The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 9780670020980, 2009015169

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Tk INHERITANCE CHRIS

WICKHAM

ILLUMINATING'^ ifce DARK AGES // •

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The

idea that with the decline

Roman Empire

of the

Europe entered into some immense “dark age” has long been viewed

Elow could

Rome

a

misleading by

as

world

still

many

historians.

so profoundly shaped

by

and which encompassed such remarkable

societies as the Byzantine,

Carolmgian and Ottoman

empires be anything other than central to the devel-

opment of Europe?

In The Inheritance of Rome, prizewinning historian

Chris W^ickham defies the conventional view of

European history between A.D. 400 and 1000 with

work of remarkable scope and scholarship.

Drawing on

and featuring

a

rigorous yet accessible

wealth of

a thoughtful synthesis

archaeological

approaches,

a

new

material

of historical and

W^ickham

argues

that

these centuries were critical in the formulation of

European

identity. Ear

between more to

tell

ture

us in

Its

from being

a

“middle” period

significant epochs, this age has

own

right

much

about the progress of cul-

and the development of political thought.

Sweeping focuses

on

in its breadth, a

world

still

Wickham’s

incisive history

profoundly shaped by

which included peoples ranging

fro

m

Rome,

the Goths,

Eranks and Vandals to Arabs, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. Digging deep into each culture,

\Vickham

constructs a vivid portrait of a vast and varied world stretching

from Ireland to Constantinople, the Baltic

to the Mediterranean. The Inheritance liantly presents a fresh in

which Europe

vvs

ofRome

bril-

understanding of the crucible

uld ijl'imaK

iv

he created.

The Inheritance of Rome

i

THE PENGUIN HISTORY OF EUROPE General Editor: David Cannadine

I:

CHRIS

II:

III:

IV:

V: VI:

SIMON PRICE

Classical

WICKHAM

Europe

The Inheritance of Rome: of Europe from 400 to 1000

WILLIAM JORDAN

Europe

in the

A

History

High Middle Ages^

ANTHONY GRAETON Renaissance Europe, i^yo-iyiy MARK GREENGRASS Reformation Europe, iyiy-1648 TIM PLANNING VII: VIII:

The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1 81

RICHARD

J.

EVANS

IAN KERSHAW

Europe 1813-1914

Twentieth-Century Europe

already published

rt.

CHRIS WICKHAM The Inheritance of Rome A

History of Europe from 400 to 1000

VIKING

VIKING Group

Published by the Penguin

Penguin Group (USA)

New

York,

New

Inc.,

375 Hudson

Street,-

York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (a division

of Pearson Penguin

M4P 2Y3 Canada

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London

Penguin Ireland, 25

Inc.)

WC2R ORE,

England

Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

St.

of Penguin Books Ltd)

(a division

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

(a division of

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd,

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Community

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Delhi -

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Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632,

New

Zealand

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of Pearson

Penguin Books (South Africa)

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(Pty) Ltd,

Zealand Ltd)

24 Sturdee Avenue,

Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices;

80 Strand, London

First

WC2R ORL, England

American edition

Published in 2009 by Viking Penguin, a

member

of Penguin

13579 Copyright

Group (USA)

Inc.

8642

10

© Chris Wickham, 2009

All rights reserved

Illustration credits

appear on pages x-xi.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA Wickham, The

inheritance of

Rome

:

Chris,

illuminating the p.

1950-

Dark Ages, 400-1000

/

Chris

Wickham.

cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-670-02098-0 1. Civilization,

Medieval.

2.

Middle Ages.

3.

Rome

—Civilization—Influence.

I.

Title.

CB351.W49 2009 940.1’2—dc22 2009015169 Printed in the United States of America

Without

limiting the rights

under copyright reserved above, no part of

this publication

may

be reproduced, stored in or

introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this

book.

The scanning, uploading, and the publisher in or

is

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distribution of this

and punishable by

book

via the Internet or via

any other means without the permission of

law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions

encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights

and do not participate is

appreciated.

For the students of AMH, the Ancient and Medieval History degree of the University of Birmingham, i^yS-iooy,

heard and discussed much of this before

who have

Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2017 with funding from

Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.Org/details/isbn_9780670020980

Contents

List of Maps

of Illustrations

x

Acknowledgements

xii

List

1

ix

Introduction

3

PART The Roman Empire and

I

its

Break-up,

2

The Weight of Empire

3

Culture and Belief in the Christian

4

Crisis

400-550 21

Roman World

and Continuity, 400-550

50

76

10

PART

II

The Post-Roman West, 550-750

in

5

Merovingian Gaul and Germany, 500-751

6

The West Mediterranean Kingdoms: Spain and

Italy,

550-750

130

7

Kings without

8

Post-Roman Etiquette,

9

States: Britain

and

Ireland,

Attitudes: Culture, Belief

and

400-800 Political

550-750

170

Wealth, Exchange and Peasant Society

The Power of

150

203

the Visual: Material Culture and

Display from Imperial

Rome

to the Carolingians

vii

232

CONTENTS

PART The Empires of

III

the East,

550-1000

Byzantine Survival, 550-850

11

255

12 The Crystallization of Arab Political Power, 630-750 13

Byzantine Revival, 850-1000

14

From Abbasid Baghdad 750-1000 The

1 5

State

to

279 298

Umayyad Cordoba, 318

and the Economy: Eastern Mediterranean

Exchange Networks, 600-1000

PART

348

IV

The Carolingian and Post-Carolingian West, 750-1000 16 The Carolingian Century, 751-887

375

17 Intellectuals and Politics

405

18

The Tenth-century Successor

19

‘Carolingian’ England,

427

States

800-1000

453

20 Outer Europe 21

472

Aristocrats between the Carolingian

and the ‘Feudal’

Worlds

508

22 The Caging of the Peasantry, 800-1000 23

Conclusion: Trends in European History,

529

400-1000

552

Notes and Bibliographic Guides

565

Index of Names and Places

623

Vlll

List of Maps

I.

The Roman Empire

2.

Western Europe

in

500

3-

Western Europe

in

1000

4-

The ‘Abbasid Caliphate

5-

Northern and Eastern Europe

6.

Britain

7-

Italy in the early

8.

Erancia in 843

9-

Spain in the early Middle Ages

lO.

and Ireland

in

400

xiv xvi xviii

XX c.

in the early

Middle Ages

1000

Middle Ages

xxii

xxiv

XXV xxvi

The Byzantine Empire

xxviii

XXX

IX

List of Illustrations

1.

Exterior of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (photo: Leslie Brubaker)

2.

Interior of

3.

Aerial photo of the Great

Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (photo:

Leslie Brubaker)

Mosque, Damascus (photo: Charles and

Patricia Aithie/ffotograff) 4.

Courtyard mosaic from the Great Mosque, Damascus (photo: Leslie Brubaker)

5.

Plan of the Anglo-Saxon

6.

Sixth-century ivory depicting the empress Ariadne, Bargello

7.

Museum, Florence (photo: Alinari Archives) Nave of S. Prassede, Rome (photo: Caroline Goodson)

8.

Mosaic from

9.

Mosaic from St-Germigny-des-Pres, near Orleans, France (photo:

S.

site

Prassede,

of Yeavering (courtesy John Blair)

Rome

(photo: Caroline

Goodson)

Manfred Heyde) 10.

Drawing of (copyright

the remains of the palace of Ingelheim, near

Mainz

© Kaiserpfalz Ingelheim) Aachen (photo: Aleph)

11.

Exterior of the palace chapel,

12.

Bath-house and andron,

13.

Private house, Serjilla (photo: Leslie Brubaker)

14.

Reconstructed house at

15.

Reconstruction of Montarrenti (courtesy Area di Archeologia

Serjilla, Syria

site

(photo: Olga Kolos/Alamy)

of Trelleborg,

Denmark

Medievale, Universita degli Studi di Siena - Studio

INKLINK

Firenze) 16.

Interior of the crypt with sarcophagi.

Marne, France (photo: akg-images

/

Abbey

of Jouarre, Seine et

Erich Lessing)

17.

Offa’s Dyke, Shropshire (photo: Jim Saunders/Prints of Wales)

18.

Roman

19.

Excavated house, Foro

city walls,

Barcelona (photo: Fotobox/AISA) di

Nerva,

Fentress)

X

Rome

(photo: Elizabeth

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 20.

Column fragments

in the walls of the citadel,

Ankara, Turkey

(photo: Ben Claasz Coockson) 21.

Collapsed colonnade, Scythopolis (Bet Shean), Israel (photo: Leslie Brubaker)

22.

Basil

II,

illumination from an eleventh-century psalter, Biblioteca

Nazionale Marciana, Venice (photo: akg-images 23.

/

Erich Lessing)

Louis the Pious, illumination from a ninth-century manuscript, Bibliotheque nationale de France, Paris

24.

Church, Brixworth, Northamptonshire (photo:

All Saints

akg-images 25.

/

A. F. Kersting)

Large runestone

in the

churchyard at

Jelling,

Denmark

(photo:

Interfoto Pressebildagentur/Alamy) 26.

Exterior of St Sophia, Kiev (photo: Leslie Brubaker)

27.

View

of Canossa, Italy (photo: copyright

© Bildarchiv Foto

Marburg)

Ramiro

Oviedo, Spain (photo: AISA)

28.

Palace of

29.

Illumination of peasants working, from the Utrecht Psalter (copyright

I,

© University Library, Utrecht)

XI

Acknowledgements

Numerous friends read chapters of this book for me; their criticisms and comments saved me from a wide range of errors. In the order of the chapters they read, they were Leslie Brubaker, Conrad Leyser, Kate Cooper, Walter Pohl, Ian Wood, Julia Smith, Paul Magdalino, Hugh Kennedy, Jinty Nelson, Pat Geary, Pauline Stafford and Equally essential, for sharing ideas and unpublished

Wendy

Davies.

work with me, were

Teresa Bernheimer, Leslie Brubaker, Leslie Dossey, Caroline Goodson,

John Haldon, Guy Halsall, Sarah Halton, Anne-Marie Helvetius, Mayke de Jong, Christina Possel, Carine van Rhijn, Petra Sijpesteijn and

Whittow. Sue Bowen heroically typed the whole

drew the maps; the index all. I

after

is

by Alicia Correa.

I

text,

Mark

and Harry Buglass

am very grateful to them

have not been able to incorporate publications which came out

May

2007; not systematically, at

least.

Birmingham

May 2007

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MfMUA 29.

A

peasant ploughing and a

ri^P(WWASUJWrOf.UM C|UlfAaSANaHOJIUO«py HMiMlSIAOnUO^-lCWfM man

early ninth-century Utrecht Psalter.

ABJWCWfAliOMflUA-fwJ twi- AUOaTOWlTCUlWi

fOAMtOAIUHI

(doubtless a lord) being served food at a table, in the

The

world

picture illustrates Psalm 103, in its right order.

which celebrates the

THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF ARAB POLITICAL POWER, 63O-750 caliph Hisham’s favourite country residence in the 730s; he built a

mosque

there right beside, indeed sharing a courtyard v^ith, one of the

major churches of the

(Hisham was see

Chapter

city,

and also a

set of

shops around the precinct

monumental shop complexes elsewhere, too: The caliph was clearly reacting to - indeed, respect-

a patron of 15).

ing - the religious importance of the place, even though that import-

ance was essentially and traditionally Christian. Rusafa was a Muslim political centre for only

Sergios, turned into a

Arab world

two decades

at the most, but Sarjis, that

Muslim holy man

in centuries to

in at least

come. In places

querors and conquered could meet

some

is,

parts of the

Rusafa, both con-

like

as, in religious

terms,

some kind

of equals.

‘Umar Ts

was marked by war, and, apart from the establishment

reign

of the dlwdn system,

When

it

was not

a period of wider-scale state formation.

wave of conquests stopped around 651, ‘Uthman found that one danger was that the new provinces risked drifting apart under their

the

first

new Arab

military elites.

It is

not clear whether under ‘Umar the

provinces sent any of their tax revenue back to Medina, but

some of them,

agree that ‘Uthman laid claim to at least

all

sources

particularly

from

the agriculturally rich provinces of Egypt and Iraq. ‘Uthman’s equally

controversial patronage of kinsmen and tribal leaders as governors,

instead of the early Muslims, often of

no

particular tribal status,

dominated the garrison towns, can be interpreted

as the caliph trying to

ensure chains of loyalty to him that would stabilize the political system. is

likely

enough that

656. But

it

Mu‘awiya Ziyad

Both of these

(d.

was

his

it

policies

aimed to

was indeed these

who

new Arab

centralize power,

and

it

policies that led to his death in

kinsman Mu‘awiya who won the

First Civil

War, and

certainly continued them; he appointed his adopted brother

673) to govern Iraq and Iran, for example, and inside Syria

linked himself closely to the tribal confederacy dominated by the Kalb,

which was the main Arab group far

in the province.

(It is less

certain

how

he managed to divert provincial revenues to Syria, however; his

centralizing

practices

were above

all

thought dynastically, and ensured that

Yazid

I

his

656-61, the Second

son al-Husayn was the

first

Civil

Mu‘awiya

clearly

son (by a Kalbi mother)

(680-83) would succeed him. This led

serious rerun of ‘All’s

personal.)

at his death to a far

War

more

of 680-92.

to revolt against Yazid, in 680; he

289

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO was

killed at Karbala’ in Iraq in a one-sided conflict that has resonated

ever since in Shi‘a martyrology. In Medina, ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr,

son of another First Civil

War

and he established himself

as caliph there

some

quite a wide authority for militarily active himself, but

leader, also rejected Yazid’s authority,

itself

Mukhtar, and was

Arab

the leading

in

Mecca (683-92), with

years. Ibn al-Zubayr

was not very

he had substantial support both in Iraq and Kufa, too, revolted under the Alid

in parts of Syria. After Yazid’s death,

leader

and

effectively

independent in 685-7.

in Syria

Kalb being opposed by the

tribes fell out, the

Qays, a coalition of newer

And

from northern Arabia, based

settlers

in

northern Syria and the Jazira, supporters of Ibn al-Zubayr. The Kalb

put in a

new branch

Marwan

al-Zubayr, the

first

of the I

Umayyad

(684-5) and

family as caliphs to confront Ibn

his

son ‘Abd al-Malik (685-705),

Marwanids, and Marwan defeated the Qays

Marj Rahit north of Damascus

in 684.

at the battle of

Even then, everything risked

breaking up, but ‘Abd al-Malik held on, carried on fighting, and established unity with the reconquest of

al-Zubayr in 692.

What was

clear,

Mecca and

stable political settlement, to avoid

the end of

Arab

and

reliable

new

renewed chaos leading to

rule.

With ‘Abd al-Malik our

more

the death of Ibn

however, was that he needed a

and more

re-

reconstructions.

historical information begins to be rather

diversified,

One

and we can be more confident

thing he did

was return

to conquest.

in

our

Westwards

from Egypt, Arab armies had rather desultorily moved into the southern parts of Byzantine Africa in the 640s

and then the 670s (founding the

garrison city of Kairouan in 670); in the late 690s, however, they

defeated the powerful Berber tribes of the Algerian plateau, and con-

quered Africa

Arab

definitively, taking

rule very fast. In 71 1,

Carthage

in 698.

The Berbers took

under ‘Abd al-Malik’s son al-Walid

to

I,

a

Berber and Arab army invaded Spain, and by the end of the 710s

it

controlled nearly

To

the east,

all

the Iberian peninsula

Bukhara and Samarkand

and was raiding into Francia.

fell

in

706-12, and the Arabs

occupied central Asia, and also parts of north-west India. The scene was set for the greatest

717-18

led

conquest of

all,

Constantinople, with the siege of

by Maslama, son of ‘Abd al-Malik, although

turned out that the caliphate had reached al-Walid, and border wars

would be

the

its

norm

this failed;

it

greatest extent under thereafter.

These new

conquests did not have the economic and political importance of those

290

THE CRYSTALLIZATION OL ARAB POLITICAL POWER, 630-75O main provincial armies busy and

of 636-51, but they kept the

which was

rich,

better than civil war.

‘Abd al-Malik also ruled the provinces as forcefully as he could. Egypt

was entrusted

to his brother

Abd

to the Qaysi governor Qurra,

and shortly

al-Aziz (d. 704),

whose surviving

letters

very effective in his exactions and his local control.

after that

show him

We

still

to be

cannot see

Egyptian wealth going to Syria, and these governors were probably as

were certainly

rich as the caliphs themselves, but they

most troublesome province to

Umayyads, was

loyal. Iraq, the

694 assigned the hyper-loyal al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, another Qaysi, who governed it

(and, after 697,

Khurasan

for the early

as well) until his death in 714; al-Hajjaj

who provoked

a very tough, not to say oppressive, ruler

the Kufans in 701

and established

Iraqi armies withered,

on. In Syria,

Abd

in

and

army

a Syrian

in the

war with

a civil

zone

was

after that;

went to Damascus from then

Iraqi taxes

al-Malik maintained a balance between Kalbi and

Qaysi patronage networks, as these Qaysi governors already imply. The

two opposing networks gained

in force, all the

same; the Kalb joined

Yemen who had settled in central Syria, and the from now on called Yamani in our sources; the two

with immigrants from alliance

is

generally

networks, which came to include virtually

from the

for patronage

all

Arabs, were fierce rivals

caliphs, particularly the highly lucrative position

A Yamani or a Qaysi governor could be relied on to appoint

of governor.

only members of his

own

faction to subordinate posts, but the caliphs

themselves were for a long time fairly neutral between the two major groupings.

Abd culture seen.

al-Malik established a

and

for Islam.

He

new

public prominence both for

Arabized the

civil

administration, as

That administration gained ever greater coherence, as

Arab

we have

is

visible,

for example, in the highly polished state letters of the senior chancery

Abd al-Hamid

administrator belles-lettrist

adab

(dating 725-50),

which prefigure the

style of the ninth to eleventh centuries, as also the

highly literary Byzantine practices of the same period, both discussed

Abd

later.

al-Malik furthermore, for the

first

time, instituted a coinage

that reflected caliphal political power. Previously,

tated Byzantine

coins

came

in,

and Persian models, but

the gold dinar in the

in

Arab coins had

imi-

691-2 new standard- weight

ex-Roman

lands and in ex-Persian

lands the silver dirham, which had Arabic and Islamic inscriptions, and

which

after

696 abandoned images

for purely verbal decoration.

291

The

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO caliph also, already during the Second Civil prestige buildings, beginning with the

Muhammad

which

War, inaugurated expensive

Dome

of the Rock, on the spot to

reputedly miraculously travelled for a night from

Mecca, on top of the old Jewish

Temple Mount

cult centre of the

in

Jerusalem, finished in 691-2; this was followed under al-Walid by the

neighbouring al-Aqsa mosque in

in

Mosque

Jerusalem (709-1 5 ), the Great

Medina (706-10), and the huge Great Mosque of Damascus (705-16),

which

largely survives in

we have

seen.

its

original form, decorated with mosaics, as

These and other projects were by

buildings in Eurasia west of China in this period,

celebrated a triumphal and rich Islam. that

some money

at least

The Umayyads were one sign

who

is

and

now

to Syria

it

all explicitly

must be added,

from the provinces.

Muslim education to their children; of ‘Umar II ibn ‘Abd al-Aziz (717-20),

also giving a

alone out of the

but by

and they

They show,

was by now getting

the religious austerity

later generations.

far the largest-scale

Umayyad

caliphs

was regarded

as a just ruler

by

This austerity was not continued by his successors,

the stability of the regime

relatively peaceful rule of

was more assured,

Hisham, the

last

as the long

son of ‘Abd al-Malik

(724-43), shows.

The Umayyads had

a terrible press after their fall in 750.

They were

seen as dynastic rather than ruling by consensus (though the ‘Abbasids

would be just as dynastic as they); and as luxurious degenerates, enjoying themselves in their palaces and ignoring the needs of government. They

some of them

certainly built luxurious palaces;

valley

and on the Syrian/Jordanian desert

own way

as al-Walid’s

mosques, and

in

survive, in the

fringe, as

two

Jordan

ambitious in their

cases (the stuccoes of

Khirbat al-Mafjar outside Jericho, the frescoes of the Qusayr ‘Amra

bath-house east of ‘Amman) they show a profusion of (often

naked and female) that do not look very

a private decorative tradition that societies, all the

would have

‘Islamic’.

human forms

This represents

a long future in

same, rather than indicating that

its

Umayyad

Muslim

sponsors

had not read the Qur’an properly. (Actually, the Qur’an only opposes idol-worship, not

all

figurative representations of

about public representational

art

Umayyad

in

caliphs, as

we saw

was

Umayyads

just as the

a caution

certainly already accepted by the

Chapter 10, for the outsides of these

were

entirely geometric

mosque of Damascus

was.) Several of the

palaces, often heavily carved in high relief,

and non-figurative,

humans; but

did indeed have imaginative personal

292

lives, too;

but so have

THE CRYSTALLIZATION OL ARAB POLITICAL POWER, 63O-750 rulers

throughout history - including, once again, the ‘Abbasids - without

impacting very greatly on their conceptions of rule. These accusations

this

are simply a

damnatio memoriae^

like the later

Byzantine attacks on

Constantine V, rather than an accurate critique of Umayyad government.

The

critique of the

Umayyads which had

that they were Arab, not

Muslim,

even Julius Wellhausen, the great

Umayyads,

the

rulers. It

For a

nineteenth-century historian of

late

Umayyad

start, the

more shadowy

a rather

a particu-

caliphs took their religious

figure).

‘Umar

II

issued highly

and was by no means the only caliph to do so. We have one

religious edicts,

from al-Walid

It is

from ‘Abd al-Malik onwards

responsibilities very seriously, at least is

was

has lasted ever since, too:

called their realm the ‘Arab kingdom’.

larly false claim.

(Mu‘awiya

the strongest resonance

II

playboy, which

(743-4), later considered the dynasty’s most notorious

is

adamant about the

religious duties entrusted to

him by

God. These include the enforcement of religious obedience, the pursuance of ‘that which

is

most righteous

in general’, and, overall, ‘the

changed,

this

his cousin

first

in particular

Muslim

III

for the

Muslims

(744) justified his uprising against

terms. These caliphs indeed

more strongly than did

‘Abbasid generation at

felt their

the ‘Abbasids, after the fervour of

least, for

by the end of the eighth century

the task of interpreting religious authority

had mostly

social group, the ‘ulamd’ of scholars (see below. It

and

completion of Islam’; with a few phrases

and supplanter Yazid

religious role

him

could be Charlemagne at his most moralizing. Similarly,

al-Walid in exclusively

the

for

fallen to a

Chapter

new

14).

Umayyad Islam was more ‘Arabic’ than would be. Was Muhammad a prophet only for

has also been proposed that

later, universalist,

Islam

the Arabs, or for everyone?

It

has been argued that the early Arab

caution about conversion implied the former, and that only the ‘Abbasids really

opened

their religion to all comers. This, too,

stated reading. superiority,

The Arabs undoubtedly

and were

at best edgy, at

is

largely

believed in their

worst

hostile, to

an over-

own

ethnic

non-Arabs,

in-

cluding converts. Qusayr ‘Amra also includes a famous fresco of six kings, of the

Spain, and

two

Roman

unidentified countries, apparently gesturing to an adjoin-

ing fresco of ethnic as normal,

empire, Sassanian Persia, Ethiopia, Visigothic

Arab

victory.

But conversion was nonetheless seen

and plenty of mawdli reached high positions under the

Umayyads, notably Musa ibn Nusayr

(d.

716), one of the conquerors

of Spain, and several later governors of Africa. Al-Hajjaj, the emblematic

293

THE EMPIRES OE THE EAST, 55O-IOOO

Umayyad (d.

devotee, himself appointed a black African, Sa‘id ibn Jubayr

713), to the post of qadi (judge) of Kufa, even

if

he had to rescind

the appointment because the Kufans protested against a maivld holding

the role. There was, of course, a contradiction between

and Muslim

ness

inclusiveness, but

it

caliph to foot soldier, until conversion

reasons, in the ninth century;

non-Arab, but

settled

little

of the desert about

Arabs by 700 lived

and

and

al-Farazdaq

became widespread,

most of his long

and

in

vs.

it, it

can be added; the huge majority of

and were

just

competing for military

allies,

rather than their rivals, led to tribal-

rhetoric, but this

is

true of any society,

750.

jz^); he

life

Arab

Arab tribalism had by

of this mixture of positions in a single person

(d. c.

from

for different

also not just a matter of

tribe vs. tribe.

and ethnic-exclusivist actions and

An example

-by every Arab,

Their desire to secure such positions for them-

their families

and would not cease

felt

exclusive-

bedouin Arab (each claimed to be the

settled lives

civilian positions.

selves

vs.

and of course

better Muslims),

now

Arab

was

it

was

Arab

may have had bedouin

in Basra.

is

the poet

origins, but he lived

His poetic palette of camels, gazelles, tents

and cavalry warfare was more the standard rhetoric of any Arab poet than nostalgia for the desert. So were his attacks on the honour and sexual morality of people (usually poets) from rival tribes, and his

complex love poetry. Al-Farazdaq was Arab through and through; he loathed having to go to ‘an odious land, the country of the blond-haired

Greeks of ‘Amman’. But when he wrote eulogies to the caliphs (some fifteen survive, for every caliph

from ‘Abd al-Malik

imagery turns Muslim: ‘Run to Islam, scourge which desolated Iraq earth,

Sulayman

not in the least

is

justice

to

Hisham)

his

has returned to us, the

dead, there are no

more poor on

the

715-17] is the treasure of the universe.’ This is surprising, and indeed precisely recalls the mixed values [caliph

that any early medieval Christian writer had, western or eastern, as with

the glorification of Frankish ethnic

and military superiority

in

Gregory

of Tours or Einhard, Christian inclusivism notwithstanding, or indeed the ferocious hostility to Goths of their fellow-Christian Synesios at the start of the fifth century. It

made

is

not religious and moral inconsistency that

the Arabs different in our period.

Hisham was the first caliph to face the problems frontier. Instead,

of a

no longer expanding

Khazars and Turks themselves invaded from the north.

294

THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF ARAB POLITICAL POWER, 630-75O and were beaten back with some

difficulty in the

730s

(in

the case of

Marwan ibn Muhammad, an able general from the Umayyad family, who became governor of the Jazira). In the far west, too, there was a major Berber revolt in 740-43 which cut off Umayyad the Khazars, by

and even

access to Spain

Africa. But these only look like signs of

Umayyad collapse in retrospect; they were all dealt with before Hisham’s death. More serious was his famous tight-fistedness with money, for this is a sign that the caliphs had not solved the problem of tax money staying in the provinces it had been collected from. Not only Iraqis but also Egyptian

Arabs had

lost their military role

Umayyad army was overwhelmingly

by now, and the

late

Syrian except in the Berber lands

of the far west and in Khurasan in the far east, but this did not lead to

any further organizational centralization. Yazid not to move tax

money

III,

indeed, promised

outside provinces in his 744 rebel manifesto. At

Hisham’s death, furthermore, serious problems did appear, for the Syrian

army broke up

Yamani and Qaysi

into

not necessarily pro-Qaysi, but Yazid

Yamani

support;

Marwan

Ill’s

factions.

Al-Walid

revolt certainly

in the Jazira,

who

had

II

was

essentially

sought to avenge the

murdered al-Walid, ruled the Qaysi province par excellence and recruited a Qaysi army. Yazid died suddenly after a few months,

Marwan

replaced

him

as

Marwan

(744-50), but the

II

spend two years reducing Yamani resistance

latter

and

had

to

in Syria, the first time the

core caliphal province had ever been under attack.

The

years

744-6

are seen as the Third Civil

War;

this time, unlike the

seventh-century fitnas, overall Arab rule was too established to be in danger. But

Umayyad

was another matter. There were Shihte and

rule

even Kharijite revolts, with Yamani support, in Iraq in 744-8 too; these

were easy enough to confront, as Iraq no longer had an army of its own, but their appearance

And

is

a sign of a loss of confidence in the ruling dynasty.

events in Khurasan, where the

were even more

serious.

It

main eastern army was

situated,

emerged that Shihte groups had been quietly

preaching revolution there for three decades in favour of the Hashi-

miyya, the branch of Quraysh that was

The Hashimiyya included

Muhammad’s immediate family.

the descendants of Ali, of course; but they

also included the descendants of ‘Abbas, the Prophet’s uncle. In

of the sectarians,

747 one

Abu Muslim, urged open revolt outside Merv in eastern

Khurasan, and very quickly

this revolt

snowballed to include almost the

whole of the Khurasani army. Abu Muslim and

2.95

his associates

chose

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO ‘Abbasids, not Alids, as their religious figureheads,

was proclaimed caliph

as al-Saffah in 749.

ward and defeated Marwan and Egypt

Syria

in the

same

Abbasid caliphate began brother

Abu

and took

The Khurasanis moved westIrac!!

full

power

where Marwan was

year,

and when al-Saffah died

here;

for himself.

Qays-Yaman

754, his

in

Abu Muslim

The new regime ended

feud, largely because

The

killed.

(or at least

mattered

it

less

Khurasani army which was substantially non-Arab; although the

Abbasids certainly made

the provinces

end the

Yamani support, they made peace they could. The fact that they conquered all

full

with the Qaysis as soon as

use of

and could thus begin from scratch also allowed them

fiscal exclusivity

of each provincial dlwdn.

themselves in Khurasan, however, even though support.

was

750, then took over

in

JaTar, al-Mansur (754-75), soon executed

marginalized) the in a

northern

in

and Abu al-Abbas

They chose

central;

waste by

it

was

Marwan

Iraq,

it

was

to

They did not base their

main

military

which became the new caliphal province.

It

also the archetypal non-Syrian province. Syria, laid

744-6 and again by Abu Muslim

in

in

750 -

as well

749 - became a province like well. Al-Mansur’s new capital of

as by a severe earthquake, probably in

any other, and

politically suspect as

Baghdad, founded

762, soon surpassed anything Damascus had ever

in

been, and the style of the caliphate decisively changed.

The Umayyads losing

them both

rule

was

had

fuelled

largely

fell

because the dominant Syrian army

military superiority

split,

and hegemony, the sense that

their

inevitable. This allowed the sort of millenarian Shifism that

Mukhtar

in

Kufa

in the 680s,

and

also lesser rebels in

subsequent decades, to gain more support than ever before, in the heartland of Islam’s second major army, that of Khurasan. (The third

army, that of the Berbers, went

its

own way.) Abu Muslim was

mawld, and he had considerable ethnic Persian support army. As a

result,

Hashimiyya

it

was

then,

and has been

were

entirely

rule

by a new

else.

was

But the other elements of the

Arab, and they drew their support from the opposite

source, the resentment of in the east

Arab

a rate of conversion to Islam that

higher in Khurasan than anywhere rising

Khurasani

since, possible to see the

rising as the rejection of particularist

Muslim community, based on

in the

himself a

who had

of Islamized Persian

Umayyad consensus

Yamani Arab

been subjected to the local elites. It is at least clear

in

Khurasan was the

296

and of Arab settlers rule - and taxation -

soldiers,

that the

result of

breakdown of

an interaction, much

THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF ARAB POLITICAL POWER, 63O-75O greater than elsewhere,

and highly tense

as well,

between Arab

settlers

and the indigenous majority. This might have broken down into local civil war; but the Shihtes managed to convert this tension into a salvation-

based unity that overturned the political system. The salvationism was

an

illusion,

and

caliphate, as

it

religious revolts

(all

by

now

Alid) dotted the Abbasid

had that of the Umayyads before them. But the

direction of a caliphate

now

political

rooted in Iraq would be quite different

the same.

297

all

Byzantine Revival, 850-1000

In the

Book of Ceremonies^

traditionally ascribed to the

emperor Con-

stantine VII Porphyrogennitos (913-20, 945-59), probably compiled

during his second reign and updated take part in a great

one on every day

number of

in the

week

later, the

emperor

is

expected to

religious processions in Constantinople:

(the date of the dedication of the

Nea church

in

880 by

Basil

I,

867-86),

feast-days for Elijah, St Demetrios, the Elevation of the Cross,

on,

all

across the year. So are a long

leaders, tens or often

times, it is

list

and so

of secular officials and religious

hundreds of people, the wives of

and also the leaders of the circus factions of the

officials

city,

some-

whose task

emperor proceeds through

to deliver formal acclamations, as the

the different halls, chapels

May

after Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, i

and chambers of the Great Palace, out of the

Bronze (Chalke) Gate of the Palace

(this is

where the faction leaders

meet him), across the road to Hagia Sophia, the Great Church of the Byzantine empire, and, after a church service, back again. The lays

down

rules for

which clothing goes with which

of the different acclamations (some are after that

still

feast-day, the text

in Latin, four

the locations of the tables for the post-ceremony dinners.

for

which

modern

is

particularly detailed -

edition - the officials

emperor

the Resurrection;

it is

in the

it

and

variability

goes on for twelve pages of the

do not prostrate themselves

twenty-one separate all this really

these people?

in proskynesis

Great Church, because the feast celebrates

the Pentecost service

which also

appearing in church with a particularly elaborate

all

The

city),

could be complex. At Pentecost, for example, the description

in front of the

Can

hundred years

language was dying out as a spoken tongue in the

in the ritual

Book

sees the

empress

set of official wives,

offices entering in seven separate groups.

have taken place, for every feast

Who

could even have kept

298

all its

in every year,

with

variations in their

BYZANTINE REVIVAL, 85O-IOOO head? Constantine certainly took

very seriously; he

it

tells

us in the

Book’s preface, which he probably wrote himself, that he wanted to

whose

re-establish imperial ceremonial,

neglect

left

the Byzantine empire

‘without finery and without beauty’, and whose celebration would be a ‘limpid

and

reins of

perfectly clean mirror’ of imperial splendour, allowing ‘the

power

to be held with order

that Constantine did think time,

and

dignity’. It

ceremony had been

less

is

clear

from

elaborate before his

and many of the descriptions commissioned by him were

reconstructions of long-lost activity,

some probably ceremonial. As

some of them

not. But Constantine

this

really

successfully revived,

was not unique

in his interest in

we have seen, the capital was used to frequent processions

of different types, triumphs for example, even in the difficult centuries

new elements invented all the time (as with Basil’s Nea church commemoration). Even military emperors might relish triumphal entries, and, when before 850. Ceremonial was a living and changing process, with

they were in the

city,

they too respected the regular church processions:

Phokas (963-9), 968 with the envoy of

one of the most military emperors of all, Nikephoros interrupted a formal ambassadorial hearing in the western

emperor Otto

I,

II

Bishop Liutprand of Cremona, to do the

Pentecost procession. Liutprand’s embassy went badly, so he sought to depict

wore old which

Otto as negatively as he could: the dignitaries

in his report to

it

clothes, only the

lined the

emperor wore gold and

way from

the palace to

rabble, the acclamations were

lies,

jewels, the city

crowd

Hagia Sophia was a barefoot

the food at dinner

was

horrible.

Unwillingly, however, Liutprand confirms the formality of the event,

and he adds something the latter

had

said

to the account in the

little

about a crowd;

and

for

ceremony was not

just

this

amazingly elaborate, but was important to ants of the city as a whole.

Book of Ceremonies, some of

at least

They respected

the inhabit-

the logic of imperial ‘order

dignity’, too.

The high point of Byzantine hundred years

after

850 or

elaborate court culture at

so. It

all levels.

tion of elite education; this

and prosperity was the two

success

was marked

in the capital

by a very

The ninth century saw the generaliza-

was already

visible for

some people under

the Second Iconoclasm (see above. Chapter ii), but by the end of the

century no secular

without

it.

The cusp

official in the capital

figure here

could easily deal politically

was Photios

the secular official hierarchy in the 840s

(d. c.

893),

who moved up

and 850s, reaching the post of

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO protasekretis, the senior chancery post, before being abruptly

promoted

sideways to the office of patriarch of Constantinople (858-67, 87786). Photios, himself

from an

patriarch, Tarasios),

was a and

large letter collection,

and

family (he was a relative of Eirene’s

real intellectual,

author of several books, a

sermons of a considerable conceptual

a set of

He can

be seen as the main creator of the cultural tem-

intellectual

assumptions of the post-Iconoclast Orthodox

sophistication. plate

elite

church. But he also

made

normal

it

for

major secular and

figures to be educated. Ecclesiastical rigorists

as spiritual pride,

and

criticized

him

for

it,

saw

work

is

Photios’ great learning

now on they would And there was much to

but from

be more politically marginal than under Eirene. be learned. Photios’ best-known

ecclesiastical

the Bibliotheke or Library,

drafted initially in (perhaps) 845, which discusses 279 separate books in

Greek, by both pagan and detail, often

late

Roman Christian authors, in considerable

quoting from them at length (some of these works only

and analysing them critically. This was not the whole of Photios’ reading - he left out poetry, for example - but, survive in Photios’ excerpts),

even with omissions, Constantinople to a

shows the range of books that were available

it

rich,

determined, and politically powerful reader.

The Bibliotheke was popular already as

an encyclopedia

Ceremonies

was one of

(it

in effect another);

is

modern Kayseri

(d. after

in

in the tenth century,

several in circulation

presumably

- the Book of

Arethas, archbishop of Caesarea,

932), in the next generation had a copy, and

may have helped to edit it. Arethas was, in a different way, as determined a bibliophile as Photios; we have two dozen of the manuscripts made under

his supervision,

Plato

up

Arethas’

to his

own

own work

which

collect a notable array of writings

from

day, and include annotations which are often

(indeed, they are often in his handwriting). This

manuscript collection

is

certainly very atypical. But the learning Arethas

had, and which he displayed in other works in a highly elaborate

style,

was by 900 or so much more normal. There are many different signs of the complexity of

One

is

that

it

this elite culture.

included several emperors as authors. Basil

I,

literate usurper,

made

Photios in

Leo wrote a military manual, the Taktika

fact;

sure his son

Leo VI (886-912) was educated, by

poems, a monastic advice manual, numerous laws (written able personal style),

and a

wrote much of a detailed

(if

a hardly

set of homilies.

{Tactics),

in a recogniz-

Leo’s son Constantine VII

often inaccurate) account of the neighbours

300

BYZANTINE REVIVAL, 850-IOOO

modern

of Byzantium, unhelpfully entitled by early

On

editors

Administration of the Empire^ as well as commissioning the

the

Book of

Ceremonies and several other works. Even Nikephoros Phokas wrote

on the military

least notes

were worked up under

tactics

he was particularly proud

of,

which

two books, including

his supervision as

Skirmishing Warfare^ one of the best of the tenth century’s

at

On

many military

manuals. These were not dilettante writers; for these men, writing

connected prose was an essential element of

statecraft.

