudden appearance and the absence of attestations to either one within the medi­eval historical record (both texts seemingly having had an earlier, apparently untroubling ‘state of latency’), goes beyond the parameters of this essay.100 But unearthing and reading the Oratio ad Pipinum now, we not only learn of how the events of 751 were remembered during the French Wars of Religion, we not only sense the fanatical intensity and feverish passion of people for whom the Carolingian past was still an immediate part of their tumultuous present. We also reshape, however slightly, our own social memory of the late sixteenth century in the process, a reshaping whose motives are hardly as immediate, but still far from innocent.101

 98 By even knowing of and acquiring a copy of Nithard’s text, Marteau joined a small circle of jurists and savants who were at that time excitedly circulating the newly discovered work among themselves in a handful of manu­script copies. See Booker, ‘An Early Humanist Edition’, though without mention of Marteau. The fate of the copy of Nithard’s text made by Marteau for L’Estoile is unknown.  99 Assmann, ‘Re-Framing Memory’, p. 43. Or in E. H. Carr’s terms, the Oratio briefly became a ‘historical fact’, which quickly slipped back into being just a ‘fact about the past’; see Carr, ‘The Historian and his Facts’, pp. 12–13. On the problematic modern reception of Nithard, see Booker, ‘An Early Humanist Edition’, pp. 251–52; Booker, Past Convictions, pp. 7, 39, 125.   100 The reception history of Nithard’s text has yet to be written. For a start, see Booker, ‘An Early Humanist Edition’; Nithard, Histoire, trans. and ed. by Lauer, pp. xxi–xxvi. For another ninth-century text without subsequent trace in the medi­eval record that suddenly reappeared in the sixteenth century, only to sink back into obscurity until the twentieth, see Booker, ‘Addenda to the Transmission History’; Ruys, ‘Mater litterata’; and Stofferahn, ‘The Many Faces in Dhuoda’s Mirror’.   101 Inspirational on this point is Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance.

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Works Cited Manu­scripts and Archival Sources Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, B 9 inf Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Dupuy 1 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Dupuy 239 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 839 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 3910 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 10303 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Réserve des livres rares, Rés. L45.1 Primary Sources Annales regni Francorum, ed. by Friedrich Kurze, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum, 6 (Hanover: Hahn, 1895) Augustine, Sermones de Scripturis, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, Patro­logiae cursus completus: series latina, 38 (Paris: Garnier, 1865), cols 23–994 Boniface, Epistolae, ed. by Michael Tangl, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Epistolae selectae, 1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1916) Clausula de unctione Pippini, ed. by Bruno Krusch, in Gregorii Turonensis Opera, ii: Miracula et opera minora, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, 1.2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1885), pp. 15–16 Digesta Iustiniani Augusti, ed. by Theodor Mommsen, vol. i (Berlin: Weidmann, 1870) Fredegar, Chronicorum Liber Quartus cum Continuationibus, ed. and trans. by John Michael Wallace-Hadrill, The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar with its Continuations (London: Nelson, 1960) Hincmar of Reims, De divortio Lotharii regis et Theutbergae reginae, ed. by Letha Böhringer, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Concilia, 4, suppl. 1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1992) Nithard, Histoire des fils de Louis le Pieux, trans. and ed. by Philippe Lauer, rev. by Sophie Glansdorff, Les classiques de l’histoire au Moyen Âge, 51 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2012) ‘Odo Ariberti’, Narratio de morte Bernardi Septimaniae ducis, ed. by Martin Bouquet, in Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, vol. vii (Paris: Aux Dépens des Libraires Associés, 1749), pp. 286–87

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Secondary Works Anglo, Sydney, Machiavelli–The First Century: Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) Assmann, Aleida, ‘Re-Framing Memory: Between Individual and Collective Forms of Constructing the Past’, in Performing the Past: Memory, History, and Identity in Modern Europe, ed. by Karin Tilmans, Frank van Vree, and Jay Winter (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010), pp. 35–50 Aventinus, Annales Ducum Boiariae, pt. 1, in Johannes Turmair’s genannt Aventinus sämmtliche Werke, ed. by Sigmund Riezler, vol. ii (Munich: C. Kaiser, 1882) Becher, Matthias, and Jörg Jarnut, eds, Der Dynastiewechsel von 751: Vorgeschichte, Legitimationsstrategien und Erinnerung (Münster: Scriptorium, 2004) Bianchi, Maria Grazia, ‘Jacopo Corbinelli lettore e testimone della storia del suo tempo: Esilio e impegno politico nella Francia delle guerre di religione’, Studi di Erudizione e di Filo­logia Italiana, 2 (2013), 197–258 Bisson, S. W., ‘Claude Fauchet’s Manu­scripts’, Modern Language Review, 33.3 (1935), 311–23 Bloch, Marc, The Historian’s Craft, trans. by Peter Putnam (New York: Vintage, 1953) Booker, Courtney M., ‘Addenda to the Transmission History of Dhuoda’s Liber manualis’, Revue d’histoire des textes, n.s., 11 (2016), 181–213 —— , ‘An Early Humanist Edition of Nithard, De dissensionibus filiorum Ludovici Pii’, Revue d’histoire des textes, n.s., 5 (2010), 231–58 —— , ‘A New Pro­logue of Walafrid Strabo’, Viator, 36 (2005), 83–105 —— , Past Convictions: The Penance of Louis the Pious and the Decline of the Carolingians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009) Boutcher, Warren, The School of Montaigne in Early Modern Europe, i: The Patron Author (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) Brown, Elizabeth A. R., ‘On 1500’, in The Medi­eval World, ed. by Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 691–710 C.A.L.M.A. Compendium Auctorum Latinorum Medii Aevi (500–1500), vol. ii (Florence: SISMEL; Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2004–2008) Carr, Edward H., ‘The Historian and his Facts’, in What Is History? (New York: Penguin, 1964), pp. 7–30 Carta, Paolo, ‘Les exilés italiens et l’anti-machiavélisme français au xvie siècle’, in La République en exile (xve–xvie siècles), ed. by Paolo Carta and Lucie De Los Santos (Lyon: ENS Editions, 2002), pp. 93–117 Catalogue général des manuscrits français: Bibliothèque nationale, Département des manuscrits, Catalogue des manuscrits français, pt. 1. Ancien fonds, vol. iii (Paris: Librairie de Firmin Didot Frères, 1881) Close, Florence, ‘Le sacre de Pépin de 751? Coulisses d’un coup d’État’, Revue belge de philo­logie et d’histoire, 85 (2007), 835–52 Collins, Roger, Die Fredegar-Chronikon, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Studien und Texte, 44 (Hanover: Hahn, 2007) Dareste, Rodolphe, ‘François Hotman, sa vie et sa correspondance’, Revue historique, 2 (1876), 367–435

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Davidson, Georgiana, ‘Divine Guidance and the Use of Sources: A Case from the Annales of Caesar Baronius’, Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, 15.1 (1988), 117–29 De Marchi, Rita Calderini, Jacopo Corbinelli et les érudits français d’après la cor­ respondance inédite Corbinelli-Pinelli (1566–1587) (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1914) Delatour, Jérôme, Une bibliothèque humaniste au temps des guerres de religion: Les livres de Claude Dupuy: d’après l’inventaire dressé par le libraire Denis Duval (1595) (Paris: École des Chartes, 1998) —— , ‘Le cabinet des frères Dupuy’, Revue d’histoire des facultés de droit et de la science juridique, 25–26 (2005–2006), 157–200 —— , ‘De Pithou à Dupuy: Un siècle de religion politique’, in Les Pithou: Les lettres et la paix du royaume: Actes du colloque de Troyes, 13–15 avril 1998, ed. by MarieMadeleine Fragonard and Pierre-Etienne Leroy (Paris: H. Champion, 2003), pp. 329–52 —— , ‘Les frères Dupuy et leurs correspondances’, in Les grands intermédiaires culturels de la République des lettres: Études des réseaux de correspondances du xvie au xviiie siècles, ed. by Christiane Berkvens-Stevelinck, Hans Bots, and Jens Haseler (Paris: H. Champion, 2005), pp. 61–101 Delisle, Léopold, Le cabinet des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Impériale, vol. i (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1868) Delitiae poetarum Germanorum huius superiorisque aevi illustrium, ed. by Janus Gruterus, 6 vols (Frankfurt: Nicolaus Hoffmannus, 1612) Diefendorf, Barbara B., The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St Martins, 2009) Dorez, Léon, Catalogue de la Collection Dupuy, vol. i (Paris: E. Leroux, 1899) Drouhet, Charles, Le poète François Mainard (1583–1646): Étude critique d’histoire littéraire (Paris: H. Champion, 1909) Dumoulin, Charles, La premiere partie du Traicté de l’origine, progres et excellence du Royaume & Monarchie des Françoys, & Couronne de France (Lyon: chez les frères Senneton, 1561) —— , Prima pars tractatus de origine, progressu, et excellentia regni et monarchiae Francorum, et coronae Franciae (Lyon: Ad Salamandrae, apud Claudium Sennetonium, 1564) Dutton, Paul E., Carolingian Civilization: A Reader, 2nd edn (Peterborough: Broadview, 2004) —— , The Politics of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994) Espiner-Scott, Janet Girvan, Claude Fauchet: Sa vie, son oeuvre (Paris: Librairie E. Droz, 1938) —— , ‘Note sur le cercle de Henri de Mesmes et sur son influence’, in Mélanges offerts à m. Abel Lefranc, ed. by Jacques Lavaud (Paris: E. Droz, 1936), pp. 354–61 —— , ‘Les theories de Claude Fauchet sur le pouvoir royal’, Humanisme et Renaissance, 7 (1940), 233–38 Fauchet, Claude, Les Antiquitez et histoires gauloises et françoises, in Les Oeuvres de fev. M. Claude Fauchet (Paris: David Le Clerc, 1610)

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Kehl, Petra, ‘The Veneration of Boniface in the Middle Ages’, in A Companion to Boniface, ed. by Michel Aaij and Shannon Godlove (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 357–78 Kelley, Donald R., ‘Civil Science in the Renaissance: The Problem of Interpretation’, in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, ed. by Anthony Pagden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 57–78 —— , ‘Fides Historiae: Charles Dumoulin and the Gallican View of History’, Traditio, 22 (1966), 347–402 —— , Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970) —— , François Hotman: A Revolutionary’s Ordeal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973) —— , ‘Murd’rous Machiavel in France: A Post Mortem’, Political Science Quarterly, 85 (1970), 545–59 Kendrick, Jeff, ‘Reprimanding the King: Jean Bégat’s 1563 Remonstrances’, in Polemic and Literature Surrounding the French Wars of Religion, ed. by Jeff Kendrick and Katherine S. Maynard (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2019), pp. 69–85 Kim, Marie Seong-Hak, ‘Custom, Community, and the Crown: Lawyers and the Reordering of French Customary Law’, in Between the Middle Ages and Modernity: Individual and Community in the Early Modern World, ed. by Charles H. Parker and Jerry H. Bentley (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), pp. 169–86 Kingdon, Robert M., Myths about the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacres, 1572–1576 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988) Koziol, Geoffrey, The Politics of Memory and Identity in Carolingian Royal Diplomas: The West Frankish Kingdom (840–987) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012) L’Estoile, Pierre de, Mémoires-Journaux de Pierre de L’Estoile, viii: Journal de Henri IV, 1602–1607 (Paris: Librairie des bibliophiles, 1880) La Boétie, Étienne de, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, trans. by James B. Atkinson and David Sices (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2012) Lacger, Louis de, ‘La collection de faux du Conseiller de Masnau et leur auteur présume, Le président Sabbathier de la Bourgade’, Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique, 29 (1928), 145–66; 30 (1929), 145–64 Langer, Ullrich, Perfect Friendship: Studies in Literature and Moral Philosophy from Boccaccio to Corneille (Geneva: Droz, 1994) Lee, Daniel, Popular Sovereignty in Early Modern Constitutional Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) Lindanus, Guilelmus Damasus, Panoplia Evangelica, sive de verbo Dei Evangelico libri quinque (Co­logne: M. Cholinus, 1563) Lugge, Margret, ‘Gallia’ und ‘Francia’ im Mittelalter: Untersuchungen über den Zusammenhang zwischen geo­graphischhistorischer Termino­logie und politischem Denken vom 6.–15. Jahrhundert (Bonn: L. Röhrscheid, 1960) Lyons, J. Coriden, ‘Conceptions of the Republic in French Literature of the Sixteenth Century: Éstienne de La Boétie and François Hotman’, Romanic Review, 21 (1930), 296–307