Secondly, this learning soon became quite difficult in tine VII largely

wrote

however, wrote

in

in a fairly direct style;

more elaborate ways,

Leo Choirosphaktes

(d. after

showpiece poems for events

on

Constan-

most of his contemporaries,

rather

more

like Arethas.

Take

920) for example: he was author of several

Leo VLs

in

a palace bath-house rebuilt

poem

itself.

reign, including a lyric panegyric

by the emperor, and also of a long

which

called the Thousand-line Theology,

sets

philosophically complex theology in a verse form

out an erudite and

itself

structured by an

own name and titles. Arethas, who was a good hater, enough to know the philosophical allusions, accused Leo

acrostic with his

and educated

of paganism; this was obviously

false,

but Leo’s Neoplatonism led him

to argue that only the educated (particularly experts in astrology, as

Leo also was) could understand God

at

mystikos, or private secretary, to Basil

all. I,

Leo Choirosphaktes was

and under Leo VI was an

895-904; we have a set of his letters to and from the Bulgar khagan Symeon (893-927) which show the same ambassador to the Bulgarians

literariness.

in kind,

in

Symeon, who had been educated in the capital, could respond

which was

a

good

thing, for in the

910s and 920s other

figures acting for the emperors, the patriarch

Nicholas

I

(d.

and former mystikos

Theodore Daphnopates

925) and the pro

961), also sought to impress the Bulgarian ruler with Platonic or allusions.

Theodore much

complex symbolism

later

to the

Heliodoros and Herodotos bishop of Synnada

(d. c.

cite

Plutarch, Hesiod, Sophokles; this

and admitted

wore

his learning as

much on

Homeric

(959-63); Homer,

The

letters

of Leo,

even more classical authors, adding

Leo

at least

he read too

in his will that

II

find their place here.

1005),

(d. after

wrote a prose panegyric with notably

emperor Romanos all

literary

his sleeve as

had

much any of

a sense of

humour,

lay literature, but he his predecessors.

This attraction to a past literature recalls the culture of the Carolingian elite in

the ninth century, as

we

shall see, in the density of

301

its

allusiveness

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO and the joy

words

in

felt

by

authors. (Cf. also Chapter 14, for the

its

ninth-century Arabs.) But there

a difference.

is

The Carolingian kings

developed an educated theological culture around them as part of a

programme

of moral reform;

gian political crises were

all

become

for people to

important solely because of their intellectual

politically

tuals. In

was possible

it

ability;

Carolin-

mediated, and moralized about, by intellec-

Byzantium, the sense of religious mission was

less

constant,

and, of the figures just mentioned, only Photios could easily be said to

have had a

programme based on a worked-out theological or position. The others were members of an official elite,

political

philosophical

who saw

their education as part of their standing in that elite; they

an entry into and

literary culture as

as a guide to

how

tine VII; ‘order

justification of political

to conduct that power. This

and

dignity’

were

is

power, not

even true for Constan-

his touchstones,

moral reform and salvation. Nor were

used

not Carolingian-style

there, for a long time,

any import-

ant theological disagreements inside the Byzantine political world after the end of Iconoclasm. Indeed, after Nicholas mystikos, even patriarchs

were

relatively

The aim of it

was

marginal politically for a century or more.

the tenth-century Byzantine educated elite

Roman

to restore the

Romans.

past,

In the fourth century,

was

different:

which belonged to them, the true

membership of the

political elite

was

closely associated with a literary education, as with Libanios, Synesios

and

Basil of

Caesarea

Apollinaris). So should literary

language

did to late

it

West, Ausonius and,

forms.

We

fellow’).

Roman Basilika

Roman

it

empire,

remarks about the lack of literary culture of the military at

Romanos

the search for a

law; begun by Basil

I

I

own throne, as Roman renewal led

admittedly usurped his

And

Sidonius

sticking closely as

begin again, as in the late

emperors (Constantine VII sneered

who had

later,

be again, and indeed was. The tenth-century

moved away from spoken Greek,

Roman

to find snobbish

(or, in the

Lekapenos, 920-44, a

and Photios, and completed by Leo VI, the

Code and Novels. This was henceforth all

illiterate

early to the revival of

was the translation and rationalization of

actually was) the basis of

‘common,

Justinian’s Digest,

to be (and, as far as

we can

the legal practice of the empire, as

it

tell,

had

not been since the crises of the seventh century. Literary, ceremonial,

and

legal re-creation

went together; with the renewed confidence of the

period, the 3 50-year gap separating Leo

could be conceptually abolished.

302

and Constantine from Justinian

BYZANTINE REVIVAL, 85O-IOOO Middle Byzantine court culture has often been seen as

static

and

even modern commentators can be found arguing along these Tenth-century writers would be delighted;

But

not a true account,

it is

classical

all

this

was

was not

in

the same. For a start, beside

any of

all this

in all these

their secular fourth- to sixth-century

forebears. Biblical allusions are in fact

much commoner

works

in their

way that would have appalled Prokopios,

than are Plato and Homer, in a for example. But things

lines.

their aim, indeed.

vocabulary there was a dense theological culture

writers, as there

arid;

were also constantly changing. Ceremonies

were always being renewed and developed, even while claiming to be immemorial. They could also be sabotaged, with sometimes sharp ical effects. illegal in

After Leo

VPs

polit-

fourth marriage in 906, which was

flatly

canon law. Patriarch Nicholas banned him from Hagia Sophia.

momentous than excommunication, for it meant court ceremonial we began with in this chapter was thrown

This was almost more that

all

the

into confusion;

Leo had

to force Nicholas to resign a year later,

and he

The

win on

did not regain his office until Leo’s death.

patriarch did not

that occasion, but a

weaker emperor would have

to have

rather more. After the

murder of Nikephoros Phokas

in

instigated by his

nephew and

successor John

own wife

the cooperation of Nikephoros’

I

conceded

969, which was

Tzimiskes (969-76), with

(and John’s lover) Theophano,

John too was banned from Hagia Sophia by Patriarch Polyeuktos (d.

demanded

970); Polyeuktos

expel her from the

city,

that

and repent

into the church to be crowned,

and

John must give up Theophano and his crime, before this

time the emperor gave

denser a ceremonial system, the more easily points,

he could even get

it

can be used to make

major ones as here, more subtle ones elsewhere. Byzantine

cians played with their system,

hands, as a direct

The Byzantine

and

it

The

in.

politi-

changed, steadily, under their

result.

court, with

all its

processions, had in fact

become

a

hugely elaborate stage, on which an equally complex politics could be fought out between rival players. The network of offices and ever

more

crucial parts of a hierarchy

which was focused

titles

directly

were

on the

emperor, and which underpinned the system of imperial power. This could

itself

be subverted, in the sense that emperors could be removed or

marginalized, but the

was more

solid than

century, and indeed

power of the system was nonetheless maintained. any other

more

political

It

system in Europe after the sixth

solid even than the parallel structures of the

303

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO caliphate, except in the

first

century of ‘Abbasid power, as

next chapter. This was not, however, a ‘theatre

in the

we

shall see

state’, a political

system only consisting of ceremonial, as on Bali in the nineteenth century, as described

on

by Clifford Geertz. Ceremonial cost money

and so did

Bali, of course),

birds

full

of mechanical singing

which so impressed Liutprand of Cremona on

embassy to Constantine VII

in

his earlier, happier,

they were intended to - impressing

(as

949

it

-The other aspects of

official status.

imperial self-presentation, like the bronze tree

(so did

envoys was a major aim of Byzantine ceremonial), cost money too. The Byzantines could be very direct about

ceremony in

in the

with the salary-paying

this, as

week before Palm Sunday

also witnessed by Liutprand

949: the emperor distributed bags of gold coins which were put on

the shoulders of each senior court

and military

three-day period - for there were so officials

pound

of gold coins for his

motivation of the whole to wield

week by

paid the following

Constantine that he would

many

like

it

spirit.)

official in turn,

officials to

pay - with

lesser

the chamberlain. (Liutprand told

better

if

he could take part, and got a

This procedure unveils the underlying

official class:

they needed paid office, not only

power (which few of them would ever

but to sustain their prosperity and

across a

lifestyle.

As

really

manage

in the time of

to do),

Theodosius

or Justinian, the solidity of the state depended on an effective tax system. Since the early ninth century, this had again,

and only

become more and more organized

could permit the ceremonial world of Constan-

this

Liutprand in 949 certainly did not miss the point, and even in 968, however grudgingly, he had not forgotten it. Byzantine

tine VII to exist at

rulers,

all.

by now, were simply richer than anyone

else in Christian

Europe;

by 949, indeed, most Muslim rulers did not match them either. It was this that their extreme formality was designed above all else to emphasize,

and indeed did

The

stage

so.

we have been

looking at was

Theodora and her advisers the proclamation of thereafter

on the

first

III

format at

least,

a

day commemorated

Sunday of Lent by another formal procession,

Book of Ceremonies

tells us).

(842-67) was dominated by others,

herself,

chamberlain, Basil. Basil capped his rapid

rise

all

Theodora’s son then her brother

Bardas, then, after Bardas’ murder in 866, by the former groom,

304

by

with the end of Iconoclasm and

Orthodoxy (on ii March,

across the city, as the

Michael

in 843,

set, in this

- unusual even

in

now

Byzan-

BYZANTINE REVIVAL, 850-IOOO

we

tium, where ancestry was less crucial than in the West, as shortly - by murdering Michael in as Basil

I.

867 as

Michael had to be subjected

shall see

and becoming emperor

well,

campaign of

after his death to a

vilification as

an inept drunkard to

stable regime,

and

a family succession for his ‘Macedonian’ dynasty that

lasted nearly

two

centuries,

up

justify this,

but Basil established a

to 1056, longer than

any family had

managed before in the history of the empire. The politico-military situation facing Basil was in most respects a favourable one. Above all, the ‘Abbasid caliphate had dissolved into political crisis after 861, thus neutralizing the strongest power in Eurasia and Byzantium’s most immediate

threat;

Arab

if

reign. This freed

war had under Constantine V,

civil

military protagonists

never recovered, except for

Leo Vi’s

a generation roughly coinciding with

Byzantines, as

it

they could

manage

it.

Already

in

up the

to be real

863 the emir

main border warlords, was

of Melitene (modern Malatya), one of the

defeated and killed on a raid to the Ankara region; in the 870s Basil

went onto the Cilicia

offensive, leading raids over the

and the Euphrates

valley. This

Tauros mountains into

protagonism remained. Even

in

managed to concrete hegemony

the generation of ‘Abbasid revival, the Byzantines at least

hold the frontier, and they gained an increasingly

over the lawless borderlands; Basil destroyed the autonomous (appar-

Tauros

ently heretical) Christian Paulicians of the

and

his successors

Armenians and

had

steadily

more

in the 870s,

influence over the

He was no more

fell

in 878),

by Arab raids

in

Sicily (its capital

but he took advantage of the confusion produced

mainland southern

Italy,

and conquered most of

himself (not in person, this time) in 880-88, turning the principalities,

much

880s then

successful than his predecessors in

holding back the long-drawn-out Arab conquest of Syracuse

newly unified

their Bagratuni kings as well. Basil in the

looked westwards.

and he

of

whose

This meant that, even though

territory he Sicily

had taken,

it

Lombard

into client states.

had gone, Byzantium maintained

a

strong western presence for another two centuries.

The most obvious target for Byzantine aggression was the Bulgar khaganate, which had dominated the central and northern Balkans for fifty years, since the time of Krum; we need to focus on the latter, and its

relations with Constantinople, for a

the Bulgar political system

excavation in

its

worked

is

moment not at

successive capitals, Pliska

305

as a result. Exactly

all clear.

how

Archaeological

and (from the 890s)

Preslav,

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO

show considerable wealth and, in the latter, architectural ambition; so does the Great Fence which bounded Bulgar rule to the south. But what khagans had

sort of fiscal infrastructure the

tribute

from

did so.

They could be very

their subjects, but

semi-autonomous armies.

If

is

not certain

it is

hard to

how

see;

systematically they

(boilades

or bolyary) to supply their

they were to withstand the Byzantines, freed from eastern

borrow techniques of

defensive needs by the 8 60s, they needed to

government from them

The

fairly fast.

first

was

of these

and the Christian church. The Byzantines attacked Bulgaria

Khagan

on perhaps

effective militarily, but they relied

aristocrats

they took

Christianity in 864,

and

Boris 1(852-89) immediately agreed to be baptized in 865,

and

to allow missionaries in.

It

was such

a

prompt concession

have been on the cards for some time, although

- Boris faced rebellion almost

at once.

was

it

far

that

it

must

from popular

The Bulgar mission nonetheless

continued, and became a political football between the rival missionary projects of Constantinople

who

whom

two churches were already bad,

Relations between the ruler Rastislav,

and Rome, both of

Boris invited for the

in.

Moravian

ruled a powerful Sclavenian polity in the Frankish

borderlands (see below. Chapter 20), had in 863 invited Byzantine

and Methodios,

missionaries, Constantine-Cyril

than the Latin missions which Pope Nicholas

to proselytize, rather

(858-67) considered

I

proper. Nicholas protested about this missionary rivalry, but without effect.

More

successfully, he pressed the usurping

insecure Basil

I

to

that his election

with

Basil:

remove Photios

and

as patriarch in 867,

still

politically

on the grounds

was uncanonical, although Photios soon made peace

he was Leo

VPs

and became patriarch

tutor by the early 870s,

Rome and

again in 877. Competition between

conversion of two Christianizing

Constantinople for the

polities, the restored Photios’

under-

standable resentment at papal interference, and growing differences over Christological details, sent relations between the

worst

crisis since

two churches

Iconoclasm.

The Moravians and Bulgars eventually accepted and the former went Latin, the in the 8 80s the tension

Boris, in particular,

Greek choice:

into the

latter

Greek; once

geopolitical logic,

this finally

between the churches quietened

had got substantial concessions

in 870, the

down again. But in return for his

Bulgar church was recognized as autonomous

outside of Constantinople, with

welcomed Methodios’

happened

its

missionaries,

own archbishop. After 885, Boris now expelled from Moravia, into

306

BYZANTINE REVIVAL, 85O-IOOO his

kingdom, and adopted the Slavonic

had created

Slav Orthodoxy. late

Moravians

for the

The

as his

liturgy that Constantine-Cyril

own -

Cyrillic alphabet

it still

exists as the core of

was developed

in Preslav in the

ninth century, too, and a Slavic religious literature followed quickly.

Slavic also slowly

became the dominant language

ate, largely as a result of these

an increasingly Byzantinizing

in the

developments. The Bulgars were creating style of rule,

but were giving

separate from Constantinopolitan influence. This stood

when Bulgar-Byzantine

9 ^ 3 ~^ 4

it

emperor

in

920-24, from

in

an identity

in

good stead

both of which the Bulgars were

^

notably successful, raiding the suburbs of Constantinople

and again

it

became cool again under Symeon,

relations

with wars in 894-7

Bulgar khagan-

an echo of Krum. Symeon took the

itself in title

913,

basileus,

913 or shortly after, and was feared to be aiming for the throne of Byzantium too - he called himself (tsar,

‘Caesar’, in Slavic) in

‘emperor of the Bulgars and Romans’ by 9 24 (why don’t you call yourself caliph as well, Theodore Daphnopates retorted). But Constantinople’s walls held,

and Symeon

returned. This

died;

under

his successor Peter

was the apex of Bulgar power and

status;

(927-68) peace under Peter we

begin to find more and more lead seals, signs of a literate Byzantinizing administration, particularly in Preslav; the Bulgar archbishop had been

upgraded to a patriarch, too. The Bulgar

state

even developed

its

own

popular heresy, Bogomilism, during Peter’s reign. The Bogomils were

and believed that the world had been created by the

dualists,

devil; this

enabled them to generate a social critique of the growing differentiations inside Bulgar society, as

Cosmas

is

made

the Priest in the 960s.

Cathar heresy which was so

The Bogomils

influential in

and thirteenth

centuries; their beliefs

liturgy as the

most

The Bulgar

but

these legacies, at least.

left

Leo VI, hemmed reviving ‘Abbasids

had been, but he held military

handbooks

some

we have

in the

as

were second only to the Slavonic Symeon’s and

we

Peter’s

shall see,

by resurgent Bulgars on one side and more

on the other, was his

by

directly influenced the

state fell fairly rapidly in the end, as

in

in Slavic

western Europe in the twelfth

lasting cultural exports of

Bulgaria. it

an attack on them

clear in

less

briefly

of a military figure than Basil

ground, and his Taktika revived the genre of

to considerable effect; a dozen similar handbooks,

seen drafted by other emperors, follow in Byzantium

next century. Leo focused on law and on administrative reform.

He was

also concerned with the centrality

307

and survival of

his

and

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO and the church

Basil’s dynasty,

Karbonopsina, was caused by

crisis

over his fourth marriage, to

his iron

determination to safeguard the

legitimacy of his only son, Constantine VII,

when

she was

still

who was born

Leo’s mistress. Constantine was only eight

Zoe when he to

succeeded as sole emperor in 913, however, and -rivals fought over

was

a

who

to be regent, or perhaps emperor, for the next seven years: the

re-enthroned Patriarch Nicholas, the domestikos ton scholon tice,

Zoe

the head of the eastern army) Constantine Doukas,

coup

in

who

(in

prac-

attempted

913, Tsar Symeon, whose second war began in the same year,

Zoe Karbonopsina herself, who took over the regency council in 914 and ruled the empire until 919, and finally the head of the navy,

who

Lekapenos,

Romanos

staged a successful coup in 919, married his daughter

Helena to Constantine, and became senior emperor

in

920. The Mace-

donian dynasty had already achieved too much status to be

easily over-

thrown, and Romanos (through Theodore Daphnopates) indignantly

when

protested his loyalty to Constantine

But Constantine, though

still

at court,

writing to

Symeon

in 924.

was marginalized, and, when

he finally overthrew the Lekapenoi in 945 and ruled directly, saw himself as in his

second reign, with a quarter of a century’s break between

the two.

Romanos

I

had an exceptionally

scholon, John Kourkouas,

who

loyal

and able domestikos ton

held the post from

Romanos was overthrown by his sons, a month own coup. After the Bulgar peace in 927, John and boldly on the eastern

dominance

in the

922

to 944,

when

before Constantine’s

raided systematically

frontier for fifteen years, achieving military

borderlands as the ‘Abbasids folded into

crisis again.

He

turned this into conquest in 934 when he took Melitene; he had considerable influence in Armenia; and in 944 he forced the emir of

Edessa not only to Christian

relics,

make peace but

the

also to

Mandylion with

hand over one of the great

Christ’s miraculous image, to be

held henceforth in the palace in Constantinople. Constantine VII as

returning as

945 appointed Bardas Phokas as domestikos ton scholon, he did to a family which had held this position for most of

the reigns of

Leo VI and Zoe,

sole ruler in

as

we

shall see later.

Bardas and then his

who

succeeded him as domestikos in 955, followed John Kourkouas in pushing eastwards; Nikephoros in particular sought

son Nikephoros,

958 he took Samosata on the Euphrates, and by 962, under Constantine’s son Romanos II, he was in control of the whole

to conquer. In

308

BYZANTINE REVIVAL, 85O-IOOO upper Euphrates

valley; in

962-5 he took

Roman

Antioch, the old

965 Cyprus, in 969 As important was his

Cilicia, in

capital of the East.

conquest of Crete in 961, the strategic key to the southern Aegean,

which the Byzantines had unsuccessfully

back several times

tried to take

since 827.

Nikephoros Phokas, the most successful general

capital,

died with young heirs

II

the children Basil

co-emperors.

own

widow Theophano,

married Romanos’

He

II

was

Romanos Lekapenos’ coup when in 963. He moved swiftly to the

thus in a good position to repeat

Romanos

for centuries,

and Constantine VIII

then returned to war, the

and, as in 920, reduced

to the status of marginal first

emperor to command

969 did his nephew and murderer John Tzimiskes, who was John Kourkouas’ great-nephew as well; John attacked on the eastern frontier as far south as Beirut, and by the end his

troops since Basil

I.

So

after

976 all the Arab rulers of the rest of Syria paid him tribute. John was also, for the first time in this period, successful in the Balkans. Svyatoslav, prince of the Rus of Kiev (see below. Chapter 20), of his reign in

attacked Bulgaria in 967, probably at Nikephoros’ instigation, and took

969 and overran the Bulgar state, threatening well. John in 971 pushed the Rus out of Bulgaria

Preslav; he returned in

Byzantine territory as in a

quick campaign, the reverse of the long-drawn-out and inconclusive

Bulgar wars of the

last

two

centuries.

He drew

supremacy and deposed Tsar Boris

his military

the logical conclusion to II

(968-71) as well,

in a

formal ceremony in the forum of Constantine in Constantinople. Bulgar

power, fearsome for so long, thus suddenly collapsed, and John ruled

from the Danube

Romanos

I

to the Euphrates, over a third as

had ruled

much

again as

at his accession.

These conquests were not, on one

were more experienced

in defensive

and perhaps they were

right, for the

level,

enormous. The Byzantines

than in offensive war, and they were too cautious to go for the big sweep, down to Jerusalem or Baghdad -

one example of

it

in the

the conquest of Bulgaria, did not hold, at least initially.

concerned with

solidity,

the eastern lands back;

it

and

this

A

work

They were most

they obtained. The Arabs did not get

was only the Seljuk Turk conquest of the Arab

world and eastern Byzantium reverse the

960S-970S,

alike in the

1060S-1070S that would

of Nikephoros Phokas and John Tzimiskes.

recurrent historiography of eleventh-century Byzantium sees a civ-

ilian faction

and a military faction

at loggerheads,

309

each rising or falling

THE EMPIRES OE THE EAST, 55O-IOOO with each successive reign. This century, and

it is

even

less true

an over-simple view of the eleventh

is

of the tenth.

It

might seem that there was

Macedonian

a civilian, not to say bookish, legitimist

which

tradition,

was marginalized by soldier-emperors, Romanos I, Nikephoros II, John I.

We know

Nikephoros

that

himself constrained by ceremonial,

felt

even though he appears to have carried

and there were and

out

when he was

certainly cultural differences

Leo VI or Constantine

a

it

VII.

between

But Romanos,

who

in the capital;

all

these figures

started in the navy,

spent most of his reign in the capital, just as Leo and Constantine did. Military officials were as important in court ceremonies as civilian ones, unless they were

and

tary

on campaign.

civilian offices, as

who was

A

single career could include

with Nikephoros Ouranos

both mili-

(d. after

1007),

keeper of the imperial inkstand, with a responsibility for

producing documents,

but then became a notably successful

in the 980s,

997-9, and as ruler of Antioch after 999 too wrote a military manual, but also poetry and hagiography).

general, against Bulgaria in (he

A

civilian official

could have a military son or brother, too, as with

which produced Romanos

the Argyroi family, mostly a military one,

Argyros (he would become Emperor Romanos literary

III,

1028-34), a highly

eparch (governor) of Constantinople and economic manager of

Hagia Sophia, as well as in Italy

his brothers Basil

and on the eastern

frontier.

There was no structural

opposition between the two traditions. career of Basil Lekapenos

was made

eunuch by

a

(d. after

his father.

and Leo, who were generals

A

good indication of

985), bastard son of

He

and

after all his

this

Romanos

is

I,

the

who

rose in the civil administration, as

eunuchs generally did (though even he fought in 958),

political

in at least

one campaign,

945 supported the coup of Constantine VII, who was brother-in-law; he gained the title of parakoimomenos, in

guardian of the imperial bedchamber, and was effectively head of the

civ-

government for the whole period 945-85, except for Romanos IPs four-year reign. He actively supported the rule in turn of Constanilian

tine VII,

Nikephoros Phokas, John Tzimiskes, and then

1025)

in the difficult first

death.

He changed

John

(he too

sides

decade of the

when he had

was complicit

wealth from his

office;

in

II

(976-

latter’s sole reign after

John’s

to,

Basil

notably from Nikephoros to

Nikephoros’ murder), and gained great

he was not necessarily a lovable man. But he

represented a continuity which successive emperors could not easily reject.

The

civil

government of the

3

capital

10

and the heads of the armies

BYZANTINE REVIVAL, 850-IOOO needed each other, the second to defend the Basil

first

first,

was anyway the

II

Macedonian heir, he was

to

produce the funds to pay the second, the

and they both knew

heir of both political strands: the legitimate

also an ascetic military figure in the

Phokas mould (he never married or had learning.

it.

Michael Psellos

in the

children),

io6os stressed

Nikephoros

and uninterested

in

his dislike of ostentation,

within the framework of a ceremonial practice which Basil, too, respected: ‘Basil took part in his processions

and gave audience

to his

governors clad merely in a robe of purple, not the very bright purple, but simply purple of a dark hue, with a handful of gems as a distinction.’

He

spent most of his

example, he was not

mark

of

life

campaigning; in 991-5, for

in the capital at all,

with the result that there was

a four-year vacancy in the patriarchate, for any patriarchal election

needed imperial participation. But he was also highly attentive to taxation,

and rumour grew

financial surplus so

to hold

at the

end of

his extremely long reign of a

huge that tunnels had to be

built

under the palace

it.

Basil did not establish his position easily. In his early years he faced

revolts

from generals who aspired to repeat the careers of Nikephoros

and John

I.

First

was Bardas

frontier (976-9); in

978

Skleros,

Basil sent

doux of Mesopotamia on

II

the far

Nikephoros’ nephew Bardas Phokas

the younger, back in the family office of domestikos ton scholon, to

push the rebels over the Bulgaria,

where

frontier. Basil

on the western edge of the former Bulgarian

revolts

state (in the area of

was himself more concerned with

modern

Serbia and Macedonia) were beginning by

the late 970s to turn into an attempt to reverse the Byzantine conquest.

who defeated Basil himself in 986 in what is now western Bulgaria, and who already by then controlled

Their leader was by the mid-98os Samuel,

all

Symeon and

Peter’s

Preslav. After the

986

former realm except the old heartland around defeat, eastern revolts

Skleros returned in 987; Bardas Phokas

was

broke out again. Bardas

sent against

him once more,

but this time he declared himself emperor as well, allied himself with Skleros,

and then imprisoned him.

A rebel Phokas, given Nikephoros IPs

heroic reputation,

was much more dangerous

for Basil. Bardas

had controlled

the eastern armies anyway,

and they remained

all

to him. Basil to confront

him had

to seek help

Phokas

from the Rus, and

loyal

in

989

he defeated and killed Bardas Phokas at Abydos on the Dardanelles. Skleros surrendered a year later, and

was

quite well treated by Basil.

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO This was unusual; Basil normally treated opponents savagely (including

even prisoners of war). But Skleros’ revolt, at

was

much

that

Basil

II

second time around,

least

less threatening.

ruled without trouble after 989, and remained fully in control

both of the armies and the palace (he had removed Basil Lekapenos in 985).

He

did not continue the 960S-970S focus on the

partly because

Arab power

becoming stronger again,

as

in Syria, in the

we

Arab

frontier,

form of the Fatimids, was

shall see in the next chapter;

most of

his

wars were with Samuel. They took a long time. Samuel was by no means

on the base,

defensive,

and attacked

far into

where he declared himself

Greece from his Macedonian

tsar in 997.

and only

that Basil destroyed Samuel’s army,

\vas not until

It

in

1018 did he

1014

mop up

resistance. Basil did fight in the East as well, all the same; here, he

was

mostly interested in gaining hegemony over Armenian and Georgian princes. His successes here

pushed the frontier as

far as the

modern

Turkey-Iran border, further east than even the Romans had reached,

though independent Armenian kings Basil’s control here

was not

still

fully stable;

remained

Armenians were hard to

But the very quantity of his campaigns, over so a certain stability, even in the

war economy, across

fifty

easily

absorbed into

years (seventy,

if

one

a reputation for

themselves

if

heavy taxation, but

he died with

money

reserves.

his

rule.

decades, created

certainly in Bulgaria. his

starts

Phokas’ campaigns), became structural to the

had

many

Armenian lands - and

Armenians and Bulgars were

in the capital at Ani.

own

armies.

The

with Nikephoros

state. Basil

may have

wars must have paid for

And

this

was so even though

he relied almost entirely on a professional, and well-paid and equipped,

army, the tagmata^ the expanded heir of the eighth- and ninth-century specialist regiments, as well as

mercenaries from wherever he could get

them. In the early eleventh century Byzantium looked in good shape.

None

of Basil’s successors for

fifty

years had his (rather grim) charisma,

but the state did not falter until the Turkish onslaught in the 1070s.

By the mid-tenth century, most of the surnames. This was a

when nicknames were were not always male-line

new development; less

stable, as

who

it is

Byzantium had

far less true of the ninth,

often inherited. Even in the tenth, surnames

with John Tzimiskes

Kourkouas descendant, or

Lekapenoi,

political players in

else

(‘the Short’)

who was

a

not always used, as with the

are called that in eleventh-century, not tenth-century

312

BYZANTINE REVIVAL, 85O-IOOO Although we can track a few

texts.

back into the

aristocratic families

eighth century, most of the greatest families of the tenth were themselves

new: the Phokades began with Phokas, apparently an ordinary

fairly

soldier

promoted by

Basil

the 870s onwards; the

contemporaries of

If

in the past, there

Kourkouas and

first

Basil; the

first

Argyroi and Doukai are

had

these families

was no need

first

to

documented

Nikephoros

aristocratic ancestors further

in

I

back

to recall them; family identity could begin

Leo VI could happily use the (borrowed) opinion

here.

from

Lekapenos were also

went further back, but only

in the 840s; the Skleroi

the early ninth.

to several provincial governorships

I

in the

Taktika

that generals should not be of distinguished origin, for those of obscure origin

would have much more

to prove; this view

been shared by his Phokas contemporaries, and controversial to

many around

when complaining

in a

would

certainly have

may

not have been

900. But even Basil

II

a century later,

law of 996 about the misdeeds of

‘the

powerful’

{dynatoi), explicitly envisaged that a dynatos could be ‘originally a

man, [who] was afterwards granted glory and

good

fortune’; his idea of

poor

and raised to the height of

titles

an old family was a domestikos

ton scholon whose descendants were ‘likewise dynatoi with success

extending over seventy or a hundred years’. Although take the phrase too

The tenth century

literally, this

certainly

saw

we should

not

image, too, only takes us back to Leo.

a crystallizing aristocracy with a visible

family consciousness, and elements of that consciousness can be traced

back to the ninth century

concept of the special nature

at least, but the

of high-status ancestry was not dominant as yet. Official titles certainly did figure in aristocratic identity,

hand.

And

had lands that were above

so did land. All these families

on the Anatolian plateau and the eastern

army under

It is

all

Phokades and

frontier: the

Argyroi in Cappadocia, the Skleroi close to Melitene. ing that they rose in the

on the other

hardly surpris-

these circumstances, although the

quasi-chivalric values of the great nostalgic border epic of the twelfth

century. Digenes Akrites, cannot yet be seen in our sources.

were the most consistently ambitious of these families are also the best documented,

and they can serve

son Nikephoros Phokas the elder was the cally

prominent; he was,

first

like his father, a

and became domestikos ton scholon

of

as

in

The Phokades

our period, but

an example. Phokas’

them

to

become

politi-

personal favourite of Basil

at the start of

Leo Vi’s

I,

reign, a post

he held for nearly a decade. His son Leo held the same post under Zoe,

313

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO and was seriously defeated by the Bulgars sacked

in

I

had him

919, and he was blinded after a revolt. Leo’s brother Bardas

in

was excluded from power under Romanos, who ingly)

Romanos

917;

saw

the

Phokades

as rivals, but was, as

clearly (and unsurpris-

we have

seen, recalled

by

Constantine VII, and he and his son Nikephoros the younger ran the armies of the empire for twenty-five years,

as domestikoi, then as

first

emperor. Nikephoros’ brother Leo was a general too, though a

popular one, including

in the capital,

where he became a

less

civil official

during Nikephoros’ reign; that, plus a lack of speed in reaction, meant that he could not reverse

John Tzimiskes’ coup. After

however, he too was blinded. Bardas the younger, rebel,

was

his son;

much

the family a revolt

from

it is

hardly surprising that Basil

II

domestikos then did not promote

But Bardas’ son Nikephoros could

after 989.

Cappadocian base

his

first

a revolt in 971,

in

still

stage

1022, and his son or nephew

Bardas tried again in 1026. These two were respectively killed and blinded,

and the family

is

The Phokades ended remembered

their

family

history

as

rebels,

and were

fact, until

Nikephoros IPs Bardas the younger’s revolt in 987-9 - they

different: they

were one of the most established families of

for that thereafter, but until the outrage of

death - and, in

were quite

not heard of again.

military leaders in the empire, holding the

supreme

command

of the

East for forty-five out of the hundred years before that revolt, not to

speak of a string of provincial

Cappadocia, and the occasional

Romanos

I,

commands

in the

civil office as well.

Anatolikon and

Out

of

in

power under

they were by no means forgotten, and this must have been

true even under Basil

II if

the last Nikephoros

Phokas could reappear

in

1022 (apparently persuaded by the governor of the Anatolikon, Nike-

who needed him as the popular figurehead for a own behalf). The point is that, although they had a

phoros Xiphias,

bid for

power on

landed

his

base they could retire to - and plenty of land elsewhere, including in the capital

- they only

Without lions’.

it,

as an

really existed as

major players when they held

Armenian chronicler put

The Phokades had

it,

office.

they ‘ranted like caged

a family identity, to be sure, but

it

could only

really be expressed

through office-holding. Wealth, land, and three or

four generations by

now

of ancestry were by no means enough on their

own. This was even truer of the other the sources at Aristocratic

all

when out

families,

who

hardly appear in

of office.

landowning was nonetheless increasing. An early example.

314

BYZANTINE REVIVAL, 85O-IOOO the

first

really

wealthy private owner

since the sixth century, first

was Danelis

we have

(d. c.

clear

890),

documentation for

who was one

of Basil Fs

patrons before he came to imperial attention; she reputedly

over eighty estates in southern Greece. The figure ated, but the order of in the East,

may

magnitude might be a guide to

where most of the powerful

owned

well be exagger-

aristocratic wealth

were based. Certainly

families

emperors thought that dynatoi were gaining too much power localities.

Romanos

Every emperor from

I

in

928

to Basil

II

in the

in

996

(except John Tzimiskes) issued laws against the oppressions of ‘the

powerful’, laws which survive as a group, and which refer to each other.

The emperors sought

to

make

who were sometimes

peasants,

in the great

dynatoi to buy land from

difficult for

it

forced to

famine of 927-8), or

else

because of misfortune

sell

(as

simply because they were intimi-

dated by local aristocrats. Neighbours and village communities were to

have the right to buy such land back;

the peasants were soldiers (that

thematic armies, an element of the Byzantine military rather

in the

is,

if

marginalized by the tagmata in this period) they could not all,

unless to poorer soldiers.

Romanos

I

in

934

said this

sell

land at

was because

land accumulation by dynatoi threatened tax collection; Constantine VII in

947/8 was worried that peasant soldiers might enter the

996 provided anecdotes expropriating whole villages, and also envisaged that

private armies of ‘the powerful’; Basil

of state officials

dynatoi might force merchants to

onto their lands.

II

in

move markets (and

thus market

tolls)

Who the dynatoi actually were was rather vaguely and

inconsistently defined in this legislation, but certainly included state officials,

and there

part of them.

It

is

no doubt that the

Skleroi,

Phokades,

etc.

formed

has been easy to see ‘the powerful’ as threatening

everyone in the empire, free peasant owners, the organization of the

army, the the

whole

It is

fiscal

system, and, thanks to private armies and regular revolts,

state.

a mistake to try

and

talk this legislation away, as

some

historians

do, in an understandable reaction against the apocalyptic readings of

What we

were certainly more

some

earlier writers.

ically

prominent than before, and therefore presumably

the tenth century,

what

aristocrats

and indeed

later; this sort

demonstrably do

fore unreasonable to

we

call aristocrats

deny

it

in other times

polit-

richer, across

of local oppression

and

places;

it is

is

there-

for tenth-century Byzantium, given that

actually have an unusually explicit set of texts.

315

Nor would

it

be

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 550-IOOO surprising that emperors feared that

than from

from

‘the powerful’

have

political clout);

in the late

Roman

it

always

it

would be harder

‘the poor’ (that is,

is,

to collect taxes

who

everyone

and similar problems are well

did not attested

why we might too much when

period. But there are plenty of reasons

not want to rely on the intensity of imperial rhetoric looking at such texts.

First, the

tax system was not under threat, as

accumulation of reserves, despite constant war, shows. Sec-

Basil IPs

ondly, local oppression, precisely because ‘the powerful’ always do

was

less

threatening to the state than the emperors claimed. Village

communities were certainly well entrenched, including tax-paying, especially in Anatolia;

would be

it

Roman

said,

the soldiers

‘it is

emperors to

terms as well, II

and the poor from persons who have attained the same

was echoing the laws against

the fourth century.) But this does not

mean

social mobility of

that peasants were univer-

under threat.

It is

also not at

all

obvious that great landowners really did dominate

the countryside by the late tenth century.

They did

Greece, as Danelis already implies, and as

Thebes Cadaster, a

brief local tax survey

in parts of

large

later eleventh century,

owners

central

and eastern Anatolia. But

earliest, tenth-century,

show monasteries Basil

II

in

some core

aristocrats

in

an area north

We could hardly

of Athens (although a few peasant proprietors as well).

doubt that the situation was the same

southern

further confirmed by the

is

from the

which shows a preponderance of relatively

and

in

our wish that dynatoi purchase from dynatoi only,

status as they have’, he

sally

law and

when Nikephoros

as befits a century as Roman-revivalist as the tenth;

966/7

in

logical for

seek to support them. (They did so in quite late

in

it,

aristocratic areas in

do not dominate

in the

Athos documents from northern Greece, which

(themselves expanding landowners, as Nikephoros

II

complained) opposing, but also being opposed by, local

communities such as Hierissos, the closest large settlement to Mount Athos. Although large landowning steadily gained ground after looo in

northern Greece,

landowning So did

it

in

still

this

was not the case everywhere even then; and peasant

continued on the Aegean coast of Turkey for centuries.

Byzantine southern

area for aristocratic interest.

Italy,

although

Anyway, even

if

this

was

some of

a

more marginal

the great families

were as rich as Danelis, they were not so very numerous. clear that the Byzantine aristocracy

the landscape that

was normal

in the

It is

far

from

had achieved the dominance over

West

316

(see

below. Chapter 21), even

BYZANTINE REVIVAL, 85O-IOOO in the eleventh century,

never mind the tenth, whatever emperors claimed

in their laws.

The

less locally

reliant in the

in the

me

great families of Byzantium thus seem to

preponderant than they were

on office-holding

for real political

most part

for the

West; and also more

in the

protagonism than they were

West. There were also, probably, more areas of Byzantium than

West by the tenth century

that were not dominated by ‘the

powerful’; this seems a reasonable conclusion to draw, even though

Byzantine evidence

West, as

we

us so

tells

about peasant

little

society.

Even

in the

were closely connected

shall see in Part IV, aristocratic elites

to the state in Carolingian Francia, Ottonian East Francia (the future

Germany),

Anglo-Saxon England; they owed

late

status to royal patronage, local

and they did not seek to

establish

power, or to undermine royal power, unless the

forced them to go

their identity

crisis

and

autonomous of a

kingdom

West Francia (the future France). In tenth-century Byzantium, where the state - based on taxation as

it

was - was

salaries,

it

alone, as in tenth-century

where office-holding commanded huge

far stronger,

where public position was

regular presence in the capital, a chance.

tied

up with army commands and

autonomous

local

The fragmentary evidence we have

power did not stand

for provincial judicial

procedures, too - mostly court cases from Athos, where the monasteries

amount

spent a strikingly large

shows

effective

larly sent

and systematic

from the

officials as well; this

capital

of time squabbling with each other -

official interventions,

with judges regu-

and interacting with a network of

network of public power, again without

the early medieval West,

omies. In any case, Basil

would not II,

who

is

way

easily give

make any

parallel in

to private auton-

often held to have been particularly

hostile to the dangers of the great families, did not fear

as to

local

provision for the survival of his

own

them so much

dynasty.

Not only

did he never marry, but he never even tried to persuade his colourless

brother Constantine VIII (who succeeded him, 1025-8) to marry off his

two daughters while they could

the line that way. Basil the imperial office,

and

knew

still

bear children, and perpetuate

that other families

this clearly did

would soon take over

not bother him. Nor, given the

continuing power and stability of the Byzantine empire for another half century, can he be said to have been wrong.

317

14 From ‘Abbasid Baghdad to Umayyad Cordoba, 750-1000

The Arab geographer Ibn Hawqal Sicilians.

Palermo

itself,

conquered by the Arabs from the Byzantines

amenities: the large

mosque

in

Hawqal spends many pages on

831, was rich and impressive, and Ibn its

990) hated Palermo and the

(d. c.

(the ex-cathedral)

7,000 people; more than 300 other mosques,

in

which could contain

an unparalleled density,

sometimes actually adjoining each other; the very numerous and varied markets; the specialized papyrus production, the only one existing outside Egypt; the richly irrigated gardens surrounding.

wasted

this latter fertility

on

cultivating onions,

consequence was that ‘one does not find

But the Palermitans

which they

in this

ate raw; the

town any

intelligent

person, or skilful, or really competent in any scientific discipline, or

animated by noble or religious (judge) there; they were

numerous, but

all

feeling’.

No

too unreliable. Schoolmasters were very

they did the job in order to avoid military

all idiots:

service; nevertheless, the Sicilians as a brilliant.

logical

what

one was qualified to be qadi

whole considered them to be

They pronounced Arabic wrong; they could not hold down

a

argument (Ibn Hawqal provides examples); they had no idea of

Iraqi legal

and theological schools

their doctrinal position

is

really believed, ‘even

very well known’.

Nor

did the Sicilians

Islamic law properly, particularly in the countryside. Ibn

so incensed about

all this

that he actually wrote a

Sicilian idiocy, unfortunately lost;

but he

tells

though

know

Hawqal was

whole book about

us quite

enough

in his

huge geographical survey. The Book of the Depiction of the Earth.

He

ends amazed that the Sicilians could be so poor, at least these days

(in

the 970s), well

was

What

when

their land

was so

rich.

The only thing they made

really

linen.

the Sicilians

had done to make Ibn Hawqal so cross (geog-

raphers often criticized the inhabitants of regions, but this

318

is

extreme)

is

FROM ‘ABBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO not easy to about.

up

in

see.

But

say that he

fair to

knew what he was

talking

He was born in Nisibis in the upper Tigris valley and was brought

Baghdad; he

North

it is

left

the latter city in 943 for thirty years of travel, to

Africa, Spain, Armenia, Pars

back to Mesopotamia and

and Khurasan

Syria, Egypt,

and

in

what

now Iran, He may by

is

finally to Sicily.

now simply have been tired and grumpy, but he had traversed the whole Islamic world. He saw it as a whole, and constantly compared its parts; the great city of Fustat in Egypt, for example,

area of Baghdad, whereas

Cordoba

in

in central Asia; the

third of the surface

Spain had almost half; the nougat

of Manbij in northern Syria was the best he

Bukhara

had a

knew

except for that of

merchants of Sijilmasa

desert were so rich that people in Iraq or

in the

Moroccan

Khurasan hardly believed Ibn

Hawqal when he told them how much they were worth. Ibn Hawqal made these journeys, however, when the Islamic world was divided between ten and

into

This hardly poses him a

fifteen separate polities.

some good, most bad,

problem; rulers appear casually in

his account,

some

he had to leave quickly, but

sufficiently threatening that

them simply controlling

sections of a single

Hawqal’s geography transcended

all

of

Muslim community. Ibn

politics; he,

and other geographers

him, saw the Islamic world as essentially a whole.

like

This cultural and religious unity was

conquests of the Umayyads.

first

established by the military

was made permanent, however,

It

in the

century and a half of the ‘Abbasid caliphate, which was politically

hegemonic

as a centralized state

between 750 and 861, and

still

powerful

around 920; the disunity of Ibn Hawqal’s time (and ever after) was hardly a generation old when he set out from Baghdad. In this chapter, until

we

shall

look at the ‘Abbasid achievement, in the decades of their most

effective political centralization,

and

and

Baghdad, which was strong enough to

scientific written culture in

survive tenth-century fragmentation.

two of the successor

states,

in the creation of a

dense religious

We shall then follow the history of

those closest to the European focus of this

book, the Fatimids of North Africa and Egypt, and, in particular, the

Umayyads of Spain. The Spanish Umayyads were autonomous under ‘Abbasid power already in the 750s, but they too looked to Baghdad for a long time. Baghdad, although by no means part of a history of Europe, or even of the former

Roman

world, had an economic and

cultural importance in the last third of our period that outclassed any-

where

in the world,

and that

certainly impacted

319

on Europe: on Spain,

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO on Constantinople, and even on court paid attention to that of

far-off

Harun

Aachen, where Charlemagne’s

al-Rashid, even

if

the reverse

was

probably not the case.

In Chapter 12,

we

now

Pakistan. This control

‘revolution’ of

747-50; the

and al-Mansur, his

al-Mansur, the second ‘Abbasid caliph (754-75),

whole of the Muslim lands from North Africa to what

in control of the is

left

was not simply the

political

result of the

system was not yet stable in 754,

had

in order to feel secure,

to defeat rivals

immediate family and also a serious ‘Alid revolt

power between

establishing a balance of

‘Abbasid

in

from inside

762-3, as well

the Khurasani

as

army which had

brought the ‘Abbasids victory and the Iraqi and Syrian factions they displaced. This political settlement

was

a success, however, the product

of al-Mansur’s brilliance as an operator, buttressed by his famed religious austerity

new

tion of a

round

and financial caution.

capital at

Baghdad

city (no longer surviving),

centre of the caliphate:

army, the abnd’ or

was crystallized in the founda-

762, focused on a monumental

which was the

Baghdad was

political

to be the

home

and ceremonial

of the Khurasani

and also of the administrative

‘sons’,

came from everywhere

in

It

in the caliphate, but particularly

elite,

from

who

Iraq, the

‘Abbasid heartland.

Baghdad seems ants or

upwards seems

This was

through

to have

made

expanded enormously

to

me

500,000 inhabit-

a plausible guess for the ninth century.

possible by the water-supply of the Tigris,

(Damascus has much

it

fast;

like so large), as well as

less

which runs

water, and had never been anything

by the great agricultural resources of the Jazira

between Iraq and Syria and (above

all)

southern Iraq, the ‘black land’

or Sawad, which were further developed through irrigation projects by the early ‘Abbasids to outstrip the productive wealth even of Egypt. But it

was

also

made

possible by ‘Abbasid control, mostly by conquest, of

every part of the Islamic world except Spain: al-Mansur had a clean slate,

in

and, after his execution of his great Khurasani general

755,

owed nothing

reorganization of the aged.

The Arabs

city’s

and

to anyone. In particular, he could begin the

fiscal

system that the Umayyads had never man-

living in the provinces steadily lost their rights to live

off provincial taxation,

military

Abu Muslim

and

it

political focus that

began to flow more consistently to the

was Baghdad,

a secure resource for the

population, whether the soldiers and administrators

320

who were

FROM ‘ABBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO paid by

it,

or else the mass of shopkeepers, merchants and artisans, and

public and private servants,

That process of

who

fiscal centralization

could not be established overcaliphate.

As we

780S-790S and the 830s saw further developments

in that

night, of course, given the size shall see, the

supplied and depended on them.

direction. But

who already had more resources caliph, or than any Roman emperor

started with al-Mansur,

it

at his disposal

and complexity of the

than any previous

since, probably, the fourth century.

Al-Mansur can

as a result also be

seen developing an administrative network that might of organizing and distributing these resources.

had

secretaries (kuttdb)

ance, but

it is

who had

The Umayyads already

a considerable administrative import-

under the early ‘Abbasids that we begin to find them more

clearly responsible for separate branches of it is

become capable

government or diwans and

under al-Mansur that we see an executive head of the

in particular

whole central administrative system appear, the wazir or

Abu Ayyub

seems to have been

ment

around

for

fifteen years

who

vizir;

the

first

ran al-Mansur’s govern-

(d.

771),

(c.

755-70). The powers of the

vizir

continued to expand across the ‘Abbasid period, although they were never complete; vizirs did not normally control provincial governors, for that cial

was

tax

a caliphal responsibility (although they did control provin-

officials),

and there were always autonomous

offices inside

who ran the caliph’s large household and often had the caliph’s ear, and who could thus be a serious rival to any vizir. But for the first time we see a clear structure of government in the Arab world, one with its own complex internal politics, as we shall see, made all the more cut-throat by the huge amount Baghdad

of

not least the chamberlain (hdjib),

itself,

money

it

had

to direct.

Al-Mansur had no doubt

as to the dynastic nature of his rule, and,

thanks to his removal of rivals, a continuous

from him, held

office

up

line of caliphs, all

to 1517. His son

grandson al-Rashid (786-809) continued

descended

al-Mahdi (775-85) and

his political practices, in a

period of general peace and prosperity which aided the trend to centralization. ‘Peace’

is

perhaps too bland a term; there were always frontier

wars with the Byzantines, and provincial rebellion was

unknown,

particularly in Egypt

and

in eastern

a peasant revolt in the Jazira, west of

them threatened the Al-Rashid, also

Mosul,

structure of the state,

known by his

birth

name

321

from

Khurasan, and including in the 770s.

But none of

which continued

of

far

Harun

(all

to develop.

‘Abbasid caliphs

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 550-IOOO had both

name and

a birth

tend to use only the

name, though historians otherwise

a ruling

by

latter), is

best-known ‘Abbasid, and

far the

perhaps the best-known medieval Muslim ruler in absolute along with Saladin, thanks to his starring role in the in its present lifetime,

form a mostly

late

Thousand and One Nights,

medieval collection of

however, although an active general, he was a relatively retiring

figure in internal politics, devoted largely to ceremonial.

and 803 the

Barmak

stories. In his

his vizir

Yahya ibn Khalid ibn

805 ), son of one of al-Mansur’s leading

(d.

old tutor.

was dominated by

state

Yahya ran

Between 786

officials,

and Harun’s

the government together with his sons Ja‘far

(Harun’s closest friend and associate, both in

and One Nights) and

who

al-Fadl,

life

distributed

and

in the

Thousand

most of the

offices of

between them and also a succession of provincial governorships;

state

together they are

known

had a high reputation

as the Barmakids.

for being skilled

The Barmakids ever

after

and honest administrators, and

they seem indeed to have been so; they were the principal architects of the mature

(except

‘Abbasid

when

bypassing provincial governors

system,

fiscal

they themselves held such offices), and directing ever

higher proportions of tax revenue to Baghdad. Their

enhanced by

their

abrupt

when

fall,

in 803,

memory was

also

almost out of the blue,

al-Rashid had JaTar beheaded and his relatives imprisoned, for no obvi-

ous reason except, presumably, his growing resentment of the family’s

power. Arab writers pondered for centuries the tragedy of the ideal administrator, Yahya, brought down by an almost-as-ideal caliph especially as

it

was only

ushered in a serious It

civil

a

work

naming

death

first

practice for rulers to seek to control the

and then second

heirs; this frequently did

out, as political alignments changed, but

that the initial heir

own

war.

was standard ‘Abbasid

succession by

few years before al-Rashid’s

it

not

at least helped to ensure

would succeed without opposition from his presumed

successor. Al-Rashid

went one

further: he designated

one of

his sons,

al-Amin, as the next caliph (809-13), and another, al-Ma’mun, as his successor, but he also assigned

which he was to be

effectively

al-Ma’mun an apanage, Khurasan,

autonomous during

in

his brother’s reign.

This was probably because Khurasan had become a tense province again,

with local aristocracies unwilling to accept the right of Baghdad to take their tax (ironically, to

and on the Byzantine

pay the ex-Khurasani abna’ army,

frontier); that

would

322

in the capital

cease, at least temporarily.

FROM ‘aBBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO once al-Rashid died, and Khurasanis could caliph

who would

safeguard their interests. The tensions did not stop

with the division of 809, however, and at

its

they had a future

feel diat

now

each side had an ‘Abbasid

head. Al-Amin at once tried to undermine his brother’s rule, and

the Khurasanis persuaded

al-Ma’mun

to declare independence in 810.

Unexpectedly, his general Tahir ibn al-Husayn defeated invading abnd’ army in

8 1 1,

al- Amin’s large

and al-Ma’mun, now claiming the caliphate

(811-33), sent Tahir against Baghdad.

Tahir besieged the capital for a year, until he managed to break local resistance in 813;

however stayed

in

al-Amin was caught and

Khurasan, making Merv (now

killed.

in

down

Al-Ma’mun

Turkmenistan)

his

capital; furthermore,

he showed in this period a Shihte commitment,

above

unique decision to make an ‘Alid

‘Ali

all

ibn

through

his

Musa, whose

ruling

name was

his heir in 817,

to be al-Rida, ‘the chosen one’.

This secured the loyalty of parts of Khurasan and Iraq, but alienated the rest of the caliphate.

Baghdad revolted

again, choosing a brother of

al-Rashid, Ibrahim, as the caliph al-Mubarak; Egypt, too, which had

had fell

its

own

civil

war between supporters of the

into chaos in

rival brothers since

819 with the most serious tax revolt of the Christian

population since 750. Al-Ma’mun had to backtrack, and

Baghdad, and line straight

812,

away from

definitively

away and Ibrahim

moved

‘Alid imagery, in 819. Iraq

fled (he survived this debacle

fell

Only

army

into

and was

reconciled in 825; he died at court in 839). Egypt, however, took

longer to subdue; al-Ma’mun had to lead an

to

much

there himself in

832

then, just before the caliph’s death, did

to subjugate

it

he have

control over his father’s domains, with the exception of

North

full

Africa,

properly.

an always rather marginal province, which never returned

to ‘Abbasid rule.

The

civil

war of 811-13 thus unleashed

the provinces over taxation

trouble.

The resentment

of

was perennial; the more the ‘Abbasids

ensured taxes were sent to Iraq, the more acute local resistance would be. In the

Umayyad

period, this resistance could be posed in terms of

loyalty to the person of the caliph

(it

was

just that local

should have the right to keep provincial taxation); but,

no longer recognized, the

risk

was

that the province

if

Arab armies

that right

would throw

was off

first

with al-Ma’mun himself in Khur-

asan. This

would indeed eventually

lead to the break-up of caliphal

power. But

it is

caliphal authority altogether, as

necessary to stress that

323

it

did not do so yet.

Al-Ma’mun

THE EMPIRES OE THE EAST, 55O-IOOO kept the loyalty and cooperation - and the taxation - of Khurasan, largely thanks to the family of his general Tahir,

who

provided four

who were

generations of Tahirid governors there from 821 to 873, but

simultaneously rulers of the city of Baghdad, which depended on provinrevenue. Egypt, at the other end of the caliphate, was finally quiet

cial

after 832.

abnd\ was

Al-Ma’mun’s army, no longer based on the initially a rather

cratic levies,

who had and

uncertain collection of east Iranian aristo-

trouble taking

Baghdad against informal gangs of

even though the defending regular army disinte-

civilians (‘ayydrun)

grated; but he,

early ‘Abbasid

especially his military-minded brother

and successor

al-Mu‘tasim (833-42), built up an army of mercenaries, particularly

from Turkic central Asia, many of whom were former

slaves,

whom our

sources generically refer to as Turks. This was an effective fighting force,

not sufficiently Islamized to have

its

own

political

programme, not

associated with any particular province of the caliphate, and very loyal, at least to al-Mu‘tasim.

big ‘Abbasid attack

They provided

the muscle behind the last really

on the Byzantine empire, which took Amorion

in

838, and Turkish leaders were increasingly used as provincial governors.

With the provinces and extensive

ate

fiscal

under al-Mu‘tasim and resented a

new

model army, and an increasingly elabor-

quiescent, a

and administrative machine, the 830s and 840s his

more

colourless son al-Wathiq (842-7) rep-

high point for the centralized ‘Abbasid state, one that

could have real staying power: or so one might have thought.

Ninth-century Baghdad, huge, wealthy and politically central as

became

works

a real cultural focus.

in

The

startlingly large

number

it

was,

of surviving

Arabic from the ninth and tenth centuries, mostly (particularly

before the 930s or so) written in or near the capital, themselves attest to

it.

They

are only a portion of

shown by the Fihrist or Index 6,000 book titles, nearly all

of al-Nadim

the (d.

at least read

them

all),

actually written, too, as (d. c.

990), which

lists

is

over

written in the last 250 years (this far

outweighs the 279 Greek books

had

what was

in Photios’ Bibliotheke,

though Photios

or by an anecdote in the Fihrist

itself

about

600 cases of books allegedly possessed by the historian al-Waqidi 823) - an impossible figure for such an early date, but significant as a

tenth-century image. Theology, philosophy, law, poetry, administration, history, medicine, science

and geography

hyperactive cultural world.

324

all

had

their experts in this

FROM ‘aBBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO These branches of knowledge increasingly developed cultures, with lawyers

above

all

their

own micro-

reading other lawyers, historians reading

other historians, poets reading other poets. They were tied together, the same, by

The

two main networks, one

whole were seen

intellectual strata as a

one

cultural-religious,

as a

community of

literary.

scholars,

The community was

the ‘ulamd’ (from 7 /m, ‘religious knowledge’).

defined initially and principally in terms of religious expertise, but

soon to extend out to the more specialized

most

disciplines;

visible in biographical dictionaries of scholars,

being written in the early ninth century.

Qur’anic scholars and

jurists,

was

It

all

this

its

came

identity

is

which were already community,

which was increasingly

led

by

seen, in a religion

with no formal priesthood or ecclesiastical hierarchy, as the determinators of

what Islam was and how

in the twenty-first century,

The community did

it

should be understood, and indeed,

it still is.

not, of course, always agree.

We

have already

encountered the fault-line between Sunni and Shi‘a, which crystallized as alternative political-religious systems in the ninth century.

had

these systems, however, also

of thought about

how

their

own

Each of

sub-systems, rival schools

religion, political practice

and law ought

to be

conducted. Inside what would be called the Sunni tradition, for instance, there

was from

early in the eighth century considerable debate about

the degree to which Islamic legal practice (sharVa) should be based legislation

(presumably by caliphs), or

else

reasoning from basic ethical

from the Qur’an, or

else

on the increasingly elaborate

principles derived

sets of ‘tradition’ (hadtth), obiter dicta attributed to

Prophet on almost every

nouncements

in reality

although custom on law.)

The

its

legal or

moral

Muhammad

gave a religious legitimacy to local custom,

own was

never regarded as a legitimate fount of

‘traditionists’ essentially

767), Malik

influential

mitment

(d.

won

795), al-Shafi‘i

- and Ibn Hanbal

(d.

(d.

out, but the four

to hadtth, with Hanafis

all

and other

main law

Abu Hanifa

820) - the most intellectually

855), varied considerably in their

most receptive

Hanbalis most rigidly attached to schools,

the

issue imaginable. (These pro-

schools of medieval Sunni Islam, looking respectively to (d.

on

literal

less long-lasting ones,

com-

to legal reasoning

and

readings of hadtth. These

achieved a mutual toleration

the same, as each constitutive of Sunni ‘ulamd’ opinion, and by

900

or so they had developed what has been called the ‘closing of the gate of independent reasoning’: no

new law 32.5

or legal opinion, including by a

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO caliph or other political leader, would, in theory, any longer be acceptable. Islamic

law thus became increasingly fixed (even

if

legal practice

did not). This served further to define the ‘ulamd’ as a cultural grouping,

although other disciplines continued to develop for centuries, the doctrinal rules of eastern

much

as

and western Christendom bounded the

developing thought-worlds of Europe throughout the Middle Ages as well.

The other way

in

which the realms of written culture were linked was

through adab^ roughly translatable as etiquette’.

‘polite education’, or ‘literary

This became the foundation of Arab written culture by around

800, and remained so throughout our period and beyond. learning with stylistic elegance, and required of

knowledge of most of the

eral

its

It

linked

practitioners a gen-

intellectual disciplines of the period,

but particularly language, poetry, stories, administrative practice and hadtth.

The administrative

practice

is

the give-away:

a qualification for careers in government. the senatorial literary education of the

It

adab was above

was the exact equivalent of

Roman empire and of the classical Byzantium

and theological training necessary

for administrators in

900, except that the knowledge

required was mostly of a

recent vintage.

And

it

after

much more

indeed the scope of intellectual activity in Baghdad

and other centres showed the range of

skills

that were acceptable in

government; intellectuals from the geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih c.

all

(d.

885) to the seriously influential and original philosopher-physician

Ibn Sina (Avicenna, offices.

d.

1037) held governmental and administrative

This range marks one of the particularities of adab. So also,

however, does storytelling. Literary culture gave considerable space to narratives; ‘Abbasid histories are

composed of thousands of short

exemplary accounts, with plenty of direct quotations, supposedly taken

from the

lips

of caliphs and their advisers. Rhetorical

remarkably recondite knowledge as part of such

skill

required

storytelling;

hence

the existence of several encyclopedias of ‘curiosities’, such as that of al-Tha‘alibi (d. 1038),

the

first

vizir

the

Arab

to

which contains such information

wear dark

silks,

the

first

most generous female pilgrim, the two caliphs

whose names began with the same

(but untrue) fact that every sixth caliph

of

was

who were also vizirs, who each killed three

letter,

and the alarming

‘inevitably’ deposed. This

knowledge, these days restricted to adolescent boys, was

326

name

caliph to build a hospital, the

with the longest unbroken chain of ancestors

political rivals

as the

in this period

FROM ‘ABBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO a requirement for statecraft, along with

knowing how

to write a letter

properly and memorizing the Qur’an.

The

from

strata of professional administrators,

secretaries

down

and generated

vizirs

and other senior

to the clerks in provincial tax offices,

own

their

were complex,

cultural traditions. There are collections of

administrative exemplary stories, just as there are political ones in his-

accounts of how and

tories;

and of the

why individuals got promoted and demoted,

clever things they said to heads of

dfwans and

al-muhddara. Desultory Conversations, another adab judge al-Tanukhi

(d.

text,

Nishwdr

by the Basra

how dense this specifically administraand how it extended, even in the late

994), shows

memory

tive historical

vizirs.

could be,

tenth century, without a break back to the caliphates of the mid-ninth,

Among

and even of al-Rashid and al-Mahdi. by

how

officials

is

struck

accidental promotions could be in this world, as ordinary

came to the eye of the powerful. Al-Fadl ibn Marwan and then

a kitchen steward to an aristocrat time,

other things, one

made enough money

minor clerk

a

buy land and

to

live in

(d. c.

845),

in al-Rashid’s

the country during

the siege of Baghdad, where he reputedly gave hospitality unknowingly to the future caliph al-Mu‘tasim; thanks to this chance, he rose steadily

and became

in the administration,

vizir at his patron’s accession in

- though, conversely, he was soon dismissed huge sums

in fines, because

public money.

(in

836), and

The chance of

fate

considerable revenues to at least of these revenues stuck to his

Much paperwork was

was linked

to a

pay

good deal of adminis-

two

own

caliphs.

It is

show

who

brought

in

also clear that plenty

fingers, given his

wealth in the 830s.

indeed expended to try to cut

but al-Tanukhi’s stories

to

he tried to prevent the caliph from spending

competence; al-Fadl was an able administrator

trative

had

833

down

peculation,

that this could easily be subverted, with

misleading papers put in the records, until or unless rivals uncovered the fraud.

One

gains a picture of a tight but very jealous administrative

munity, in which a

common

profession counted as a

al-Fadl said, quoting a retired clerk

whom

tie

many

vizirs,

cut-throat

is

life

did not.

of kinship (as

he met as a youth), but in

which promotion often depended on the destruction of al-Fadl kept his

com-

others.

At

least

in 836; plenty of others, including in particular

To

say that administrative and court politics was

indeed an understatement; unlucky ‘Abbasid politicians

could die by tortures as inventive as those of the Merovingians, or indeed

327

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO more

‘Abbasid science was more developed - al-Fadl’s successor

so, as

as vizir, Ibn al-Zayyat (836-47), died in a torture

had

devising. But Ibn al-Zayyat vizir at the accession of

his

own

also supposedly kept his position as

al-Wathiq

loathed him and had sworn to

machine of

kill

new

even though the

in 842,

caliph

him, because he was the only senior

who could compose a formal letter to the satisfaction of the ruler.

official

This mixture of ambition, greed, violence and genuine professionalism

marked

the administrative class as a whole, or at least

its

upper echelons.

The complex and dangerous world of the administration was mirrored in the

other

two arenas of

household. The

civil

caliphal politics, the

administration and the

and probably

army are

the caliphal

often seen as rivals

much as in middle Byzantine historiography,

‘Abbasid historiography,

in

army and

as wrongly; as in Byzantium, the

same person could do

both, as with the Barmakid al-Fadl and the Tahirid ‘Abd Allah ibn Tahir (d.

845),

(d.

863),

and even the occasional Turkish general, such

who

reality crossed

as

Utamish

held the vizirate for a year before his death. Factions in

both areas of government without

and

the Turks, disliked

distinct,

came

to

difficulty,

even

when

dominate the army. The numer-

ous large palaces of the ‘Abbasids also had their

own

staff,

not least the

even more numerous slave mistresses of the caliphs, whose head was either a queen, or,

if

the caliph did not formally

marry - which was the

norm after the early ninth century - a queen-mother; the factions crossed into this arena too.

As with the Merovingians, equally dynastically minded and polygamous, political influence for restricted to the

al-Rashid, and

of al-Amin.

‘Abbasid period tended to be

in the

mothers of caliphs or designated future caliphs. The

most famous examples of

Harun

women this

were Khayzuran

Zubayda

(d.

(d.

789), the mother of

831), al-Rashid’s wife

Zubayda even kept some of her

influence after

and mother

al-Ma’mun

overthrew al-Amin - she brokered, for example, the reconciliation of the anti-caliph Ibrahim in 825. But political practice

gave

less

it

has to be said that ‘Abbasid

scope to female protagonism than either

the Frankish or the Byzantine tradition.

The complicated and

ever-

developing ceremonial of the ‘Abbasid caliphate, which must have

matched that of the tenth-century Byzantines, had rather

women

as public players; but

it is

above

all

less

space for

the case that succession rules

focused on choosing appropriate candidates for caliph meant that child caliphs, for

whom mothers could act as regents, were less common than 328

FROM ‘aBBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO The

royal minors were in Byzantium or Francia.

first

was not

until

al-Muqtadir (908-32), whose reign was indeed dominated by his for-

midable mother, a Byzantine ex-slave called Shaghab (‘troublesome’), or, simply, al-Sayyida (‘the lady’).

consistently hostile

way by

Shaghab

(d.

933)

is

not handled in a

the sources, despite their general suspicion

of female power, magnified by the disasters of her son’s reign; she

followed Zubayda in making public displays of charity on a large scale, a recognizable ‘Abbasid gendered female role, thanks to her vast wealth,

and

allowed at

this

least

Shaghab established a

some

chroniclers to depict her neutrally.

parallel bureaucratic hierarchy of

and female stewardesses which exercised It is

power

direct

male

secretaries

in these decades.

important, however, to recognize that such offices were already

normal

in the

female areas of the palaces. Queens, chief mistresses and

had long been wealthy, and needed administrators to

caliphal mothers

run their

affairs;

on rare occasions, such

if,

took over caliphal

politics too, they

had

all

under Shaghab, these

as

the qualifications to

do

so.

Caliphs are portrayed in the sources in conventional ways, al-Mansur as eloquent

Mu‘tasim sense of

and

ascetic,

as martial,

al-Mahdi as generous and poetry-loving,

al-

and so on. Al-Ma’mun (who conventionally had

humour and

a gift for poetry)

is

perhaps the one

a

who most

own identity through his actions. His attraction to Shi‘ism is one such, which did not end when he backed down over his ‘Alid heir in 8 1 8 - 1 9 So is his patronage of scientists, who engaged in a programme established his

.

of translations of Greek scientific works, Ptolemy, Galen, Euclid and so on, and the determination

(among other

things) of an accurate calcu-

lation of the circumference of the earth: this a library

and

scientific research centre

came

known

school of Islam

from

as the Bayt al-Hikma,

‘House of Wisdom’, founded by the caliph

Al-Ma’mun was

to be carried out

in

Baghdad

in

830.

also a doctrinal protagonist, sympathetic to a rationalist

known

religious authority,

as Mu‘tazilism.

which was seen

as

and which was urged on al-Mansur by

The

normal

role of the caliph as a in the

Umayyad

his Persian secretary

period,

and adviser

jsj) at the start of the ‘Abbasid caliphate, was being undermined by the growth of the authority of the ‘ulamd\ but

Ibn al-Muqaffa‘

(d. c.

al-Ma’mun had

a sufficient confidence in his mission to put doctrine

into the heart of politics. In 83 3 he decided that one element of Mu‘tazilist

thought, the doctrine of the createdness of the Qur’an (that

God had created the book within time; 329

it

is,

that

had not pre-existed the world).

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO was

important that

sufficiently

to subscribe to

opposed to

all

judges and ‘ulamd’ should be forced

who were

particularly the ‘traditionists’,

it,

bitterly

Almost alone, Ibn Hanbal defied him, and went to prison.

it.

The created Qur’an remained and was only abandoned

a tenet of the next

two

caliphs as well,

in 847, at the accession of al-Wathiq’s brother

al-Mutawakkil (847-61). This period, of the so-called mihna or ‘inquisition’, is the

only one in which a doctrinal issue mattered politically in

medieval Islam, as opposed to the permanent debates about the legitimacy of early caliphs. The apparent obscurity of the religious issue at stake later

is

one element that reminds us of the Christological schisms of the

Roman

empire.

The

sense one has of a political regime using such

an issue to kick religious extremists into

line

also a reminder of

is

the near-contemporary Second Iconoclasm in Byzantium,

al-Ma’mun

recalls his

younger contemporary Theophilos

in religious-philosophical

debate as well.

created Qur’an as the issue to

make

Why

a stand

on

and indeed

in his interest

al-Ma’mun chose

the

however, even

less

is,

clear than the reasons for the Iconoclast controversy.

It

may

be that

any issue would have done, to re-establish caliphal religious authority, especially in the face of the ‘traditionists’. But the

Hanbal returned;

after

and caliphs - and, Iran,

who

believers’

still

mihna

failed;

Ibn

849 doctrine was fully in the hands of the ‘ulamd\ more, their tenth-century supplanters in Iraq and

did not have their formal religious role as ‘commanders of the

- became

essentially secular powers.

intellectuals, jurists,

They would be patrons of

‘ulamd\ but not intellectuals themselves.

Al-Mu‘tasim’s Turkish army got on particularly badly with the Baghdadis,

who were

after all the heirs of the previous paid

so the caliph built a

new

capital at Samarra, further

army, the abnd\

up the

Tigris,

and

moved both himself and his army there in 836. The establishment of new capitals was a standard part of early ‘Abbasid political affirmation; Baghdad itself was the key exemplar, and al-Rashid’s period in Raqqa (796-808) and al-Ma’mun’s in Merv (811-18) were others. Samarra was the most serious foundation the ‘Abbasids, built

40 kilometres. rival

Baghdad

on

a

huge

after

Baghdad, and was, as usual with

scale: its ruins

All the same, like

Raqqa

as a population centre,

and administrative centre during

its

extend along the Tigris for

earlier,

and

it

it

was not intended

to

remained largely a military

period as the capital, 836-92. The

problem was that the caliph was thus isolated together with

330

his

army.

FROM ‘ABBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 750-IOOO Both the Umayyads and the early ‘Abbasids used armies paid out of general taxation, which were separated from their areas of origin, the early

Arab

amsdr, the Khurasani abnd’ in Baghdad. In

settlers in their

this respect, the

beyond the

Turks were not unusual, except that they came from

and they would have plenty of successors

frontiers,

more fragmented

tenth century too. There

was always

in the

between

a tension

the paid military and the rest of tax-paying society in the medieval

Arab

world as a

elites

result of this pattern.

converted to Islam, above

Arab

settler families

all in

Furthermore, because provincial

the ninth century,

and were matched by

acquiring land - in the early eighth century in

boom-town hinterland of Baghdad, the late ninth in Egypt - there therefore came to be Muslim provincial aristocracies who could be very resentful of the political power and the

Khurasan, the

late eighth in the

financial weight of the army. This

was

where the pre-Islamic Persian ruling

class largely

aristocratic

remained, with highly

and military values, however Islamized by now. Some of

this Persian ruling class did

army,

particularly so in Khurasan,

like al-Afshin of

indeed join al-Ma’mun’s and al-Mu‘tasim’s

Ushrusana

(d.

841), a hardly

Muslim

central Asia, although he, significantly, perished because he

prince from

was thought

to have plotted against the Turks.

The

caliphs could not, however, simply leave military affairs to local

aristocracies; they

caliphate

well pay sions

would have

instantly lost their tax revenues,

would have broken up very

fast.

Given

that, they

and the

might as

men from outside the caliphate, who had no aristocratic preten-

and were

at least

good

at their job.

But there were dangers too. In

an anecdote laden with hindsight, the historian al-Tabari has the Tahirid Ishaq ibn Ibrahim

tell

al-Mu‘tasim: ‘your brother considered the roots

and made use of them, and

their branches flourished exceedingly;

whereas the commander of the believers has

utilized only branches,

which have not flourished because they lacked

roots.’

al-Ma’mun used Tahirids

like myself,

Which

is

and other people rooted

to say: in the

community, and that worked; but you use the Turks, who do not have such roots, and

this

is

a real problem.

Al-Mu‘tasim

is

supposed to have

However this may be, the deracination be an advantage when al-Mutawakkil turned

sadly recognized the truth of this. of the Turks ceased to against

them

in the

850s and sought to bring

down

their leaders, for

they had nowhere to go. In the end, they responded by assassinating

him

in 861.

This unleashed a decade of

331

crisis in

Samarra, 861-70, in

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO which Turkish factions them; the

crisis

developed (d.

891),

own

who had

military

latter in

When

anddts Tahirid governor, with

870 when the ‘Abbasid family

strongman,

in fact led the siege of

the surviving Turkish leadership; he his brother

al-

and Baghdad was besieged and captured again

Stability only returned in its

turn and killed three of

five caliphs in

fled to the old capital

a section of the Turks,

865-6.

up

extended back to Baghdad when one of them,

Mustahn (862-6), in

set

al-Mu‘tamid,

who was

Abu Ahmad al-Muwaffaq

Baghdad and was very

was put

caliph by

in

now

close to

charge of the army by

(870-92), and

left

the

Samarra while he gradually transferred himself to Baghdad.

al-Muwaffaq’s son and heir al-Mu‘tadid became caliph (892-

902), he formally re-established

Baghdad

as the capital,

and the Samarra

interlude ended.

The years 861-70 were not so very

long, but, like the civil

war of

the

810S, they opened up fault-lines in the ‘Abbasid polity which were hard to close.

The revived ‘Abbasid protagonism of 870-908

to al-Mu‘tadid’s son al-Muktafi,

(it

902-8) faced widespread

extended

difficulties.

Iranian rebels, the Saffarids (they did not have aristocratic roots, and

they were close to fringe

Muslim

sects),

had defeated the Tahirids

Khurasan between 867 and 873, and marched on defeated there in 876, but they continued to control taxes only intermittently.

Tulun (868-84) was not did not pay

and

much

directly

opposed to the ‘Abbasids, but he too

Khumarawayh (884-96) succeeded him inces,

and not

much of Iran, paying

power

tax to Iraq, and he extended his

to re-establish a greater until

were

The Turkish governor of Egypt, Ahmad ibn

which thus did not pay much

Palestine,

Iraq; they

in

either;

into Syria

only after his son

did an ‘Abbasid

army manage

measure of tax-paying from the Tulunid prov-

905 did the ‘Abbasids regain direct rule

Only

in Iraq did the

8 80s,

and here, around Basra

‘Abbasids exercise

fiscal

in Egypt.

control in the 870s and

in the south, they faced a

huge slave

revolt,

of the Zanj, African slaves used to maintain the irrigation system: this

from 869 to 883, was the most successful slave uprising history before the Haitian revolt of 1791, resulting in an independent

revolt, lasting in

Shi‘ite state

al-Muwaffaq until the

which was only destroyed by four years of war under in

879-83. The ‘Abbasids were seriously short of money

mid-88os, and even after that had to fight without a break,

with their still-Turkish armies, to keep on top of events. They succeeded in their core lands,

with the exception of Iran, which increasingly

332

slid

FROM ‘ABBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO away under

local dynasties.

But they could not afford to relax their

was

pressure. After 908, al-Muqtadir

a very inattentive ruler,

and

his

mother Shaghab did not have control of the army. By the 920s, with infighting inside the bureaucracy, rival generals in Iraq,

from the Arabian

bedouin raids

and Syrian and Egyptian governors who had

desert,

begun to stop paying taxes again, the gains of recent decades were lost; in

the 930s caliphs began to be deposed once more, and after

the caliph lost

power to

all

Ahmad

of amirs’. In 945

(d.