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Malettke, Klaus, ‘Pierre Pithou als Historiker’, in Humanismus und Historio­graphie: Rundgespräche und Kolloquien, ed. by August Buck (Weinheim: VCH, 1991), pp. 89–103 Malvenda, Tomás, Commentaria in Sacram Scripturam una cum nova de verbo ad verbum, ex Heb. Translatione, vol. v (Lyons: Apud Claudij Prost, et al., 1650) Mariana, Juan de, De rege et regis institutione libri III (Toledo: Petrus Rodriguez, 1599) —— , Historiae de rebus hispaniae Libri XXX (Mainz: Andreas Wechsel, 1605) Masson, Jean-Papire, Papirii Massoni responsio ad maledicta Hotomani cognomento Matagonis (Paris: Ex typo­graphia Dionysii a Prato, 1575) Matharel, Antoine, Ad Franc. Hotomani Franco-galliam Antonii Matharelli, reginae matris a rebus procurandis, responsio (Paris: Morellus, 1575) Maynard et son temps (Toulouse: Association des publications de l’Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 1976) McCuaig, William, ‘On Claude Dupuy (1545–1594)’, Studies in Medi­eval and Renaissance History, n.s. 12 (1991), 45–104 McKitterick, Rosamond, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) —— , ‘The Illusion of Royal Power in the Carolingian Annals’, English Historical Review, 115 (2000), 1–20 —— , ‘The Study of Frankish History in France and Germany in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Francia, 8 (1980), 556–72 Mellet, Paul-Alexis, ‘L’expression politique de la plainte: Les “Remonstrances” aux États généraux de Blois de 1588’, in La Plainte à la Renaissance, ed. by Florence Alazard (Paris: H. Champion, 2008), pp. 327–44 —— , ‘Les remontrances: Une expression paradoxale de la société politique (xvième siècle)’, in Forms of Conflict and Rivalries in Renaissance Europe, ed. by David A. Lines, Marc Laureys, and Jill Kraye (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2015), pp. 247–72 Miller, David H., ‘Sacral Kingship, Biblical Kingship, and the Elevation of Pepin the Short’, in Religion, Culture, and Society in the Early Middle Ages: Studies in Honor of Richard E. Sullivan, ed. by Thomas F. X. Noble and John J. Contreni (Kalamazoo: Medi­eval Institute Publications, 1987), pp. 131–54 Montgomery, John Warwick, ‘The Libraries of France at the Ascendancy of Mazarin: Louis Jacob’s Traicté Des Plus Belles Bibliotheques: Part Two in English Translation, with Introduction and Notes’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, 1962) Moore, Michael E., ‘Canon Law and Royal Power in the Councils and Letters of St Boniface’, Bulletin of Medi­eval Canon Law, 28 (2008/10), 1–30 Müller, Wolfgang, ‘The Recovery of Justinian’s Digest in the Middle Ages’, Bulletin of Medi­eval Canon Law, 20 (1990), 1–29 Nelson, Janet L., ‘The Lord’s Anointed and the People’s Choice: Carolingian Royal Ritual’, in Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies, ed. by David Cannadine and Simon Price (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 137–80

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Nuovo, Angela, ‘The Creation and Dispersal of the Library of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli’, in Books on the Move: Tracking Copies through Collections and the Book Trade, ed. by Robin Myers, Michael Harris, and Giles Mandelbrot (London: British Library, 2007), pp. 39–68 Orchard, Andy, ‘Old Sources, New Resources: Finding the Right Formula for Boniface’, Anglo-Saxon England, 30 (2001), 15–38 Perrin, John W., ‘“Legatus” in Medi­eval Roman Law’, Traditio, 29 (1973), 357–78 Radding, Charles M., and Antonio Ciaralli, The Corpus Iuris Civilis in the Middle Ages: Manu­scripts and Transmission from the Sixth Century to the Juristic Revival (Leiden: Brill, 2007) Ragghianti, Renzo, Rétablir un texte: Le ‘Discours de la servitude volontaire’ d’Étienne de La Boétie (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 2010) Raugei, Anna Maria, ed., Gian Vincenzo Pinelli et Claude Dupuy: Une correspondance entre deux humanistes (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 2001) Reimitz, Helmut, ‘Der Weg zum Königtum in historio­graphischen Kompendien der Karolingerzeit’, in Der Dynastiewechsel von 751: Vorgeschichte, Legitimationsstrategien und Erinnerung, ed. by Matthias Becher and Jörg Jarnut (Münster: Scriptorium, 2004), pp. 277–320 Rosanbo, Louis de, ‘Pierre Pithou’, Revue du seizième siècle, 15 (1928), 279–305; 16 (1929), 301–30 Rueger, Zofia, ‘Gerson, the Conciliar Movement and the Right of Resistance (1642–44)’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 25.4 (1964), 467–86 Ruys, Juanita Feros, ‘Mater litterata: Considerations of Maternity and Latinity in the Post-Medi­eval Reception of Dhuoda’s Liber manualis’, New Medi­eval Literatures, 10 (2008), 191–220 Sabellico, Marco Antonio Coccio, Rapsodiae historiarum Enneadum Marci Antonii Coccii Sabellici Ab orbe condito Pars prima quinque (Lyons: Aedibus Nicolai Petit & Hectoris Penet, 1535) Salavastru, Andrei C., ‘Historical Imaginary in the Political Literature of the French Wars of Religion: The Case of François Hotman’s Francogallia’, Hermeneia: Journal of Hermeneutics, Art Theory & Criticism, 19 (2017), 27–42 Salmon, J. H. M., ‘Clovis and Constantine: The Uses of History in SixteenthCentury Gallicanism’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 41 (1990), 584–605 Schneider, Olaf, ‘Die Königserhebung Pippins 751 in der Erinnerung der karolingischen Quellen: Die Glaubwürdigkeit der Reichsannalen und die Verformung der Vergangenheit’, in Der Dynastiewechsel von 751: Vorgeschichte, Legitimationsstrategien und Erinnerung, ed. by Matthias Becher and Jörg Jarnut (Münster: Scriptorium, 2004), pp. 243–75 Semmler, Josef, Der Dynastiewechsel von 751 und die fränkische Königssalbung (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2003) Serarius, Nikolaus, Epistolae S. Bonifaci martyris (Mainz: Balthasar Lipp, 1605) Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, ii: The Age of Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978) Stoclet, Alain J., ‘La Clausula de unctione Pippini regis, vingt ans après’, Revue belge de philo­logie et d’histoire, 78 (2000), 719–71

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Index of Manuscripts

Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 382 D: 362 table 15.1 Admont, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 227: 371 n. 54 Arras, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 528: 362 table 15.1 Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Hist. Misc. 3: 369 Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod. 363: 14 n. 10 —— , Cod. 458: 362 table 15.1 Brussels, Bibliothèque royale, MS 5541–42: 362 table 15.1 Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys MS 2808: 362 table 15.1 Cologne, Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek, Cod. 166: 11 n. 6–8, 12 figs. 1.1–1.2, 13 n. 9 Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 146: 14 n. 10 Graz, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. 433: 362 table 15.1, 368 London, British Library, MS Cotton Titus A XXVII: 362 table 15.1, 370 —— , MS Harley 3099: 362 table 15.1 Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, B 9 inf.: 402 fig. 16.6, 403 n. 71 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 1001: 362 table 15.1, 365 fig. 15.1, 366–67 —— , Clm 5251: 362 table 15.1, 367 —— , Clm 6282: 367 —— , Clm 17134: 371 —— , Clm 19411: 362 table 15.1, 364 n. 27, 371–72 —— , Clm 30004: 362 table 15.1, 368

422

i n dex of man uscr ip ts

Oxford, Oriel College, MS 2: 362 table 15.1 Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 379: 362 table 15.1 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Dupuy 1: 387, 388 fig. 16.2, 390, 390 n. 28, 392, 392 fig. 16.5, 392 n. 31, 393 n. 34, 394, 404 n. 73 —— , Collection Dupuy 239: 406 n. 80 —— , MS français 839: 405 n. 80 —— , MS français 3910: 390, 391 fig. 16.4, 392 n. 31, 404 n. 73 —— , MS français 10303: 389 fig. 16.3, 390 —— , MS lat. 1673: 362 table 15.1 —— , MS lat. 2342: 362 table 15.1, 369 n. 45 —— , MS lat. 3858 A: 362 table 15.1 —— , MS lat. 7530: 14 n. 10 —— , MS lat. 18324: 369 —— , MS n.a.l. 310: 362 table 15.1, 367, 369–72 —— , Réserve des livres rares, Rés. L45.1: 385 fig. 16.1, 386 n. 19 Reims, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 142: 362 table 15.1, 364 n. 27, 372 Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 1343: 362 table 15.1, 364 n. 27 St Petersburg, Russia National Library MS F.I.376: 205 Serbia, Plevlja Monastery, MS 98: 205 Valenciennes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 207: 362 table 15.1 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Ottob. lat. 1555: 362 table 15.1 —— , MS Pal. lat. 1588: 14 n. 10 —— , MS Reg. lat. 1658: 362 table 15.1 —— , MS Vat. lat. 2001: 371 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 951: 362 table 15.1, 368, 369 n. 45

Index of Scriptural References

Numbers 22. 28

238

1 Kings 10.11

372

3 Kings 8. 46 Job 14. 5

237 237

Luke 12. 42 24. 45

238 238

John 6. 27 6. 35

225 225

232

232

Psalms 78. 19 (77.19) 238 78. 25 (77. 25) 225 119. 125 (118. 125) 238 Proverbs 3. 9 Matthew 5. 6 7. 6 15. 1–20 15. 26–27 24. 24

Mark 7. 1–23 7. 27–28

Acts of the Apostles 4. 32–34 223

Ephesians 5. 16

236

Colossians 3.5 3. 9–11

31 31

2 Timothy 3. 1–4

236

Jude 1

44 n. 39

228

225 240 237 237 236

Index of Non-Biblical Sources

Adhemar of Chabannes Chronicon: 292 Adso of Montier-en-Der De Miraculis S. Waldeberti: 289 Admonitio ad comes regni ordines: 261–62, 264 Admonitio generalis: 279 Agnellus Gesta: 122 Liber pontificalis: 124 al-Zubayr Book of Gifts and Rarities (Kitāb alHadāyā Wa al-Tuḥaf): 372 n. 60 Alaric Breviary: 129 Alcuin of York De virtutibus et vitiis: 222, 227, 229–30, 241 Annales Fuldenses: 88 n. 31, 92 Annales regni Francorum (Royal Frankish Annals): 383–84, 397 Augustine De civitate Dei: 363 table 15.1, 367 Enchiridion: 224 Semones: 408 n. 89 Beaumanois Coutumes de Beauvaisis: 279 Benedict of Nursia Rule of Benedict: 220 Bernard of Clairvaux Sermons on the Song of Songs: 363 table 15.1 Boniface Epistolae: 395 n. 38, 396 n. 44