967), from the most successful of

the rising dynasties of Iran, the Buyids, took Baghdad, and

al-umard’ with the ruling

nominally ‘Abbasid]

name

state’.

of Mu’izz al-Dawla,

Iraq

936

amir al-umard\ ‘amir

a military governor, the

ibn Buya

all

became amtr

‘fortifier

of the

[still

was controlled from western Iran from

then on for a century.

The break-up of

the ‘Abbasid caliphate, for a hundred years the

strongest state in the world (Tang China had run into trouble in and after the 750s),

would

ideally

of events in a couple of pages, history hardly extended

set of

Roman empire. If I dispose of the sequence

explanations as did that of the

its

need as detailed an account and

it is

only because by now, after the 8 60s,

beyond Iraq except

for brief periods,

and

is

too far from the history of Europe. The tenth century in the Islamic world was, as already observed, even more fragmented, with the Samanids and

then the Ghaznavids in eastern Iran, two or three Buyid polities in

western Iran and Iraq, two Elamdanid polities in Aleppo and (more briefly)

and

Mosul, a

east, the

set of

Kurdish dynasties in the mountains to their north

Qaramita

in the

Arabian

desert, the Ikhshidids

and then

the Eatimids in Egypt, and other smaller polities too - as well as those

of the Maghreb, which had not been under ‘Abbasid control since the early ninth century or even before, the Aghlabids in

what

is

now

Tunisia and

and the Umayyads But before

we

Sicily, the Idrisids in

in Spain.

We

cannot follow

look at two of them,

century of ‘Abbasid unity and of

its

and then the Eatimids

what all

we do need

is

now Morocco,

their histories here.

to take stock of the

failure.

One simple reason why the ‘Abbasid caliphate broke up was that it was too large. Local societies were too different; communications were always slow; the caliphate was larger than the sea,

with

its

relatively easy

reconquests, with reunifications: in

new

Roman empire, and did not have a

bulk transport, at

ruling armies

and

heart.

Conquests and

a clean slate, helped periodic

636-51, 747-50, 811-13,

333

its

as subsequently with the

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO Buyids, and the Seljuk Turks in the 1040s and later, but tensions

always

rise again.

This was particularly the case in Khurasan and in

whose

Iran as a whole,

would

pre-Islamic ruling class, with

some

military

protagonism, survived better than elsewhere (and whose pre-Islamic past

was

still

celebrated by

Muslims

in oral

and written

literature, unlike

anywhere further west except Spain); and which, being mountainous,

was much harder and long-lasting

to control in depth; significantly, the later Islamic empire, the

most successful

Ottomans, never held

Iran.

Trouble for the ‘Abbasids generally began in Iran; Iraq and Egypt were

much

easier to rule,

centuries after the

and Syria was not any

fall

of the Umayyads.

This straightforward geopolitical argument

is

largely

backed up by

one basic point about the tenth-century Muslim successor

were almost

all

two

sort of power-centre for

tax-raising states with a central paid

cracy, just as the caliphate

states:

they

army and bureau-

had been. Only some of the Kurdish

states

of southern Anatolia and the Iranian mountains, followed by bedouin

had a simpler

dynasties in Syria and the Jazira in the eleventh century, structure, based

on block

gifts

of tribute to

Unlike at the end of the western

breakdown

Roman

armed transhumant groups.

empire, there was no structural

inside the majority of these smaller polities. Unlike in the

Romano-Germanic kingdoms, the new ruling groups were not concerned to make themselves into a landowning aristocracy. Land indeed power

did not bring political

state position did that: or so

in

most medieval Muslim

it

seemed to medieval

societies,

political actors.

Wealth, too, was most reliably obtained through positions

and old

families,

whose longevity was ensured by

inevitably in land, in the especially privileged in political

Muslim

as in the Christian

any Islamic

model established by ‘Umar

and ‘Abbasid caliphs thus continued

I

world - were not

to hold. Indeed,

communities and no family background, Mu‘tasim’s Turks, became an increasingly

Independence from the caliphate

in Iran.

The

and two centuries of Umayyad

the idea of ex-slaves holding military power, with

turies.

in the state;

private wealth -

even

state structure,

only

first

it

intensified, as

no

links to local

experimented with

common model

just

al-

in later cen-

meant that taxation stayed

in the

province concerned and paid a local army: a basic aim of provincial

elites

from the Umayyad period onwards, and only

the strongest ‘Abbasid rulers, with reversions slipped, as in the 8ios

and 86os. From

334

fully

overridden by

whenever ‘Abbasid control

this standpoint, the

break-up of

FROM ‘ABBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO the caliphate could even be seen as unproblematic, as simply consisting

of the reversion of politics to

Broadly,

I

optimum

its

think this interpretation

attention too

much on

is

size,

the province.

a fair one. But

does concentrate

it

the state; provincial societies get

out of the

left

equation. Local social leaders were hugely diverse, extending from the

old families of parts of Iran to the rapidly changing Iraqi

who

elites,

tended simply to be the heirs of the most recent wave of administrators,

who had made money from

taxation and settled down;

all

the same,

they existed everywhere. They certainly did have land by now, and also

sometimes commercial wealth, which they turned into land as well. The great local political centres, almost all urban - major cities like Aleppo,

Mosul, Rayy (modern Teheran), Merv and Nishapur

were

of local

full

elite families,

Khurasan -

who sought the power, and who squabbled

of ‘ulamd' and others,

post of qadl^ an important focus of local

over local and provincial position, rather than seeking here, land, private wealth

in

and

it

from the

an ‘Alid was

birth did matter (being

increasingly chic, especially in Iran), just as

state;

did in the West. ‘Abbasid

it

governors always had to come to terms with local power-broking families, or else they

process

itself

would

fail:

they

would be unable

controlled by local figures), or face revolt, or both. So did

And

indeed this in

itself

and the

‘state

Even the most deracinated army family could put down

local

the smaller-scale rulers of the tenth century.

shows that there was a relationship between class’.

to collect tax (a

local societies

and

roots, at least as rulers, as the Tulunids did in Egypt;

bureaucrats and local military

men had

or at least the richest of them.

Some

larly the civil administration, least,

had

had

all rulers,

to negotiate with their subjects,

sections of the ‘state class’, particu-

origins in local societies, too; they, at

tight local obligations.

All the same, a separation

between the

provincial societies did exist, and a career in the local city

and

‘state class’

was a problem. By and

and making a career

in the state

local

large,

were

and

making

different,

not only in the geographically large-scale ‘Abbasid caliphate but in the provincial polities of the tenth century as well. This societies

meant that

local

could view the changing fates of their rulers with a certain

equanimity: the latter were largely external figures, whether benevolent or violent, generous or fiscally harsh, cultured or martial, without a structural connection to the strata of the governed.

became more

secular,

now

that the fate of Islam

335

As government

had devolved

to the

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO ‘ulamd\ the Salvationist imagery of right rule so effectively invoked by

Abu Muslim and political

we

was

the early ‘Abbasids

programmes. Only the Fatimids

shall see in a

moment. When

no longer part of most

also

tried

it

in the tenth century, as

a local ruler faced military failure, then,

made

because a blockage in the tax supply

hard to pay troops, or

it

simply because of defeat in battle, he could be replaced without local society really being involved, as long as the

new

ruler did not take

over too violently. There were certainly some examples of a loyalist

protagonism by local the Buyids

elites, as

when the citizens of Mosul in 989

and temporarily restored

but they were not so very many.

which the ‘Abbasids

their earlier rulers, the

On one level,

lost control in the

expelled

Hamdanids,

indeed, the very ease with

910s to 940s, to be replaced by

regimes which for the most part resembled them, was a real structural

however dismal the period was,

failure:

someone

for

to

make more

older legitimacy.

were

still

later.

ought to have been possible

of a stand, a heroic loser committed to an

The ‘Abbasids did not

nor did the Buyids

it

The

leave stories of that kind,

stories that

continued to hold attention

Sassanian - or else of the timeless fantasy Baghdad of

al-Rashid and the Thousand and

The Fatimids were tenth-century

the

Muslim

most

One

and most

They outlived

stable of the

major

their

Buyids, by over a century, and indeed ruled over

all, first

in

rivals,

the

Kairouan

in

modern Tunisia, and then (after 973 in newly conquered Egypt, more than two hundred and fifty years, 909-1 171. They also rep-

Ifriqiya,

for

Harun

Nights.

successful, richest

states.

and

)

resent, as just observed, the only serious attempt at a Salvationist revival after the early ‘Abbasids,

and are thus a

special case in the tenth-century

Islamic world. Their salvationism was, however, Shi‘ite, not Sunni. first

The

Fatimid, ‘Ubayd Allah al-Mahdi, was an Isma‘ili Shi‘a living in

who belonged to one of the hidden imam or supreme spiritual Syria,

sects of Shi‘ism

which held that

a

from the caliph ‘Ali, would return to redeem the world. In around 899 he declared controversially inside the Isma‘ili movement, which he split in two that he

the

leader, descended

was himself the imam. He had

Kutama

Berbers of

modern

to flee Syria,

Algeria, a sensible

and ended up among move, for the Berbers

often had ‘Alid sympathies - an earlier ‘Alid exile, Idris ibn ‘Abd Allah (d.

795), had founded the Idrisid

The Berbers were

also

good

kingdom

fighters,

336

in central

Morocco

in 789.

and were the core of the Fatimid

FROM ‘aBBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO army

our period ends. The Kutama adopted al-Mahdi

until well after

as a charismatic leader,

and keenly took

to the role he offered

them

as

the equivalent to the Khurasanis in the ‘Abbasid ‘revolution’. Their

named Abu ‘Abd

general, an Iraqi

Muslim, took

Ifriqiya

from the

Allah, the Fatimid version of

Aghlabid dynasty

faltering

in

Abu

909, and

al-Mahdi proclaimed himself caliph (910-34) outside Kairouan a year Like

later.

Abu Muslim, Abu ‘Abd

Allah was also killed by his patron-

protege inside a year, and al-Mahdi was not troubled by rivals thereafter. Like both the ‘Abbasids and the Aghlabids, al-Mahdi set up his

Mahdiyya on

capital in 920, at

the Tunisian coast.

governmental structures as the Aghlabids, although ism

set himself,

and

his

Kutama army,

He

own

used the same

his Isma‘ili messian-

apart from his Sunni subjects.

That messianism, however, meant that al-Mahdi would not be content with

from the

Ifriqiya;

start, the

on Egypt. This strategy was

Fatimids looked eastwards, with raids

deflected by another Salvationist Berber

was defeated, and by 960 al-Mahdi’s great-grandson al-Mu‘izz (953-75) ruled all North Africa,

revolt,

by Kharijites

unified for the

this time, in

Egypt with

general Jawhar

country with later.

and vision (d.

little

and

for

after the recent death of Abu’l

eunuch of fabled

ugliness,

who had ruled

twenty-two years (946-68). The Fatimid

976), another ex-slave, a Slav this time, took the

violence in 969, and al-Mu‘izz

Jawhar and

Palestine

was rudderless

a black ex-slave, a

skill

it

time since the 730s. This stability allowed a renewed

first

attack on Egypt, which

Misk Kafur,

944-7, but

later generals

Syria, but they ran

moved there four years

pursued Fatimid ambitions on into

aground around Damascus, and when

the frontier stabilized in the 990s

it

did so between

Damascus and

Aleppo. Fatimid expansionism stopped, and a modus vivendi emerged in Syria

between the main regional powers, the Fatimids, the Buyids,

and, since the 950s, the Byzantines, as

we saw

Perhaps surprisingly, by the 990s the caliphs,

wealthy Egypt, were prepared to of hereditary governors; from

let

in the last chapter.

now

situated stably in

control over Ifriqiya

slip,

to a family

now on the Eatimids would be an Egyptian

and Levantine power, which they remained

for nearly

two

centuries

more. It is

whose

749-50, and at one level one fervour had greater staying power, for the Fatimids

easy to see religious

909-10

as a rerun of

began a long way from the old power-centres of the Islamic world, which they would have to fight for longer to reach - indeed, they never

337

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO reached Baghdad. As

Shi‘ite

imams, too, the Fatimid caliphs did not

have to pay attention to the 'ulamd’

was by

any of

in

their

and anyway an imam drew

definition Sunni,

domains, for that

his authority direct

from God. But, even more than in Ifriqiya, Fatimid rule in Egypt was simply a continuation of the - already effective - rule of their predecessors.

The Kutama

from home,

like the

recentralized the

Egypt and Syria were another paid army,

in

abnd' and the Turks. Al-Mu‘izz and his successors administration of Egypt, as had the early

fiscal

‘Abbasids, but in Egypt state aided

far

it

A

had never been very decentralized.

commercial development, but

in

strong

any case Egypt had by

now

outstripped Iraq again as a productive region. In large part, the Eatimids

allowed

it

to develop simply by creating stability;

Egypt remained one

of the major Islamic powers until the very end of the Middle Ages as a result,

with a political protagonism unmatched since Cleopatra. Their

administrative capital, al-Qahira, that

is,

Cairo,

just outside the previous provincial capital Eustat,

was founded

in

969

which remained the

commercial focus of Egypt; Eustat-Cairo was for a long time the major

economic powerhouse of the whole eastern Mediterranean, surpassing even Baghdad, as

we

shall see in

more

detail in the next chapter.

So the Eatimids can be construed simply as normal rulers of the tenth century and onwards, just successful at they ruled. All the same, this did not

it,

make

and lucky with the region

the Eatimids exactly the

same

as their peers elsewhere in the Islamic world. Ismahlism, a secretive sect

with esoteric and abstract Neoplatonist elements, including a complex letter

and number symbolism, continued to mark out the court and the

army, isolated among an ocean of Sunnis, Coptic Christians and Jews,

and caliphs could continue to have messianic dreams: not (996-1021),

who

erected anti-Sunni slogans

was

still is,

al-Hakim

on Sunni mosques, who

demolished the church of the Holy Sepulchre was, and

least

in Jerusalem,

and

who

venerated as divine by the Druzes of Lebanon. Al-Hakim

also a capricious

and violent autocrat

in a rather

more

familiar

mould, but his religious imagery marks out the originality of the Eatimids nonetheless.

Tariq ibn Ziyad, the Berber leader of a largely Berber army, invaded Visigothic Spain for the

and all

killed

King Roderic

Umayyad

in 711.

caliphs of

Damascus and defeated

The Berbers and Arabs had taken nearly

the peninsula by around 718.

Muslim armies raided 338

into Francia for

FROM ‘ABBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, another decade and a

much commitment

but without

half,

75 O-IOOO to conquest;

Spain - al-Andalus in Arabic - was already on the very edge of their

world, and

it is

stopped at the the peninsula

made

likely that,

if it

had not

Straits of Gibraltar.

fallen so easily, they

Be that as

it

would have

may, the occupation of

was quick. With the Visigothic army defeated, the Muslims

separate treaties with several local lords, in particular Theodemir

in south-east

Spain in 713. They did not base themselves in the old

Visigothic capital of Toledo, but in Cordoba, in the rich south; Toledo

was rather more of

a frontier area, with an extensive uncontrolled land

further north in the

Duero

valley

between Muslim al-Andalus and the

Christian polities of the northern fringe of the peninsula. At Cordoba, a succession of governors ruled,

looked

like a

affected as

normal,

chosen by the caliphs. Al-Andalus

outlying, province of the caliphate.

if

was North Africa by the great Berber

Caliph Hisham sent Syrian armies into Spain in 742,

It

was

as

revolt of 740, but

who won back

the

peninsula in 742-3 and settled there, thus increasing the Arab element

Muslim

of the

settlement.

The Syrians

in Spain replicated the

Yaman faction-fighting of the fertile crescent,

Qays-

however, and for a decade

from 745 there was civil war between them. When the Umayyads were overthrown in Syria in 750 and largely wiped out as a family, one of Hisham’s grandsons, ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu‘awiya, kin of his mother,

first in

fled to the

Berber

Africa and then, in 755, in Spain. Here he

found support, both from Berber lineages and from the Yamani Arab opponents of the Qaysi governor, Yusuf

were thus pro-Umayyad, not East.)

al-Fihri.

they had

(The Yamanis in Spain

come

by 749 in the Inside a year he had defeated Yusuf and had taken Cordoba. ‘Abd

al-Rahman

I

anti, as

to be

then ruled as amir for more than thirty years, 756-88,

wholly independent of

his

‘Abbasid enemies in Baghdad. So did his

descendants, until 1031.

Spain was not like most of the other caliphal provinces, however.

was

far

simpler

more

decentralized,

and

also, for a century at least,

economy than many, more

like the

had

economies of the

It

a rather rest of

western Europe, with relatively unskilled and far more localized artisanal production, than like the economically complex and heavily urbanized provinces of the caliphate, Egypt or Syria or Iraq. Even

which under the Arabs

as

its

major

under the Visigoths were Cordoba,

cities,

Seville,

Merida, Toledo, Zaragoza and a few others, were for a long time relatively small

by comparison with those of the eastern Mediterranean.

339

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO Spain was also, crucially, one of the only provinces conquered by the

Arabs which did not have more than

a

fragmentary tax system. The

standard procedures for Arab occupation, based on a paid military in a (perhaps

new) garrison

city,

newly Islamized (when converted

wanted simply Syrians, settled

and

who were

were thus impractical. The Berbers, at all) in the 710s,

on conquered

to settle

elite

anyway doubtless

and did

land,

so.

But even the

normal paid army, soon tax-farmers, soon as landowners -

sent in in the 740s as a

on the land too -

initially as

which they were paid by the campaign);

just did military service (for

they intermarried with the Visigothic aristocracy, and into the tenth

we

century, as

Arab and

their

were families

shall see, there

their

by chroniclers for

century Christian source,

same, they had none of the

anywhere

it

still

from the

the start,

start (as

in Latin, the

fiscal

else in the caliphate,

and were heavily

witnessed by a mid-

Chronicle of jj 4). All the

control of governors elsewhere. Unlike

they had to face a

racy from (nearly) the start as well,

who

Muslim landed

might be able to

much

time.

The

aristoc-

resist tax-

paying more successfully than their still-Christian neighbours. there

of both

Gothic ancestry.

The amirs took what tax they could from criticized

who were proud

Nor was

of a paid ‘state class’, either civilian or military, for

some

existence of the frontier with the Christians in the north

also led to a military-political fragmentation, with half of al-Andalus

separated off into marches (thugur), based on central-northern centres like

Toledo and Zaragoza, or Tudela, power-base of the ex-Visigothic

Banu Qasi had

little

family, over

which the Umayyad amirs, based

control for a century and more. Spain

is

in the south,

very regionally diverse,

with bad communications, and the Muslim conquest had caused societies to

move

in

local

sharply in different directions; these contrasts were

also further exacerbated by the diversities of Arab

The

its

and Berber settlement.

Berbers, for example, seem to have settled in tight tribal groups

more marginal

landowners when

areas, but to

have become ordinary (and Arabized)

living in or near cities.

political fragmentation,

and the need

Given

for the

this local diversity, this

Umayyad

amirs from the

Muslim Spain was part of the Arab

start to recognize the relevance of the politics of land,

was indeed political

as

much

part of western Europe as

it

environment.

Faced with ful for a time,

this reality, the

but

it

was

Umayyads were

a long process

340

and

it

eventually rather success-

was

far

from

straightfor-

FROM ‘ABBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO ward. ‘Abd al-Rahman family,

which was

powerful family

in

I

own

essentially established the centrality of his

756 - the Banu Fihri, a both Africa and Spain, who had supplied four gov-

a task not yet completed in

ernors in al-Andalus alone, were

revolting into the 780s. Father-

still

son succession then followed into the 8 80s without a break, and, although there were certainly succession disputes between sons, and killings of potential rivals, there

was

about which Umayyad should rule

and one which both aided

was

state

still

actually

no protracted disagreement

until after

1000, a remarkable record,

stability

and was made possible by

fairly skeletal until the 820s,

did employ a small paid army, but far outside the

The

it.

however. ‘Abd al-Rahman

I

unlikely that his tax-base extended

it is

Cordoba-Seville region, linked by the lowlands of the

Guadalquivir valley, and attempts by his grandson al-Hakam

(796-

I

822) to stabilize that taxation led to revolt in 818, not only in marcher centres like Toledo,

where uprising was

urban population of Cordoba

itself. It

fairly frequent,

was not

until

among

but

the

‘Abd al-Rahman

II

(822-52), a subtler ruler, that an administrative system resembling that of the caliphs of the East took shape, with higher taxation, a bureaucratic class

(headed here by the hdjib, the chamberlain, not by the

latter

was

and

wider

a

a lesser office in Spain, political control.

and there were usually

‘Abd al-Rahman

II

in

825

- the

several of them) built a

Murcia, in the previously marginal south-east, and settled loyalists;

vizir

it

new city,

with Arab

he confronted the rebellious tendencies of Merida by building

a large internal fortress there in 835,

and another

he developed a formal court in Cordoba,

whose growth

in

now

in

fast

Toledo

in 837;

expanding as a

power, wealth and buying-power meant that

it

and city,

would

not henceforth be disadvantageous to the capital for the amir to be strong there.

Al-Andalus under ‘Abd al-Rahman 86), seen

from the standpoint of the

II

and

state,

his

thus

son

Muhammad

(852-

came more and more

to

match the ‘Abbasid heartland. The former patronized poets and scholars from the

East, not least the important Iraqi musician

(d.

who was rewarded

857),

for

coming west by

a

and poet Ziryab

huge

salary.

‘Abd

al-Rahman’s reign was also marked by the crystallization of an ‘ulamd’

on an

entirely eastern model,

soon present with

its

in every

Umayyad

major

dominated by the Maliki law school, and

city

and plenty of minor ones. Al-Andalus,

legitimist tradition,

was almost devoid of the disputes

about right rule that were so important elsewhere, and even

341

its

law was

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO not up for discussion. This in part marks

its

provinciality by compari-

son with the East, but the cultural continuum that linked them was

unbroken; that would remain true

we have

Ibn Hawqal’s time, as

in

already seen. Indeed, Spanish historians, once history-writing began in the peninsula (with ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Habib, d. 853, a wide-ranging intellectual),

were capable of writing

in detail

about eastern events on

what went on

occasion; Andalusis were consistently informed about the ‘Abbasid world.

The population was

to Islam; a majority of al-Andalus into the tenth century, influential in

movement known

was probably not Muslim

Muslim now.

until well

less

than

of the still-large

fifty

A sign

of this

is

the strange

as the ‘martyrs of Cordoba’, Christian

who

859) and Alvar,

(d.

their death in the capital

There were

slowly, converting

if

Andalusi culture, but political leaders and major political

extremists led by Eulogius

voked

even

and Christians and Jews never ceased to be

centres were in general mostly

minority

also,

in

by insulting Islam

deliberately pro-

in public in the 850s.

of them, and they were clearly unrepresentative

Cordoba Christian community,

despite the fascination

have had for recent scholars; but

their writings (conveniently in Latin)

the desperation of their stand implies that they

saw only extreme

measures as adequate against the steady advance of Muslim hegemony. This process of increasing amiral power on eastern political models

was

falling apart,

however, by

Muhammad’s

death, and the 880S-920S

were a long period of generalized disturbance or already had trouble with Toledo and Merida; he

former

in 873,

and sacked the

which became an alternative

latter in

fitna.

Muhammad

made peace with

the

868, but then nearby Badajoz,

political centre to

Merida

in the 870s,

turned to revolt too under the former Meridan leader ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn

Marwan

also revolted

al-Jilliqi (d.

from

892). In the 88os

his base at

‘Umar ibn Hafsun

(d.

917)

Bobastro in the far south, above Malaga.

Under Muhammad’s son ‘Abd Allah (888-912), more and more local lords established effective independence, both in the marches and in the Andalusian heartland of the Guadalquivir ineffective

and

Muslim landed

reclusive ruler, but the

aristocracy,

many

of

valley.

‘Abd Allah was an

problem was

whom

a

wider one. The

(including Ibn

al-Jilliqi

and

Ibn Hafsun) had at least partial Visigothic ancestry, had effective local bases and local loyalties.

from which they could

They could be happy with an expanding

benefit,

even though the growing

fiscal

of that state were opposed to their immediate interests, but

342

if

state,

demands the state

FROM ‘aBBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO would look

faltered they

to their localities, rather than to the person of

the amir. Beneath the ‘Abbasid-style political system in Cordoba, that to say, the

more

continued to

is

western-style local political practice, already discussed,

exist. Iran,

with

its

surviving Sassanian aristocratic families,

offers the closest parallel, including the survival of pre-Arabic political

imagery

found

in local social

the Zoroastrian legitimists that can be

in Iran as late as the tenth century

ibn Hafsun, also

memory;

who

have their parallel

actually converted to Christianity in 898. But Iran

had other regions with strong paid armies and

societies,

which tended to dominate

paid army was

still

depoliticized local

politically. In Spain, the

permanent

not substantial, and military service was largely

controlled, as in other parts of the West, by the very aristocrats loyalty

was now

autonomy under

‘Umar

in

in doubt.

a

When even Seville in 899

member

of one of

its

whose

established effective

local elite families,

Ibrahim ibn

al-Hajjaj (d. 91 1), called ‘king’ (malik) in the sources, the state risked

breaking up.

‘Abd Allah’s grandson and successor, ‘Abd al-Rahman

was the

ruler

who

III

(912-61),

reversed this trend, and by doing so he inaugurated

three generations of strong central power, the strongest

known

in

Spain

between the Romans and the thirteenth century. ‘Abd al-Rahman

III

understood that the only way to cope with

to

fight, systematically

and without

this decentralization

a break. In only

was

two years he

re-

established control over the Guadalquivir valley; thereafter he pushed

outwards, expanding his army as he did

so,

not just in the old amiral

heartland but in the marches as well. Bobastro

fell in

928, Badajoz in

930, Toledo in 932. ‘Abd al-Rahman for the most part incorporated the lords he uprooted into his

Cordoba, but they were,

army or

else into the civilian state class in

crucially, separated

from

their local

power-

bases and incorporated into a tax-based political system that was less superficial in

its

similarity with the East than in the previous century.

This was underlined further by a great increase in slave and ex-slave soldiers,

who were

mostly Saqdliba,

‘Slavs’

to include other northern Europeans).

(though the word extended

Erom as early as 916 this enlarged

army was also sent north against the Christians, which further allowed ‘Abd al-Rahman (who, unusually, often led his own troops) to impose himself in the marches. In the end, he came fully to control all of al-Andalus except the Upper March in the far north-east, whose lords gave him military service and tax but remained autonomous. Even there.

343

THE EMPIRES OE THE EAST, 550-IOOO the

main old ex-Visigothic

family, the

Banu Qasi, had

lost its

power by

907, and was replaced as a regional focus by the Tujibis, a family close

Umayyads, which had been given Zaragoza

to the

Amir ‘Abd

partially in the

890

in

one of

hegemony was not

Allah’s rare effective interventions. This

weakened, except

in

Upper March, by ‘Abd al-Rahman’s

only serious military defeat, against the Christians of Leon in 939 (see

Chapter 20). This overall success, plus the collapse of ‘Abbasid power in the

same period and the Fatimid establishment of ‘Abd al-Rahman

ate in 910, led

a rival Shi‘a caliph-

to proclaim himself caliph, as al-

III

Nasir, in 929.

The tenth century was developed most with

its

fully.

the period

when

Cordoba gained

monumental mosque

al-Rahman’s son al-Hakam

II

the ceremonial of the ruler

a series of

new

in the centre, greatly

(961-76),

moved

stantinople and Cairo as a metropolis. ‘Abd

suburbs, and,

enlarged by ‘Abd

into the league of

al-Rahman

also

Con-

founded

around 940 an impressive new court and administrative centre Madinat al-Zahra’, just north-west of the city. Here, caliphal ritual

at is

recorded in a number of texts, from the Life of John of Gorze, ambassa-

around 953-6, intransigent in its (and its subject’s) to Islam but unwillingly impressed by the complexity of the

dor for Otto hostility

court, to the

I

in

971-5

section of the history by ‘Isa al-Razi (d. 989),

preserved a century later in the Muqtabis of Ibn

Hayyan

(d.

1076),

which provides us with several detailed accounts of particular

cer-

emonial moments at the high points of the Muslim religious year. In the caliph’s

had

main reception

hall at

their allotted positions, in

Madinat al-Zahra’,

two

lines,

all

officials

with the caliph at the end; the

majesty of caliphal power was intended to be, and was,

The tenth century was

major

also a period of larger-scale

made

very clear.

economic

activity.

We shall see in the next chapter that al-Andalus participated in Mediterranean exchange, through the port of Almeria, founded walled and expanded) by ‘Abd al-Rahman

we can

see in recent archaeology the

III

in

(or, rather,

955. Internally, too,

development of centralized and

professional artisanal production of ceramics and glass, including glazed

pottery in east Mediterranean styles, not least a ‘green and manganese’

decorated ware, which appears extensively on Spanish

and which seems to have been made centres.

That

latter

ware has

largely in

sites

of the period,

Cordoba and other major

explicit caliphal associations, as

can be

seen in the frequent inscription al-mulk (‘power’) along the edges of

344

FROM ‘aBBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO plates

and bowls,

especially but not only in

sort of artisanal activity

cannot be

Madinat al-Zahra’. But

in itself ascribed to

or his political success. Tenth-century artisanal

in

parts; but leather,

and

elite

most of the Muslim parts of the peninsula. (Not the Christian

Arab-made

artisanal goods, especially carpets, cloth

were nonetheless prized there as

economic complexity shows

ing

on that of

built

to the steady development of hierarchies of wealth

testifies

demand

‘Abd al-Rahman

which was notably more professional than that of the eighth;

the ninth, it

work

this

is

luxuries.)

One

and

thing this grow-

that the rich aristocracies of the ninth

century had by no means gone away; they had simply been absorbed into the caliphal political hierarchy, or else into the local ‘ulamd’ hier-

archies of the cities of al-Andalus large,

- or

and the deracinated Slav (and,

else both, for later,

Spain was not that

Berber) armies were only

part of the ‘state class’. Their identity and assumptions are well expressed

by the historian and grammarian Ibn al-Qutiya

who wrote

in Seville,

(al-Qutiya), granddaughter of

and

who supposedly included Sara

‘the

huge Goth’

King Wittiza; Ibn al-Qutiya was nonethe-

focused on the doings of the

clearly

977), son of a judge

a chatty history full of stories about the

landed wealth of his ancestors,

less as

(d.

Umayyads

as

any other historian,

bought into the values of the court. All that ‘Abd al-Rahman

did here - not a small thing, however - was to create the political

foundation for the linkage of the local economies and societies of the ninth century in a single network, covering the whole of the Spanish caliphate.

Al-Hakam continued his known as a literary patron,

father’s political practices; he

was well

too. His military expansion, especially in

972-5, was southwards, into Morocco, which had been largely left to its own devices after the Fatimid move into Egypt. At his death, however, his

son al-Hisham

II

(976-1009, 1010-13) was only

Morocco,

seized by one of al-Hakam’s military leaders in

ibn Abi ‘Amir, a

coup against

who had

a loyal

fifteen;

power was

Muhammad

detachment of Berbers to help him win

their Slav rivals. Ibn

Abi ‘Amir

steadily eliminated all

other powerful figures in the court, and in 981 assumed supreme

power

as ruling hdjib for a figurehead caliph, even giving himself the ruling title

of al-Mansur (in Spanish Almanzor, 981-1002).

Al-Mansur

greatly

developed the Berber component of his army to counterbalance the Slavs.

He

fought in Morocco, too; but he principally sent his armies to

the north, against the Christian

kingdoms and

345

principalities,

whom

he

THE EMPIRES OE THE EAST, 550-IOOO defeated time and again, notably but not only in the devastating sack of

Barcelona in 984 and of Santiago de Compostela in the far north-west 997; his son al-Muzaffar (1002-8) continued this as well. In this military dominance, coupled with a substantial internal stability, and in

a continuation of the central ceremonial role of

Mansur

al-

another suburban administrative centre, Madinat

built yet

al-Zahira - the

Cordoba - where

Umayyad

caliphate appeared to reach

its

height.

As with the ‘Abbasid high point under al-Mu‘tasim and al-Wathiq, however,

hegemony would not

this

last.

Indeed, almost as soon as

al-Muzaffar died, al-Andalus disintegrated into a twenty-year

(1009-31). The detailed reasons for essentially

lie

more

war

our period; they

this lie outside

with the political ineptness of al-Muzaffar’s successors,

and power-struggles between Berber and Slav far

civil

serious than

violent sack of

its

Cordoba

But

leaders.

predecessor a century earlier; itself in

this fitna it

was

included a

1013, and the abandonment of the

nomination of caliphs altogether, by

now

all

them figureheads,

of

in

1031. By that date al-Andalus was divided between thirty or so king-

doms, known as the Taifas (from

‘Abd al-Rahman’s

td’ifa, ‘faction’),

political unity or

and

never recovered

it

al-Mansur’s military protagonism.

This collapse was so fast and so complete - far faster than that of the ‘Abbasids, and resulting in independent polities that were in single city territories, far smaller

that

it

many cases

than the successor states in the East -

needs some comment.

Some of the Taifa kingdoms were ruled by regional army commanders, Slav or Berber, who simply turned their commands into autonomous, and then independent, as in the East.

units as central authority collapsed in the loios,

Some, especially

in the north-east,

were ruled by long-

standing families whose local power had been recognized even by ‘Abd

al-Rahman

III,

Santaver area,

haps the civic,

not

the Tujibis in Zaragoza or the Dhi’l-Nunids of the upland

who

in

1018 occupied Toledo. But some, including per-

richest, Seville, state, office:

were taken over by

local

landowners

not necessarily from the same families

who had who had

dominated around 900, but at least from the same social stratum. We have to conclude that ‘Abd al-Rahman III had not definitively ended the presumption,

which had always been stronger

in

al-Andalus than

elsewhere in the Muslim world, that landownership brought potential rights to political authority.

And, even more important: notwithstanding

the substantial territorial reorganizations of the caliphal period

346

- with

FROM ‘aBBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA,

75 O-IOOO

governorships both large and small tightly controlled by central govern-

ment, and

many

of the local fortifications of the

first fitna

simply taken

over by the state - ‘Abd al-Rahman and his successors had not succeeded fully in

undermining that other core Spanish presupposition, that prac-

tical politics

was

local. In

both these respects, the Visigothic inheritance

of al-Andalus comes out in the Taifa period.

succeeded in establishing a tax-based Spain since the

Roman

Taifas; but they did not

state,

The amirs and

caliphs

such as had not existed in

empire, and this indeed continued under the

manage

to

move

their

Andalusi population to

the assumptions that prevailed in Egypt or Iraq, even in the fragmented

tenth century, that only the control of the state mattered, and that a

land-based local politics was marginal.

loios as

moved

the state faltered, in the

in the 8 80s and, earlier, in the 710s, Spain’s localities at

centre stage.

this time,

When

When

a degree of reunification belatedly

once

came

with the Almoravids at the end of the eleventh century, the

Christians had taken Toledo and the whole balance of power had shifted.

347

and the Economy: Eastern Mediterranean Exchange Networks, 600-1000

The

State

Being a tradesman in Constantinople around 900 was by no means a straightforward process. According to the Prefect), a set of official regulations

keepers and

many

operate, and

artisans

had to

silver-dealers in the

perfumers

in the

sell

had

their

from

to be

wares

Book of the Eparch

this period,

members of

(or the

merchants, shop-

a guild (systema) to

in specific places, the gold-

Mese, the merchants of Arab

silk in the

Embole, the

Milion beside Hagia Sophia, the pork butchers

Tauros. Ambulant

sellers

and

in the

were banned; they would be flogged, stripped

of guild membership, and expelled from the city. Sellers of silk could

not

make up

clothes as well; leather sellers could not be tanners.

guilds, such as the

to

do

guild

down

their

merchants of Arab

silk

Some

or the linen merchants, had

buying collectively, with the goods then distributed

among

how much money

to keep

members according

to

they had put

in,

way

competitive buying. Sheep butchers had to go a long

into

Anatolia to buy their sheep, to keep prices down; pork butchers, by contrast,

had

to

buy

pigs in the city,

and were prohibited from going

out to meet the vendors; so also were fishmongers, shore, not if

silk

sea.

The eparch,

merchants (divided into

who were all

on the

the city governor,

five

who had had

buy on

to be informed

separate guilds) sold to foreigners,

prohibited from buying certain grades of

bread prices, by which bakers had to

sell,

silk.

and the

He

determined

price of

innkeepers sold; and he also determined the profits that

made -

to

wine the

many vendors

grocers were allowed a 16 per cent profit, but bakers only 4 per

cent (with another 16 per cent for the pay of their workmen), over and

above the price they paid

in the state grain

warehouse.

Later medieval western towns often had quite elaborate guild regulations like these,

archies in trades.

aimed

at

maintaining monopolies and internal hier-

The Book of

the

Eparch stands out, however (apart

348

THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY from

in its early date), in the

degree of state control

assumes. The

it

regulation of profit was particularly important here, and also the regulation of the

ways

were allowed to buy

sellers

controlled because

was

their goods. Silk

production and distribution reflected directly on

its

imperial prestige (the regulations for linen merchants were looser).

Above

however,

all,

had

for Constantinople afford.

it

was

vital that the

food market was controlled,

to be fed reliably, at prices the inhabitants could

Bread was no longer

Roman

free, as in the late

empire; that had

stopped abruptly by imperial decree when the Persians took Egypt in

6i8 (above. Chapter

Constantinople was

ii).

much

not need Egyptian grain any more, and could provision

Aegean and southern Black Sea hinterland. seen,

it

even at

was

still

very substantial in

low point

its

size;

in the seventh

it

was the

and eighth

well have surpassed

it

did

it

from

itself

its

we have

All the same, as

largest city in

Europe

and was now

centuries,

growing again, reaching maybe 100,000 inhabitants

may

now;

smaller

in 900.

in size in the tenth century, but

it

(Cordoba shrank

in

the eleventh, leaving the top spot to the Byzantine capital again.)

Emperors and eparchs could not afford the trouble from that

would

inevitably appear

if

its

inhabitants

there were food shortages -

and

these,

indeed, were seen by the urban population as the fault of public author-

Trade was independent

ities.

were closely linked to the the rules in the

as

an aspiration, and

ascribe this sort of

fury.

silk in

state.

We

it is

terms of trade

can of course doubt

Book of the Eparch were, but

all

prohibited

in Constantinople, but the

how

effective

they are very striking

at least true that narrative sources regularly

power

Cremona

to officials. Eiutprand of

968, but

it

was discovered and

The Byzantine government had

did buy

confiscated, to his

the infrastructure to

make

its

laws

obeyed, at least sometimes. This introduces us to a standard feature of both Byzantine and Arab

exchange,

its

close link to the state. This varied, certainly.

It

was prob-

ably greater in Constantinople than in the Byzantine provinces; to have been greater in

Egypt than

in al-Andalus;

and

it

seems

state control

was

always more likely to be enforced in the arena of urban provisioning

than in that of the international luxury trade interest

goods

risk-taking. turies

apart), for that trade relied so

Arab port

much on

authorities in the tenth

even then regularly assigned

(silks

and

official prices to

these were only guides to market prices,

349

and other

state-

private mercantile

early eleventh cen-

imported goods, but

which varied by supply and

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 550-IOOO demand. But grain

in

Constantinople was only one out of several com-

modities which were bought from government warehouses; in Egypt,

was

too, flax (for linen), one of that region’s principal productions,

also

sold to merchants (whether for internal sale or for export) by state offices,

and some of the major linen-weaving

and

centres, such as Tinnis

Damietta, were largely publicly owned. Egypt, as already implied, had in every period a rather

more dominant

state sector

than existed in some

other regions, but the existence of operations on this scale

Commerce

itself

might be

in the

striking.

is

hands of independent merchants,

but they operated in a framework in which the public power had a considerable say. And, above

all,

were huge sources of demand.

states

Egyptian documents from the decades around looo show merchants regularly (and sometimes unwillingly) selling to the

and, even artisans

when

this did

on great

own

who were

itself;

not take place, the focusing by merchants and

political centres

such as Constantinople, Baghdad,

Eustat-Cairo and Cordoba was because these buyers

government

cities

had so many

rich

paid by the state, bureaucrats or soldiers and their

dependants.

As we have

seen,

and

as

we

shall see again, after the

end of the

Roman

West, which was a strong and centralized state and which

empire

in the

moved

large quantities of

goods around on

its

own

behalf,

exchange

in

post-Roman kingdoms depended for its intensity on the wealth of landowners - aristocrats, churches and kings. The richer landowners

the

were, the more exchange there was, and the more complex

patterns.

its

This was broadly true in the eastern Mediterranean as well; but state

power, based on tax-raising, continued here, and

was normally on

a

somewhat

state

buying-power

larger scale than that of private land-

owners. Eurthermore, private wealth allowed people access to state office,

and thus access

taxation. This

to the greater

was so even

owners were usually

less

in the Islamic

as a whole,

it is

demand

Byzantine and Arab East.

its

and

soldiers.

Where

demand, and thus exchange,

private landed wealth

trajectory to the wealth of the state,

and

to that of officials

the changing wealth of the state sector that

best guide to the changing scale of

well,

world, where private land-

automatically linked to political power, and so

could be seen as a rival source of

Taken

emoluments made possible by

local variation

analyses. But broadly the

it

350

in

the

in the

different

must have affected demand

adds a further

two moved

had a

is

level of

tandem

in

as

complexity to our

most of the

East,

and

THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY the State system

about the

is

also rather better documented.

latter in this

The gap

in

I

shall be saying

more

chapter as a result.

our evidence for the landed aristocracy matches the very

serious gap in our seventh- to tenth-century evidence for the peasant

majority in the East. The millions of documents regularly produced for

governments and private individuals have almost

been

all

lost.

land documentation that

Only

for

we can

in

Byzantium and the caliphate

Egypt do we have the sort of local

find in Erancia

few cases the reconstruction of peasant

in a

and

Italy,

thus allowing

societies, as in the case of

the eighth-century Coptic village of Jeme, in western Thebes in

Upper

Egypt; and the uneven publication of Egyptian documents in Arabic

means

that

we cannot as yet easily do this

archaeology

is

for the period after 800. Rural

currently poorer for the period after

before, too, in nearly every region.

650 or so than

for

We looked at Byzantine and Andalusi

and 14, and I shall of course be referring to some aspects of peasant economy and society in this chapter, for they aristocracies in Chapters 13

will inevitably

impinge on issues of wealth-creation, taken as a whole:

and the higher aggregate demand was, the more the peasantry was exploited -

put simply, the richer

elites

were (whether from tax or

an equation which must be understood to underlie But

we

shall

detail of

have to wait for future research before

most eastern peasant

we have

confront the

600-650, so

society

also seen in the last four chapters.

whole chapter.

we can

social realities after

compare them with those of the West. Urban as

this

rents),

is

as to

better attested,

One urban

society

is

particularly clearly documented, the Jewish sector of the city of Eustat in Egypt,

whose genlza or storehouse of waste paper

would not destroy on),

founded

in

the

word

(kept because Jews

of God, and thus any paper with writing

1025, preserves thousands of texts, which begin to be

numerous around 980. Most of rather than from the tenth, but

I

these are eleventh-century or later, shall use

some

early eleventh-century

geniza texts here as well, as they transform our understanding of

urban

societies

how

could function at the very end of our period. Despite the

wealth of the eastern Mediterranean, then, our surviving information

about the socio-economic history of the period 600-1000 than

it is

for the West.

I

is

even

shall focus here, necessarily briefly,

regions in turn: Byzantium, with

its

seventh-century

crisis

bittier

on three

and ninth-

century revival; Syria and Iraq, rivals throughout, where economic pro-

tagonism moved decisively from the

351

first

to the second in 750;

and

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 550-IOOO Egypt, the region with the most continuity. international

As we saw

commerce which

We

linked them.

caused the Byzantine state to change markedly..

and mostly demonetized tax structure, focused

tained

look at the

Chapter ii, the military disasters of the 6ios and 640s

in

own goods

shall then

structure,

adopted a localized

It

matching a localized military

on defence. Never again would the

long distances on any scale, even

itself as a fiscally

if

state transport

its

Constantinople main-

supported focus for commercial demand.

It is

also likely that the landed aristocracy, never as rich as in the West, lost

some ground, given

its

850 or

invisibility in the sources before

so,

and

given the constant raiding that will have reduced agricultural productivity in

much

of Anatolia until the frontier stabilized in the eighth

when our

century; as noted in Chapter 13, even in the tenth century,

sources

was

all

agree that a process of local affirmation of aristocratic

firmly under way,

it is

across the whole empire as

we know about some areas of the seventh

hard to argue that they were as dominant

was normal

in the

West. The tiny amount

peasant society at least shows that there were indeed

the empire

and eighth

where

centuries.

aristocrats did not

full

Law,

a private

in parts of the

cultivation in

Anatolian plateau.

handbook of agrarian law from

also be located in Anatolia it

may

(as

in

in the years leading

to the Persian invasions, indicating that aristocrats never

wholly hegemonic

control in

Theodore of Sykeon had

communities already

largely independent peasant

have

The lands west of Ankara described

the early seventh-century Life of the ascetic

up

power

If

the period

had been

the Farmer’s

650-850, can

the absence of reference to olive-

imply), then such peasant communities continued

to exist there after the invasion period as well. In both texts, the state

remains present, unquestioned, as a tax-raising and judicial power.

There were also considerable wealth differences

in each,

with richer

peasants dominating the community and leasing land to poorer peasants.

But external landowners are relatively unimportant in the earlier

and absent

in the later.

This

is

text,

not a guide to the empire as a whole,

or even to the whole of Anatolia (aristocrats were rather strong in

Cappadocia, further

east, in

both the fourth to sixth centuries and the

ninth to eleventh, so plausibly in between as well); but the patchiness of local aristocratic

dominance

is

made clear by these texts, and

certainly increased in the crisis centuries.

352

this

almost

THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY Corresponding to the

difficulties

experienced by the Byzantine state

and aristocracy, the seventh and eighth centuries show, particularly clearly in fact, a crisis in urbanism. Archaeologists

about whether there was already a dip

in

urban

and historians argue Byzantine

vitality in the

lands after 550; but no one any longer seriously argues that there was

not a systemic

makes 650

in

show

this

seventh century. Urban archaeology

crisis in the early

too clear. Building cannot be shown to have continued after

most of the dozen or more

areas of systematic

with decent excavation; most

cities

abandonment

in the

same period,

as with the

particularly well-excavated street of shops in Sardis, in the Anatolian

lowlands close to the Aegean, which were abruptly deserted or the gymnasion in

Ankara whose burning can be

the Persian sack of 622, for a Persian ring-stone

burnt

level.

am

I

precisely dated to

was excavated

too,

and can

also recover

It is

was on an

is

too great to be

significant that the best counter-example,

Gortyn on Crete,

island,

and thus

raids: here Heraclius

quake, and a

late

walls,

(610-41) reconstructed the

(now often still

some

an earth-

all

we

get

city,

is

and

above the old town.

state continued, as

we have

called kastra) could

had bishops (although

still

hill-top fortifications

were

is

seen.

Even small

hill-top

have a political-military

these, as

preferred to live in the capital). There that

city after

seventh-century artisanal quarter, probably extending

hills

The Byzantine and also

from Persian/Arab or Avar/Sclavenian

sometimes enclosing only portions of the ancient

sometimes on

cities

safer

has recently been excavated. Elsewhere,

later as well,

new

have

cities

from being sacked), but the

accumulation of evidence in the Byzantine lands gainsaid.

in the

normally cautious about drawing too catastrophist

conclusions from anecdotal examples like these (prosperous

abandoned areas

61 os,

in the

we have

role,

also seen, often

some evidence, furthermore,

citadels for islands of surviving

settlement in the ancient cities below, as at Euchaita and Amorion, both

on the Anatolian plateau, or

at Corinth in central Greece, or at

on the south coast of modern Turkey. Whether was

sufficiently dense

cannot yet be

said: of these,

likely. Overall,

Some holds.

and economically

however,

this scattered

occupation

diversified to be called ‘urban’

Amorion and Corinth

we have

Myra

to recognize a

are perhaps the

new urban

most

typology.

ancient cities were wholly abandoned or reduced to small strong-

Some developed this

scattered pattern, with greater or lesser levels

of organization or urbanization.

A

few continued to be active as urban

353

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST,

55 O-IOOO

though on a considerably reduced scale, like Ephesos, Miletos and Athens on the Aegean coast - Ephesos’s new walls left much of the

centres,

old city centre outside them, but land; the city

sum

a large

enclosed a square kilometre of

still

recorded by Theophanes as having a major

is

in taxes, in

795-6. And

may

a handful of cities

seen rather less change, though excavation

is

less

good

in

yielding

fair,

well have

them

precisely

because of the urban continuities there: Thessaloniki, Iznik (ancient Nicaea), Izmir (ancient Smyrna), Trabzon, major political centres in

each case. This

not total urban collapse, but even on an optimistic

is

reading of the evidence cities lost all

The

common to most ‘successful’

entrepot,

is

the

main exception.)

army and

too.

demand

It

looks as

and administrative

local military

joined the

civil

These towns thus remained

to retain their

urban

When Byzantium

the state focused

if

centres;

bureaucracy, they

may

were

as yet

far fewer of

perhaps some

them than

in 600.

number

They increased

their

of active cities

own

sizes again,

hard to be sure exactly when from the archaeology;

the eleventh century

and also

well have gone to such

achieved greater military and political stability again,

did not greatly expand, either. it is

its

sufficiently potent centres of

slowly after 750, more visibly after 850, the

although

on

landed aristocrats

if

characteristics: markets,

artisanal specialization. But there

is

early Byzantine

that they were thematic centres. (Ephesos, long a commercial

is

towns

that four-fifths of Byzantine

or most of their urban characteristics.

significant feature in

towns

main

we might propose

shows

in Hierapolis

it

better than the tenth, although in Sardis,

on the western edge of the Anatolian plateau,

it

already visible before 1000. But the Byzantine empire never again

Roman urbanism

re-created the density of late

Our

evidence for

logical,

commerce outside

both mirrors

this picture

in its territory.

the capital, also largely archaeo-

and nuances it. The seventh century saw

the abrupt end of the Aegean’s

main

industrial tableware production,

Phocaean Red

more

local imitations; painted

Slip

ware, and

its

reasonable quality sometimes replaced their distribution

localized

ERA

2,

we

localized,

and

example

(for

in

some

in Crete),

but

places (notably in

handmade pottery, indicating the end of production. Amphora production, for oil and wine, also

inland Greece) professional

was very

it

wares of

and

all

find

is

simplified; the standardized

was replaced by

Aegean globular amphora,

a variety of related but

more

local types.

developments, into the eighth century, imply a breakdown in

354

These

demand

THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY for goods,

and thus the weakening of concentrations of wealth, whether

public or private. But this

had an

is

not the whole picture. Constantinople

which began around 600 and continued

two

for

many

(GWW),

centuries. In the next

centuries there are sporadic finds of this pottery type in a wide range

of places across the Aegean,

had

White ware

industrial ceramic production, of Glazed

itself

its

own

down

productions). These

and even Cyprus (which

to Crete,

show

that the

Aegean did not

certain level of medium-distance exchange. This

(probably) eighth-century Rhodian Sea

supported by the

is

Law, another

manual, which discusses the relationship between

lose a

private legal

ships’ captains

and

merchants on ships, and which presumes as standard cargoes an array of goods that are hard for archaeologists to find: slaves, linen, as well as

wine and

oil in

silk,

grain,

(presumably) post-LRA 2 amphorae. Seventh-

to ninth-century saints’ lives also regularly feature shipping, often but

not only for grain. The Aegean was by now, as

demand

ople’s agrarian hinterland; the else,

kept ships on the sea.

we have seen,

Constantin-

of the capital, even

if

nothing

GWW tableware was probably one of the

things the capital sold in return.

The Byzantine empire

work seas

at

low point thus never

its

of exchange that covered

heartland, the

its

entirely lost a net-

Aegean and Marmara

and the coasts around them. This was so even

if

most

duction had simplified, sometimes radically. This seems to else

we know about

structures, but that

the empire: that the state

it

was

still

local pro-

had localized

dominated by a powerful

what

reflect

own

its

capital.

Argu-

ably, the local differences in productive professionalism

around 700

power on

the ground,

reflect areas

of greater or lesser aristocratic

although the evidence further.

is

not yet good enough for

The Aegean-wide exchange we do

our written sources

stress

see

this to

be developed

was not run by the

independent merchants

in the

state;

period before

Book of the Eparch, for all its regulatory interest, does in 900. But state-fuelled demand was the most solid agent of buying power all the same; and this commerce focused on the capital first, 800, just as the

although secondarily, in other surviving centres as well, Thessaloniki,

Ephesos or Smyrna.

As we move in the

into the ninth century, one visible change

numbers of coins found on

find coins

up

to Constans

II

nothing, for a hundred and

in

sites. It is

normal

is

an increase

in excavations to

around 660, and then nothing, or almost

fifty

years; even

355

though every emperor

still

THE EMPIRES OE THE EAST, 55O-IOOO minted coins, they vanished from circulation, and

were

that they

commonly

at all

we could not conclude

available outside the capital. This

changed from the 820s onwards. At Corinth^ nearly four times as many coins are

known

for Theophilos

(829-42) as for

all his

predecessors put

together after Constans; those for Leo VI (886-912) are six times as

numerous

as for Theophilos, those for Leo’s son Constantine VII double

and the

again,

figures

go on up from

linked to a revival in taxation and often ascribed to Nikephoros shift

depended on a more

I

there. This

army pay

in

can most plausibly be

money, which

(802-11: above. Chapter ii); such a

reliable supply of metals, but also

(and furthered) market exchange, sufficient to In the ninth century, too,

most

is

we come upon

move

presumed

the coins around.

larger-scale finds of

GWW

outside the capital, for example at Mesembria, a Byzantine port in

modern

Bulgaria,

and even

in field survey, in the countryside outside

Sparta; in the tenth, this extends to Thebes. Local imitations of Constantinople pottery begin to be found at Athens, and, significantly, at Preslav in

independent Bulgaria. Large-scale ceramic production at Corinth also

began by the tenth century, and so did the amphorae of the Canos area, in the Sea of

Marmara, destined

for the

newly systematic export of

wine. The wine trade could already extend far afield, indeed,

consignment of wine-amphorae, marked with

found

in a

wreck

off south-west

was from the Crimea,

Turkey dating

if

the large

names,

their shippers’

to

as the excavators think. Linen

local

around 880,

really

was exported from

Bulgaria and the southern Black Sea (as also from Egypt) to the capital as well,

and both Constantinople and Thessaloniki made

beginning to

glass.

We

are

move into the complex Byzantine productions of the central

Middle Ages. In the ninth century,

and

still

more

in the tenth, the state

was

getting

stronger and richer in Byzantium. In the tenth, so was the aristocracy, in

some areas - often away from

the

Aegean focus of the archaeology,

but including in southern Greece, where already in the 880s the wealthy Danelis (see Chapter 13) had access to elaborate linens and

silks,

and

the textile workers themselves,

whom

century

complaints about ‘the powerful’, was

later,

Basil

II,

in his

she gave to Basil

I

and Leo VI.

worried that they would monopolize rural markets, too. in this set of

whole

list

of examples

is

What we

A

see

an increasingly elaborate and diversified

agrarian and artisanal productions, with an increasingly wide and

complex

distribution, to

and from the

356

capital, certainly, but

between

THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY provinces as well: Thessaloniki was a particularly important entrepot.

This was again,

made

possible by elite

demand, which was

and was also furthered by

production and exchange.

direct elite involvement in artisanal

was ever a natural location

there

If

medium-distance exchange, of course,

it

was the Aegean,

locked and protected, and studded with islands, as

900 merely saw

of the

crisis,

invasions. But the growing

two

The years around

it is.

demographic expansion, which our period, begins to be more

the Byzantine state

two

further in the

still

centuries after the Persian

power of

is

for

largely land-

a return to normality in this respect; they point

abnormality, the

that exchange

clearly increasing

up the

and Arab

would push

centuries to come. After 1000, a

quite likely to have already started in

visible in

our documentation, as does a

trend to reclaim uncultivated land; the agrarian base of the empire

was

The eleventh century shows some

clearly expanding.

agricultural

specializations as well, not least in mulberry trees for silk in various

parts of the empire: these too for

must have existed already before 1000,

Byzantium was certainly producing

old view that the empire twelfth centuries

is

now

its

own

silk in

saw economic stagnation

our period. The

and

in the eleventh

decisively rejected; the roots of the generalized

economic expansion of that period lay yet only see occasional signs of

in ours,

And

it.

even though

we can

as

that expansion affected areas

outside the empire as well: by the early eleventh century the Byzantines

were exporting

silk to

Syria did not for the

Egypt. This

most part

Byzantine empire. After 661 caliphate,

we

shall

come back

to.

see the seventh-century crisis of the

was the

political centre of the

as also in the regional religious centre, Jerusalem.

was never a huge is

a point

Umayyad

and that period saw major monumental building in the capital,

Damascus,

but

it

is

city,

which partly

reflects

partly also due to the fact that the

getting taxes

from the provinces of the

problems of water supply,

Umayyads had

caliphate. But

still

difficulties

enough came

Syria to ensure the wealth of the caliphs themselves,

and rural palaces

Damascus

and

their

into

urban

survive in the landscape of Syria and Palestine.

The Arab conquest was anyway quick enough for Syria not to suffer in its basic infrastructures. Most of the numerous excavations in both Syria and

Palestine,

both urban and rural, show continuities that extend to

750 at least, particularly in inland areas. In and around the city of Madaba, for example, in what is now northern Jordan, Christian

357

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO churches were founded into the late eighth century, with impressively

show both wealthy patrons and

decorated mosaic floors which

artisans: in the city, in rural monasteries,

changed

Cities

in structure.

to fall out of use, as the

Their

and

skilled

around.

in villages

Roman monumental centres

Arabs had a different ceremonial

tended

style,

with

fewer religious or political processions and a focus on the enclosed public space of

mosque courtyards. But they continued

demographic and productive

Roman

centres;

to be active

public buildings were

replaced by artisan workshops, colonnaded streets were replaced by

rows of shops, often monumentally

built (particularly, as

Chapter 12, by Caliph Hisham, 724-43). So north of

Madaba

complexes were

kiln

economy of the

Roman

built in a

800 or

Galilee area until

so; at

(modern Bet She’an) there were by 700 or so

in

Gerasa (modern Jerash)

made Gerasa ceramics

temple, part of a network which of the

at

we saw

theatre

and

a

a major feature

nearby Scythopolis

kilns in the theatre

and

amphitheatre, linen workshops in a bath complex (Scythopolis linen

was well known already shop complexes on the

in the

site

Roman

empire), and one of Hisham’s

of a sixth-century hall. These patterns are

repeated, in greater and lesser detail, in twenty other

duction of glass, dyeing (and thus

work. Substantial

in recent archaeological

found

in

some

monumental

cities,

too;

buildings,

textiles), iron,

the pro-

cities;

copper are

attested

all

town houses have been

elite

and of course the Arab period had

mosques and governors’

its

own

palaces.

This picture was clearly very different from that in the Byzantine heartland, although the sources - almost

all

archaeological - are the

same. There are almost no usable written sources on these issues for Syria

and

Palestine, in fact, although the Syriac chronicles for Edessa

also paint a glowing picture of the

of the wealth of

its

Christian

landowner and a tax reputedly

nuance

The

elites:

official for

and

Athanasios bar Gumoye, a great in

Egypt around 700,

nine inns in Edessa.

Two

changes

continuing

elite

and rural prosperity, however.

that the coast of Syria

and

Palestine, a

this picture of

export area under the

Roman

abandonment of marginal

linked to the Mediterranean;

it

major

oil

and wine

empire, saw stagnation under the

Umayyads, the weakening of major coastal the

activity of that city

‘Abd al-Malik

owned 300 shops and

first is

commercial

lands.

such as Antioch, and

cities

Umayyad

Syria

was not

closely

hardly even had any economic links with

Egypt, although some Egyptian products

358

still

came

in

through the major

THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY surviving coastal entrepot, Caesarea in

-

this

is

the second change - Syria

economic

The productions

unit.

and

what

is

Palestine

now

But actually

Israel.

were no longer a

single

that can be best traced by archaeolo-

once again mostly ceramics, remain of very high quality

gists,

Umayyad levelled,

period, and

aimed

show

at elites

localized than in the

industries that

and non-elites

Roman

in the

were large-scale and many-

alike;

much more

but they were

period. Gerasa pottery rarely reached the

Mediterranean coast, or ‘Aqaba on the Red Sea, or northern Syria, for example; even Jerusalem, only loo kilometres away, largely had

own -

again, high-quality

- ceramic

tradition.

its

So the Syro-Palestinian

economy remained prosperous and complex under the Umayyads, but it was much more internally fragmented, and cut off from its neighbours. It was, in fact, even more internally fragmented than the crisis-bound Byzantine empire, as

seems on the basis of the archaeology of the

it

moment. This economic fragmentation further underscores the difficulty the

Umayyads had

own

in centralizing the fiscal

political heartland,

system of the

state,

although they were certainly more successful

here than elsewhere. But the complexity of (almost sections of Syria local

and Palestine also points

respect to merchants than the

mad had

It is

visible in the

that

is

often said that the Arabs gave

Romans had, which is true; Muham-

It is

much

often also said that this ideological shift

monumental

building,

from colonnaded

mosques (above. Chapter unused buildings

we should

lo);

streets

shifts in the

and

will get taken over for private uses,

focus

theatres, etc., to

and so

it

was

here.

also not overstate the mercantile element in elite activity.

first

and foremost;

patricians in this period

commerce,

already

a city remains economically active,

if

Athanasios bar Gumoye, notwithstanding

all

is

old public centres; this seems less likely, however. These

changes are better explained as the normal result of

landowner

of the West, or

changing forms of cities, with more artisanal and commer-

cial activity in

above

elites,

been a merchant, and there was never in the Islamic world any

even Byzantium.

But

the different

at the continuing force of

stigma attached to wealth ‘from trade’, unlike in

of

all)

demand, and thus of the continuing wealth of urban

to say the local landed aristocracy.

more

even in their

it

is

all his

likely

shops, was a great

indeed that most urban

(who were anyway mostly

still

Christians) were

landowners, and at most used landed capital to get into if

they wanted. This would be so

359

later, too, in

‘Abbasid Iraq,

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO where such

would usually be Muslims, and

elites

where ‘ulamd’ biographies show land

as mercantile activity as

wealth. Even the Jewish rnercantile elites of Fustat in

who may

well have gained their initial wealth entirely in the

commercial

sector,

bought land or tax-farming concessions with

their

land remained overwhelmingly the chief source of wealth

profits, for

Exchange was, and remained, only a spin-off of agricultural

overall.

wealth, even around the great

and

post-‘Abbasid Iran,

elite

the basis for

Egypt,

much

as

in

still

more

Umayyad

in

cities

of the second half of our period,

Syria.

The year 750 marks a change in the economy of Syria and Palestine. The ‘Abbasid takeover marginalized the region politically, and, with the fiscal centralization

of the caliphate from the 780s onwards, Syrian taxes

were firmly directed to into the ninth

Iraq. Cities

which stayed

as prosperous as before

and tenth centuries were rather fewer, Ramla near Jerusa-

lem, Tiberias on Lake Galilee, Caesarea, ‘Aqaba, Aleppo, Damascus,

entrepots or major local governmental centres.

quake which significantly,

She’an

hit the Galilee area in

were often not

rebuilt

a particularly impressive sight, with white limestone

is

roads. Syria

(for the

North

lying across black basalt

in the late tenth century)

Aleppo was sometimes independent

This, plus the wars fought over

But

now

columns

would henceforth be mostly governed from elsewhere, from

Baghdad, Cairo, or ople; only

earth-

749 left cities in ruins, which, and can thus be excavated; Bet

(including those of Hisham’s shops) even

perity.

The devastating

it

was by no means

centralization brought with

in

it

it

end of our period.

in the tenth century,

economic

crisis

a widening of

more evidence of exchange with

at the

Iraq:

Constantin-

sapped

its

pros-

even then, and ‘Abbasid

economic horizons, with

new polychrome

glazed ware

spread from Iraq into Syria/Palestine from 800 onwards, the beginning of a

new

international taste in fine pottery

whole Mediterranean, Muslim and Christian regions

inate the is

which would by 1100 domalike. It

for this reason that entrepots flourished under the ‘Abbasids; inter-

regional networks were beginning to develop again, west to Egypt (via

Caesarea), south

down

the

Red Sea

(via

‘Aqaba), east to Iraq (via

Aleppo). This network would continue even after the ‘Abbasid caliphate collapsed, as

we

shall see in a

The ‘Abbasids, of political

course, invested in Iraq. Iraq

and economic centre

created a

fertile

and

moment. had been

for millennia; the Tigris

irrigable basin

•360

a

major

and Euphrates

matched only by the Nile

for

its

THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY The Sassanians were only

agricultural wealth.

develop

irrigation,

its

rulers to

with the great Nahrawan canal, probably built

which brought

the sixth century,

most recent

the

in

network of smaller

Tigris water to a

canals north and east of the capital, Ctesiphon, situated just south of

what would become Baghdad. An early and influential 1950s of the

field

survey

Nahrawan area by Robert Adams indeed saw the Sassanian period

as the

economic height for

however prosperous, dating of

number

failing to

620S-630S,

crises of the

sites in

Iraq, with the pre-tenth-century caliphate,

in

match Sassanian

which canal dykes were not maintained. The

Adams’s work, and thus

assumptions about the

his

of settlements that were actually occupied in each period, were

however more influenced by his than a

levels after the political

field

over-literal readings of narrative sources

survey would be today

The land north of Raqqa

in

one were possible

(if

modern

eastern Syria, a

in Iraq in 2007).

more

short-lived

‘Abbasid capital on the Euphrates, showed a clear ‘Abbasid-period settlement peak in a

more

recent field survey.

The Umayyads, anyway,

and even more the ‘Abbasids, were committed canal-builders and land reclaimers, as

we saw

the

and the ‘Abbasids were particularly

in

Chapter 14;

was

to build dykes

and

to desalinate land in

marsh areas of the south that they imported the

slave gangs of the Zanj. olis

it

active in southern Iraq,

of

Baghdad

The ‘Abbasid construction of the huge metrop-

762 required systematic provisioning, and

after

it

was

who bought Iraqi land with his tax

in the interests of every public official

profits to

large-scale African

develop that land with an eye to the urban market. Samarra, at

the northern end of the

Nahrawan

the mid-ninth century.

The sharecropping contracts discussed

canal, only

added to that market

in

in legal

sources from ‘Abbasid Baghdad, which presumably best reflect the Iraq the legists lived in, irrigation

network

show is

landlordly investment; state investment in the

assumed

as well, largely

through wage-labour;

the legists say less about the Zanj. Wage-labourers were also used in agriculture,

which shows that some landowners were

directly, a sure sign of a market-orientated

the expansion of Iraqi rice cultivation,

cultivating estates

approach.

One

result

was

which was a ninth-century

phenomenon.

Tax revenues only went itself

created a stimulus to Iraqi agriculture, and the Iraqi commercial as a whole.

Baghdad (and

also an artisanal

hub which was

economy was

to the capitals, but their resultant vast size

to a lesser degree other Iraqi cities) for a century

361

unmatched anywhere

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO in the world. Silk, cottons, glass,

paper (the Baghdad paper-mills were

795, using technology brought from Samarkand and, before that, from China) were all made in the city. Baghdad was a focus for

founded

in

internal Iraqi exchange,

and

also

an entrepot for interregional commerce

between the provinces of the caliphate, which was by

now moving

ceramics or cloth across the whole terrain from Iran to Egypt. Indeed, this

commerce went further;

the

1960S-1970S excavations of the Iranian

show

port of Siraf (as yet only partly published)

that the caliphate

opened up to Indian Ocean and Chinese trade on a large

scale

had

by the

The Seven Voyages of Sinbad in the Thousand and One Nights symbolizes this for most of us, but that is perhaps late eighth century.

matched by the remarkable

collection of plausible

and implausible

(some of them first-person experiences) made by the Iranian

stories

ship captain Buzurg ibn Shahriyar in the 950s,

who

discusses wonders,

strange customs, storms and remarkable animals right across to the

South China Sea. The trade thus established continued for the the

Middle Ages.

Baghdad’s wealth, and also region had lost the

rest of

Nahrawan

its

political

Iraq’s, faltered in the tenth century.

and

fiscal

The

dominance by now. The cutting of

canal in 937 for short-term military reasons was soon

reversed, but the precedent

was a bad one; the

city

and the canals

were refurbished several times (most committedly by the Buyid ‘Adud al-Dawla

in

981-3), but Iraq’s prosperity did not again match that of

the ninth century. All the same, that prosperity

Baghdad remained one of the western

None

city,

had been so great that

principal cities of Eurasia, larger than any

and a major entrepot into the twelfth century

at least.

of these regions matched the stability of Egypt. Egypt

Roman

was the

empire’s richest province by far, with the most complex

economy, and

it

remained so

in the

post-Roman world

teenth century. In the caliphate, too,

if it

into the four-

was surpassed by

Iraq, that

was only

in the

950 or

The power-house of the tenth- to fourteenth-century Mediter-

so.

‘Abbasid century, and

it

had regained

ranean exchange system, which was not driven by that of

Rome

was the

relative reliability of the Nile flood,

or the caliphs, was Egypt.

The

its

primacy by

fiscal factors as

was

basic reason for this

which allowed continuous

cropping of agricultural land and produced wheat yields of around ten to

one (three or four to one, with fallow periods, being the best that dry

362

THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY farming could produce

in the

Middle Ages). Egypt’s canal system has

also almost always been regularly maintained; the country has almost

always been governed by a single political authority, which helps, and it

was so throughout our period and beyond. The

certainly

large yields

of Egypt’s agricultural land, not only in wheat, but also wine and flax,

allowed a whole hierarchy of non-cultivators to be fed from the labour of the peasantry, including landowners, tax officials and soldiers, of course, but also chants.

complex networks of

can be plausibly argued that in the

It

of the population of Egypt lived in

cities,

the ancient or early medieval world,

think that

dropped

it

later; if

it

shopkeepers and mer-

artisans, later

Roman empire

a figure that

and there

is

is

not

unparalleled in

much

reason to

had, the drop had certainly been reversed

by looo. Certainly the rather restricted archaeology cities

a third

shows dense private housing,

in

Arab-period

in

apartment buildings, from the

seventh to the tenth century: in Alexandria, Eustat, nearby Saqqara, and

Akhmim

in

Middle Egypt.

Egyptian agriculture was carried out through a hierarchy of substantial villages,

whose head-men

also handled tax-raising, subordinate in

this respect to provincial capitals.

good

for

Roman

Arab Egypt, show

period,

revolts show).

its

and not relaxed

The records of

later (as eighth-

were always peasant landowners, and the

and

little

and ninth-century tax

in Egypt,

elites

however; there

which ran

villages

were

more. Post-conquest documents imply

that great landowners were notably fewer

period than under the later

which are

systematic nature, inherited from the

Landowning was fragmented

usually rich peasants,

taxation,

Roman

and

less rich in the early

empire, and this did not change

850 three developments

until the late ninth century. After

Arab

led to larger

landholdings again: more Christians converted to Islam, thus gaining access to state patronage,

which was by now sometimes expressed

in

terms of grants or leases of state land; more Arabs began to acquire land as well (for a long time off state salaries, as

Arab immigrants had stayed

we saw

financial administration

taxes, rights effective

in

in Eustat

and

Chapter 12); and, from 800 or

began to farm out the rights to

lived

so, the

collect local

which could under certain circumstances be turned

landholding over wider areas. Tax-farming turned into

ownership

less

often in Egypt than

for the state never relaxed

its

grip

it

into full

did elsewhere in the Islamic world,

on the mechanisms of taxation, but

certainly helped the establishment of local control. Eor the

363

first

it

time in

THE EMPIRES OE THE EAST, 55O-IOOO

many centuries

Egypt, a late ninth-century estate (day ‘a) could consist

in

of a whole village (indeed, by the eleventh century day‘a could simply

mean

‘village’).

This was not universal, and fragmented ownership sur-

vived past 1000 in Egypt, as did direct tax-paying, but a clear change visible here at the

is

end of our period.

This weakening and renewed strengthening of a landowning aristoc-

which

racy,

paralleled elsewhere (for example, in Byzantium) as

is

have seen, had than

it

less effect

on the

rest of the

we

Egyptian economy, however,

did in other regions, precisely because of the continuing strength

of the tax system, which independently brought wealth into the

and, above

all,

Eustat. This

was

the basis for an active exchange

cities,

network

which, throughout our period, unified Egypt into a single economic whole. The Nile helped here, as an easy and cheap routeway which ran

by or close to nearly

all

the population of the region.

fine pottery of

we can

result,

which were available from north to south.

trace artisanal productions

The

As a

Aswan

in the far

south can be found up to the

Mediterranean, i,ooo kilometres away, throughout the early Middle Ages, a unique achievement in scale and continuity in our period. The

Aswan

kilns continued to

the end of our period

produce Red

ware

Slip

and beyond, too, centuries

in a

Roman

after tastes

style until

had changed

elsewhere, although increasingly alongside other ceramic types, whiteslipped and painted wares, and, after 800, polychrome glaze, following Iraqi fashion. tively say the

And, although archaeology cannot track

same

period in which

its

sale

is

we can

tenta-

and wool production had always

for cloth; linen

been substantial in Egypt since

it,

Roman

times,

and there

not attested in documents.

A

is

never a

cache of

late

ninth-century papyri from the Eayyum, a large agricultural basin to

shows a

set of

buying and

selling

the west of the Nile 150 kilometres south of Eustat,

Arabic-speaking cloth merchants and related

up and down the Nile from Qus far north.

The main

figure of this

Madinat al-Fayyum, the main

in the

officials

south to Alexandria in the

papyrus

city of the

set,

Abu Hurayra,

lived in

basin, in the 860S-870S,

although others were based in Eustat, which was clearly a major node in the

whole exchange process.

These wide exchange networks were not

We

can see an exchange hierarchy

all

that Egypt had, either.

in ceramics,

with local productions

Aswan hegemony, and cloth prowith many local centres too (based on

(based on local clays) fitting into the

duction was certainly associated

364

THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY local flax

and sheep),

Qus

Tinnis and

as well as

for linen,

were differences here

well-known major

and Bahnasa

Middle Egypt

in

And

There

for wool.

and convenience,

in status, price, taste

elaborate commercial systems.

artisanal cities like

as in all

whole

the Egyptian system, in the

period 650-1000, was by far the most elaborate anywhere in Europe

and the Mediterranean. Continuous urban demand saw

demand was

and also

also, of course, for food,

diversified artisanal

certainly for

documents are about other matters, reason to doubt

it.

One

was

was only

it

was supplanted by paper, a

it

The geniza documents of illuminate a world that

late tenth, for

but, given the rest, there

of these goods

production based in the Delta; centuries that

more

goods than cloth and pottery, too; we can say

about them between the sixth century and the

little

The

to that.

still

is

our

no

papyrus, an industrial

in the late ninth

and tenth

linen by-product.

the late tenth century

and onwards thus

had been economically complex

for centuries,

not to say millennia. But there were also changes at the end of our period. Already in the late ninth century,

we can see signs of a larger-scale

investment in artisanal production that seems to be new. The governor

Ahmad

ibn Tulun (868-84),

who

ruled Egypt

more or

less

autono-

mously, invested privately in linen according to early tenth-century

and so did

narratives,

lesser officials.

The

industry appears in these narratives, as as a

major

textile centre. It

certainty, but Ibn

and dated Tinnis

and the

is

also did in the

hard to trace

Tulun upgraded textiles survive

state factories

it

largely state-run Tinnis linen

its

it

earlier

Eayyum

letters,

than 850 with any

infrastructure with public

money,

from the 880s. These are luxury items,

were substantially devoted to the production of

court fabrics; but the Delta linen towns also sold on the open market,

and by the tenth century exported cloth (Tinnis is

the

is

on an

island,

main novelty

and

is

also a port)

here. Since the

it

is

and to

Iraq.

The word

‘export’

Arab conquests, Egyptian production

and consumption had mostly been centralization,

too, to the Mediterranean

internal.

Even with ‘Abbasid

fiscal

hard to find very much reference to exports and

imports in our evidence.

Demand

inside the region

enough to make interregional exchange

was evidently steady

less necessary,

except for the

luxury trade, which always existed. But in the tenth century our evidence for

it

increases,

ports were

Tunisia and

full

and by the end of the century Alexandria and other of ships,

Sicily;

moving goods from Egypt

from the

latter

to Palestine,

two, other ships went westwards

365

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO to al-Andalus.

be

made up

Egypt exported not only made linen cloth but also

in Tunisia

and

Sicily; sugar,

another industrial product, was

goods exported from Egypt,

also an Egyptian speciality. But the range of

and

also imported,

was by

the end of our period very substantial indeed.