Brevis vita ss. Constantini et Methodii: 86–87, 96 Burchard of Worms Decretorum libri viginti: 289 Lex familiae Wormatiensis ecclesiae: 294–95 Capitularia: see General Index, capitularies Cassiodorus Variae: 107 Charney, Geoffroy de Livre de Chevalerie: 301 Chronique des quatre premiers Valois: 301 Chronicon Sanctae Sophiae: 132, 132 n. 12 Chronicon Vulturnense: 130 n. 5, 132, 132 n. 12 Cicero De inventione: 14 n. 10 De legibus: 397 n. 51 Clausula de unctione Pippini: 384 Codex Falkensteinensis: 157 n. 29 Constantine Porphyrogennetos Book of Ceremonies: 83, 86 De administrando imperio: 90 Conventum inter Guillelmum aquitanorum comes et Hugonem chiliarchum: 290–92 Corpus iuris canonici: 382 n. 9 De Admiranda sacra (Roman inscription): 50–51

in dex of non- biblica l sources

Desert Paterikon (Sayings of the Desert Fathers): 201–02 Dhuoda Liber manualis: 152, 215–48 and genre: 216; see also mirrors, lay and political commentary: 219, 246 sources: 162, 219–20 Dorotheos of Gaza, Abba Instructions: 201, 203 Diptych of Stilicho: 46, 46 n. 46. Einhard Vita Karoli: 367, 369 table 15.2 Epistola patriarchae: 369 table 15.2 Ephraim the Syrian, St Homily on the Holy Transfiguration: 201 Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem: 370 table 15.3 Epitaphium Alexandri: 370 table 15.3 Erchempert Historia Langobardorum Beneventanorum: 86 Eutropius Historia Romana: 369 table 15.2 Fortunatianus, Chirius Ars rhetorica: 13 n. 9, 14 n. 10 Fredegar Chronicorum Liber Quartus cum Continuationibus: 72–75, 383 Froissart, Jean Chroniques: 297–99, 301 Gerbert of Reims Die Briefsammlung: 290 Geary, Patrick ‘Ethnic Identity as a Situational Construct’: 63, 76 Furta Sacra: 171

Myth of Nations: 63 Phantoms of Remembrance: 64, 218, 335, 353 Geoffrey of Monmouth Historia regum Britanniae: 363 table 15.1, 370 table 15.3 Gregory (unidentified) Vita of St Romil (Romylos) of Vidin: 202 Gregory of Tours Histories: 69–74 Gregory the Great, Pope Dialogues: 173 Moralia: 363 table 15.1 Gregory Tsamblack Homily of St Evtimii of Trnovo: 202 Guibert of Nogent Gesta Dei per Francos: 363 table 15.1 Henry of Huntington Historia Anglorum: 363 table 15.1 Hincmar of Reims De divortio Lotharii regis et Theutbergae reginae: 395 n. 38 Hippolytus of Rome Liber generationis: 72–74 Hrabanus Maurus De rerum naturis: 15 n. 14, 19 n. 30, 157–58 Hugh of Fleury Chronica: 363 table 15.1 Hugh of St Victor De sacramentis: 363 table 15.1 Instituta Cnuti aliorumque regum Anglorum: 370 table 15.3 Isidore of Seville Etymologiae: 15 n. 14, 17 n. 22, 67–68, 157–58, 363 table 15.1 Ivo of Chartres Decreta: 363 table 15.1 Panormia: 369 table 15.2

425

4 26

i n dex of n on -b ib lical sourc es

Jacopo da Varagine Chronicle of Genoa: 19, 172–73, 187 Golden Legend: 19, 172 Historia reliquiarum…Philippi et Jacobi: 179–81 Historia…Iohannis Baptistae: 181–85 Legend or Life of Saint Syrus: 173, 175–76, 178–79, 185 relic treatises: 171–72, 187 sermons: 172 Jerome Chronicle: 73 John Cassian Collationes: 363 table 15.1, 368–69 John Chrysostom, St Margaritae: 201 Opus imperfectum in Mattheum: 367 John Climacus, St The Ladder of Divine Ascent: 201 John Moschus Spiritual Meadow (Sinaiskii paterik or the Paterikon Sinaiticum): 204 John the Deacon Life of Gregory: 348 Jonas of Orléans De institutione laicali: 216, 222–23, 225, 227, 229, 233 Josephus Antiquitates Judaicae: 363 table 15.1 Bellum Judaicum: 363 table 15.1 Justinian Digest: 397, 397 n. 47, 401, 407, 408 n. 87 Institutes: 129 Kallistos I, Patriarch of Constantinople Vita of St Teodossi of Trnovo: 198–200, 202

La Boétie, Étienne de: 405 De voluntaria servitute: 404–06 Lambert of St Omer Liber Floridus: 357, 369–70 Lavrentii (Laurentius), monastic scribe miscellany: 192, 200–05, 209–10 Legenda et miraculum de s. Gerdruda: 368 Leo Presbyter Liber Alexandri Magni: 369 table 15.2, 369 Leontios of Neapolis Life of St John the Merciful: 205–10 Letter of Prester John: 22, 359, 361, 364, 366–69, 369 table 15.2, 370 table 15.3, 371–73 archetype of: 361, 364, 370 Kurzfassung-u of: 361, 364, 371–72 Urtext of: 361, 364, 372 vernacular traditions of: 360 n. 16 Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis: 291, 293–94 Liber Pontificalis: 348 Life of Pope Leo IV in: 344 Ludus de Antichristo: 363 table 15.1 Marbod of Rennes Liber lapidum: 363 table 15.1, 370 table 15.3 Master Roger Epistle to the Sorrowful Lament upon the Destruction of the Kingdom of Hungary by the Tatars: 316–17 n. 29 Master Tolosanus Chronicon Faventinum: 118–22 Mirabilia Romae: 363 table 15.1

in dex of non- biblica l sources

Nilus of Sinai Teachings on the Eight Spiritual Sins: 204 Nithard Histories: 244, 411 Notitia dignitatum: 33–34, 40, 43, 43 nn. 37 and 38, 51 n. 64 Notker De virtutibus Karoli: 369 table 15.2

Ralph Glaber Historiarum libri quinque: 293 Regesto di S. Angelo: 132 n. 12 Regesto di S. Angelo in Formis: 132 n. 12 Registrum Petri Diaconi: 132 n. 12 Robert of Rheims Historia Hierosolymitana: 363 table 15.1, 368, 369 table 15.2, 371

‘Odo Ariberti’ Narratio de morte Bernardi Septimaniae ducis: 401 n. 67 Odo of Cluny De vita sancti Geraldi Auriliacensis comitis: 290 Orderic Vitalis Historia ecclesiastica: 357 Orosius Libri historiarum contra paganos: 369 table 15.2, 370 Otto of Freising Chronica/Historia de duobus civitatibus: 359, 363 table 15.1, 366–68

Salimbene de Adam Chronicon: 124 Sextus Rufus Gesta Romanorum: 369 table 15.2 Skete paterika: 206 Solinus Collecteana rerum memorabilium: 363 table 15.1

Pactus legis Alemannorum: 279 Parable of the Ten Virgins: 204 Paulinus of Aquileia Liber exhortationis: 222, 227, 230 Peter the Deacon Registrum Petri Diaconi: 348 Pliny Historia naturalis: 372 n. 59 Pseudo-Augustine De rhetorica: 22 n. 41 Pseudo-Jerome Quindecim signis ante iudicium: 363 table 15.1, 368 Quadripartitus: 370 table 15.3

Tacitus Annales: 396 n. 46 Tale of Barlaam and Joasaph, The: 201 Tegernseer Briefsammlung: 363 table 15.1, 371–72 Tetraevangelion: 201 Theodosian Code: 44 Thietmar of Merseburg Chronicon: 290 Valerius Gesta Alexandri Magni: 363 table 15.1, 370 table 15.3 Victorinus, Gaius Marius Adversus Arium: 11 nn. 3–4 Explanatio in rhetoricam: 11 n. 7 Visio Tnugdali: 368 Vita Clementis: 84 Vita Methodii: 85 Vita Pachomii: 368

427

Index of Names and Places

Aachen: 86, 94, 245 n. 203 Abbé Del Bene: 404 Abbo of Provence: 18–19 Acereta, Valle di: 119 Acre: 363 table 15.1 Adelbona: 141 Adelchis, Prince of Benevento: 136 Adelfrid: 143 Adelgisa: 143–44 Adelprandus: 141 Ademarus: 138, 141 Adhemar of Chabannes: 292 Ado of Vienne: 381, 398 Adrianople: 92 Adriatic: 117 Adso of Montier-en-Der: 289 Aelius: 51–52 Aethelbald, King of Mercia: 396 Agapetus: 209 Agiou Pavlou, monastery of: 205 Agnellus: 122, 124 Aimery, Sir Jean: 302 Aimon of Fleury: 381 Akbari, Suzanne Conklin: 358–59, 373 Alaric I, King of the Visigoths: 37 Alba Julia: 312 Alberic, princeps and senator: 350–51 Alciocus, Khan of the Bulgars: 93 Alcuin of York: 220, 230, 244 Alexander the Great: 366–67, 369–70 Alexander III, Pope: 360, 363 table 15.1, 368–69, 371 Alexandria: 182, 187, 206–08 Alfonso IV, King of Portugal: 309 Allstedt: 117

Alps: 35, 117 Amalfi: 129, 133 n. 20, 136 Byzantine duchy: 131 Amazonia: 74 Ammianus Marcellinus: 51 Anatolia: 171 Andrew the Apostle: 181 Andrew II, King of Hungary: 313, 318 n. 31 Andrew III, King of Hungary: 311–12 Andronikos II, Emperor of Byzantium: 195, 197 Anno, Archbishop of Cologne: 117 Anonymus Beccensis: 363 table 15.1 Ansegisus: see General Index, capitularies Apennines: 116, 119, 178 Appia, via: 339, 350 Apulia: 129, 134, 134 n. 24, 136 Aquileia: 35, 38 Aquincum: 53–54 Aquitaine: 215, 277 Aquitania: 133 n. 20 Aragon: 308 Arbo, Margrave in East Francia: 90 Arbogast, magister militum: 38, 48, 50–54 Arcadius, Emperor of Rome: 39, 46, 51 Arichis II, Duke of Benevento: 136, 144 n. 64, 145 Aristotle: 369 Arnipert: 138 Arnulf, Bishop of Metz: 96

in dex of na mes a nd places

Arnulf of Carinthia, King of East Francia and Emperor: 87–93, 95–98 Arnulf, Count of Sens: 97 Arnulf, Duke of the Bavarians: 98 Asia: 195–96, 373 Asia Minor: 67, 192, 194–95 Athanasios I of Constantinople, Patriarch: 192, 195–98, 208, 210 Athos, Mount: 205 Attila: 38 Augenti, Andrea: 108 Augustine, St: 11, 22, 161–62 Augustus, Emperor of Rome: 118 Austria: 88, 91, 95, 98 see also Ostarrîchi Aventinus: 393 ‘Baccara’: 364, 371 Bachofen, Johann: 151 Balderic, prefect: 94 Balkans, the: 191–92, 194, 205–06 Baluze, Étienne: 386 n. 19 Bamberg: 367 Baphaeus, battle of: 195 Barbaros, St: 198 Barbero, Alessandro: 33 Bari: 134, 134 n. 24 Barletta: 131 Bascot de Mauleon: 298–99 Basileios I, Emperor of Byzantium: 86, 92 Bavaria: 83–87, 89, 94, 96–98, 362 table 15.1, 364, 367, 370 see also Bawory, Waïoúri Bawory: 84 Bayeux, abbey of: 123 Beauvais: 293 Bede: 237, 241 Bela, Duke of Slavonia: 311, 315–16 Bela IV, King of Hungary: 311–12, 315–16, 316 n. 29

Benenatus: 138, 141 Benevento: 93, 129, 140–41, 144–46 Benson, Robert L.: 357 Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century: 357 Berenger II, King of Italy: 110, 116 Bern: 13 manuscript: 17 Bernard, Duke of Septimania: 153, 215, 229, 234, 244–48 Bernard, teacher: 292 Berthold III of Andechs, Count: 371 Bertrada, Queen of the Franks: 383 Besley, Jean: 390 n. 27 Betti, Maddalena: 108 Bianchi, Maria Grazia: 405 Bingen: 160 Bisagno, River: 173 Bisson, Thomas: 289 Bithynia: 195 Bloch, Marc: 258 Bobbio: 178 Bologna: 110, 117 Boniface, Archbishop of Mainz: 384, 384 n. 16, 386 n. 17, 395 n. 38, 396, 396 n. 43, 397 use of law: 397 n. 48 Bohemia: 89, 91 Borbonius, Matthias: 408–09 Boris I/Michael, Khan of Bulgaria: 87, 89, 93–95 Boucher, Warren: 405 Bourges: 71, 278 Brașov: 319 n. 33 Bratislava: 206 Braulio: 68 Brazlavo, dux in Siscia: 96 Britain: 44, 74 Brittany: 296 Brown, Peter: 31 The World of Late Antiquity: 31 Brown, Thomas: 108, 122

429

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i n dex of n ames an d p lac es

Brubaker, Rogers: 66, 68 Ethnicity without Groups: 66 Brutus: 404–05 ‘Brutus, Étienne Junius’: 405 n. 77 Budapest National Museum: 53 Pest: 326 Bulgar, Visigothic commander: 93 Bulgaria: 85–86, 89, 93, 95, 97, 191–94, 198–202, 204, 209–10 Burchard of Worms: 289, 294–95, 303 Burgundy: 273, 277, 280 Caelian, Hill: 22, 335, 339, 343, 348–49 Caesar, Julius: 70 Camaldolensi, monastery of: 119 Cambyses, King of Persia: 366 Campania: 131 n. 12 Canterbury: 370 Cappel, Jacob: 399 Carinthia: 96–97 Cariotto, dux of Mainz: 52, 52 n. 67 Carle, Guillame: 300, 303 Carloman, King of Bavaria: 88–89, 91, 96 Carloman II, King of West Francia: 268 Carrouges, Jean de: 302 Casacellensis, fundus: 350–51 Casentino, Valley: 116 Cassiodorus: 70, 75 Chalon: 50 Chandler, Cullen J.: 218, 246–47 Charlemagne: 86, 93–94,119, 134 n. 25, 260, 271, 273, 279, 367–68, 370–71 Charles V, Duke of Normandy: 296, 300 Charles VI, King of France: 298 Charles ‘the Bad’, King of Navarre: 296, 300

Charles the Bald, King of the West Francia and Emperor: 95, 215, 233, 246, 259–60, 264, 268, 271, 273, 410 Charles the Fat: King of East Francia and Emperor: 87, 90, 96–97 Charles the Good, Count of Flanders: 278 Charney, Geoffroy de: 301–03 C(h)arpentier, Pierre: 386 n. 20 Charroux: 292 Chernomen: 192 Cherewatuk, Karen: 248 Cheyette, Frederic: 257 Childebrand: 383 Childeric, King of the Franks: 382, 384, 393, 398–99, 407 Chilperic I, King of the Franks: 71, 73 Chittolini, Giorio: 309 Chlotar II, King of the Franks Edict of: 279 Chrysos, Evangelos K.: 84 Cicero: 11, 22 n. 41, 397 ‘Cinomanci’: 364, 371 Cirelli, Enrico: 108 Classe: 108, 117 Classen, Peter: 357–58 Claudius Mamertinus, Praetorian Prefect: 36–37 Claussen, Martin: 217, 240, 246, 248 Clement III, Anti-Pope: 117 Clermont: 301 Clichy: 279 Clovis, King of the Franks: 50 Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome: 358 Coligny, Gaspard de: 380 Cologne: 50, 117, 180, 187 cathedral library: 11 manuscript: 14 n. 10, 17, 17 n. 24, 18, 22 n. 41

in dex of na mes a nd places

Columbus, St: 178 Conques: 292 Constable, Giles: 357 Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century: 357 Constans, Emperor of Rome: 43, 49 Constantine, Pope: 339 Constantine I, Emperor of Rome: 36, 37 n. 18, 49 Constantine II, Emperor of Rome: 43 Constantine III, Emperor of Rome: 50 Constantinople: 36, 85–86, 92, 94–95, 97, 118, 192, 194–95, 197–99, 208–10 Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, Emperor of Byzantium: 83–84, 90 Constantius II, Emperor of Rome: 34–35 Corbie, monastery of: 362 table 15.1 Corbinelli, Jacopo: 403–05, 405 n. 77, 406, 409 Cosentino, Salvatore: 108 Cruse, Mark: 369 Cuntruda: 136 Cyprus, King of Persia: 205–06 d’Alençon, Pierre: 302 Dagobert I, King of the Franks: 93 Danube, River: 36, 36 n. 14, 37, 43, 53–54, 89, 93–95 Darius III, King of Persia: 366 Dauphin: see Charles V, duke of Normandy Davis, Jennifer: 267 De Mesmes family: 390 library of: 390 n. 30 De Mesmes, Henri: 405–06 library of: 406, 406 n. 80

De Rossi, Giovanni Battista: 341, 347 Deliyannis, Deborah: 108 Demetrios, St: 198 Derolez, Albert: 358 Deusdedit, Cardinal: 339, 342, 342 n. 26 Deusdedit, dux, archbishop of Romanus: 109, 111–12 Dhuoda: 17, 20, 215–48 as author: 216–18, 238–40, 243, 245–48 and Bernard of Septimania: 234, 246–48 and family: 152–53, 215, 225, 235 as lay person: 217–18, 229, 240 as mother: 161, 216, 240–41, 243, 245–46, 248 and sense of authority: 226, 238–40, 243, 245–48 as spiritual parent: 161, 225–26, 246 on fathers: 152–53, 161–62 reception of her text: 411 n. 100 Diesenberger, Max: 97 n. 86 Dinis, King of Portugal: 309 Diocletian, Emperor of Rome: 43–44 Dionisii Divnii (Dionysios the Wonderful): 201 Dorotheos of Gaza, Abba: 201, 203 Dovina Puella, castle of: 88 Dronke, Peter: 217, 245 Dubreucq, Alain: 218, 246 Duby, Georges: 23 Dumoulin, Charles: 407 n. 84 Dupuy, Claude: 405 library of: 406 Dupuy, Jacques: 387, 390, 390 nn. 27–28, 392, 394, 404, 406, 410 Dupuy, Pierre: 387, 390 n. 27, 392, 394, 404, 406 Dutton, Paul: 408

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Edward III, King of England: 297 Eglidi: 144 Einhard: 398 Elne-Toulouges: 292 England: 308–09, 326, 362 table 15.1, 371 Ephraim the Syrian, St: 201 Erhart, Peter: 137 n. 36 Eric of Friuli: 230 Esders, Stefan: 133 n. 20 Esztergom, archbishopric of: 313 Eugenius, Emperor of Rome: 38, 50–51 Europe: 31–32, 53, 55, 152, 309, 311, 330 Eusebius: 73, 366 Eutropius: 363 table 15.1 Everett, Nicholas: 146 n. 70 Evtimii (Euthymios) of Trnovo: 199, 202–03 Faenza: 118–20, 122 Falconius, secretary of SS. Andrea e Gregorio: 349–50 Fauchet, Claude: 392, 394–95, 395 n. 38, 396 n. 43, 407, 407 n. 85, 409 library of: 392 n. 32 Fécamp, monastery of: 362 table 15.1 Felix, Bishop of Trier: 47 Firnhaber-Baker, Justine: 300 Flanders: 278 Florence: 44, 119 Forino: 137 Forlí: 119 Fortunatianus, Chirius: 11, 13–14, 14 n. 10, 17–18, 20–22, 22 n. 41 Foucault, Michel: 63–64 Foy, St: 291–92, 294, 303 France: 308–09, 320 Francis I, King of France: 380

Francis, Duke of Anjou: 400 Frederick Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor: 23, 360, 363 table 15.1, 368–69, 371 Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor: 124 Freed, Johannes: 98 n. 90 Freed, John B.: 371 Freising, church of: 159–61, 367 Frigeridus, dux Valeriae: 51 Friuli: 36 Froissart, Jean: 297–99, 301–03 Fulda, monastery of: 159–60 Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis: 151 Gaeta: 129, 133 n. 20, 136 Garver, Valerie: 241, 245–46 Gascony: 296 Gaul: 33, 46, 52 n. 67, 70–71, 134 n. 23, 147 Geary, Patrick: 34, 63–65, 76, 87, 124, 129–30, 147, 171, 218, 257, 335, 353, 358–59, 373 Gebhard of Bedenburg: 368 Gelasius, Pope: 382 n. 9 Gellner, Ernst: 76 Gembloux, monastery of: 362 table 15.1 Geneva: 386 n. 20 Genoa: 172–87 Gentillet, Innocent: 405 n. 77 Gerald of Aurillac: 289–90 Gerard of Cambrai: 293 Gerold II, prefect: 94 Germania: 90, 96 Germania Superior: 56 Germany: 46, 52, 116 Giesey, Ralph: 407 Gisulf II, Duke of Benevento: 144–45 Godfrey of Viterbo: 381

in dex of na mes a nd places

Goetz, Hans-Werner: 379, 384 Grafton, Anthony: 399 Gratian, Emperor of Rome: 46, 48–51 Greece: 67 Gregory (unidentified): 202, 335, 339, 340­–42, 350 Gregory of Sinai: 198, 209 Gregory of Tours: 16, 69–72, 74–75 Gregory I, the Great, Pope: 22, 173, 176, 340–44, 346–52 Gregory II, Pope: 347 Gregory III, Pope: 347 Gregory V, Pope: 341 Gregory VI, Pope: 341 Gregory VII, Pope: 341, 341 n. 23 Gregory IX, Pope: 349 Gregory Tsamblack: 202 Grimoald, Lombard king: 119 Grisar, Hartmann: 340 Grispertus: 138 Guaimarius, Prince of Salerno: 138, 141, 143 Guibert, cleric and vice chancellor for Italy: 117 Guido, son of Ingelrada II: 116, 121 Guy IV, Duke of Spoleto: 141 Hadrian II, Pope: 86 Hagia Sophia, church of: 197, 208 Ham: 74 Hamilton, Bernard: 373 Haskins, Charles Homer: 357 The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century: 357 Heng, Geraldine: 358–59, 373 Henry, provost of Schäftlarn abbey: 371 Henry I, King of England: 278 Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor: 123 Henry II, King of France: 380 Henry III, King of France: 400

Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor: 117 Henry IV, of Navarre, King of France: 23, 380, 400–01, 409, 410 n. 94 Herrenchiemsee, monastery of: 362 table 15.1, 367 Herrin, Judith: 108 Héry: 273 Heydemann, Gerda: 70 Higgins, Ian Macleod: 358 Hincmar, Bishop of Rheims: 256, 259–63, 266, 270–72, 272 n. 69, 273 Hlodric: 47–50, 54 Hobsbawm, Eric: 76 Hoeflich, Michael H.: 327 Hoffmann, Dietrich: 33 Holy Land, the: 180, 182 Honorius, Emperor of Rome: 46 Hosius of Cordova: 145 n. 67 Hotman, François: 380–83, 386, 387 n. 21, 392, 394–96, 396 n. 43, 397–400, 400 n. 64, 401, 404, 406, 407 n. 84, 408–09, 411 Francogallia: 380, 382, 387, 395–401, 409 use of Justinian’s Digest: 397 n. 49 Hrabanus Maurus: 15 n. 14, 18–19, 157, 159 Hugh of Jabala: 359–60 Hugh of Provence, King of Italy: 116 Hugh IV of Lusignan: 290–92 Hungary: 91, 97–98, 307–08, 311–30 Hydatius: 73 Iberia: 67 Île-de-France: 299 Illyria: 37, 41, 51 n. 64 India: 361, 367, 369 Ingelrada I (Engelrada): 111, 115–17 Ingelrada II: 18, 115–22, 124

43 3

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Ioanne, notary: 135 Isidore of Seville: 15 n. 14, 17, 67–69, 73, 75, 157–58, 363 table 15.1 Israel: 69 Istria: 38, 44–45 Istvan Szechenyi, Count: 53 Italy: 35–36, 37 n. 19, 48, 51 n. 64, 70–71, 96, 129–32, 134–36, 139, 141–42, 145–47, 308 Iustus: 145–46