969 meant that Egypt, Tunisia and Sicily were while under the same government, which facilitated this; but Egypt

The Eatimid conquest for a

in

was the major motor of this commerce thanks of

its

flax, to

to the continuing strength

and promoted.

internal market, as the Fatimids recognized

Joseph (Yusuf, or 1040)

is

family

the

first

in

Hebrew, Yosef) ibn Ya‘qub ibn ‘Awkal

really large-scale

may have come from

his father’s time;

he spent his

of Cairo just outside

it.

life

He and

both Egypt and abroad, above

from Egypt, buying

and

in the

it

in the geniza

970-

documents. His

Iran initially, but were settled in Fustat by

and

at Fustat

Tunisia and

from small towns it

new Eatimid capital

in their headquarters,

all in

Fayyum and sending

in the

ran an import-export business,

his sons

employing numerous secretaries

flax

merchant

(fl. c.

down

dria (thus bypassing the linen factories

Sicily.

and agents

They exported

in the hinterland of

from Fustat

the Nile

on the other

in

Bahnasa

to Alexan-

side of the Delta)

and

then to the west. They also exported dyestuffs, madder (Egyptian-made), indigo and brazil-wood (both imported); imported pepper and spices,

and Egyptian-made sugar; and more expensive pearls; 83 different

Ocean

the Indian

commodities

trade; Fustat-Cairo

mercial node between the Indian it

in all.

The business bought

ners, gold

The imports were

largely

from

was becoming the principal com-

Ocean and

remained for centuries, although that

speciality.

luxuries, in particular

which

the Mediterranean,

latter trade

was not Ibn ‘Awkal’s

from

Mediterranean part-

in return,

its

(North Africa was the contact point for the Sahara gold

trade), copper, lead, olive oil

(still

an important Tunisian product),

by-product soap, wax, animal-hides, and

silk.

its

This sounds solid enough,

but Ibn ‘Awkal’s business was in reality rather more delicate than that.

The geniza

letters are full

of descriptions of the difficulty agents had in

moment to get a decent profit; and Ibn ‘Awkal, like every other merchant, had to make informal deals with friends, clients and even rivals, who were on the spot, trusting them to act in his selling at exactly the right

interests.

from Samhun ibn Da’ud ibn

1000

in

We

This did not always work.

which

a

by

al-Siqilli (‘son

have a long indignant

of the Sicilian’) from around

now probably ex-friend,

other things that he had

made

a loss

letter

or client, complains

among

on Ibn ‘Awkal’s brazil-wood; that

366

THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY he has had to of

all,

sell

Ibn ‘AwkaPs pearls without taking any profit; worst

had not paid Samhun’s creditors despite promises,

that the latter

and despite

all

Samhun was doing

that

latter’s reputation;

and

that the Fustat merchant

But most

the sender

letters to

him

to the detriment of the

‘Awkal had been

overall, that Ibn

no reason and high-handed

fact.

for

into the bargain. There

was an

is

with

critical

no reason to think

especially sympathetic character, in

him were highly courteous, and explained how

had protected

his interests, often in adverse situations (war,

water damage, low prices), but usually with success. Ibn ‘Awkal did not trade with Iraq or further

and for

little

east, or

with Byzantium,

even with Syria/Palestine, but he can in other respects stand

an entire network of (usually smaller) Fustat merchants, above

the diversification of his activities. pillar of the Fustat

He was

also,

may

it

all in

be added, a

Jewish community, and a local representative of the

important yeshivas (religious academies) of Baghdad and Jerusalem; had he been Muslim, he would have been a leading

He was tive. it

socially central, that

is

internal to the country.

of the entire Ibn ‘Awkal dossier

all.

much

cities

The

it

was Nile

real-life feel

it

was important,

The economic

all

the same,

The continuing

and Egypt compensated, weakening of

this basic

and would remain

history of each of these regions

seventh and the tenth centuries, but for all that.

traffic,

between the

it

had

was

economic

fact;

so.

different

between the

structural elements in

as a

motor of exchange, though

this

for the

common

and eighth

had

its

own

diffi-

centuries. In Syria, aristocracies stayed

prosperous until 750, but were state

temporary

compensation was

rather less pronounced in Byzantium, where the state

market by the Umayyad

as

strength of the state in both Byzantium

local aristocratic wealth,

culties in the seventh

looo

in

of the world of the geniza letters leaves

such an effect on the reader that one can forget but

that

However active the Mediterranean network was,

and towns, that dominated Egyptian exchange,

as in 700.

is

Most Egyptian commerce remained

or any other external exchange network,

major

of the ‘ulamd\

to say, not just economically representa-

The only misleading aspect

deals with external trade at

member

less integrated into a single regional

than

Umayyad governors managed

in

Egypt; after 750, the reverse occurred, with local foci of prosperity slipping, but a fiscal-led integration of regional Iraq, finally,

commerce developing.

both aristocracies and (overwhelmingly) the

367

In

state increased

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO and

their force in the late eighth century,

set the

region up as a major

and commercial focus for a century and a

agrarian, artisanal

We could

which the region slipped back again.

the West, to this gallery of examples too,

half, after

add al-Andalus, over

where a

in

set of localized

aristocracies of varying wealth existed throughout, but the state

became

notably stronger in the tenth century (above. Chapter 14), allowing the

economy

integration of the

some export

Iraq)

the

same could be

though there we can

The ninth century internal

in

many

an

see

said of the Tunisian heartland of

effective state already in the ninth.

places (except perhaps Syria)

saw more

exchange than the eighth, the tenth century everywhere (except

saw more than

the ninth.

These broadly drawn trends occurred these regions; but they

had an

effect

especially in the Mediterranean.

network was that of the

The

Roman

9;

economies of

first

great Mediterranean trade

empire. As the empire fragmented,

West from 450 onwards, by 600, and snuffing out by 700, as we saw in detail

reaching low levels

Chapter

in the internal

on interregional exchange, too,

Mediterranean exchange lessened: slowly

in

and qirmis (crimson dye)

specializations, silk, saffron

among them. Much Ifriqiya,

of the whole peninsula and the creation of

in the

rapidly in the East in the seventh century, in the context

of the great wars of the 610S-640S, and the fiscal decentralization of

both Byzantium and the caliphate thereafter. In the eighth century there

was

less

Mediterranean-wide trade than there had been for over a millen-

nium. Not none; there was always a small-scale network of boats nosing

from port to

port.

The Aegean,

as

we have

seen, maintained a certain

enclosed identity as the focus for one level of Byzantine exchange. So did the Tyrrhenian Sea, in the triangle between Sicily, fortified

as

by the continuing force of the

we saw in Chapter

9.

As we saw

mick has pinpointed the route from important sea route it is it

the route

still

open

Rome, Calabria and

city of

Rome

in that chapter too,

Rome to

as a market,

Michael McCor-

Constantinople as the most

in the eighth century. It

is

not chance that

which linked these two more localized maritime networks;

must have been further reinforced by the

fact that Sicily

was

still

a

Byzantine province in that century, and probably one of the richest ones.

We

must recognize,

Mediterranean, as also Italy

and Francia

too, that a luxury trade always existed in the

in the

Indian Ocean, bringing

in return for

silk

timber and slaves. But, as

seen, luxuries are marginal items to the

368

economy

and

spices to

we have

also

as a whole. In the

THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY eighth century, outside restricted areas, the bulk trade in food and

goods had gone, even

artisanal

Arab-ruled provinces of the

in the

southern Mediterranean, which were always in our period the richest.

The

seas

must have been

relatively quiet.

was slowly

In the ninth century this

the Adriatic route after

750 or so

The

reversed.

one small sign of

is

Venice focused on the luxury trade mentioned

must have been expanding

rise it:

earlier,

of Venice and small, because

although

this

for Venetian wealth to increase as fast as

it

did in the ninth century (below. Chapter 22); Venice traded with Byzan-

tium and also with Alexandria, from where henceforth the

patron

city’s

Tunisian conquest of a great deal closer to

saint,

the

body of St Mark,

The ninth-century

820s.

allowed for more movement, for

Sicily

Tunis than

much exchange between

in

stole the

it

the

it

was

to Constantinople,

Sicily

was

and there was

two regions henceforth; we have seen them

operate as a pair in their links with Egypt two centuries

later,

and that

pairing began here, at the latest. South Italian ports like Amalfi and

Naples benefited from Arab connections which were

now

nearer (they

indeed colluded in Arab attacks on the Italian mainland), and Amalfitans

were regularly to be found

Arab world, we

Inside the

Egypt and the Aegean a century

in

find

more casual

along the African coast, using Tunisia and the route

from Egypt

to Spain;

references to

movement

halfway points

in

centralization, even

if

Sicily as

and ‘Abbasid

later too.

focused on Iraq, helped to link Egypt closer to Syria, a link which

remained, for autonomous Egyptian rulers after the 860s tended to

the luxury trade,

movement was doubtless still largely in but there was more of it, in ever more complex patterns;

and not

was luxury,

control Syria as well. All this

all

of

it

large quantities of olive

oil,

the 880s, oil that probably

as with the

captured off

came from

In the tenth century there

Arab merchant Sicily

ships carrying

by a Byzantine

fleet in

Tunisia.

were two further developments. One was

that sections of the Mediterranean

which had hitherto been

relatively

cut out of these developing systems, like southern France, were brought in as well; several

Arab wrecks from the mid-tenth century have been

found off the French coast, apparently from Spain, containing amphorae (for oil?), tableware,

copper or bronze, and

of a protagonist as yet in the ninth century,

glass. is

Byzantium, too,

much more

less

visibly so in

the tenth, selling quality silks and timber in the Egyptian market, and, later, cheese, a

major source of protein

369

for Egyptians;

on the south

THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO Turkish coast, Antalya became an important entrepot for trade with Syria

and

Palestine,

and south to Alexandria. The development of the

port of Almeria in 955 by the Andalusi caliph ‘Abd al-Rahman

III

was

intended to focus and expand the Spanish contribution to this exchange

we can see it did just that; Almeria makes frequent geniza documents around 1000 and later. Though

network, and as far as

appearance

in the

from Alexandria

certain routes (such as

to Tunis)

were doubtless more

prominent than others, one gains the impression that by the century one could

sail

almost anywhere

else

late tenth

from almost anywhere in the Mediterranean to - not always directly, but without very much

difficulty.

The second development, already indicated by oil-amphorae and cheese,

that

is

these references to

became more normal to transport

it

bulk goods again, for a relatively large-scale market. Tunisian olive

reached both Egypt and Italy by 1000, just as

it

had done

in

oil

400,

although grain was never again a major item of international exchange; that

had depended on the

any natural interchange, since the back of

oil,

we

also, as in

Roman

needs of the

fiscal it

was produced everywhere. Probably on

400, find Tunisian glazed pottery in Italy

by the end of the tenth century. And, above

by a sector of Egyptian merchants, by 1000 be

made

into linen cloth in Tunisia

Egyptian linen factory towns,

had become

ships that

empire rather than

and

testifies to

large-scale

all,

the astonishing choice

at the latest, to

Sicily rather

send flax to

than in the great

a set of commercial relation-

and symbiotic,

as well as

complex and

competitive. Bulk trade did not dominate everywhere yet, or ever; the same,

it is

here that

we can speak

all

of real interregional/international

exchange systems^ rather than the thin luxury-based links of two centuries earlier.

cycle

By the tenth century, the second great Mediterranean trade

had properly begun, and would continue to the

In the eleventh century,

would begin

newly active

Italian ports,

late

Middle Ages.

Genoa and

Pisa,

to take over the western part of these Mediterranean

networks by force and direct them northwards; the Crusades had similar results in the East; but the trade cycle

remained, and even expanded,

thereafter.

The tenth century thus saw Mediterranean trade reach that

North Sea trade already had

ter 9),

and indeed surpass

it.

in the eighth

the complexity

and ninth

(see

Chap-

Egypt’s agricultural wealth and productive

complexity lay at the heart of

it.

Even

370

after Italian fleets

had

partially

THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY taken over the role of middlemen, including for the Arab world, by I

loo, Egypt was

still

the

hub of this exchange,

as well as being the nodal

point for luxury goods coming in from the Indian Ocean; the

motor

that ran the entire medieval trade cycle.

the tenth century

began to

sectors at least, as

complex

that relations of mutual economic dependence less risky, solid

was arguably

What happened

in

was that the economies of other Mediterranean regions

some

be, in

it

enough

to be built on. This

was

as that of Egypt, so

became more

reliable,

the basis of the exchange

of bulk goods in every period of history. All the same,

made

earlier: in

we must end

account by repeating a point already

this

every part of the Mediterranean, the most important

exchange systems were

inside,

not between, regions. City-country

exchange, and micro-regional agricultural and artisanal specializations, lay at the heart of this, not the

wharves of Venice or Almeria, Tunis or

Antalya, Palermo or Alexandria.

Nor

are

we

looking at self-sustaining

exchange processes here; however active the merchants of Fustat and Venice were, these would not develop for

nomic development

essentially

many

centuries. Internal eco-

depended on the force of internal

demand, and thus on the wealth of

elites,

and thus on the extraction of

surplus from the peasantry. These increased in the ninth and tenth centuries, in the

Mediterranean as

in northern

Europe, creating a more

complex and colourful environment, and some cloth) that could be

cheap enough to be bought

artisanal products (like in villages;

nonetheless signs of exploitation as well as dynamism.

back to

this issue in the

there

more evidence

is

but they are

We

shall

come

north European context in Chapter 22, where

for

its

effect

on the peasant majority.

371

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PART

IV

The Carolingian and Post-Carolingian

West, 750-1000

The Carolingian Century, 751-887

In one of the few non-diplomatic letters of

Charlemagne (768-814) that

has survived, the king wrote to his wife Queen Fastrada in 791. Charles relates that his son, Fastrada’s stepson Pippin king of Italy

has told him of a victory against the Avars of what

and

lists

the bishops, dukes, counts and vassals

larly well in the

war. (The

is

(781-810),

now Hungary,

who performed

omits their names, unfortunately;

letter

only survives as a model for future writers.) The text then

Charlemagne and

religious litanies that

particu-

days, probably immediately after the

lists

it

the

his court

performed for three

news of the

victory, including a

prohibition on eating meat or drinking wine, which however people

could buy out of with a graduated payment according to wealth. Charles asks Fastrada to take advice about performing similar litanies, and ends

with an injunction to send him more regular communications.

The tone of most of

this text

hardly intimate;

is

it

reads like a ruler

communicating with a high-ranking subordinate, which a queen indeed was. There

no reason

is

to think that

it tells

relationship between the couple. But in

and

religious ritual

Carolingian actively

it

reflects

politics. It also

what

else

its

us

much about

the personal

mixture of military action

we know

of the tone of early

shows that Charlemagne, even when not

campaigning (he was probably forty-three

in

791, fairly old for

campaigns, though he did lead armies for another decade and more), received and expected up-to-date and detailed information from his generals: this information-exchange

was

structures of the Carolingian century.

mation, but, as far as

we can

that this letter has survived not.

It

a regular part of the political

The Merovingians had such

see, less systematically;

when

it is

infor-

also significant

equivalent Merovingian letters have

has survived by chance, but in the context of a vast increase in

surviving information about the political process in Francia, which

375

THE CAROLINGIAN AND reaches

PO

S

T- C AR O L I N G I AN

height in the 830S-840S.

its

It is

vingians articulated politics through as

drinking,

it is

much

(he

which

lasted

century and beyond, and which had

many

in this chapter

earthy,

throughout the Carolingian ramifications, as

we

shall see

Charles Martel (717-41) took over the office of maior of the

5

),

civil

war of 715-19

he re-established the practice of annual

had been intermittent

that

was rather

and the next.

Frankish kingdoms by force in the

Chapter

penitential ritual as this.

claimed), but he introduced an ecclesiastical and moraliz-

ing edge to political practice

When

Mero-

also unlikely that the

and loved hunting and swimming, and roast meat - less so

Charlemagne was not unusually pious jokes, songs, sex,

WEST, 75O-IOOO

(see

above.

summer campaigning

at best for over seventy years.

Between 720

and 804 there were only, probably, eight years without a campaign, and in some years there were two or three. Charles fought on all his borders, reabsorbing Provence and blocking Arab advances from Spain as he did so, taking

over Frisia, and re-establishing Frankish hegemony in Alsace

and Aquitaine. Most important, however, was the

he

total authority

established in the Frankish heartland, thanks to this military aggregation,

and

to

its

success - Charles never lost a war.

The Merovingian

kings were only puppets by now, and the lay aristocracy and the episcopate both followed Charles; he overthrew any potential rivals without

qualms or (apparently) Pippin

III

This continued under his sons

difficulties.

(741-68) and Carloman

ship just as the Merovingians

I

(741-7) - they divided the mayor-

had divided the kingship,

resigned his office, apparently willingly, and went to

monk

at the

until

Carloman

Rome, becoming

a

monastery of Monte Cassino. So did the annual campaigns,

which included the subjection of Alemannia

in the

bloody battle of

Canstatt in 746, extended to Italy in 754-6, and continued with the

full

reconquest of Aquitaine in a sequence of invasions in 759-69. In his last years, after 737, Charles Martel ruled without a king.

Facing revolts. Pippin and Carloman re-established one, Childeric

III,

in

743. Nonetheless, after Carloman retired, in the context of disturbances

caused by family ask

(in

the

rivals.

words of the

Pippin wrote to Pope Zacharias (741-52), to official

forty years later) ‘whether at that time

was good or not

that the kings in Francia

had no royal power’. Zacharias correctly replied

better to call not’,

it

Royal Frankish Annals, written some

him king who had

the royal

and Pippin took the throne

in

376

‘that

it

was

power than the one who did

751, the

first

Carolingian king.

THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 751-887 Childeric

was tonsured - that is, had his Merovingian royal

- and imprisoned

hair

removed

monastery. (The Carolingians henceforth wore

in a

short hair and moustaches.) Later Carolingian sources of course depict this as a

straightforward succession, buttressed by concord and cere-

monial, including the agreement of the Frankish magnates and a formal anointing by Boniface archbishop of Mainz. Pippin was indeed the

first

Frankish king to be anointed; although this followed Visigothic practice in the late seventh century

the innovation clearly

through a new

and

it

(and also the traditions of the Old Testament),

shows the need

to

make

set of ecclesiastical rituals.

But

the Carolingians special,

in reality this

was

a coup,

presented immediate problems of royal legitimacy. Pippin was

able to reinforce the rituals of 751

when the new pope Stephen II (752-7)

came north

753-4, the

to the Seine valley in

first

time a pope had ever

travelled north of the Alps, to ask for help against the

him

re-anointed that king

king,

and Pippin duly invaded

Lombards; Stephen

Italy, twice.

and pope needed each other, the pope

The

fact

is

to gain protection

against attack, the king to gain legitimate authority; for the Carolingians,

although the strongest aristocratic family in Francia by far since the 680s, were not royal until two successive popes - importantly, an exter-

moral power - said they were. The two processes

nal, non-Frankish,

went

together. Pippin

and Carloman were already more concerned than

Charles Martel had been with church reform, and called at least four

church councils

in

742-7, the

first

since the 670s; this intensified after

751, under the aegis of Chrodegang bishop of Metz

(d.

766), a leading

adviser of Pippin. In 765 Pippin also introduced compulsory tithes to

which dramatically increased the wealth of the episcopal

the church,

hierarchy everywhere in Francia.

The help

the church gave Pippin in

751 was already paying off, on a substantial scale. This was the pattern Charlemagne inherited in 768, together with brother Carloman early death

was

(768-71): the two got on badly, and Carloman’s

II

was perhaps not unplanned. Charles Magnus^

initially called this to distinguish

him from

his

own

‘the Great’,

son Charles,

but already in the ninth century the adjective began to be used to his especial charisma,

their epithet

that

and he

is

one of the few people

absorbed into their

French and English.

One

two exceptionally

became reduced

his

own name,

mark

in history to find

‘Charlemagne’ in modern

of the early signs of this charisma was the fact

forceful rulers, Charles Martel

to predecessors,

and are hard

377

and Pippin

III,

to see clearly in our later

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

P O ST- C ARO LI N G I AN

WEST, 75O-IOOO

eighth-century sources. Charlemagne followed Pippin’s political path,

but across his long reign transformed

European least,

it,

transforming the parameters of

he did so, for a longer period - three centuries at

politics as

arguably - than any other single early medieval ruler.

The

first

element in

this

was simply war, which

two generations, but

the practice of the previous

Four areas stand out

Saxony was pagan;

first

and location of border wars it

was

it.

Saxony,

is

for over

two

also not a single polity, but rather

a collection of small tribal territories

assembly and fought

greatly extended

Charlemagne’s wars. The

in

Francia’s northern neighbour, centuries.

certainly continued

which met

in larger or smaller

in a single

annual

groupings according to choice

and need. Charlemagne from 772 onwards set out to conquer it. He started, programmatically, by sacking the major Saxon cult-site, the Irminsul,

and taking home a

rich booty, but

to complete his task (in 804; there

was

Charlemagne thought he had won,

in

conquer precisely because

was

it

it

took him over thirty years

also a period of peace,

when

785-93). Saxony was hard to

and

disunited,

was the theatre of

it

considerable violence, not least for the 4,500 Saxon prisoners massacred in

782

after a

Frankish defeat. The conquest was by 780 associated

with a conscious process of Christianization;

this

was one of the few

conversion processes openly brought about by force in our period.

More

important perhaps, Frankish conquest resulted in a social revolution, in

which members of the Saxon aristocracy were given for the

first

time landowning rights over their free neighbours, alongside Frankish

incomers and a newly endowed Saxon church system. Saxony remained marginal to Carolingian

developed further, and itself in

it

but the wealth of that aristocracy

would be

the basis for tenth-century kingship

we shall see in Chapter 18. was Lombard Italy, and it was an

East Francia, as

The second area

Charlemagne was asked as Pippin

had been;

Lombard kingdom Conquering

Italy

this

in

was

it),

but

capital, Pavia,

it

for his help

easier task. In

by Pope Hadrian

I

(772-95), just

time he went the whole way, and annexed the

773-4

in

an unusual summer and winter war.

mother Bertrada and

his cousin

Adalard, were

turned out to be straightforward once the

fell,

773

a controversial decision (several of Charlemagne’s

advisers, including his

against

politics,

for the

kingdom was

Lombard

sufficiently centralized for

resistance to cease almost completely. Again, wealth flowed north to

Charlemagne’s treasury.

Italy

was, however, not absorbed into the

378

THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 751-887 Frankish lands in the taine

way Saxony would be (and Alemannia and Aqui-

had already been). Charlemagne took the

Franks and Lombards’, reflecting the fact that tually separate,

one

and Pavia remained a separate

in the Carolingian

kingdom;

after

to Italy, Charlemagne’s son Pippin.

of ‘king of the

title

remained concep-

Italy

political centre, the only

781 a subordinate king returned

Lombard

would

Italy

nevertheless

be a source, not only of wealth, but also of governmental expertise, for Francia.

As noted

Chapter

in

6,

only the duchy of Benevento remained

independent; in the face of Frankish power

its

duke, Arichis

II,

took the

of prince in 774.

title

Of

the old areas of Merovingian rule, the last one

autonomous was Bavaria. Duke Tassilo protege of Pippin

III,

his

III

still

to remain

(748-88) had begun as a

mother’s brother, to

whom

he swore an oath

757 at adulthood; but he stopped participating in Pippin’s 763, and ran an independent politics for two decades; he was

of fidelity in

wars

in

particularly close to the last

Lombard king, Desiderius.

After 781 Charle-

magne sought to rein him in, and he threatened invasion in 787. Tassilo’s aristocracy persuaded him to capitulate, and he became Charlemagne’s vassal, or

sworn follower. This was not enough, however, and

he was victim of a show Bavarians,

Lombards and Saxons,

cooperation,

A

trial for disloyalty.

condemned him

to death.

tribunal of Franks,

Charlemagne then commuted

tonsured and confined in a monastery. The

trial

like Childeric in

of Tassilo in

the Carolingians as different from their predecessors.

by historians

that,

788

a rarely invoked image of multi-ethnic

penance and he was,

this sentence to forced

in

whereas the Merovingians

It

itself

751,

marks

has been noticed

killed those

who

lost royal

favour, the Carolingians often simply imprisoned them, and confis-

cated their land. This kill

opponents, or

Byzantine practice:

condemnation

is

an exaggeration; the Carolingians often did

else

blinded them (following both Visigothic and

cf.

above. Chapter ii). But the ritual of a legal

to death, followed

by the ‘milder’ sentence of blinding or

imprisonment, did become rather more common, and the deaths by

slow torture of the sixth and seventh centuries virtually disappeared.

Imprisonment did not always work (people escaped), and death might well then follow, but these changes do

show

a

growing

belief that a

show of legal process and an elaborate ritual of political exclusion were good ways to marginalize opponents, and that killing was not always necessary. They fit in with other Carolingian changes, as we shall see.

379

THE CAROLINGIAN AND In the

P O ST- CARO

LIN G AN WEST, 75O-IOOO I

meantime, Bavaria and the Bavarian aristocracy (who survived

almost without exception, apart from the ruling Agilolfings) were

absorbed directly into the Frankish

political system.

The absorption of Bavaria brought Carolingian borders eastward the lands of the Avars,

now

by

far less great

and Avar wars began

than

it

had been

to

Avar power was

in 791.

in the early seventh century,

but

Avar khagan remained enormous. In 795-6 three

the wealth of the

armies were sent eastwards to the Avar royal residence, the Ring, located

somewhere on

Hungarian

the

plain.

The sack of

booty on such an immense scale that

and

their

them

enriched the Carolingians

magnates (including the pope) for a generation - Einhard said

in his Life left

it

the Ring produced

of Charlemagne that ‘no one can

recall

richer or better stocked with resources’.

any war

.

.

.

that

The Avars were not

conquered, but they soon disappeared, their place taken by newer Sclavenian polities, (see

who remained on the Frankish/Bavarian borderlands

Chapter 20 for the term Sclavenian).

By 804 the lands ruled by Charlemagne were half again as large as in 768, and over twice the size of those ruled by Charles Martel at his death. Nearly

all

borders were further away than in 768, even that of

Spain, where northern Catalonia

and 801. This was a

had been taken from the Arabs

fairly thin strip,

in

785

however, and Charlemagne’s bolder

attack on Zaragoza in 778 led to one of the few military setbacks of the reign, the attack

on the

retreating Frankish rearguard

by the Basques

western Pyrenees. The Carolingians had

at Roncesvalles in the

new

neighbours now, the Danes, the Arabs, the Beneventans, and half a continent of Sclavenian tribes from the Baltic to the Adriatic. these gave rich pickings,

stopped as a policing,

result.

It

fairly far

tribute from, their

still

away. Expansion

independent neighbours,

has been plausibly argued that this had bad conse-

quences for the Franks, for their aristocracies inside,

of

Carolingian military activity largely became one of

and extracting

for a generation.

and they were mostly

Few

now had

to aggrandize

not outside, the Frankish kingdoms; kings themselves had greater

difficulties as a result.

had other roots

But

as well.

this

too was a generation away in 804, and

Charlemagne’s

last

decade was one of relative

peace, and unheard-of prosperity for the ruling

elite

of Francia by early

medieval standards. It

is

worth

insisting a little

more on

Charlemagne had conquered new

the roots of this prosperity.

territories,

380

and

seized, not only exten-

THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 751-887 sive booty, but the royal treasure of

two

peoples, the

Lombards and

the

Avars: essential resources for royal generosity in gift-giving, to aristocrats

and

to foreign rulers,

their predecessors.

He

also

which the Carolingians needed

now

as

much

as

controlled the royal land of Italy and

the ducal land of Aquitaine and Bavaria, and the confiscated land of rebels across the

also a

whole of Saxony and

network of new

(to a lesser extent) elsewhere;

offices, counties,

and

abbacies and bishoprics, to add

to those in the Frankish heartland. (Over all Charlemagne’s lands, there

were some 600 counties and 180

dioceses.) All of these could be given

out to his supporters as honores, ‘honours’, as both royal land and offices

were

teries,

which

when

called.

So could the extensive lands of churches and monas-

the Carolingians disposed of without

all

they needed. Royal wealth was thus the wealth of aristocrats as

well, as long as such offices

many qualms

men were

in the king’s favour.

The lands and

were revocable; Charlemagne gave few permanent landed

and church land

preferring to distribute royal

beneficia or ‘benefices’. Aristocrats their sons, but

had

court, in order to

to remain

do

so.

And

hoped

as

temporary cessions,

to keep these

committed to the king, there

and pass them

whom

The

great that

was by the 790s possible

effect the

it

self-confidence of the Frankish elite

new chosen people

imagery was standard

in

magne was commonly otherwise,

it

may

in these

he liked to his court,

including poets and intellectuals from outside Francia, and as he chose.

to

faithfully attending

was so much wealth around

decades that Charlemagne could attract

gifts,

endow them

became

sufficiently

for writers to describe

in succession to the Jews;

them

as in

Old Testament

Carolingian political programmes, and Charlecalled

David by court

intellectuals.

Hence or

be added that the Carolingians were notably tolerant

of Jews, and Charlemagne’s son Louis the Pious (814-40) in particular

protected them, to the great distress of writers like Agobard archbishop of

Lyon

(d.

840),

who came from ex-Visigothic

Spain, and had inherited

the anti-Semitism of late Visigothic political culture. In less religious

imagery, Einhard preserves for us with some smugness a Byzantine proverb,

‘[if]

you have a Frank

as

your friend, [then] he

is

not your

neighbour’, which he actually cites in Greek; the Franks were proud of their greed

and aggrandisement, and regarded

it

as a proof of their

virtue.

The court crystallized in two further ways in the 790s. The first is that in the years 794-6 Charlemagne founded his own capital, at Aachen in 381

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

PO

S

T- C AR O LI N G I AN

the heart of Pippinid northern Austrasia,

and

son Louis endowed

his

it

political

survives.

more and more time here

and administrative focus

still

moved around,

ations of courtiers

The second in a

still

(it

As Charlemagne grew

was

is

ceremony

came

that in in

The importance of honorific. But

nition of

it

Aachen

as a natural

in

this title

by the Byzantine in

812

backdrop a

which he was anointed

new

(as

after

a stable

two gener-

it,

for politics.

emperor,

title,

by the pope.

(again)

should not be exaggerated;

Charlemagne was proud of

which he achieved

became

for the first time in Frankish history.

800 Charlemagne obtained

Rome,

it

taking their court with them, but

to see

Ardennes

close to the

one of the best royal hunting reserves), and

forest,

Kings

and across the next decades he

with ambitious buildings, one of which,

the cathedral-scale palace chapel, older, he spent

WEST, 750-IOOO

was only

it

and was keen to get recog-

one might say, the

menacing the

emperors,

‘real’)

still-Byzantine enclave of

Venice. Imperial imagery began to infuse Carolingian legislation after

800

as well.

The

truth

is,

to his military successes,

though, that already by the

Charlemagne had achieved

late

a western

wide dominance, and a near unanimity of support from political centrality, that

is

to say, that

Roman emperor

since the

no one had matched

Valentinian

I.

780s, thanks

European-

his subjects, a in those lands

Even the strongest Merovin-

gians, Clovis or Dagobert, did not rule as widely or enjoy such longlasting success. Charles Martel’s military

machine, and the luck of four

almost unbroken generations of single rulers (for Charlemagne’s sons,

between

whom he fully intended to divide his lands,

all

predeceased him

except Louis), were the basis of this success, but Charlemagne’s charisma

capped

It

it.

The question would then be what he would do with

cannot be denied that Charlemagne - and

his advisers, but

it.

animated

beyond doubt by the king himself - had a conscious and ambitious political project. In the or, a

widest sense,

much commoner word,

it

was one of ‘reform’

(renovatio),

‘correction’ (correctio), of the inner

well as the external acts of lay and ecclesiastical subjects alike. clear in

one of Charles’s

relatively early legislative acts, the

life

It is

as

very

General

Admonition of 789. In this widely circulated text, the king re-enacted canons from church councils to provide a template for the proper activity of clerics, but also instructed the laity in the necessity of concord, justice, the avoidance of perjury, the avoidance of hatred, and, overall, the necessity of the preaching of the Christian faith. These

382

were keynotes of

THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 75I-887 the moral reform

matched by

programme

They were

of the Carolingian period.

a systematic education

programme, which was

General Admonition) largely the work of the most influential

(as

of the

was the

intellectual

generation of the Carolingian reform project, the Northum-

first

brian Alcuin

804). Alcuin

(d.

was

at

Charlemagne’s court for most of

786 to 796, and then continued teaching in one of the several monasteries Charlemagne gave him, Saint-Martin in Tours. As the king the period

open

said in an

letter

good behaviour and

spiritual

literary education, for

was

full

understanding were impossible without a

‘knowing comes before doing’, and even the Bible

of figures of speech which had to be decoded.

promoted basic and

clerics

of the 780s or 790s, also written by Alcuin,

literacy,

aristocrats: a

The Carolingians

but expected more, especially from leading

proper understanding of the Bible and of

theology, without which a path in the Carolingian political world could

not properly be walked.

The

successes

and

failures of this project

discussed; but that there were successes

Carolingian

elite

is

have been very intensively

not at

issue.

The whole of the

cared about theology, or had to pretend they did.

794 an assembly of bishops and magnates at Frankfurt could devote much of its time to discussing heresies, Adoptionism and the

Already

in

Byzantine rejection of Iconoclasm (the Franks had greater sympathy

with the Iconoclasts), for the

and 840s, the whole

the 830s

first

time in the West in two centuries. By

political process, including

coups and

civil

wars, could be seen in theological terms. By then, there were two dozen or

more

political actors

who were

also active writers, participating in

what were often pamphlet wars about

Some

them were

of

the theology of political practice.

lay aristocrats, including

Dhuoda

(d. c.

of the sometime royal chamberlain Bernard of Septimania

(d.

843), wife 844),

who

wrote a handbook on correct behaviour for her son, suffused with biblical

imagery and citing an array of church fathers, which were

evidently available to her in Uzes, far in the south of the Frankish lands.

This will

all

be discussed in the next chapter, but

it

marks the Carolingian

period out. Exactly

Many

of

why its

this project

developed

is

rather harder to understand.

The Carolingians had to identify with church that gave them legitimacy as a ruling

roots are obvious.

the church, for

it

was the

family; the coup of 7 5 1

was still in living memory at the time of the General

Admonition. The church councils, which had become commoner again

383

THE CAROLINGIAN AND after the 740s,

P O ST- C ARO L I N G I AN

and which continued without

natural source of moralizing enactments, royal legislation already under Pippin to

Old Testament parallels,

as

a break thereafter,

many

III.

WEST, 75O-IOOO

of

were a

them absorbed

into

Frankish self-confidence led

we have seen, and also to Roman parallels,

thus encouraging people to look back to the fourth to sixth centuries,

when

correct belief

was

a burning political issue (see above. Chapter 3).

Although the Merovingian period was not an age of

programmes

in Francia, seventh-century Visigothic

showing that an overtly moralized early

in

(d. c.

explicit ideological

medieval western

politics already

Spain had been,

had potential roots

and Theodulf bishop of Orleans

soil;

826), the major theologian of Charlemagne’s reign,

gothic origins.

(It

must be

said,

was of

however, that the Franks,

borrowed from the Visigoths, did not borrow the Gothic

Visi-

they

if

zeal for

we have already seen.) Once Alcuin, Theodulf, Deacon from Lombard Italy, the Franks Angilbert of Saint-

religious exclusion, as

Paul the

Riquier and Einhard, and others, combined in Charlemagne’s court in the 780s

and 790s,

a critical

mass of intellectual debate and competitive

writing ensued, enough to expand and continue for another three generations.

But

is

it

hard not to see a plan at the back of

Charlemagne who gifts that

was

It

and gave them such big

they stayed in or near the court for decades. Programmatic

legislation, too, his

invited these intellectuals,

this.

although not, of course, composed by him, went out in

name, and was new. The successes of the 770s

seem already

(particularly in Italy)

was

to have persuaded the king that he

special,

and that

he had a mission, not just to rule the Franks and their neighbours, but to save their souls. Fie

more

may have been

ecclesiastical political

educated to

this in the already

environment of Pippin’s reign - however

incompletely; Charlemagne could appreciate poetry and theology, but

he never fully learned to write. All the same,

own

choice.

Justinian; his son Louis,

The

seems to have been

Charlemagne thus matches Justinian

moral-political practice (although he

there).

it

famous

fascination with

him

had a

is

an innovator

better sense of

for not smiling,

was

in

humour than

a better parallel

that has resulted in such a dense his-

toriography, unbroken across the centuries but elaborate now,

as

his

if

possible even

more

not entirely unjustified.

All kinds of legislation

were commoner under Charlemagne. Royal

assemblies produced capitularia, ‘chapter-collections’ or ‘capitularies’.

These varied

in their formality

(some were

384

official

written texts;

some

THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 75I-887 seem

to have survived only because participants took private notes of

some were

their content); they also varied in their aim, for

for local representatives,

guidelines

some were one-off enactments, but others were

systematic additions to existing law, Frankish or Lombard. But there

were many of them; the standard capitulary edition has the reign of

Italy, for

earlier

from

Charlemagne alone, plus some enactments that survive

more fragmentary form. Some from

eighty-five

in

come

of the impetus for this must have

they start in the late 770s, and are matched in frequency

than that only by the Lombard laws of Liutprand; church council

legislation,

which partly overlaps with capitulary

legislation (as

with the

General Admonition^ and the 794 synod of Frankfurt), was another model. Charlemagne also reissued the Lex Salica in a new edition,

which was widely copied

conquered peoples such as the Saxons. Not copied,

When

it is

worth

and made laws

in the ninth century,

many

stressing;

all

capitularies

for

newly

were widely

survive in only a single manuscript.

Ansegis, abbot of Saint-Wandrille on the Seine, went looking for

capitularies to turn into a rearranged collection to present to Louis the

Pious in 827, he only found (or used) twenty-nine of them, and only one (the

General Admonition) from before 803. As in the

before the Theodosian Code,

was hard

it

to be sure

Roman

empire

what laws had been

passed, even though the Carolingians, Roman-style, regarded ignorance

of the law as no excuse. But

some were very

carefully circulated, such

law of 803, which survives in fifty-three too), one of which states that Stephen

as the capitulary adding to Salic

manuscripts (Ansegis used

count of Paris had

his

it,

copy of

it

read in a public assembly there, and

names on

local political leaders signed their

it.