Joseph the Philosopher: 203 Josephus: 366 Judea: 181 Judith of Bavaria, Empress of the Franks: 215, 247 Julia Concordia: 34–38, 45 Cemetery of: 16, 34–35, 37–38, 40 Julian, Emperor of Rome: 34–35, 37 n. 19 Justinian, Emperor of Rome: 209

Jacopo da Varagine ( Jacobus de Voragine): 19, 172–73, 175–76, 178–85, 187 Jager, Eric: 302 James, St: 172, 180­–82, 185 Janus, founder of Genoa: 186–87 Japheth: 74 Jean de Venette: 297 Jeremiah, Prophet: 270 Jerome: 73, 157, 237, 240–41 Jerusalem: 181–82, 187, 207, 359–60, 367 John, archpresbyter: 339, 342 John the Baptist, St: 172, 180–85, 187 John Cassian, St: 369 John Climacus, St: 201 John of Damascus, St: 208 John the Deacon: 347–48 John the Merciful (the Almsgiver or Eleemon) of Alexandria, St: 205–10 John Moschus: 204 John of Venice: 89–90 John II, King of France: 287, 296–97, 301–03 John, St: 351 John Alexander, Tsar of Bulgaria: 20, 192–93, 198–202, 210 John Chrysostom, St: 197, 201 Jordan, William Chester: 308–09, 319 Joseph, biblical patriarch: 248

Kallistos I, Patriarch of Constantinople: 198–200, 202 Kalocsa, Hungarian archbishopric: 326 Kendrick, Jeff: 396 Kinoshita, Sharon: 358, 373 Kiprian (Cyprian), metropolitan of Kiev: 203 Koder, Johannes: 84 Konstantinos, St: 86, 88–89, 95 Kresten, Otto: 83 n. 1 Krum, Khan of the Bulgars: 94 La Boétie, Étienne de: 405 Labbé, Charles: 386 n. 19, 387, 390, 392, 392 n. 31 Lambert of St Omer: 357–58, 373 Lampert of Hersfeld: 381 Landulphus Sagax: 381 Languedoc: 299 Estates of: 299 Latina, via: 339 Lavrentii (Laurentius): 192, 200–52, 209–10 Le-Bec-Hellouin, monastery of: 362 table 15.1 Le Gris, Jacques: 302 L’Estoile, Pierre de: 390, 390 n. 28, 392, 394, 410–11 Leidrat, Count: 160 Leja, Meg: 233–34

in dex of na mes a nd places

Lemene, River: 35 Leo IV, Pope: 344 Leo IX, Pope: 341 Leon VI, Emperor of Byzantium: 92 Leontios of Neapolis: 205–09 Leuven, battle at: 97 Leyser, Karl: 152 Ligura: 172, 178 Limassol: 205 Limoges: 292 Liutpold, Margrave: 98 Liutswind, Queen of the Franks: 96 Loire: 71 Lombardy: 180 Lorsch, monastery of: 11, 14 n. 10 Lothar I, Emperor of the Franks: 119, 408–09 Louis of Anjou, King of Hungary: 314 Louis the Pious, King of the Franks and Emperor: 94, 97, 155, 215, 235, 243–44, 260–61, 264, 268, 273 and public penance: 243 and sons: 235, 244, 246 Louis II, the German, King of East Francia: 86, 88–89, 92, 95–97, 119 Louis III, the Younger, King of East Francia: 96 Louis VI, King of France: 278, 280 Louis IX, King of France: 308, 311, 319, 319 n. 34, 320 Grand Ordonnance of: 279 Lupus: 143–44 Lutirano: 119 Lyon: 276 MacCormick, Neil: 289 Macé, Normandy: 123 Machelm: 94 Macheron: 182 Magi: 359, 366–67

magistri militum: 109, 112–14 Magnentius (Roman general): 43, 49 Maine, Henry Sumner: 152–53 Mallius, Petrus: 347 Mallobaudes, King of the Franks: 48–49 Manemann, Jürgen: 194 Manuel I Comnenus, Emperor of Byzantium: 359–61, 372 Mareš, František V.: 84 Maritsa, River: 192 Marseille: 55 Marsilius of Padua: 381 Marteau, Claude de: 410–11 Martin, St: 47, 69–70 Martin, Duke of Ravenna: 115–16, 118, 120 Masson, Jean-Papire: 381 n. 8, 382 n. 9 Master Roger: 316, 317 n. 29 Master Tolosanus: 118–22 Matharel, Antoine: 381 n. 8, 382 n. 9 Mauricius, Abbot of SaintBenedictus: 145 Maximian, Emperor of Rome: 41 Maximus, Emperor of Rome: 49–50, 52 Mayeski, Marie Anne: 218, 223, 228–29, 239–40 Maynard, François de: 387, 387 n. 23, 390, 390 n. 27, 392, 392 n. 31, 410 McGuire, Anne C.: 218, 223–25, 229, 231, 242 McKitterick, Rosamond: 242, 384 McLennan, John Ferguson: 151 Medici, Catherine de: 380–81, 403 Medici, Cosimo de: 403 Mediterranean, Sea: 182, 185, 193 Mellet, Paul-Alexis: 395 Menander Rhetor: 203

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i n dex of n ames an d p lac es

Merobaudes (Roman officer): 50 Metellus: 368, 371 Methodius, St: 85–90, 92, 95 Michael I, Emperor of Byzantium: 94 Michael III, Emperor of Byzantium: 85, 89, 92, 95 Milan: 48 Modena: 110 Modestos, Patriarch of Jerusalem: 207 Modigliana, valley: 118–20 Moesia: 191 Mojmir I, Duke of the Moravians: 88 Molassana: 173, 175, 178–79 Montaigne: 405 Montecassino: 131–32, 133 n. 21, 134, 134 n. 26, 140 twelfth-century cartulary of: 348–49 Morava, River: 86, 88 Moravia: 85–92, 95–96 Morbecque, Denis de: 301 Morgan, Lewis Henry: 151–52 Ancient Society: 151–52 Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family: 151 Moses, biblical patriarch: 70 Munsterbilzen, monastery of: 362 table 15.1 Murat I, Sultan: 192 Mursa, battle of: 43, 49 Myra: 171–72, 182–83 Nandipert: 140 Naples: 129, 133 n. 20 Neel, Carol: 217–19, 223, 231, 234, 236, 243, 246–47 Nelson, Janet: 383 ​​Nero, Emperor of Rome: 203 Nicholas, St: 171

Nicomedia: 195 Nikephoros I, Emperor of Byzantium: 93 Nilus of Sinai: 204 Nithard: 231, 243–44 Noah: 74 Noble, Thomas F. X.: 228–29 Nocera (Nuceria): 137 Normandy: 296–97, 357 North Africa: 178–79 Novalesa: 18 Obuda, Hungarian assembly at: 323–24 Odo of Cluny: 289 Odo of Rheims: 363 table 15.1 Ohnsorge, Werner: 84 Olsen, Glenn: 219, 223, 246 Omer, St: 301 Omurtag, Khan of the Bulgars: 94 Orderic Vitalis: 357, 363 table 15.1, 373 Orosius: 363 table 15.1 Orsa: 135 Osman, ghazi emir: 195 Ostarrîchi: 98 Otto, Bishop of Bamberg: 371 Otto of Freising: 359–60, 367, 381 Otto I, the Great, Emperor of the Ottonian Empire: 110, 117–18 Otto II, Emperor of the Ottonian Empire: 110 Otto III, Emperor of the Ottonian Empire: 110, 113, 115 Oxford: 309 Padua: 403 Pannonia: 43, 51 n. 64, 89–90, 93, 97 Paris: 48, 296–97, 300, 303, 403 Parlement: 302 Parma: 110 Paschal II, Pope: 344, 351

in dex of na mes a nd places

Patzold, Steffen: 261 Paul, St: 31, 55, 70, 351–52 Paulinus of Aquileia: 220 Pavia: 134 n. 25, 178 Pecorara, Giacomo, Bishop of Palestrina: 314 Perigieux: 71 Persia: 359, 366, 369 Peter, St: 352 Peter the Deacon: 348 Peter IV, archbishop of Ravenna: 110, 117–18, 120–21 Peters-Custot, Annick: 133 Petrus: 138 Philip, St: 172, 180–82, 185 Piacenza: 110 Pinelli, Gian Vincenzo: 403 library of: 403 n. 70 Pippin (Pepin ‘the Short’): 379, 381–84, 386, 393–94, 397–99, 408 Pithou, Pierre: 386–87, 387 n. 21–22, 392, 394, 396 n. 43, 401, 404, 406, 409, 409 n. 93 Placidus, St: 348 Plato: 10–11 Po River: 36, 45 Valley: 178 Pohl, Walter: 65 Poitiers: 278, 293 Battle of: 287–88, 297, 299, 301, 303 Poland: 91 Portugal: 309–10 Potenza: 117 Praenestina, via: 339 Pregiato: 138 Prester John: 22–23, 360–61, 364, 366–67, 370, 372–73 Proclis, fundus: 350–51 Provence: 18 Puteanus: see Dupuy

​​ ara Khitai (Liao dynasty): 360 Q Qatwān, Battle of: 360 Quasideus: 364, 366 Quierzy, assembly at: 259 Raba, River: 90 Radagaisus, King of the Goths: 37 Radelchis II, Prince of Benevento: 141, 143 Radipert: 138 Rady, Martyn: 316 Rainald of Dassel: 368 Rainerius, son of Ingelrada II: 116–17, 121–22 Ralph Glaber: 293 Rapp, Claudia: 209 Rastislav, Duke of the Moravians: 85, 88–89, 91–92 Rasyphus, martyr: 123 Ravenna: 17, 107–24 archbishop of: 116–18, 124 charters of: 108–09, 111–14, 117–18, 121 church of: 108–09, 111, 117–18, 121–23 commune of: 110 exarchate: 107 as given name: 123 history of: 122 Pontifical: 124 Regensburg: 88–89, 92, 95, 97, 367–68 Reggio: 110 Regino of Prüm: 89, 96, 381 Reimitz, Helmut: 379 Remigius, Bishop of Rheims: 50 Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus: 51 Reno, River: 117 Reuter, Timothy: 88 n. 31 Rhaetia: 35 Rheims, Council of (1148): 369 Rhine, River: 49–50, 71, 86, 90, 96

43 7

4 38

i n dex of n ames an d p lac es

Rhône, River: 275–76 Richard, Duke of Burgundy: 289 Richard II, King of England: 298 Riché, Pierre: 216–17, 230 Ricimer, magister militum: 48, 51 Rimini: 117, 121 Rio, Alice: 143 Robert, Abbot of SS. Andrea e Gregorio: 349 Robert II, the Pious, King of France: 273, 294 Rodelenda: 137–38, 140 Rodenardus of Bari: 134 Romagna: 118, 120–21 Romanus, Archbishop of Ravenna: 109 Rome: 119, 121, 335–36, 338, 340, 342, 344–48, 350, 352, 360, 363 table 15.1 Romig, Andrew: 230, 243–44 Romil (Romylos), St: 202 Romuald of Camaldoli: 110 Roncevaux Battle of: 119 Rupert, Abbot of Tegernsee: 370–71 Saint-Amand-en-Pevcle, monastery of: 362 table 15.1 Saint-Augustine, monastery of: 362 table 15.1 Saint-Benedictus, monastery of: 145 Saint-Denis, monastery of: 399 Saint-Eucher, church of cemetery: 47 Saint-Evroult-Notre-Dame-duBois, monastery of: 362 table 15.1 Saint-Felice, church of: 145–46 Saint-Gall, monastery of: 159 Saint-Jean Baptiste, church of: 362 table 15.1

Saint-Lamprecht, monastery of: 362 table 15.1 Saint-Maria in Quintodecimo, monastery of: 145 Saint-Peter, church of: 144 Saint-Peter, Roman church of: 346–47 Saint-Peter in Quintodecimo, monastery of: 144–45 Saint Stephen, feast of: 316 Saint-Thierry, monastery of: 362 table 15.1 Saint-Vaast, monastery of: 362 table 15.1 Saint-Victor, abbey of: 362 table 15.1 Saints-Paulinus-and-Maximin, church of cemetery: 47 Saintes: 71 Salerno: 129, 130 n. 5, 131, 137, 140–43 Salimbene de Adam: 124 Salvian of Marseilles: 55, 162 Samarkand: 360 San Lorenzo, cathedral of: 172, 181, 183, 185–87 chapel dedicated to John the Baptist in: 182, 185–87 San Maria, Locosano: 145 San Massimo, Salerno, monastery of: 138, 141, 143–44 San Nicola, church of: 171 S. Paolo fuori le Mura, church of: 344, 346–47 San Salvatore, monastery of: 116 San Severo, monastery of: 108, 117 San Siro, basilica of: 174–76, 178, 185, 187 San Tommaso, monastery of: 121 San Zenon, Pistoia, church of: 116

in dex of na mes a nd places

San Vincenzo al Vulturno, monastery of: 132, 140, 144 n. 63 Sanjar, Sultan: 360 Sant’Eufemia, monastery of: 121 S. Cecilia, church of: 342 S. Maria in Portico, church of: 342 Santa Maria, monastery of: 113, 123 S. Susanna, church of: 339 S. Erasmo, monastery of: 339 S. Pudenziana, church of: 342 SS. Andrea e Gregorio, monastery of: 22, 348–52 SS. Archangeli et Benedictus, monastery of, Senedochio: 144 Santi Giacomo e Filippo, convent of: 172, 183, 185, 187 SS. Giovanni e Paolo, church of: 22, 335–36, 338–40, 342, 344, 348, 350–53 SS. Quattro Coronati, church of: 344–45 Sava, River: 35, 86, 95 Saxony: 83 Scauri, clivus: 348 Schäftlarn, abbey of: 371 Schmid, Karl: 161 Schneider, Olaf: 379 Scoca: 364 Sebastia: 182 Seneca: 203 Septimania: 130, 147 Serbia: 193, 198 Sheba, Queen of: 372 Shem: 74 Sicard, Prince of Benevento: 145–46 Sicily: 140 Sidonius Apollinaris: 152–53 Sieve, valley: 119 Sigebert of Gembloux: 381 Sikenolf: 143 Silvanus, Roman general: 43, 49–50, 54

Silvester, Pope: 113, 145 n. 67 Simbaticius (protospatharus): 141 Siponto: 146 Sirus, Comes Argentoratensis: 52 Sixtus V, Pope: 400, 400 n. 64 Skinner, Patricia: 136 Slessarev, Vsevolod: 372 Slovakia: 91 Smith, Julian M. H.: 229 Soissons: 293, 384 Solomon: 372 Spain: 68 Spoleto: 141 Stephen, Duke of Transylvania: 311, 315–16 Stephen, King of Hungary: 313 Stephen II, Pope: 399 Stilicho, magister militum: 46, 53 Stock, Brian: 209 Stone, Rachel: 218, 227–28, 242, 244 Strasbourg: 52 Subiaco, monastery of: 341 cartulary of: 348–49 inscription of: 341 Sumption, Jonathan: 299 Sylvia, mother of Pope Gregory the Great: 349–50 Symeon of Thessaloniki: 208 Syrus, St: 172–79, 185, 187 Székesfehérvár, Hungarian assem­ bly at: 312, 315–16, 325, 329, 330 Targny, Louis de: 386 n. 19 Tedderic, godfather: 224–26, 229, 248 Tegernsee, monastery of: 362 table 15.1, 367–71, 373 Teodelgardus: 143–44 Teodosii, Patriarch: 198, 200, 210 Teodosii, tried heretic: 200 Teodosii (Theodosios) of Trnovo, the holy man: 198–200, 210

439

440

i n dex of n ames an d p lac es

Teoperga: 141 Tetgrimo (Teudigrimo): 116, 118–20 Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths: 93 Theodosius I, Emperor of Rome: 38, 40, 45–46, 48, 51, 54 Edict of Thessalonica: 50 Theophanu, Empress of the Ottonian Empire: 290 Theuderic III, King of the Franks: 398 Theutbald, Archbishop of Vienne: 275 Thietmar, Archbishop of Salzburg: 91 Thietmar of Merseburg: 290 Thomas, St: 367 Thomas, Count: 363 table 15.1 Thomas Gray, Sir: 296 Thomas of Marle: 278 Thrace: 197 Ticha, River battle of: 94 Tischler, Matthias: 367 Tigris, River: 359 Tongres: 34, 51 Tours: 69 Trani: 131 Transylvania: 312 Traversari, noble family of: 110, 113, 124 Lord Paul Traversaria: 124 Trenchard-Smith, Margaret: 244, 247 Trier: 46, 48–49, 52, 55 cemetery: 47 Trnovo: 191, 194, 198–200, 202, 204, 210 Tuscany: 107, 115–16, 118, 120 Tulln River: 96

Town: 90, 95 Tullnerfeld: 89, 96 n. 70 Turilov, Anatolii: 201 Turkmenistan: 360 Twelve Apostles: see San Siro, church of, Genoa Ursula of Cologne, St: 180 relics of companion of: 180 Uzbekistan: 360 Uzès: 216, 247 Valens, Emperor of Rome: 43 Valentinian I, Emperor of Rome: 40, 43 Valentinian II, Emperor of Rome: 48 Valentinus: 176, 178, 185 Valeria: 51 Venice: 16, 93, 110, 171, 180, 206 Vetulenius Praenestinus, Governor of Venetia and Istria: 36 Vico San Pietro della Porta: 176–77 Victorinus, Marius: 10–11 Vienna: 63–64 ‘Vienna School’: 63 Vienne: 48, 275–76 Vipara, River battle of: 35–36, 38, 40, 44, 53 Vistula, River: 90 Vitória, André: 309–11, 320 Wagner, Bettina: 361, 364, 370 Waïoúri: 83, 85, 95, 97, 98 n. 90 see also Bavaria Walramus of Naumburg: 381 Warin of Beauvais: 294 Watts, John: 310 Weihenstephan, monastery of: 362 table 15.1, 366–67, 370 Wenskus, Reinhard: 15

in dex of na mes a nd places

West-Harling, Veronica: 108 White, Stephen: 257 Wiching, Bishop of Nitra: 90 Wickham, Chris: 130 n. 5 William, son of Dhuoda: 152–53, 215–16, 220–39, 241, 244, 247–48 William, Duke of Toulouse: 221 William V, Duke of Aquitaine: 290–91, 293 Windberg, monastery of: 362 table 15.1, 363 table 15.1, 368 Wissembourg, monastery of: 159 Wolfram, Herwig: 15, 32 Wood, Jamie: 68 Worms: 294 Ye-lü Dashi (gürkhan): 360 Zacharias, Pope: 384, 386 n. 17, 393 Zarncke, Friedrich: 361 Zwentibald I, King of the Moravians: 86–92, 95–97 Zwentibold, King of Lotharingia: 89

4 41

General Index Abodrites: 94 Alans: 195 aléa: 64 Alemans (or Alemanni): 16, 35, 41, 44, 84, 112 Alexander Romance: 363 table 15.1 Alexandrine schism: 360, 368 Amalfitans: 130 n. 5 alms and almsgiving: 224, 228 see also charity anachronism: 395, 401, 407 n. 84 Angles: 66 anti-corruption legislation: 309, 309 n. 8, 311–13, 324–25 in England: 309–10 in France: 308–09 in Hungary: 311–30 Decree of 1231: 308, 311, 313–14, 318, 321–24, 326, 330 Decree of 1267: 308, 311–12, 314–16, 325, 329–30 Decree of 1290: 308, 311–12, 323–25, 330 Decree of 1298: 308, 311–12, 314–17, 326–28, 330 Golden Bull: 311–16, 318–23, 325, 328–29 in Portugal: 309–10 Apocalypse: 367, 367 n. 41 Arab Caliphate: 206 Aragonese Oath: 398 archives Archivio dell’Abbazia at Monte Cassino: 130 n. 6, 133 Archivio della S.ma Trinità at Cava dei Tirreni: 130–31, 133, 136, 140, 142, 144

Archivio Diocesano in Barletta: 130 n. 6 Archivio Diocesano in Trani: 130 n. 6 aristocracy foreign: 113 Frankish: 109, 109 n. 8, 223, 244, 293–94, 302, 304 Hungarian: 324 landed: 112, 121 “new”: 108 Ravenna: 108–10, 112–13, 116 n. 28, 121–22, 124 urban: 110, 112 warrior: 296–98 Assyrians: 73 Athenians: 73 author-copy: 387 n. 22 Avars: 87, 93 bailiffs: 320–22, 324, 330 bannus dominicus: 263, 266, 269 baptism: 95, 145, 163, 221, 230 and Carolingian renewal: 218 n. 27 community based on: 195 Crossing of Red Sea as prefiguration of: 69–70 Dhuoda’s understanding of: 225–27 barbarians: 32, 156 and settlement of: 31, 32 n. 2, 33–35, 40, 44–46 stereotypes of: 90–91 Baresi: 171–72 basilisk: 171, 174, 176–78,178 n. 24, 187 Batavi: 41–42 Bavarians: 16, 86–88, 90–91, 93, 97 see also Nemcy/Nemítzioi

g enera l index

Biblioteca capitolare in Benevento: 130 n. 6 Bibliothèque du Roi: 390 blackbird: 171, 174–75 blood-right: 407, 407 n. 83 see also suitas Bretons: 39 n. 25, 44, 55 bubonic plague: 193, 199, 209–10 Bulgarian Church: 198, 209 Bulgarian Empire, 193, 204 Bulgarians: 19, 85–86, 92–95, 191–92, 201, 209 bulls, papal: 341 n. 23, 342 Burgundians: 71 Byzantine Empire: 85–86, 92–94, 96, 191–98, 200, 202–03, 206, 208–10 capitularies: 21, 129, 155, 257–59, 264–73, 276 Ansegisus’ collection of: 259–62, 266, 270, 277 Capitulare Saxonicum: 267 Capitularia legibus addita: 267 Hincmar of Rheims’ dossier of: 259–63, 270, 273, 277 Benedictus Levita, collection of: 263 of Pîtres: 264, 268, 270 of Quierzy: 263–64, 270–71 of Thionville: 265 of Ver: 268, 270–72, 278 Carolingian Empire: 87, 93–94 cartularies: 22, 129, 158–59, 257, 349 Lombard: 131, 131 n. 12, 132, 142, 144–45 Montecassino: 348–49 Subiaco: 341 n. 23, 348–49 Wissembourg: 159 Catalans: 197, 210 ‘chain of chronicles’: 72 Chalcedonian: 206

chancellery: 373 charity: 20, 195–97, 204, 206–10, 228 see also philanthropy Chartae Latinae Antiquiores: 131, 131 n. 6 charters: 129–47, 158–61, 257–58, 276, 291, 311–14, 316 Barletta: 130 n. 6, 131 Benevento: 130 n. 6 Cava dei Tirreni: 130–31, 133, 140, 142, 144 donation: 159–61, 228, 349–50 Freising: 159–60 Fulda: 159 lapidary: 338 and law: 132–35, 137–47 and legal ethnicity: 132, 136, 140–41, 146–47 liberty: 311, 313, 315, 328 Monte Cassino: 130 n. 6, 131 Ravenna, church of: 108–09, 111–15, 117–18, 121, 123–24 St-Gall: 159 Trani: 130 n. 6, 131 Wissembourg: 159 and women: 133–34, 136, 138–42, 144, 146–47 chastity: 220, 244, 247–48 chiliarch: 290 Christianization: 84, 95, 187 n. 61 Church Bulgarian: 198, 209 Catholic: 206 (Eastern) Orthodox: 196–97, 199, 206 of Ravenna: 108–09, 111, 116–18, 121–23 See also ecclesia civil war Carolingian/Frankish: 215, 235, 242–44, 246, 411 Second Byzantine: 191