Such a mixture of oral

publication and formal subscription was probably

major enactments. The capitulary

up

Pious, at least

to 830,

‘habit’

and then

in

common

for the

continued under Louis the

West Francia and

Italy until

the late ninth century; in East Francia, too, the acts of church councils

continued to be recorded. In the ninth century, informal capitulary collections begin to be Italy;

commoner

as well, particularly but not only in

they seem to have been intended for use in court.

were ‘complete’

sets (capitularies tended, after all, to

they do attest to a recognition that a wide range of

and that

it

was

useful to be informed about

None

of

them

be repetitive), but

new law now existed,

it.

These laws, and the other sources for Charlemagne’s reign such as annals and letter collections,

show that the government of the Carolingian 385

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

P

O S T-C ARO LIN G I AN WEST, 75O-IOOO

lands was essentially based on old foundations, but that these were fairly carefully reshaped as required.

The network of public assemblies

that

were crucial for the Merovingians and the Lombards remained crucial in the Carolingian period.

Royal assemblies were held

just before the

campaigning season every year and were the points of reference for army muster as well; kings could

call

smaller or larger assemblies later in the

year, too, to prepare policy for the next year or

business.

Major

and

political figures, lay

ecclesiastical,

larly.

These were venues for genuine discussion, not

tions;

Hincmar archbishop of Reims

Organization of the Palace (which lost text of

attend

all

c.

812 with the same

(d.

was urgent

attended regu-

just royal instruc-

882) in his 882 treatise

itself

title)

there

if

On

the

drew on Adalard of Corbie’s

indeed

tells

us that kings did not

assembly discussions, but instead stood outside glad-handing

- and Hincmar was one of the major advisers of King Charles the Bald (840-77), as Adalard had been for his cousin Charlemagne, so

whichever wrote

this

would have known. Early

in Charles the Bald’s

war of 841-2, Charles’s follower and cousin Nithard (d. 845) records in his contemporary history how Charles’s May 841 assembly argued about which way the king reign, during the preparation for the civil

and

his

army should march; Charles went with

the minority, not the

majority, view - wrongly, in fact, Nithard said - but, either way, he

had the

benefit of hearing real argument.

participation in assemblies,

and

Even without that argument,

in the rituals

normal

in all of

powerfully reinforced a sense of collective participation in public

These national assemblies were matched assemblies, placita, meeting

two or

in every

them,

affairs.

county by local

three times a year under the count’s

presidency, in which local elites were brought into the

same public

network; these heard reports of national deliberation (Count Stephen’s Paris gathering of 803

was one

such),

and decided on court

cases.

The

Carolingians regularized these assemblies, too, for example determining that local judicial experts should be called scabini everywhere,

the early ninth century they were indeed

Channel to

Italy. It

was

coming

to be,

which by

from the English

also county assemblies that administered the

taking of oaths to the king, another older tradition systematized in this period.

Charlemagne

Hesse and Thuringia second revolt, by

instituted these in in

785-6;

in

789 after regional revolts in 793 he had them repeated after a

his disinherited eldest

son Pippin in 792, since some

of the rebels said they had not sworn in 789, perhaps because they were

386

THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 751-887 too young (not that this did them killed).

These were the only revolts

much good; Charlemagne had them in Francia in his reign,

and they seem

to have been fairly small-scale, but the king’s response

man

formal oaths more systematic. Every free

had in

to swear,

and

names had

their

was

over the age of twelve

to be recorded by counts

802 these obligations were further extended,

make

to

and

as oath-swearers

missv,

had

swear a much more detailed oath to the emperor. Oaths mattered

to

in this

world; oath-breakers were perjurors, and risked damnation, not just secular penalties - dispossession, mutilation

and sometimes death. They

made to men who

could be dangerous: Charlemagne banned oaths of association

anyone except the king and one

and

lord,

in

806 enacted that

did so should beat each other and cut off each other’s hair (or, in extreme cases,

slit

their noses).

Oaths to the king further added to the

intensity

of ritual at even the most remote assembly, and to the local presence of royal authority.

The Carolingian empire was huge, in

Europe has ever been except

of

Napoleon and

Hitler,

and

larger than

any subsequent

for brief years at the height of the

societies of

Provence and

Italy.

How

it

could

all

one part of

it;

was an almost impossible

challenge.

was army muster; and the

so

or emperor, whether at

it

did

urban

to the old

be controlled, without

the elaborate fiscal and administrative system of the the caliphate,

power

also extremely diverse, stretching as

from the half-converted and roadless lands of Saxony

state

Roman

Assembly

empire or

politics

was

palace, the court of the king

Aachen or elsewhere, was furthermore a magnet

for the ambitious in every period, as they

came

preferment. Kings did not just give

they received them too, the

‘annual

These

gifts’

gifts

gifts;

to seek justice, gifts or

of horses and the like presented at each general assembly.

seem

to have

had a military edge

associated with the fact that soldiers

to them,

and were probably

on campaign had

to bring their

equipment and three months’ provisions with them, not a small

invest-

ment. Rather than a proto-tax system, which cannot be identified in the Carolingian period (kings were not short of resources even without taxation, until late in the ninth century), this

was another element

in the

gift-exchange of political participation. Palaces were also the focus of a particularly large as

we

amount

of collective and increasingly moralized ritual,

shall see further in the next chapter; the other elements of Carolin-

gian political aggregation had clear roots in the Merovingian period,

but this was largely new. But kings did not

387

move around

the

whole of

THE CAROLINGIAN AND the empire, except

P

O ST- C AR O LIN G AN WEST, 75O-IOOO I

when on campaign; Charlemagne, Louis and

Louis’s

sons seldom strayed out of the three great ‘royal landscapes’, of the Seine valley, the Middle Rhine valley, and between

of royal and ex-Pippinid estates around Aachen.

went

ever

there; the kings

One way aristocrats.

had

to reach

them

them the core block

Not

every local leader

too.

they did so was by strategically placing their most trusted

Counts tended to be from long-standing

after conquests, as in

Alemannia

local elites, except

after Canstatt, or in Italy in the early

ninth century; so did bishops. But beside these local

and

elites,

inter-

locking - and intermarrying - with them, there were also greater families, those of the Reichsaristokratie, the ‘imperial aristocracy’, as Gerd Tellen-

bach called them

and

fifty

in

He and his successors identified between forty who could be found in any part of the empire,

1939.

such families,

and whose members could move around

some

facility.

Most

of

(or be

moved around) with

them were from the old Pippinid heartlands of

Austrasia, extending southwards into the Middle Rhine and northern

Burgundy, though they could come from anywhere except

few

if

could

Italy.

Very

any of these families were newly created; but the Carolingians

make favoured members

them

of

rich

and powerful beyond any

previous imagining, even though Merovingian aristocrats could already be pretty rich, as is

we saw

in

the ‘Widonid’ family (as

Chapter

we

call

originating in the Middle Rhine

5.

A

well-known example of these

them - surnames did not

and Moselle

valleys; they

yet exist),

seem

in the

eighth century to be linked to Milo of Trier (see Chapter 8) and to an

important church in Mainz. Under Louis the Pious and his sons, they are found simultaneously in the far west of

duchy of Spoleto

in the central

modern France and

in the

Appennines of Italy, running the frontier

marches facing Brittany and Benevento respectively, while keeping their

Rhineland

links,

where they controlled the major monastery of

Hornbach. They did not follow a simple family crisis

political line (in the

of 833-4, which set Louis the Pious against his sons,

of Vannes fought a battle for Louis against his brother

Guy count

Lambert marquis

was

killed),

and they could be unscrupulous about establishing themselves

locally,

of the Breton march, fighting for Louis’s son Lothar, and

as in distant Spoleto,

where they ran a

largely

autonomous

politics. All

the same, they were loyal to Carolingian ideals, including Carolingian

unity -

Guy

887, tried to

III

of Spoleto

make

(d.

895), after Carolingian

power ended

in

himself king in both West Francia and Italy, and was

388

THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 751-887 crowned emperor

actually

in 891.

Without that

range of their power would have ceased to for the family

there

is

and, indeed, did cease,

not attested after the 890s outside the Rhineland (though

remained important: the Salian dynasty of German kings was

it

probably descended from deal, but the reverse

was an immense racies

exist,

unity, the geographical

is

it).

Kings relied on families such as

true too; in

many respects

the Carolingian empire

power of

oligarchy, and, given the rooted local

both large and small,

it

had to

The point

be.

this a great

aristoc-

will be explored

further later.

Not

all

like this. all

royal dependants in the provinces were from great families

The Carolingians made considerable use of

of whom were rich, but

ties

all

of whom

had

royal vassals, not

particularly close ceremonial

to the kings, in rituals of personalized oath-swearing

and homage.

These could be local men, called to the palace and the army, or aristocrats,

both rich and middling, brought

in

from outside;

either

else

way,

they are invoked in legislation as the sort of men kings could particularly rely on. (Aristocrats had,

and

relied on, their

own

Vassalage was the lineal successor of the personal

vassals as well.)

fidelity

of the

Mero-

Lombard Italy; what was new about it was once might be moved around. It is this movement of

vingian world and of

again that vassals

men, of

families,

which marks the early Carolingians out from

their

predecessors.

The kings

also, systematically, sent representatives to the provinces.

These representatives, missi, were the king’s eyes and

ears.

They had

Merovingian and especially Lombard antecedents too, but Charlemagne regularized them, and the Frankish heartland missatica, territories in

which

was

in

802 divided into

pairs of missi, a count

regularly toured, to hear appeals against local counts

and a bishop,

and

others. Italy

and most of the other conquered lands had missi of their own. Missi were not often outsiders to their territory - local archbishops were popular missi, for example - but they again owed loyalty and responsi-

whom they were expected regularly to report, in writing if necessary. We have some of the court cases in which bility directly to the king, to

they held local officials to account, such as the 804 case at Rizana in Istria in

against gized,

which three missi heard the complaints of 172

Duke John

of Istria’s trampling of local customs; John apolo-

and the customs seem

to see missi

and

local leaders

to have been restored.

It

would be wrong

their territories as fully institutionalized, but kings

389

THE CAROLINGIAN AND certainly regarded it

them

O S T- C ARO LI N G I AN WEST, 75O-IOOO

normal

until late in the ninth century, except,

And we

certainly have chance-surviving evi-

as

seems, in East Francia.

P

dence of regular written communication, to the provinces and back again, whether through people called missi or other officials, such as the

from Hetti archbishop of Trier

instruction

Toul

in

817

telling

him

bishop of

(as missus) to the

to mobilize against the revolt of

King Bernard

of Italy, that very day; or the letters Louis the Pious sent in 832 to

two

tell

vassals to stand by as messengers in case his missus or his count

needed to send a message to the emperor; or the demand made by Charles the Bald to his churchmen in 845 for systematic information

about to

his monasteries,

fulfil;

Reims

or the

lists

of

which Abbot Lupus of

men who swore

in 8 54, attached to a

Ferrieres sought actively

Charles the Bald at

fidelity to

copy of a capitulary by Archbishop Hincmar,

who was probably himself the local missus. Men must have been moving around the queen

entire time, looking for the king/emperor, or sometimes, the

(this

was not straightforward,

for they

informing them; Hincmar indeed supposes the Palace that receiving

bishops had their politics,

them was

too),

and

the Organization of

task. (Aristocrats

and

networks, to keep abreast of

the roads

filled

On

major royal

a

own communications

which presumably

in

moved about

still

more.) Without this

presumption of regular and detailed communication, again not new but

would not have been

greatly extended, running the empire

Did

this

complex network of instructions and accountability actually

work? There are two views. One

is

of the Carolingian administration their advisers

move

that the complexity

was

self-supporting.

flexibility

The kings and

quickly; Louis the Pious’s muster against Bernard in 817, for fast that

it

caught the rebel entirely by surprise. The

‘system’ of the capitulary legislation or of Hincmar’s tion of the Palace it

and

were constantly innovating and retouching, and could

example, was so

for

possible.

was more

could be moulded to

flexible in reality, fit

On

and that was a strength,

the diversity of the provinces.

centrality of the royal court (or, after 840, courts) ished, as all political leaders or

rich royal monasteries,

circle

as they did the elaborately is

good evidence

and even book-buying, which backs

ment up. This was further extended

the

remained undimin-

moralized programme of Carolingian correctio; there

network of

And

would-be leaders continued to

around kings into the 880s, imbibing

for aristocratic literacy

the Organiza-

this argu-

into the provinces thanks to the

from Corbie

390

in

modern northern

THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 751-887 France to

on into

many

St.

Gallen and Reichenau in modern southern

Italy,

Germany and

and the even denser network of cathedral communities,

of which had extensive libraries, and trained intellectuals

who

could and did debate about theology and politics until the end of the ninth century, with effects on political practice in

The other view and

that this

is

ecclesiastical alike,

was

all

a sham.

The

cases.

aristocracy, secular

were corrupt and out for themselves, from top

to bottom. Theodulf of Orleans wrote a

(among other things)

some

poem around 800

against

which would have been incom-

judicial corruption,

prehensible to the people of his south French missaticum^ given the

degree to which litigants apparently pressed

gifts

on him; many of the

abuses missi are recorded as correcting were in fact the oppressive acts of other missi\ Adalard of Corbie’s younger brother

Wala

(d.

836),

when

a missus for Italy in the 820s, uncovered an elaborate cover-up of the

expropriation and later murder of a

bottom

in the Italian

major court of

Lyon

protect

for providing ‘a wall’

aristocratic

marked by As

tell us.

from top

to

was

criticized in

about 827 by Agobard

between the emperor and criminals,

‘to

correctio'; there are plenty of other

examples of

bad behaviour from the period, which was

in fact also

a notable oppression of the poor, as capitularies themselves for the imperial project,

830s and was only his adviser

stretched

kingdom; Matfrid count of Orleans, one of the

figures of the 820s,

them from

widow which

fully

it

was already

disintegrating in the

maintained after that by Charles the Bald and

Hincmar; most other Carolingians soon moved towards the

rougher realpolitik of the tenth century. In any case, the ambition of Carolingian reform legislation betrayed constant repetition betrayed

its failure.

its

(Maybe

Michael Wallace-Hadrill thought, writing account: ‘had [Hincmar’s programme]

would have been in their rhetoric,

a police-state.’)

and

hopeless naivety, and

in

this

was a good

its

thing,

an otherwise sympathetic

worked

out, Carolingian society

The Carolingians were unusual only

in their military success,

ninth century, leaving the empire open to

which petered out

civil

in the

war and demoralizing

(because unremunerative) defence against external attack.

The

interest of the Carolingian period lies in the fact that

both of these

views are largely accurate. Aristocrats are always violent, corrupt and greedy, but they were at least aware of the ideology of public responsibility in this period,

strably

- linked

and presumably - sometimes, it

as with

Dhuoda, demon-

to their desire for personal salvation after death,

391

which

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

P

O S T- C ARO LI N G I AN WEST, 75O-IOOO

The

they certainly always also possessed.

state

was ramshackle and

too large for the governmental technologies of the period, but the same, constantly striking

document

in resolutely local

we have examples

how

often

it

makes

its

presence

it is, all

felt

even

Throughout the ninth century,

collections.

of peasants appealing to public courts against their

lords, in Italy, Francia, Septimania

(modern Languedoc), over personal

status, rent levels or seized lands; they

do so

that they bothered to

at

all,

almost always

in a political

lost,

but the fact

system so obviously run

by the aristocracy, implies that they knew the system could

sometimes work as later.

far

it

was supposed

There was a constant

dialectic

patronage powers, and local

empire (royal power

fell

and such cases are much rarer

to,

between the

state,

with

its

immense

throughout almost the whole

societies,

back only

at least

at the edges, like eastern Bavaria,

Spoleto or Catalonia). Local powers had to pay attention to kings, and accept their political guidelines, including whatever ideological pro-

grammes they had, not no means did

all

least

because kings were also dangerous, and by

the things their

own programmes

enjoined.

We

shall

explore these contradictions, and their ironies, further in this chapter

and the next.

Charlemagne died emperor by

in

814, and Louis the Pious,

his father the year before, his

himself as a

new broom, and summarily

in

been crowned

immediately marched north to

Aachen from

sub-kingdom

who had

Aquitaine to take over.

He

represented

expelled his sisters, led by

Bertha, from the palace, where they had been acting as a sort of collective

queen for

their father since his last wife died in 800.

The imagery of

Louis’s early years stresses his moralism, as opposed to the sexual licence

of his father’s reign; Charlemagne had had a string of mistresses up to

and his daughters, whom he would not allow to marry, had lovers too - Bertha’s was the court scholar Angilbert, by whom she was his death,

the

mother of the historian Nithard. Louis’s own sex

an adult, was

in fact as far as

we know

life,

once he became

restricted to the

marriage bed,

unlike most male Carolingians, but his criticism of the sexual immorality

of the palace (the ideal moral centre of the polity, thus very vulnerable to such criticism, as

we

shall see in the

next chapter) was a standard

part of ninth-century political rhetoric, and Louis’s

and

own court in the

830s. Louis

would be applied back

was committed

his first substantial political initiative

392

to

to monastic reform,

was two reform councils

at

THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 751-887 Aachen

extended

how

816-17, which revised the Rule of Benedict of Nursia and

in it

to

all

the monasteries of the empire. In

would be divided

the empire

at his

817 he also set out death between his three sons,

which excluded from the succession Bernard, son of

who was

his brother Pippin,

already king of Italy (812-17); Bernard unsurprisingly re-

volted, with the support of not a

few Frankish magnates (including

Theodulf of Orleans), but, as we have seen,

818 and condemned to death, but, following the pattern, this sentence

was commuted

He was tried in common Carolingian

failed.

to blinding,

from which however

he died anyway. After 818, Louis understandably had

and the next decade can be seen confidence.

Wars were

little

opposition for some time,

as the apogee of Carolingian self-

now, and the emperor’s attention

small-scale by

was focused on an elaborate and complex court

marked by regular embassies from

Aachen,

different neighbours, another dense

(many of them

set of capitularies

politics in

collected by Ansegis in 827),

and

an administrative reordering under the arch-chancellor Helisachar (814-30),

who had come

with Louis from Aquitaine, and the arch-

chaplain Hilduin, abbot of Saint-Denis and four other monasteries

(819-30). The emperor’s control of court ritual was marked above

by

his decision in the

822 general assembly at Attigny to perform

penance for the death of Bernard, imitating Theodosius

I’s

all

a public

penance of

390, according to one of his biographers. At the same time, he called

back the (male)

and possible

was

relatives he

rivals

had exiled from court, notably

his cousins

Adalard and Wala; Carolingian family reconciliation

to be complete.

The calm of

the 820s was, however, broken abruptly in 829-30.

Court factions were

crystallizing around,

on the one

side, Louis’s oldest

son Lothar (817-55), already emperor (since 824) but with a

and, on the other, Louis’s second wife Judith

remit confined to

Italy,

and her family.

828 Lothar’s father-in-law

his associate

In

political

Matfrid of Orleans had

Hugh count

of Tours and

lost their offices. In

829 Bernard

of Septimania, count of Barcelona, was brought in as chamberlain, an office traditionally very close to the

queen, and was for a few months

regarded as ‘second to the king’; he was (for unclear reasons) a highly controversial figure, however, and by 830

was accused of adultery with

Judith. Lothar gained the support of his brothers Pippin king of Aquitaine (817-38)

and Louis king of Bavaria (817-76)

393

to set in

motion

in

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

PO

S

T- CARO LI N GIAN

WEST, 75O-IOOO

April 830 a quiet coup, significantly also supported by the old guard of the court, Helisachar, Hilduin

and Wala. Bernard

and Judith was

fled

temporarily exiled, until Louis the Pious regained control in October

and brought Judith (but not Bernard) back. and much the same occurred;

this time, the

an army to meet Lothar and

emperor Louis marched with

who were

his brothers,

At the meeting-point,

Gregory IV,

in Alsace.

Lies’, Louis’s

army melted away,

in

In 833 tensions rose again,

joined by Pope

later called the ‘Field of

joining Lothar,

and Louis was deposed

favour of Lothar. This time his public penance was not voluntary; the

do was refuse to take monastic vows when he was confined Saint-Denis. But, as in 830, Lothar and his brothers fell out - Lothar,

best he could in

like his father,

was too

clearly

committed to being the dominant Carolin-

gian - and Louis was restored in 834. at

Metz

in 835,

He was

ceremonially re-crowned

and re-established himself, confining Lothar

to Italy

on any of Lothar’s

again, though Louis did not take violent revenge

supporters (they merely lost their lands and offices north of the Alps,

and some of them, such remained

as Hilduin,

in control until his death in 840.

The events of 830-34 imperial government and lands.

soon got them back). Louis then

They have

certainly greatly disrupted the balances of

the patronage networks of the Carolingian

also been typically seen until very recently as a sign

of imminent Carolingian breakdown, perhaps fuelled by aristocratic hostility,

and

also as a sign of the

weakness of Louis

‘the Pious’ himself.

Louis was not, however, either pliable or accommodating, any more

than his sons were - hence, indeed, the fact that the uprising occurred twice;

and

sense of a his

aristocratic reactions to the crisis

new

opportunity. Einhard

(d.

show alarm

840), by

now

rather than any in retirement in

monastery of Seligenstadt near Frankfurt, although a supporter of

Louis (he preserved in his written in 830), prudently

letter collection a fell ill

very rude letter to Lothar,

during both

crisis

moments, but then

might be taken the wrong way by the kings, and

was worried that

this

wrote to friends

at court to ask

them

to ensure that his loyalty

was

recognized, by Louis the Pious, but also by Louis of Bavaria (whose

power-base was close to Seligenstadt), and even by Lothar; one a

dependant

in

833 asks him to give the ‘customary

arily victorious Lothar,

and to report back on

gifts’

how

letter to

to the tempor-

Lothar received

them. Einhard was, thanks to his long-standing palace connections, a

major local patron and

political intermediary,

394

and

it is

clear in his letters

THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 751-887 of these years

how much

mediation would need to be done

in a

period

of sharp political swings, for the kings could and did remove the ben-

than fully loyal. So Einhard

efices of the less

833 wrote to a friend asking him to intercede with Lothar for a certain Frumold, who had in late

been given a benefice near Geneva by Charlemagne but was too travel to court

long

and commend himself

way from

again,

to the

new

ruler

ill

to

(Geneva was a

Seligenstadt; Einhard’s patronage stretched widely); or

around the same time, to another courtier who might, he hoped,

persuade Eothar to

let

an aristocrat and

his brother

hold benefices jointly

kingdoms of both Eothar and Eouis of Bavaria. That Einhard

in the

kept these

they were normal, and also, perhaps,

letters indicates that

successful: his

younger contemporary the poet Walahfrid Strabo

(d.

849)

wrote a prologue to Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne noting rather wryly

how well the author had kept ‘a certain remarkable and divinely inspired distance’

from the

himself, in fact,

crises of Louis’s reign.

who was

exiled

from

Louis of Bavaria in 839-42; Walahfrid

hard

it

was

thus doubly a witness to

to avoid trouble in the 830s. This

which magnates would

was not

how

a crisis period

easily seek to exploit.

probably best to see the

It is

monastery of Reichenau by

his is

This was unlike Walahfrid

crises of the

830s as a product of two

underlying problems, a struggle between court factions, and the normal tensions any ruling Carolingian

had with adult sons

itching to succeed.

This confluence was only exacerbated by arguments over theology and political ethics,

and the more mundane

fourth son, Charles, in 823,

who would

into the partitioned empire (he

fact that Judith gave Louis a

have to be

was given Alemannia

fitted

somewhere

in 829, a politically

tangential area, but in a significant year - Nithard later thought that this

was the excuse

that Louis’s father

Louis’s

for Lothar’s first rebellion).

Charlemagne managed

It

has at least to be said

his sons better,

and so did

own sons: Lothar, Louis and Charles each weathered the rivalries

of their adult sons without ever losing the initiative. Misjudgements in the crucial years around

830 seem

to have

marred Louis the Pious’s

standard toughness. After Louis’s death in 840, however, to see

how

his heirs fell into civil war. Pippin of

it is

not hard

Aquitaine had died in

838, allowing Louis to substitute Charles as his heir in the western part of the empire (at the expense of Pippin’s son Pippin the Younger), which

ought to have made things

easier;

German’, as historians from

but Charles ‘the Bald’ and Louis ‘the

now on 395

call

them, were not at

all

inclined

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

P

O S T- C AR O LI N G AN WEST, 75O-IOOO I

to let Lothar have the leading role

because of this that

civil

which he regarded

war ensued

in

841-2.

as his right.

It

was

A bloody but inconclusive

841 scared the Frankish magnates, however another sign that they were by no means ready to exploit crisis - and

Fontenoy

battle at

in

Lothar, driven out of Aachen in 842, agreed peace; the empire was divided again, rather carefully, at the Treaty of Verdun in 843. Charles

took West Francia (including Aquitaine), Louis East Francia (including Bavaria, Alemannia and Saxony), Lothar the lands around Aachen,

Burgundy, Provence and estates

were

thickest,

Italy.

The Frankish heartland, where royal

was divided neatly

one

into three; each brother got

of the ‘royal landscapes’, and was in addition assigned the outlying

kingdom idiotic

which he was

in

on

a

map, much

the extent to project;

it

which

all

The

fact that the division looks

Merovingian divisions often had, underlines

three brothers

still

saw

the empire as a

common

perhaps also shows that none of the parties really thought

would be permanent. tion

as

strongest.

was permanent, however. The only major excep-

It

was the lands around Aachen, named Lotharingia

son Lothar

II

(855-69)

it

after Lothar’s

who inherited them, which were divided between

Charles and Louis at Lothar IPs death. (Aachen became marginalized after that, as a borderland; in the tenth century Lotharingia

into East Francia.)

the same.

all

Verdun should not be overstated

We know

that

was absorbed

as a dividing point

West Francia eventually became

‘France’,

East Erancia became ‘Germany’, but contemporaries did not, and the

imagery of a single Francia under several rulers survived 1000, as

The

we

shall see in

until after

Chapter 18.

division of the empire

was

a return to the

norms of

the sixth

and

seventh centuries, and was regarded as inevitable and indeed appropriate

by nearly everyone;

after

all,

Charles Martel and Pippin

divided their lands temporarily, and Charlemagne It

was

also a return to the bickering

III

had both

would have done

so.

and occasional warring of the

decades around 600. Lothar’s northern heartland around Aachen looks the quietest, though this

may

be because the two major continuators of

Royal Frankish Annals^ the Annals of Saint-Bertin and the Annals of Fulda, were written in Charles’s and Louis’s kingdoms respectively.

the

Louis the German, too, seems to have been in

full

control of East Erancia,

at least after his

bloody quelling of a peasants’

revolt, the Stellinga, in

Saxony

Louis spent his long reign (he died in 876) fighting

in 842.

on the eastern

frontier, particularly against the

396

Bohemians, and the

THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 751-887 increasingly powerful

Moravian

rulers Rastislav (846-70),

who was

captured and blinded by the Franks, and his successor Sviatopluk or

Zwentibald (870-94): these princes had expanded political

vacuum

in particular,

their

power

into the

that followed the collapse of the Avars. Zwentibald,

fought the Franks as an equal, and had considerable

influence over eastern Bavarian aristocrats by the mid-88os. But the

importance of the eastern frontier, and the traditional nature of the

campaigns

there,

allowed Louis to sustain a military effectiveness

focused on offensive war that had not been

by

one

his three sons in

level, for

very

little

of

857-73. East Francia was harder to

had been part of the

it

lacked good communications or west; Louis probably had

went

since Charlemagne’s

which he faced down successive

time. Hence, doubtless, the ease with revolts

known

little

cities

on

empire, so

it

except in the far south and far

Saxony,

direct control in still-peripheral

and

rarely

like

any Carolingian king, when he did go

there. All the

Roman

rule,

same, he ran placita there and did there,

justice,

most notably

in 852;

and, although he did not issue capitularies, and seems to have had a simpler administration than his brothers, his bishops, headed by the influential archbishops of

Mainz on

the Rhine

- a

Roman

city,

and

in

a Carolingian royal heartland - behaved just like other Carolingian ecclesiastical first

communities, holding councils and making law. (Louis’s

appointment to Mainz was indeed the

influential theologian

and

commentator Hraban Maur, 847-56.) This, plus Louis’s armies, made the East Erankish kingdom a still-functioning heir of that of biblical

Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. In Italy, too, Lothar’s son Louis

of the

kingdom (with

recorded

difficulty,

II

(840-75),

the imperial

and seems

title)

who was

in sole control

by 850, operated without an

to have been

effective ruler.

certainly a practitioner of Carolingian reform,

and

He was

as early as

enacted capitularies and conciliar legislation to combat abuses, the of an Italian sequence that

Angilberga

(d.

891),

would only end

an unusually

in 898.

influential

He and

850 first

his wife

queen, had a more

hands-on control over government than most Carolingians; Louis was secure

enough to promote Lombard

a century, alongside three or four

aristocrats for the first time in half

major families of the Reich saristokratie

(including his wife’s kin, the ‘Supponids’).

He was

clearly the heir of

kings like Liutprand, while also taking seriously his imperial letter to the

title;

in a

Byzantine emperor, he claimed to represent the whole

397

THE CAROLINGIAN AND Carolingian dynasty. Louis

P

II,

O S T - C AR O L I N G I AN WEST, 750-IOOO

uniquely

among

Carolingian rulers, could

take the risk of a long unbroken period (866-72) campaigning abroad,

who had

against the Arabs

taken Bari in southern

he took Bari

Italy;

back but was then imprisoned by Prince Adelchis of Benevento (853-78) in 871,

who had no

far south. This

was

reason to welcome Carolingian power stretching so

a humiliation for Louis,

- but he was

and he had

unopposed

north of

to counteract

it

too, then, the

norms of Carolingian power were not

still

to be re-crowned

in the

Italy.

Here,

yet under threat.

Charles the Bald faced by far the greatest problems out of the Carolingians of this period. This, plus the extensive documentation for his reign,

has meant that he

is

the best-studied later Carolingian, although he

also the least typical. For a start, his

was the only kingdom

848 and then intermittently

effectively until

843 with contested Aquitaine rather

who

another claimant. Pippin the Younger,

was

until his

in

death in about 864.

Secondly, he had to face the most systematic external attack, from

Viking raiders. The Vikings

in

Francia and England were mainly from

Denmark (Norwegian Vikings went mostly They were standard war-bands of an

to Scotland

and

Ireland).

on the

early medieval type,

scale

of early Anglo-Saxon armies, although they were never as large as

Frankish ones, even

when

they got bigger later in the century. They were

private enterprises, in that they were not under the control of the kings

of

Denmark

this

(at least,

upbraided them, and

is

what

the latter said

when

was plausible enough, given the

it

royal strength: see Chapter 20).

the Franks

limits

They were pagan, so were

on Danish

less inhibited

than Christians about sacking churches, major wealth depositories, to the particular horror of ecclesiastical writers. ships: this

was the big

difference

which was otherwise very run, far

up

from

similar, for

rivers into Francia, before

Major Viking

raids

began

in 834,

And

local Frankish border raiding,

it

allowed the Vikings to

as well as also

knowing

and a

as early as

more widely,

841 Dorestad was given

faithfully

much

knew Dorestad

his

of Frisia, and defended

well

was busy

in

Frisia after that as well,

in benefice

Danish royal family-member, and then to

Rorik controlled

and

with an attack on the Rhine port

that the Frankish political system

834. They attacked Dorestad and,

hit

any defence army arrived.

of Dorestad; ship-owners were also merchants, and

-

they were based on

by Lothar to Harald,

younger brother Rorik. it

for the Franks

more

than not, for most of the period 845-75. Almost certainly as

a result. Vikings

seldom came further up the Rhine to bother Lothar’s

398

THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 75I-887 and Louis the German’s heartlands, except

881-3.

for big raids in

Charles the Bald, however, had to face regular attacks on his long

and up the

coastline,

and Garonne, without

Seine, Loire

a break

841. Charles could never get rid of them; they were a permanent in his side.

from

wound

Vikings soon over-wintered at river-mouths as well. Charles

them

alternately fought

off

and bought them

off with tribute (the least

popular but most effective response); twice at the end of his reign he actually organized a general tax to

pay them. Most

effectively of

all,

perhaps, he fortified bridges over the Seine in 862 and the Loire in 873, to block their path.

into England,

The major Viking push for fifteen years

which eased the pressure on Francia a

years. But the Vikings never really

The aura the Bald,

this

865 was

in Charles’s last

went away.

of military failure, or at least

and

little

after

thus

crisis,

hung over Charles

must be one of the main reasons why he had greater

with his aristocracy than did his brothers and nephews.

difficulties

Charles’s anti-Lothar alliance with his brother Louis broke the 850s, and in 854 Louis the German’s son Louis the

down

in

Younger went

to Aquitaine to test out the seriousness of invitations to his father by

Aquitanian aristocrats. disaffection

It

was much stronger

was a bad period

(it

and Pippin the Younger had reappeared magnates, lay and

ecclesiastical,

German

still

in.

Charles

and most of

showed

who was from

least

and Louis

the uncertainties Charles

866),

in terms of Vikings,

in Aquitaine),

had support, not

his other bishops,

then, but by 858

were prepared to

had

‘the

and numerous

invite

Louis the

from Hincmar of Reims

retreated; but the episode

to face.

which included the powerful Robert (d.

weak

turned out to be

The pro-Louis group,

Strong’, count of

Anjou

a major Rhineland imperial aristocratic family,

the ‘Rupertines’ or ‘Robertines’, gave in,

and retained

their honores.

Charles did not have to face a revolt like this again, but he had to negotiate with critical aristocrats on other occasions too, such as when, at the

end of

his reign,

he occupied Italy (and took the imperial

after the death of the son-less Louis

II

in 875,

title)

while simultaneously

attacking in 876 - and losing - against Louis the Younger (876-82),

who had succeeded his father in most of East Francia.

Charles was trying

to assert himself as the

dominant Carolingian, without securing

Hincmar was

and several of Charles’s magnates thought he was

furious,

his base.

over-stretching himself. But Charles died in 877, and normal politics

resumed.

399

THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO S T- C AR O LI N G AN WEST, 75O-IOOO I

Charles did remain hegemonic over his aristocracy.

power-bases of

his

most useful

fideles,

new name

who was his mainstay of support in the far south after who was made

(d.

built

up the

such as Robert of Anjou, at least

before 858, or Bernard marquis of Gothia, a

he patronized Boso

He

for Septimania,

865. In particular,

887), brother of Charles’s second wife Richildis,

chamberlain of

sub-kingdom of Aquitaine

in

son Louis ‘the Stammerer’ in his

his

new

872, as well as count of Bourges and

Vienne, and in 876 Charles’s viceroy in Italy and husband of Louis

II’s

only daughter, Ermingard. But he also removed honores from magnates at will,

and moved them around; when Robert died

Vikings, his son

Odo

in battle against the

did not inherit Anjou, and lost others of Robert’s

counties in 868 - he did not return to royal favour until 882,

became count of

Bernard of Gothia,

Paris. Similarly,

who

when he

rebelled in

878 against Louis the Stammerer (king of West Francia 877-9), was

summarily stripped of

his lands

and

offices,

and never got them back.

Charles was generous with land; he gave out far more estates in

full

property than did other Carolingians, not just benefices; but he took

them back

as well with

some

ease.

Charles also threw himself into the complexities of Carolingian correctio

and Carolingian

as another

ritual.

Aachen, including

ceremonial, as

He its

developed his palace of Compiegne buildings; he created

when he hosted a month-long synod

at

some

Ponthion

original in

June-

July 876, after his imperial coronation, wearing Frankish costume at the start

but Byzantine costume plus a crown at the end. Imperial echoes

were already

visible in the

864 Edict of

Pitres,

most substantial of his many

capitularies, the

which draws substantially on the Theodosian Code

(as well as, explicitly,

on Ansegis). Charles was

trative refinement as

was

as concerned for adminis-

his father; Pitres, for

example, also involved

which coin-hoards show to have been

a coinage reform,

implemented. His missi

still

ran as in Charlemagne’s day.

effectively

And

Charles

had a court almost

as full of intellectuals as Charlemagne’s, including

Hincmar

who wrote much

at

hand

of Reims,

for advice,

wanted or not,

of his legislation and

as well as writing

was always

some of the longest

and twenty years of the Annals of Saint-Bertin. The core of Charles’s ruling was not undermined, for all political tracts of his generation,

his military difficulties;

and

his

ambition as a reformer was more elab-

orate than any other Carolingian after 840. Even Charles the Bald, then, despite

many

problems, remained on top of his kingdom in most

400

THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 751-887 respects, in different

but with a similar

ways from Louis the German and Louis

result.

The Carolingian

project

was

still

II

in

of Italy,

operation

into the late 870s.

But

it

five

kingdoms, with

did not last a decade more. In

by

the empire broke

six or seven claimants, only

male-line Carolingian. This as a takeover

887-8

was seen

as

one of

up into

whom

was a

an end even by contemporaries,

reguli, ‘kinglets’, as the

Annals of Fulda put

it.

His-

torians have understandably sought long-term explanations for

mostly in the

‘rise’

and growing autonomy of major

it,

aristocratic families,

was these who provided the new kings of 888, the ‘Robertine’ Odo of Paris in West Francia, the ‘Widonid’ Guy of Spoleto in West Francia

for

it

and then

Italy,

Boso’s son Louis in Provence, the ‘Unruoching’ Berengar

of Friuli in Italy, and the ‘Welf’ Rudolf, from

Queen

Judith’s family, in

Burgundy. All these were however families very close to the Caro-

by marriage

lingians, linked

in the last three cases (Louis

and Berengar

had Carolingian mothers). Only one of them, too, had any serious track record of disloyalty: Boso, tradition in lasted until

887-8

What

broke with the whole Carolingian

879 and declared himself king in the Rhone valley (he only 882 as king, for all the Carolingians combined against him).

The others show no the

who

power on

signs of seeking

crisis itself,

their

own

which forced them onto the centre

account until stage.

destroyed Carolingian power was simply genealogy. There had

always been too

many

division the family

Carolingians, given the presumption of political

had inherited from the Merovingian

past. Rulers

had

developed methods of excluding minor branches from succession, either

by force

(as

with Carloman

Bernard) or by agreement to be

major players

son Drogo, or Pippin of

with Adalard and Wala,

in their cousin’s court, or

Pippin, count of Beauvais, crat; his heirs

(as

I’s

who

Italy’s

son

who were content

Bernard of

Italy’s

son

effectively turned into a regional aristo-

were the central medieval counts of Champagne), or

through a growing concern to exclude illegitimate children. Even then, there were

still

a large

number

of them; as late as 870 there were eight

legitimate adult male Carolingians, kings. In 885, however, there

all

kings or ambitious to

become

was only one. None of Lothar’s sons had

legitimate male heirs; nor did Louis the German’s; Charles the Bald’s

son Louis had three, but two were dead by 884 and the third, Charles ‘the Simple’,

born posthumously, was only eight

401

in 887.