443

444

gen er a l in dex

clergy: see priesthood clerical-lay divide: 159, 217–19, 222–23, 226, 229–30, 232, 240–43, 245–46 coins Lombard: 133 n. 21 communes: 110, 124 communion: 198, 203 see also Eucharist compilation: 358 Condé family: 380 confession: 216, 226–27, 230 confraternity books: 22 coniurationes: 272, 272 n. 69 convivencia: 134 corregedores: 309 corruption: 307, 311–13, 328 Ciceronian triad: 327 definition of: 308–09 see also descensus, anticorruption legislation cosmology: 19, 172, 187 councils anti-heretical: 198–200, 205, 210 church councils: 243 of Clichy: 279 of Ganga: 145 n. 67 of Guastella: 110 of Mainz, 813: 226 see also Peace of God counsel and counsellors: 227, 235, 244 counts: see political order courts, law: 130, 145, 272, 277, 279, 293, 298, 311, 322 Crossing of the Red Sea: 69–70, 73, 75 Crusades: 357–58, 361, 366, 370 First: 182, 367, 371 historiography: 371 Cumans: 312, 326 custom, local: 66, 124, 134, 137–38, 142, 145–46, 257, 317

Dacia: 37, 42–43 descensus: 313, 317–19, 329 deutsch: 84 disloyalty: see fidelity dispositio: 73 dispute resolution compromise settlements, 257 studies: 21, 257 see also self-help divisio terrae: 74 dogs: 221, 237–42, 245 dux: 88 n. 31, 108–09, 113–15 East Frankish kingdom, the: 86–87, 96–97 Eastern Marches of: 86, 88–90, 94, 96–98 ecclesia: 219, 221–23, 229, 231, 237–38, 248 see also church Edict of Nantes: 380 elites, urban: 107–13, 115, 122–24 encyclopedia: 67–68 universal: 358 n. 5 End Times theology: 358 epitaphs: 335 at Aquincum: 53–55 at Julia Concordia: 34–35, 37–46, 55 at Trier: 47 Estates General: 300, 303, 381, 393–96, 409 ethnic imagination: 16, 65, 74 pluralism: 74 ethnicity: 63–69, 75–76, 111, 129–30, 133, 136, 146 barbarian: 90 legal: 130, 132, 134, 136, 140–41, 146–47 ethnogenesis: 15, 63 ethnonyms: 34, 64–66, 71, 84, 87

g enera l index

Eucharist: 216, 224–27, 229–30, 239–41 ‘ex genere…’: 109, 111–16, 124 excommunication: 263, 268, 270, 270 n. 61, 312–13, 327, 400, 400 n. 64 exegesis: 64, 75, 240–41 fabula: 399 falcon: 372 familia: 295 familiaritas: 89 Fathers of the Church: 70, 74 feudal revolution: 20, 257–58, 287, 289 feudal society: 21 fideles: 259, 270 fidelity: 215, 230, 234, 234 n. 143, 235, 244, 247, 247 n. 215, 261, 264, 270–71, 273, 290 Fleur-de-lys: 301 forgery: 22, 131, 132 n. 14, 343, 347–50, 359, 395, 398–99, 401, 401 n. 67, 407 n. 84, 408 forbannitio: 268 Franks: 16, 65–66, 69, 71–74, 87, 94, 109, 111–12, 116, 381–84 Free Companies: 288, 296, 298–300, 302 Frigians: 74 gastalds: 138–39, 142–43 Gauls: 381–82, 393–94 genealogy: 73, 363 table 15.1 generation and regeneration: 162–63, 162 n. 59 genetrix: 161, 163 genitor: 153, 161–63 Genoese: 171–72, 175, 179–85, 187 genomic research: 76 gentes: 16, 67–68, 70–71, 74 Gentiles: 181, 237–38, 240–41

Germans: 16, 84–85, 87 Germanic language: 42, 84 gift-giving: 138 godparenthood: 89 Golden Bull of Hungary: see anticorruption legislation Greek: 191, 193, 195, 201, 205, 210 Goths: 45–46, 66, 68, 71, 74 Gothic kingdom: 107 ‘groupism’: 66 Guise family: 380 hagiography: 197–200 and audience: 202, 209 and ethnicity: 64, 75 by Jacopo da Varagine: 172–73, 175–76, 178–85, 187 and Latin Orientalia: 358 and localism: 172–73, 175–76, 178–85, 187 and monasteries: 202–05, 210 menaia: 201, 205, 210 paterika: 201–04, 206, 210 and political rhetoric: 187, 193, 208–10 and Ravennus: 123 and relics: 19, 172, 176, 179–85 and relic translations: 123, 172, 180–85 Slavic: 202, 205–06 studies: 358–59 themes in: 206–10 vernacular (late medieval Bulgarian): 19 see also specific hagiographies in Non-Biblical Sources index hawking: 372 Hebrews: 73 heresy and heretics: 74, 178 n. 24, 198–200, 205, 209–10 anti-heretical synods and councils: 198–200, 205, 210

445

4 46

gen er a l in dex

Arian: 178 n. 24 hesychasm and hesychasts: 197–98, 200, 202, 209–10 ‘Holy Commonwealth’: 68 homilies or homiletic: 64, 199–202, 205, 210, 271 hostage, political: 215 n. 4 Huguenots: 380–81, 400, 405, 407, 409 Hundred Years War: 296, 299 Hungarians: 16, 84, 91–93, 97 Identity: 9–11, 14–15, 124 civic: 122–24, 172, 184, 187 clerical: 219, 223, 229–37, 239–45 collective: 19, 65, 172 ethnic: 15–17, 34, 43–46, 53–55, 65–67, 75, 111–12 ethnogenic: 108, 111–14, 122, 124 family: 161 Frankish: 74–75, 109 and gender: 17–18, 130, 136, 141, 147 Genoese: 172, 184–85, 187 Gothic: 74 hereditary: 108, 110–11, 113, 115, 124 lay: 216–19, 222–23, 227, 230, 241–45 legal: 133, 137 local: 14–15, 22, 122 maternal: 246, 248 non-local: 112 occupation-related: 112 onomastic: 35, 40–45, 44 n. 40 and property: 17–18 religious: 18–19, 43–44 Roman: 46, 54–55 situational: 20–21 urban elite: 108, 111, 115, 122–24 women, elite: 115 see also specific ethnic and civic identities, e.g., Franks, Genoese identitas: 10

‘ideological erasure’: 17, 17 n. 24 Ieracha (ierarchia): 372 Illyrians: 41, 41 n. 28, 43 infidel: 191, 209 infidelity: see fidelity inheritance: 17–18, 122, 136, 138, 141, 151–53, 155–56, 158–59, 161–63 Falcidian fourth: 153–54 intestate: 152, 154–55 laws of: 111, 131, 153–55 inscriptions: 22, 335–36, 338–47, 350–53 composite: 335–36, 338–40, 343, 351–53 see also epitaphs intermarriage: 109, 136–37 Ishmaelites: 196 Israelites: 69–70, 237, 240 Italians: 111–12, 130, 142, 210 ‘iurisdictio’: 397 n. 49, 407 Ivanova, Klimentina: 201 Jacquerie: 299–301, 303 Jews or Jewish: 43–44, 198–200, 237–38, 240–41 judicial duel: 295, 302 July Edict: 380 Kaiserkritik: 197 Karlskompendium: 363 table 15.1, 367, 371 ‘kingdom of the Greeks’: 68 kinship: 17–18, 20, 66, 75, 151–53, 155–56, 158–59, 161, 163, 309 carnal or natal: 66, 153, 155–56, 159–63 Germanic: 156 spiritual: 161 laeti: 33, 41 n. 30, 53, 55 Landfrieden: 258, 276–77 landscape: 172, 175, 179, 181, 185, 187 see also localism and place

g enera l index

Latin Orientalia: 358–59 Latins: 195, 197 launegild: 130 n. 5, 138 laws: 257–58, 265–67, 273 Alemannic: 154, 163 Canon: 132, 142, 145–46 Bavarian: 154, 163 Lombard: 18, 129–30, 130 n. 5, 132–34, 136, 138–40, 142, 144–46 personality of: 133 n. 20, 147 Ripuarian: 154–55, 267 Roman: 129, 130 n. 5, 132–37, 139, 142, 146, 151, 153–54, 279 Salic: 154, 267 Visigothic: 129 see also inheritance lay-clerical divide: see clerical-lay divide lechitus: 372 legal anthropology: 20, 257 Legend of Prester John: 359 liturgy or liturgical: 193, 196, 198–99, 201, 205, 208, 219, 222–26, 229–30, 239 calendar: 197, 205 commemoration: 193, 199 praxis: 198 localism custom: 142, 145–46 defence: 299–300 documents and notaries: 113, 115 elites: 107–08, 110, 112–13, 119, 121, 124, 299 governing bodies: 272, 276–77, 299–300 and hagiography: 172–73, 175–76, 178–85, 187 history and memory: 17, 108, 119, 122, 176 identity: 14–15, 22, 122 institutions: 183

interest: 183, 292 landscape and environs: 176, 185, 187 legal practice: 277, 279 legislation: 276, 280 oaths: 272, 280 peoples: 109, 276, 299–300 practice of disputation: 21, 277 see also landscape and place Lombards: 66, 107, 109, 111, 115, 119, 130–33, 135–37, 142 loyalty: see fidelity Macedonians: 73–74 ‘Machiavellian rule’: 410 ‘magistri militum’: 112–14 marriage: 44, 108–09, 116, 136–37, 198, 223 n. 65, 247, 267 Mattiaci: 41 Mello, battle of: 301 memory: 22, 22 n. 41, 120–21, 132, 141, 218, 257, 298, 352, 367, 371, 379, 411 collective: 386 n. 17 commemoration of dead: 152, 335 elite women’s: 108, 117 family: 117, 122 historical: 108, 122, 218, 335, 352–53 liturgical: 218 local: 176 memorial books, 152, 161 memorialization of inheritance: 122 menaia: 201, 205, 210 Merovingians: 16, 69, 71–74, 130, 257, 295, 379, 381, 407 migrations: 16 ministerium: 21, 261–64, 269, 272, 276 mirrors: 245–46 lay: 19, 216–20, 222–23, 225, 227–30, 233, 241–42, 244 of princes: 209–10, 216 miscellany manuscripts: 358, 358 n. 7

4 47

4 48

gen er a l in dex

missatica: 86, 269 missi: 264, 268–69 Moesians: 191 see also Bulgarians Moldova: 205 monasteries and monasticism: 195–95, 198, 202–03, 217–18, 220–21, 228, 246 donations to: 19, 116, 121, 134, 138, 158–60, 162, 205, 228, 343, 349–51 foundations: 109, 116 libraries: 200, 202, 205, 210 principles: 195, 220 readings: 206 reprimanding of: 197 see also property, reform Mongol invasions: 316 n. 29 Montjoie: 301 Moravians: 84–93, 95 morgengabe: 130 n. 5, 131–32, 134–37, 139–40, 142 mundium: 136, 141, 143 n. 58 mundoald: 140, 141 n. 54 Muslims: 23, 140 natio: 15, 17, 31–33, 67 nationalism: 192 nature: 11, 14, 153 Nemcy (Nemítzioi): 83–86 see also Bavarians nicknames: 41–42 Normans: 134, 136, 141 norms: 21, 258, 271, 288–91, 295, 300, 302–03, 309–11 Northmen: 97 notaries: 112, 115, 123, 144 oaths Aragonese Oath: 398, 398 n. 53 and gift-giving: 138 to God: 273

horizontal: 272, 410 and Peace of God: 21, 273, 275, 277–80, 287 and penance: 270 n. 61 and property: 138, 143–44, 146, 329 and Roman law: 130 n. 5, 146 and self-help: 21, 272, 280 sworn to leaders: 88, 90, 96, 270–73, 294 and timing: 268 see also Aragonese Oath oath-helping: 130 n. 5, 144, 146 ‘observer effect’: 9 onomastics: 40–45 ordeal: 295 orthodoxy: 74, 176–78 n. 24, 202, 205, 208 Ottomans: 191, 205 ‘papimania’: 381 paterika: 201–04, 206, 210 patria: 13, 15, 20–21, 158, 243, 260, 297, 409 patriarchs 161, 195, 197, 216, 237, 360 Indian: 363 table 15.1 peace: 89, 95, 97, 204, 260–62, 265, 268–69, 272, 276–77, 279, 291–93, 297, 299, 394, 411 as a responsibility: 272 capitulary as: 264 councils: 293–95 king as source of: 269 ministerium and: 262 oath: 294 saints and: 20 treaties: 90, 92–96 violation of: 262, 264, 266, 274 wergeld and: 295 Peace of God: 21, 257–59, 273, 275–80, 287, 292–95, 303 at Bourges: 278

g enera l index

at Charroux: 292 at Compiègne: 273–75, 277 at Héry: 273 at Poitiers: 278 at Vienne: 275–77 Burgundian Peaces: 273 see also Landfrieden Peace of Venice: 371 Pechenegs: 92 pegma: 372 penance: 226–27, 243, 263, 270, 270 n. 61, 295 Persians: 206–07 persona: 11, 13–14, 14 n. 10, 15, 17, 20–21 modalities of: 13, 14 n. 10, 17, 17 n. 24, 18, 20–22 philanthropy (philanthropia): 20, 196–97, 203, 208, 210 see also charity place: 19, 90, 108, 122–24, 172–73, 175–76, 178–82, 185, 187 see also landscape and localism placitum: 117, 121–22 political order: 20, 73 n. 50, 222, 258–59, 264, 269, 271–72, 280, 288–89 counts and: 261–65, 268–69, 272, 276–77, 279, 319–20, 322–23, 325, 330 king’s role in: 21, 264–65, 269–70, 273, 277, 288, 295–303 see also anti-corruption legislation, corruption, courts, ministerium, peace, and violence political theology: 191, 194, 196, 198, 200, 209 postcolonialism: 360 n. 16 post-Roman kingdoms: 31 prayer: 198, 216 Dhuoda and: 220–25, 227, 229, 231–32, 247–48

Eucharistic: 225 narrative and: 118–19 network: 152 prefiguration: 70, 74, 161 Premonstratensian order: 368 priesthood, or clerical hierarchy: 218–19, 221, 223–27, 229–40, 242–45, 270 pristaldi: see bailiffs property alienation of: 18, 130, 132, 136, 139, 141–42, 152–53, 157 dispute: 129, 136–37, 144, 146, 153, 291, 351 ecclesiastical: 146, 196, 259–60, 263, 274–75, 341, 348–52 Inheritance: 138, 141, 152–54, 157–62; see also morgengabe rights, church: 347, 352 rights, monastic: 344, 349, 352 rights, papal: 347 transactions: 18, 129–30, 132–33, 139, 141–42, 144–47, 158–61, 309 n. 8 see also charters rapina: 263, 265, 269, 274 Ravennati: 109, 112–13, 120 reform (renovatio) Carolingian: 218, 222, 242, 244, 248 monastic: 109–10, 209, 218 relics: 20, 123, 171–73, 176, 179–85, 198–99, 338, 344 acquisition of: 180 agency of saints over: 182–83, 187 authenticity of: 172, 180, 183 loss of: 352 miracles of: 176, 179, 182–83, 185, 197 place of origin of: 179–81 punishment for disobeying: 183 reunification of: 184 theft of: 19, 171–72

449

450

gen er a l in dex

translation of: 172, 180–83, 185, 351–52 treatises on: 172 remonstrance’: 395–96, 401, 410 Roman army: 32, 34, 36, 38 and barbarians: 32–34, 33 n. 2, 53 soldiers of: 39–44 Romans: 70, 73–74, 111, 154, 156 Romanization: 31–32, 46, 54–55 Russians: 84 St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: 23, 380, 380 n. 4, 386 n. 20, 400 saints: 20, 160, 162, 197, 199–201, 206 agency via relics: 182–83, 187 cult of: 206, 257 liturgical commemoration of: 193, 199 miracles: 173, 175–79, 187, 205 punishment from: 20, 183–85 visions of: 181, 183 see also relics salus populi formula: 397 salvation: 18, 70, 163, 217–18, 228, 230, 245 history: 358, 368–69 Saracens: 142–44 Sarmatians: 36, 36 n. 14, 55 Saxons: 66, 312, 318 n. 31, 326 self-help: 21, 277–80, 300, 303 see also vengeance serpent: see basilisk servi: 268, 295 servientes regis: 311–12, 314, 317–18, 325, 328–29 Silk Road: 360 situational construct: 15, 64, 75–76, 112 n. 19, 129 slavery: 134, 140–41, 143–44, 144 n. 62, 195 penal: 142–43, 143 n. 60 Slavic: 193, 198, 201–02, 204–10

Church Slavic: 191–92, 199­–201, 205, 208–09 eastern Slavic: 206 language: 84–85 Old Church Slavonic: 85–86 south Slavic: 193, 198 Slavs: 87, 93–94, 198 and Slavicization: 85 Song of Songs: 363 table 15.1 space: see place speculum: see mirrors spirituality, lay: 217, 219–20, 229 suitas: 407 n. 83; see also blood-right Swabians: 16, 84 Syrians: 37–38 merchants: 38, 47 n. 47 Syro-Phoenician woman: 229, 237–41 Teutons: 46 regnum Teutonicorum: 98 theodiscus: 84 Thima (thyina, tigna, tinna): 372 ‘Three Indias’: 359–61 Timočani: 94 tithing: 217, 228 titulus: 339, 342 topography: 21, 157, 175 sacred/of holy places: 199, 335 Tower of Babel: 74 translatio imperii: 367 Trinity: 10–11, 217, 220 Trojans: 74 Truce of God: 21, 275 Turks (and Turkish): 171, 182, 191–95, 197, 210 vengeance: 21, 122, 264–65, 269, 291–92, 295, 299, 303, 313 Venetians: 171, 180 victus: 13–14, 14 n. 10 Vikings: 270, 272

g enera l index

violence: 51, 140–42, 257–58, 261–62, 287–96, 301–03, 324 against women: 139, 142–43 by peasants: 294 by saints: 292 clauses in charters: 139–40, 140 nn. 47 and 49 perceptions of: 21 representations of: 20, 257, 291 rights to: 293–96, 303 see also rapina, vengeance virtue, civic: 172 vitae: see hagiography wadia (guadia): 130 n. 5, 135, 146 Wars of Religion: 23, 380, 411 wergeld: 295 widows: 135–38, 140–41, 228, 261–62, 274, 301 Wilhelmines: 89–90, 95 witnesses, judicial: 109, 111–15, 142, 322, 324, 330 Woden: 42, 45 women, elite inheritance, memorialization of: 122 power: 116 n. 31, 122 and property, 130–32, 134–42, 146–47 roles in Ravenna: 115 wealth: 116 n. 31, 122

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CURSOR MUNDI

All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field.

Titles in Series Chris Jones, Eclipse of Empire? Perceptions of the Western Empire and its Rulers in Late-Medieval France (2007) Simha Goldin, The Ways of Jewish Martyrdom (2008) Franks, Northmen, and Slavs: Identities and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Ildar Garipzanov, Patrick Geary, and Przemyslaw Urbanczyk (2008) William G. Walker, ‘Paradise Lost’ and Republican Tradition from Aristotle to Machiavelli (2009) Carmela Vircillo Franklin, Material Restoration: A Fragment from EleventhCentury Echternach in a Nineteenth-Century Parisian Codex (2010) Saints and their Lives on the Periphery: Veneration of Saints in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe (c.1000–1200), ed. by Haki Antonsson and Ildar Garipzanov (2010) Approaching the Holy Mountain: Art and Liturgy at St Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai, ed. by Sharon E. J. Gerstel and Robert S. Nelson (2011) ‘This Earthly Stage’: World and Stage in Late Medieval and Early Modern England, ed. by Brett D. Hirsch and Christopher Wortham (2011)

Alan J. Fletcher, The Presence of Medieval English Literature: Studies at the Interface of History, Author, and Text in a Selection of Middle English Literary Landmarks (2012) Vehicles of Transmission, Translation, and Transformation in Medieval Textual Culture, ed. by Robert Wisnovsky, Faith Wallis, Jamie C. Fumo, and Carlos Fraenkel (2012) Claudio Moreschini, Hermes Christianus: The Intermingling of Hermetic Piety and Chris­tian Thought (2012) The Faces of the Other: Religious Rivalry and Ethnic Encounters in the Later Roman World, ed. by Maijastina Kahlos (2012) Barbara Furlotti, A Renaissance Baron and his Possessions: Paolo Giordano I Orsini, Duke of Bracciano (1541–1585) (2012) Rethinking Virtue, Reforming Society: New Directions in Renaissance Ethics, c.1350 – c.1650, ed. by David A. Lines and Sabrina Ebbersmeyer (2013) Luigi Andrea Berto, The Political and Social Vocabulary of John the Deacon’s ‘Istoria Veneticorum’ (2013) Writing Down the Myths, ed. by Joseph Falaky Nagy (2013) Charles Russell Stone, From Tyrant to Philosopher-King: A Literary History of Alexander the Great in Medieval and Early Modern England (2013) Wendy J. Turner, Care and Custody of the Mentally Ill, Incompetent, and Disabled in Medi­eval England (2013) Tanya S. Lenz, Dreams, Medicine, and Literary Practice: Exploring the Western Literary Tradition Through Chaucer (2013) Viking Archaeology in Iceland: Mosfell Archaeological Project, ed. by Davide Zori and Jesse Byock (2014) Natalia I. Petrovskaia, Medieval Welsh Perceptions of the Orient (2015) Fabrizio Ricciardelli, The Myth of Republicanism in Renaissance Italy (2015) The Mirror in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: Specular Reflections, ed by Nancy M. Frelick (2016) Ilan Shoval, King John’s Delegation to the Almohad Court (1212): Medieval Interreligious Interactions and Modern Historiography (2016) Ksenia Bonch Reeves, Visions of Unity After the Visigoths: Early Iberian Latin Chronicles and the Mediterranean World (2016) Ersie C. Burke, The Greeks of Venice, 1498–1600: Immigration, Settlement, and Integration (2016)

Graphic Signs of Identity, Faith, and Power in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Ildar Garipzanov, Caroline Goodson, and Henry Maguire (2017) Writing History in Medieval Poland: Bishop Vincentius of Cracow and the Chronica Polo­norum, ed by Darius von Güttner-Sporzyński (2017) Luigi Pulci in Renaissance Florence and Beyond: New Perspectives on his Poetry and In­fluence, ed. by James K. Coleman and Andrea Moudarres (2018) James L. Smith, Water in Medieval Intellectual Culture: Case Studies from Twelfth-Century Monasticism (2018) Visions of North in Premodern Europe, ed. by Dolly Jørgensen and Virginia Langum (2018) Temporality and Mediality in Late Medieval and Early Modern Culture, ed. by Christian Kiening and Martina Stercken (2018) Andreas Vesalius and the ‘Fabrica’ in the Age of Printing: Art, Anatomy, and Printing in the Italian Renaissance, ed. by Rinaldo Fernando Canalis and Massimo Ciavolella (2018) Text, Transmission, and Transformation in the European Middle Ages, 1000–1500, ed. by Carrie Griffin and Emer Purcell (2018) Mythical Ancestry in World Cultures, 1400–1800, ed. by Sara Trevisan (2018) Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World: European and Middle Eastern Cul­tures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, Alessandra Foscati, and Charles Burnett (2019) Geoffrey Symcox, Jerusalem in the Alps: The Sacro Monte of Varallo and the Sanctuaries of North-Western Italy (2019) Disease and Disability in Medieval and Early Modern Art and Literature, ed. by Rinaldo F. Canalis and Massimo Ciavolella (2021) Victorine Restoration: Essays on Hugh of St Victor, Richard of St Victor, and Thomas Gallus, ed. by Robert J. Porwoll and David Allison Orsbon (2021) Order into Action: How Large-Scale Concepts of World Order Determine Practices in the Premodern World, ed. by Klaus Oschema and Christoph Mauntel (2022) Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700, ed. by Thomas W. Barton, Marie A. Kelleher, and Antonio M. Zaldívar (2022)