One by

one, as

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

P O ST- C ARO LI N G I AN

the Carolingians died in the 8 80s, Louis the

WEST, 75O-IOOO

German’s

son

last surviving

Charles ‘the Fat’, king of Alemannia (876-87, emperor 881) inherited

kingdoms,

their

until

he reunited the whole empire in 884 for the

first

time since 840. Charles the Fat has had a bad press. This

is

and was linked to some

over-pragmatic showings against the Vikings, as

when Odo

of Paris

fought off a big siege in 885-6, but Charles paid them to go away;

and

coloured above

is

illegitimate

by hindsight, for he was overthrown by

all

nephew Arnulf

few weeks before

in 887, a

his

his death in 888.

Charles was more able than this implies. But everybody must have

known

world was

that the

likely to

change, for Charles was

and

ill,

himself had only an illegitimate son, Bernard. (Boso indeed must have seen

it

coming

in 879:

predictable.) Lothar

most of these genealogical problems were by then

II

had spent most of

son Hugh, and

his illegitimate

Charles the Fat had no his legal heir.

failing, as

rivals,

Hugh, who had

Charles and blinded in 885;

his reign trying to legitimate

we

shall see in the

but even he could not

make Bernard

visible royal ambitions,

was caught by

and

this,

also Arnulf ’s succession,

that Bernard could well have tried to succeed

against Arnulf, and rules fast

enough

to

was

killed, in 891),

make

anyway

illegitimate sons

previously been kept

(he did rebel

normal royal

so that he could remarry and aim for legitimate sons;

who had

means

but Charles did not change the

he tried in 887 to divorce his wife Richgard, as Lothar

Arnulf,

next chapter;

away from

II

heirs. Instead,

had

it

central

also tried,

was then

that

power on

the

Carinthian borderlands of eastern Bavaria, staged his coup and took the East Frankish throne. This coup

made the decisions of the most powerful

aristocrats of the other sections of the empire easier; Arnulf

standing in West Francia, Burgundy and

Italy,

had some

but his genealogical claims

did not seem so strong to most political actors outside the eastern

kingdom, and someone had to

rule.

When

they did, they varied in their

most of the Carolingian

effectiveness; but they did not use

political

practices discussed in this chapter.

More important than

the

‘rise’

of an aristocracy

regionalization. This, paradoxically,

Kings could confiscate benefices and feared this.

We

840s

clearer, for the

is still

saw

this in

was

was

its

growing

a reflection of royal power.

offices,

honores, and aristocrats

Einhard’s letters in the 830s; Nithard in the

whole of 840-41 was a phoney war

in

which

Lothar and Charles prowled around each other trying to tempt followers

402

THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 75I-887 frora each other by promises, threats cess,

and an appearance of future suc-

which would be convincing enough

to persuade worried aristocrats

to tolerate losing honores temporarily in order to gain

move

the German’s failed structured.

into Charles’s

Each king who did

would bring

all

was usually

lands of the other. full

hoped

in

later.

Louis

858 was similarly change that

for a catalytic

a rival’s followers running in, as at the Field of Lies in

833; this seldom happened (887 instead

this

kingdom

more

the only parallel), so

is

what happened

that the followers of one king lost honores in the

They were more

keep the land they held in

likely to

property, as Matfrid of Orleans did in the case of his family land in

when he followed Lothar to Italy in 834, or as a group of aristocrats in East Francia did in 861 when Louis the German abruptly

northern Francia

expelled

them from power. This land could remain very widely spread,

as in the case of the ‘Lfnruoching’ Everard

marquis of

father of Berengar, future king of Italy, 888-924),

made with a

book

Italy

his wife Gisela, disposes

collection

and

between

Friuli in Italy (the

whose

his sons

will of

863-4,

and daughters of

rich treasures, but also estates stretching

up through Alemannia to what

is

now

from

Belgium. Such wide spreads

favoured support for a single political system, as has already been noted for the ‘Widonids’. But Everard

and Gisela gave

at least their

younger

sons more geographically restricted territories; they also included explicit provisions for

what might happen

if

made

political tension

necessary to divide this land up further. The family regionalized a result; Berengar’s brother

Rudolf

(d.

it

itself as

892) spent his career, not in

Italy,

but in Artois and on the English Channel. Similarly, the ‘Welfs’, whose lands lay both in Alemannia and in Burgundy, had to choose between

Charles and Louis in 858;

it

may

who

possibly be that those

chose

Charles kept some of their properties in East Francia, but henceforth their careers

became

would be

entirely restricted to

totally separate

stayed with Louis.

The

from that of

their brothers

honores and their properties

as they

had been

smaller, this

since

and cousins who

in

it

was

is

to say,

sensible to have both

one kingdom, not widely scattered

Charlemagne’s time. As kingdoms became

would become

Aristocrats always

their history

tensions between the Carolingians, that

persuaded prudent imperial aristocrats that their

Burgundy, and

still

truer.

wanted to leave

all their

power-bases -

properties, benefices, rights over monasteries, counties

fully

- to

owned

their sons.

This was only assured for their properties, but already in Charlemagne’s

403

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

P O ST- C ARO LI N G

I

AN WEST, 75O-IOOO

time a loyal aristocrat could assume that his son might well inherit his

The county of

county.

example, was probably held by a single

Paris, for

family between the 750s and the 850s;. kings restricted themselves to

choosing which heir took

it

moved counts around more than all

The sons of Louis

over.

the Pious actually

and grandfather had, but

their father

the Carolingians recognized that the sons of counts should normally

get a county

contracted

it

somewhere^ and

as the

might well be that

this

geography of practical

might be

politics

in or near their father’s

county or counties. The sons of counts sometimes actually feuded against

men who were given their father’s counties,

as

happened on the Bavarian

eastern frontier in 882-4, admittedly a marginal area.

The memory of former power

lingered too;

of his father’s Loire counties back in 886, a father’s death

full

- and very usefully timed, given

and somewhat wild

Odo

of Paris got

some

twenty years after his

his takeover of the

West

Frankish throne in 888. This further aided the process of regionalization.

Odo’s father Robert had moved without

difficulty

from the Rhineland

when long-distance career moves were still move to Burgundy in 858 was more controversial,

to the Loire in the 840s,

normal, but the ‘Welf’

and

after that

such

shifts

were

rare, or else resented as the irruptions of

outsiders. (Perhaps only Boso,

Rhone

valley

brother,

and

Italy, is a

and anyway

who moved from

Lotharingia to the

counter-example, but he was a queen’s

a mould-breaker in other

ways

too.)

When Charles

the Fat inherited seven separate kingdoms, separate political

networks

visibly

continued to operate in most or

would have taken

a Charles Martel-style

the Fat did not have time for that. in 888.

to unify them,

They went

make

that break-up

possible, once the Carolingians died off.

was attached only

underrated, for a

of them; by

now,

it

and Charles

their separate

ways again

These were, genuinely, long-term causes for the break-up of the

empire. They did not

identity

war

all

power

new

its

more

By

likely,

but they

made

it

then, a sense of empire-wide

to the Carolingian family (and, not to be

army-muster). But aristocratic networks were prepared

regionalized politics; which

which faced them now.

404

was

fortunate, for

it

was

this

and

Intellectuals

Politics

Early in the morning in late January 828, Einhard met Hilduin of Saint-Denis sitting outside Louis the Pious’s bedchamber in Aachen,

waiting for the emperor to get up. This was Hilduin’s job; as imperial arch-chaplain, he formally controlled access to Louis. But Einhard had

come

to see Hilduin.

They chatted while looking out of the high window

into the rest of the palace, perhaps the

window which Notker

880s would claim that Charlemagne had

built so that

was going on everywhere

(see

in the

he could see what

above. Chapter 10). Einhard had a bone

to pick with Hilduin, however.

Hilduin had in 826 initiated a fashion for buying

relics

from Rome,

acquiring the body of St Sebastian for one of his monasteries, Saint-

Medard

at Soissons. In

a professional thief

sent his

Peter

own

from

and

827 Einhard had imitated him, with the help of dealer, the

Roman deacon Deusdona, and had

notary Ratleig to steal the bodies of Sts Marcellinus and

their

tomb on

the Via Labicana outside

Rome and

them north. After Ratleig crossed the Alps, he no longer had

bring

to hide

them, and in a public procession, in front of crowds of bystanders, he

brought them to central Germany, where most of Einhard’s properties

He took them to their destined church in Einhard’s planned retirement home of Michelstadt in the Odenwald forest; but the saints were.

did not like

it

there,

and demanded

in

dreams that they be transferred

to Einhard’s other church at Seligenstadt near Erankfurt,

which Einhard

when he did, and had continued numbers, up to when Einhard wrote his

duly arranged. Healing miracles began

without a break, often in great account of these events

in late 830.

had gone to Rome with St Marcellinus;

But Hilduin’s servant Hunus,

Ratleig,

who

had stolen from him some of

and when Einhard met Hilduin the rumour had already

spread that Hilduin had both bodies at Saint-Medard. The rumour was

405

THE CAROLINGIAN AND almost worse than the

own

P

O S T- C AR O LI N G I AN WEST, 75O-IOOO

fact, for

Einhard’s reputation and that of his

Einhard had to get them back. Hilduin admitted he had

relics;

Marcellinus, rather grudgingly (one must note that Einhard was writing

account after Hilduin’s

this

fall

from power

October 830). The

in

relics

were brought from Soissons to Aachen, and Einhard received them

in

April 828. There, they certainly reversed the rumours, for, in a sense

now in the centre

of the empire;

they were (Einhard says) met by crowds, and Louis and

Queen Judith

thanks to Hilduin, Einhard’s

relics

were

themselves visited them and gave them

continued after Einhard rejoined both the end of the year. Einhard

long route

home

made

Miracles began again, and

gifts.

the

to his fellow saint.

sets of relics at Seligenstadt at

most of

Soon

it;

Marcellinus took a

after Easter, as

Einhard

happily records, his friend the palace librarian Gerward was staying outside town, and was told the palace news: ‘At present the courtiers

and miracles happening

are mostly talking about the signs

house by means of the saints points of his

.

.

.’

It

in

Einhard’s

must have been one of the high

life.

This account foregrounds the importance of the palace, the import-

ance of public

ritual,

and the importance of

intellectuals, in the Carolin-

gian political world, for Einhard was the biographer of Charlemagne

and had been

a

mainstay of court society for three decades by now, and

Hilduin was no minor scholar: in 828 he had just painstakingly translated a

Greek

the Byzantine

we

shall

works of

St

Dionysios (that

emperor Michael

II

to Louis, into Latin. In this chapter

text, the

look at these three issues

in turn,

is,

and then

St Denis), sent

at

some of

by

their

implications.

The royal or imperial the core political

and

Aachen or elsewhere, was centre of the Carolingian lands, a whirl of activity palace, whether at

noise, as Paschasius Radbert’s Life of

Every political actor had to go there case

was

this

if

called,

which

a

Hincmar’s

Merovingian tradition writ (or Adalard’s)

officials,

to the hunters

had to come

On

As usual with the Carolingians, large,

(in

and also systematized.

the Organization of the Palace can

headed by the arch-chaplain

and the arch-chancellor

in Einhard’s

by the arch-chaplain or the count of the palace

the king needed to get involved.

was

palace

when

often, just as every victim seeking royal justice

there, to be interrogated

to see

Adalard of Corbie complains.

(in

charge of church

charge of the writing

list

the

affairs)

office), in order,

down

and the falconer, and there are consistent indications that

406

INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS this

was

a real hierarchy

- although

it

could always be modified, as

Bernard of Septimania, as chamberlain

in

829-30

when

charge of the

(in

palace commissariat under the queen, and fourth-ranking

official,

according to Hincmar/Adalard) was seen as ‘second to the king’ after Louis. Notker, although he never

went to

court, could imagine that the

palace hierarchy was preserved in dining etiquette, with Charlemagne served by dukes, dukes served by counts and aristocrats, and so on

through court scholars, and greater and certainly

had an ever-changing

lesser palace officials.

etiquette of behaviour,

knowing. And

down

The court

which no aspiring

had an organized, explicit, patronage network. Hincmar/Adalard even supposed - certainly overschematically - that officials were deliberately appointed from different politician could risk not

regions, so that everyone could use a

it

kinsman or

their locality to facilitate access to the palace.

the death of a bishop,

all

someone from

at least

Notker imagined

that, at

names forward

aspiring applicants put their

through those closest to the emperor. Einhard, although never a palace official in a formal sense, routinely acted as a patron,

(it

seems)

and he

is

seen in his letters requesting the kings, either directly or through current

approve the appointment of an archbishop or an abbot,

office-holders, to

or the renewal of a benefice, or simply to hear an appeal. This was a

competitive and often unscrupulous world of favours, structured by court procedures.

The palace was thus hub. But after

it

was

780 or

so,

also the

a worldly (and corrupt,

priest

vicious) political

moral centre of the empire, particularly once,

Charlemagne embraced the task of moral

was not chance that the senior Carolingian palace affairs: these

and

correctio.

It

handled church

official

were the court’s special concern. Louis the Pious was a

even more than he was a king, at least in that he promoted religious

learning, according to one of his biographers. penitential fasting at court, as

which he extended

we saw

Charlemagne

at the start of the last chapter,

to the entire empire in

805 to combat a famine; Louis

did the same in 823 in the face of dangerous portents.

century Irish tract

On

instituted

the Twelve Abuses of the

World

The seventh-

circulated very

widely in Carolingian Europe, and Abuse 9, ‘the unjust king’, argues that if kings were oppressive and unjust, and if they did not defend the church, then famine, invasion and ruin would follow.

A

succession of

ninth-century writers composed treatises for kings on just rule, culminating in Hincmar’s

On

the Person

and Ministry of the King, and most of 407

THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST, 75O-IOOO them quoted Abuse

They held

own and

9, alongside, at great length, the

that the king should start with controlling himself

and

his

behaviour, before he could properly govern others, through law its

enforcement. The whole empire was at risk

king/emperor could appoint his bishops in the

if

he did not. The

was never contested

(this right

Carolingian period), but they, conversely, were responsible for

and that included royal

policing the moral world,

and

Old Testament.

actions, both private

public. Bishops often took this role very seriously, particularly in

829-34 and

the crisis years of

public

The

war period of 840-43, when the

good was obviously threatened. political

contradiction.

much

the civil

the

and the moral

The

roles of the palace did not

and the

secular

spiritual

same way. Einhard regarded same way

spiritual patrons in just the

Sts

have to be

in

could be seen to work in

Marcellinus and Peter as his

as the

emperors were

patrons, and his heartbreak over the death of his wife

Imma

his secular

836 was

in

only worsened by the realization that his spiritual patrons had failed

him, in not answering his prayers. Thus at moments of crisis the Carolingian world could lay

itself

personal morality,

these panics centred

who (as

on queenly

ran his palace in his

was Charlemagne

Bernard

in

political

permanent ambiguity of female power and the

profile of queens, the

new emphasis on

open to moral panics. Given the high

it is

not surprising that

sexuality.

last years,

many

Charlemagne’s daughters,

were accused of fornication

himself). Judith

of

in

814

was accused of adultery with

830, an accusation which recurs in every account of the

period, favourable or hostile -

it

must have been

a very high-profile

charge - and which was theorized by Paschasius Radbert in the 850s as

marking a

total reversal of the right order of the world, a sign

that Louis the Pious,

govern. Lothar

II

who

above

could not control his palace, was not

fit

all

to

accused his wife Theutberga of sodomy and incest (see

below); Charles the Fat his wife Richgard of adultery with, again, his principal counsellor. Bishop Liutward of Vercelli; Arnulf’s wife

was accused of adultery doubtless

too.

queens was under threat:

them

it

were children

less in

first,

was

to criticism.

queen-mothers was rulers

would be wrong

except the

all false

that exposed

It

Uota

to see these accusations,

as signs that the political role of

their high profile, not their

The Merovingian

weakness,

tradition of powerful

evidence in the Carolingian period, for few

at their accession (there

would be more of them

the late tenth century); but Carolingian queens were

408

in

more prominent

INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS during their husbands’ been.

lives

Conversely, except

than their Merovingian predecessors had

when

rulers

themselves sought

(perhaps

unwisely) to use queenly impurity as an excuse for divorce,

all

these

accusations had as their primary target, not the queen but the king/

emperor, whose capacities as a corrector of his people were thus cruelly exposed. Control, or the appearance of control, was necessary at

all

times.

Both harmony and tension were mediated by elaborate

whether regular

(as

with the ceremonial associated with assemblies or

Easter celebrations), or specific to the occasion. Einhard

brought

his saints to Seligenstadt

when he

first

prepared ‘those things that ritual

stipulates for the reception of saints’ bodies’,

masses.

rituals,

and then performed two

When he got St Marcellinus back from Hilduin, the latter organ-

ized a choir to chant an antiphon; Einhard’s party then proceeded,

chanting, to his

own

chapel,

which attracted

a large crowd;

when he

joined the bodies again in Seligenstadt, he again prepared the process

own

carefully.

According to

his

for ritual

was always

means of

make

sure that

were properly things into kingliness

it.

a

account, that

One

and

of the

and

this

is

important:

self-presentation (Einhard

no one could doubt the treated),

is,

saints

were

his

wanted

to

and that they

different observers could read different

most elaborate secular

and royal order was regular hunting;

rituals that expressed it

recurs with almost

obsessive frequency in the annals of Louis the Pious’s reign, for example, especially after

major events, and

Einhard to have gone hunting 828.

It is

just after

interesting, then, that the

hunts in 830-34;

it

is

it is

significant that Louis

he had seen the

is

said

by

latter’s relics in

Annals of Saint-Bertin do not mention

not that Louis did not hunt then (one of his

biographers explicitly says he did in 831 and 834), but rather that a ritual of order did crisis,

not seem appropriate to the annalist in a period of

even though Louis was presumably himself trying to present 831,

for example, as business as usual. Louis’s

were particularly prone to be read

822 and 833, ways. In 822 at Attigny

two penances,

in different

in

he performed a voluntary penance whose orchestration he controlled, to cauterize the

wound

caused by the death of Bernard of

Italy;

but did

end the matter? In 833 Bernard’s death was as fresh as ever the indictment proposed by Lothar’s bishops; it is as if Attigny had

this really

in

not occurred. Paschasius Radbert, for his part, in his Life of Adalard,

could not ignore Attigny, for

it

had brought Adalard back to court.

409

THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST, 750-IOOO

how

but he contested

contemplated

his willingness

had gone out on

and perceived

‘all

Louis

his unwillingness.’

a limb in 822, probably with success at the time, but

hindsight and hostility could see

it

Louis’s deposition penance in 833.

was written up

Louis really was:

in control of the ritual

and

as failure,

The

as leading directly to

an interesting

latter, in

reversal,

by Louis’s enemies, but as forced and

as voluntary

therefore invalid by his friends.

Every major event

Carolingian period, whether involving ritual

in the

make

or not, was written up by writers to

political points of this type;

they either upheld or subverted the correct order of the empire. This

means

that

‘really’

happened. But what

was

particularly

by every

is

abundantly clear

that the ninth century

is

- the public sphere, one Carolingians used the word publicus extensively) - was

which the ceremonial

a period in

could say (the

wide and important.

political actor,

It

terrain

was

terrain

which had to be claimed

even though he (or she) could not fully control

the perceptions of the audience of each ritual act, given that the audience

what

often enough, impossible to enter in detail into

it is,

who would

ultimately determine whether the act

was

it

worked

properly or not. There always had to be a process of negotiation. This is

why,

was

for example, Charles the Bald at the

876 Ponthion synod, which ended the proceedings

largely devoted to ecclesiastical court cases,

with an elaborate procedure intended to fact that

he was

crown, as fetch

now

we saw

Queen

the emperor: he

make

real to the

Franks the

wore Byzantine costume and a

in the previous chapter, then

papal legates went to

own crown, and

then the same legates

Richildis with her

performed the closing

liturgy.

Did

this

work? Hincmar, who wrote

this

up for the Annals of Saint-Bertin^ was greatly hostile to most of the decisions of the synod, but he was clearly impressed by the ritual: he

was himself the writer of elaborate coronation

rituals,

understand the internal structure and the roots of annalist,

anyway opposed

where much

less

to Charles,

them

this one.

and also writing

The Fulda

in East Francia,

was known about the Byzantine empire, dismissed

Charles’s ‘Greek customs’ in

who were

and he could

two

lines;

but

it

was men

like

Hincmar

Charles’s intended audience, not the Frankish East,

this ritual

had

and

for

a considerable success.

This large and moralized political arena was also populated by lectuals, at least three generations of

patronize them in the 780s.

It is this

them

after

group of

410

(in

intel-

Charlemagne began to nearly every case)

men

INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS which

really characterizes the Carolingian period as different

from

its

predecessors; in other respects, the politico-cultural world of the sixth to early eighth centuries

was

still

fully operative.

The importance of

intellectuals for the political practice of the ninth-century

great as or greater than the ninth century

it

would ever be again

matched the French Revolution

intellectual political activity. This did not better, of course,

but

self- justifications

for

To have had an

in the

it

make

West was

as

Middle Ages, and

as a focus for collective political actors

behave

greatly increased the range of the excuses

and

bad behaviour, which also mark out the period.

education was, simply, enough for prominence.

It is

not

that aristocrats did not sneer at the low-born, as with Louis the Pious’s

biographer Thegan’s highly coloured hostility to Archbishop Ebbo of

Reims

for his servile birth

who was compared

(Thegan claims), or with Liutward of Vercelli,

to the biblical villain

both ended their

annalists;

Haman

by one of the Fulda

political careers in disgrace,

too - Ebbo was

one of the few people to face punishment for having supported Eothar in

833-4. Neither of

and

intelligence,

these, all the same,

was a major

writer.

Education

however, linked Einhard and the poet and

liturgist

Walahfrid Strabo, whose backgrounds were relatively undistinguished, with genuine aristocrats such as Hraban Maur, Hincmar, or the theologian Gottschalk

(d.

c.

Hincmar’s enemy), as well

869: Walahfrid’s friend, but Hraban’s and as,

of course, incomers from England, Ireland

or Spain, with no roots in the Frankish lands, from Alcuin and Theodulf at the start of the Carolingian period to the theologian (d. c.

John the Scot

877) at the end.

Part of this sense of collectivity derived from being educated together, at

Aachen

itself

or Tours or Corbie or

St.

Callen or Fulda (where

Einhard, Hraban, Walahfrid and Cottschalk had

any of two dozen other active

centres.

all

been trained) or

Much of it, however, was

because

such writers had a communality of knowledge, of the Bible, canon law, Virgil,

Augustine, Gregory the Great, Isidore, Bede, and the rest of the

knew what they were each talking about. And their peers did too; as we have seen, aristocrats

Eatin church fathers: they

they could assume that

had to be

literate to

be able to operate politically in this period. Hincmar

could write highly erudite texts for Charles the Bald and expect him to pick up the allusions; Charles sought books on his as

when Eupus abbot of Ferrieres

sent

him

a

(d.

own

behalf as well,

862), one of his most loyal scholars,

sermon of Augustine against perjury. Aristocrats had libraries;

THE CAROLINGIAN AND Marquis Everard of taries, several

for him),

two or

P

O S T- C A R O L I N G I AN WEST, 75O-IOOO

863-4

Friuli’s

will

had

bibles, biblical

commen-

law books (including, probably, one Lupus had collected

works by Vegetius, Augustine and

three histories,

Isidore, several saints’ lives,

and more. Most of these books were not ninth-

century texts, but they attest to the same interests that our ninth-century writers demonstrably had. There

which extended

a long

was

way beyond

a

common intellectual community,

the writers of the period.

This community could sustain some quite elaborate theoretical interventions. Late in 828 Louis the Pious called four church councils for the

following year, in Mainz, Paris, Lyon and Toulouse, to discuss the ‘anger of God’ -

some

how

unspecified natural disaster - arid

he could be

placated. According to Paschasius Radbert’s Epitaph of Arsenius (an

often obscure biography, in dialogue form, of Wala), this involved specific requests for advice.

Wala duly responded with

a schedula,

which

he formally presented in one of the 829 councils: this seems to have criticized

uncanonical episcopal elections and the lay control of church

lands. Interestingly, Einhard presented a at

almost the same moment, and

to the

same generalized request

we do have circle

the

summary

very likely to have been in response

for opinions.

We

of a similar pamphlet

do not have

composed

these, but

in Einhard’s

around the same time, which denounces oppression and the

range of standard

enough

set of

sins,

misdeeds

certainly heartfelt

in particular it is

of a possessed

true,

on Einhard’s

the second critique to the girl,

full

hatred and mistrust, a generic

and maybe

Louis, but

less useful to

part. In a bizarre framing, he attributes

demon Wiggo, speaking through

the

mouth

and the capitula to none other than the archangel

Gabriel, appearing in a

man,

it is

pamphlet of capitula to Louis

dream

(in

the guise of St Marcellinus) to a blind

recently cured at Seligenstadt. Louis’s decision to

open up debate

allowed criticism to come from some unusual sources.

We

must not overstate the success of

Einhard remarks sorrowfully that or urged to do by this small

this sort of discursive initiative.

‘of the things that [Louis]

book he took

the trouble to

was ordered

fulfil

very few’.

The 829 council of Paris listed many things that the Frankish people and king could and should do as well, but what Louis actually did was appoint Bernard of Septimania as chamberlain, a cure worse than the disease to

most observers. Wala (though not Einhard) went over

to

camp

at

the other side, and, together with Paschasius,

was

in Lothar’s

the Field of Lies; but Louis’s temporary overthrow

412

was not reassuring

INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS to

Wala

at

all.

Paschasius’ account portrays himself and

Wala dumb-

army melted away: ‘they had flown completely around, like chickens under wing without serious counsel struck at the ease with which Louis’s

.

and careful arrangement

.

and, worst of

.

Wala’s advice! Aristocrats were not taking

were simply engaging

to say; they

moral implications.

It

.

would be

a

it

.

all,

without listening to

seriously enough, that

without considering

in politics,

common moan of intellectuals

is

its

at later

times of political change as well. All the same, scholars elaborated both

key ceremonies of 833-4: Agobard of Lyon drafted part of

sides of the

the core accusations against Louis in his forced penance of 833; after

Louis’s restoration the emperor

written

down by

had

his

own

version of the

833-4

crisis

and abbots, and formally read out

his bishops

the Thionville assembly in 835; meanwhile,

Hraban Maur

in

at

834 had

written a tract on the duties of sons, which Louis reprised in instructions sent to Lothar in Italy in 836.

above

all

by

Whether or not magnates were governed

realpolitik, they felt a strong

need to express their

choices in moralized terms, and writers sought to argue about

political

them

Lupus and then Hincmar would do the same

a result. Nithard,

as

for

Charles the Bald later as well.

Did the increasingly elaborate education of Carolingian inclusive, or exclusive?

It is

not wholly

to be

it

the

departed from the

the huge majority of the population of the western

and southern parts of the empire; the seen as a separate language for the

Carolingian period.

aim

The more complex

clear.

Latin used by the educated strata, the further

Romance spoken by

elites

earliest

first

form of French came

to be

time by authors precisely in the

And a high percentage of the Carolingian elite spoke

German; ninth-century

texts for the first time regularly describe people

as bilingual, including

Charlemagne, Louis the Pious and Wala, which

implies that plenty of people were not. (Einhard fact that the

demon Wiggo spoke

spoke German.) a court

and

It

was most struck by the

Latin, for the girl he possessed only

might be that the complex Latin of our texts was only

clerical language, a

increasingly un-French

‘mandarin’ language, pronounced in an

way because

of the influence of the Anglo-Saxon

Alcuin, and therefore deliberately closed to most people, including even

most

aristocrats.

But at

least

among

the aristocracy there

dence of a wider awareness of Latin than

that.

Lupus of

is

good

evi-

Ferrieres could

be trained for several years at Fulda in the 830s without ever having to

413

THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST, 75O-IOOO German; Latin was

learn in the

hegemonic

in this large

monastic school

middle of Germany, which had lay students too. Everard’s books

show what an read

totally

less today),

inherited

might read or

aristocrat

and

notable that he expected his daughters,

it is

some of them,

(many would

at least listen to

to

do so

as well: Judith-was given

who

some August-

Lombard law code. And Dhuoda, down in Uzes, clearly shows in her Handbook someone who has bought the whole Carolingian package: not only had she read the Bible, some church fathers and some Christian Latin literature, but she could manipulate it with sophistication. It may have been wasted on her son William (see ine,

some Alcuin, and

the

below. Chapter 21), but

by him. Dhuoda she

was married

is

its

very survival implies that he kept her text

seen as being from the high Reich saristokratie because

in

824

to Bernard of Septimania, in

given the striking absence of her

thought William should pray

way, a dense or so,

literary

own kin among the

for,

Aachen, too; but,

lists

of relatives she

one might wonder about

education was available to a lay

that. Either

woman

only twenty-five years after Carolingian schooling started,

which, given the patriarchal values of the period, must surely it

by 810

was normal

for aristocratic

men, and not necessarily

mean

that

just the top

families either.

Conversely, this was, overall, overwhelmingly an

elite

affair.

The

Carolingians did sometimes contemplate general schooling, but they did

not seriously develop the Bible into

it.

Similarly, there

were some

efforts to translate

German (though certainly not into proto-Erench), but they

did not get past Genesis and the Gospels, for the most part in poetic versions. Indeed, the

wide peasant world was hardly

in the field of vision

of any Carolingian king or intellectual except for preaching (a genuine

commitment, but one which only reached of

wonder

at ignorance, as in

local beliefs in

a minority), or else as a source

Agobard of Eyon’s exasperated attack on

weather magic. Too great a separation would be an

exaggeration; Agobard also inveighed against the idiocy of widespread beliefs that a cattle

plague had been caused by malign dust sent by Prince

Grimoald IV of Benevento, but a chance remark of Paschasius Radbert

shows that Corbie

intellectuals

had been panicked by that

too. Similarly,

Einhard’s descriptions of the miracles and visions of Sts Marcellinus and Peter

and

their

sensibilities

popular reception show no break at

and those of the peasants around

all

between

his

Seligenstadt. Education

did not separate people from the religious culture around them, which

414

INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS did not fundamentally change from the sixth century to the tenth (above,

Chapter

But the imagery of correctio and the need for education w^as

8).

confined to the aristocracy and to priests,

growing

number

in

founded, were the lowest

some

reached. There are

documents) that these

in this period as

down

Local

clerics, the political actors.

more

the social scale

rural churches it

were

even theoretically

signs (for example, in the signatures to Italian

priests

could at least write, and bishops certainly

expected them to be basically educated, often in a cathedral school. But

even the

common assumption in church statutes that priests would know was not

the Psalter

necessarily true of the majority,

control of their daily activities and culture priests

came from

their localities,

local elites,

and

their social

who

not to the bishops

was

and

little

detailed

in practice possible;

most

networks were linked to

sought to

command

them. The

Carolingian project reached local societies through the structures of public justice, not through those of moral reform.

The educated, even

elled,

if it

political

world was nonetheless dense and many

only included

start of the process,

saw

elites.

The court of Charlemagne,

lev-

at the

commentary and

legislation, theology, biblical

poetry written; under Louis and his sons, the genres of educated writing increased further, with works on liturgy, history and political theory as

These were sought

well.

after.

Hraban Maur,

the great biblical

tator of the 820S-850S, dedicated his (rather daunting)

and kings, including

a

commentary on

Judith in the key year of 834.

mous

the

books to queens

Book of Judith

The Carolingian world

commen-

sent to

Queen

also copied enor-

quantities of texts, usually patristic writings but also including

pre-Christian Latin works (these were only a small proportion of

Carolingian copying, but

it

is

because of that proportion that most

classical Latin literature survives). Scholars

for texts to copy; a

wrote to each other begging

dozen of Lupus of Ferrieres’s

are requests for books,

some very

letters in the 8 3 os-8 5 os

like the letter to

specific,

Pope

(855-8) asking for the commentary of Jerome on Jeremiah ‘starting with the seventh book and continuing to the end’ - for many

Benedict

texts

III

were defective or corrupt, and

them and

intellectuals

to find the best versions.

sought both to complete

They were helped by

advance, the fast and easy-to-read Caroline minuscule

out over older cursive hands in the

late eighth

script,

a technical

which won

century and had become

uniform across most of the empire by the early ninth. Libraries of laymen could reach

fifty

books, as was the case with Everard of

415

Friuli,

but the

THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST, 75O-IOOO larger monastic libraries could have hundreds,

more than one work. This added

many

them containing

of

communality of

to the sense of the

culture, for writers in the different parts of the empire could increasingly

assume that they had the same

texts to hand.

This was the essential context for the growing importance of theological debate. This ical circles first

is

already visible in the 790s, for Carolingian polit-

were then flustered by the discovery of Adoptionism, the

new western

heresy for nearly four centuries, associated with two

Spanish bishops, Elipand of Toledo and Felix of Urgell

(it

used the image

of adoption of the Son by the Father to explain Christ’s humanity).

They

also reacted very negatively to the Byzantine repudiation of Iconoclasm at

Nicaea

have

full

in

787 (above. Chapter

access to the Byzantine debate,

principles (Greek

was

relatively

not

ii). Carolingian theologians did

little

and did not understand

known

its

in Carolingian Francia),

but the continuing status of Byzantine theology ensured attention to the issue,

and Theodulf of Orleans,

in the Libri Carolini,

condemnation of the veneration of

rival

790-93. The

religious images in

794 formally rejected both doctrines, and Alcuin length against Adoptionism in 800, to match the work of his

synod of Frankfurt wrote

wrote a detailed

at

in

Theodulf. These were, emphatically, not widespread disagree-

ments;

it

would be

tionists in the

surprising

if

there were

more than

a

dozen Adop-

Carolingian lands (outside the ex-Visigothic far south), or

hardline Iconoclasts for that matter. But they mattered to the state, and also to theorists.

Theodulf took the trouble to create an Iconoclast

programme

pictorial

Pres near Orleans, theorists (mostly

for the apse of his private chapel at Germigny-des-

which

still

survives (see Chapter 10),

from Spain) argued

and Iconoclast

into the 820s, with Bishop Claudius

of Turin going so far as to attack pilgrimages, and the veneration of the cross and of relics, as idolatrous - this to

have brought him condemnation

went too

far,

however, and seems

in his turn.

Carolingian thought never claimed to be novel; in

Roman, Byzantine and

central medieval thought,

fact, like

was

it

most

late

explicitly the

opposite, the return to older authority, often cited at great length. But

Charlemagne and Alcuin made tuals to

accumulate

political

thought off in

it

or not.

The

in

‘virtual’

it

possible for a critical

Aachen and argue, and

this

schools of the ninth century,

all

in

416

intellec-

took theology and

new directions whether writers community of

mass of

liked (or realized)

the great monastic

and cathedral

communication with each other.

INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS continued that

mass.

And

the importance of theory to the polit-

kept debate in the public eye, doubtless encouraging

ical elite

People

critical

made

further.

it

very individual choices sometimes, like the deacon Bodo,

who

839 converted to Judaism and fled to Spain, to the horror of Louis the Pious and his courtiers. And every so often a court scholar,

in

went outside the bounds of debate, and were condemned

writers

church councils, as Amalarius of Metz was

at

Quierzy

views on the liturgy, or as Gottschalk was at Mainz in in

849 for

cantly,

his

was

views on predestination

(a

839 for his 848 and Quierzy in

condemnation which,

referred to in the Annals both of Fulda

at

and of

signifi-

Saint-Bertin).

These deserve some attention. Amalarius of Metz Lyon, was the main

(d.

850), successively archbishop of Trier and

liturgical expert of the early ninth century,

intermittently patronized by both in the 820s,

Charlemagne and Louis. Out of

which he circulated

widely and revised in response to queries, criticisms and

from Rome, three times

Lyon

office

he wrote the Liber Officialise a detailed exegesis of the

allegorical significance of every act of the liturgy,

to royal

and was

and episcopal

in the

next decade or

attention,

so.

new information

This brought him back

and when Agobard was expelled from

835 for supporting Lothar, Amalarius was appointed to replace him. This good luck was also bad luck, for Lyon seems to have been in

solidly city,

behind Agobard, and Florus of Lyon, the major scholar

the

already thought that Amalarius’ allegories were ridiculous insults to

the intelligence. Allegory

the

left in

word

was only supposed

to be applied to the Bible,

of God, which liturgical practices were not; and

some of

Amalarius’ attempts at symbolic meanings were simply bizarre - indeed,

maybe

heretical.

Both Agobard and Florus wrote

Amalarius, savagely pointing out his errors. This was to Quierzy in 838, to

answer

this criticism

and to

by authority. Amalarius replied that ‘whatever read deep within This was

fatal;

my own

-

in other

why

he was called

justify his

arguments

have written

I

have

words, he had no authority.

he was condemned for heresy and was himself expelled

from Lyon, although did, after

spirit’

I

against

tracts

all, still

his

works continued

to circulate widely (the liturgy

need explication).

Gottschalk was a more serious scholar; he was trying to

make

sense of

Augustine’s theology of predestination, which he certainly did through

appeal to authority, but which he interpreted in a novel way: that

humans could

separately be predestined to salvation and damnation.

417

THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST, 75O-IOOO and that Christ’s crucifixion only affected the former, not the

Even

after his

condemnations

this split the intellectual

world

Ratramn of Corbie, Prudentius of Troyes

of the 840s and 850s. Florus,

and Lupus of

848-9,

in

latter.

some

Ferrieres supported Gottschalk, at least to

extent;

Hincmar and Hraban vehemently opposed him. So did John the Scot, though his tract on the subject was itself controversial. The debate spun out of control in the 850s, and at least different views

a stop to at the

it

on

in 860,

it,

five

church councils came to

Bald and Lothar

until Charles the

II

together put

with a rejection of some of Gottschalk’s key positions

synod of Tusey. As with Amalarius, an apparently arcane disagree-

ment became

Roman

the stuff of high politics; Francia briefly

became the eastern

empire of Nicaea and Chalcedon, when correct doctrine was

crucial for the stability of the state.

The

one: he

When and

resonance of Amalarius’ condemnation was a simple

political

was both

beneficiary

and victim of the aftershocks of 833-4.

he was dismissed from Lyon, indeed, Agobard was called back,

it

is

hard not to

experience at Quierzy old opponents. But

feel that if

Louis the Pious had not wanted to reintegrate

it is still

a theoretical one; Florus

Amalarius might have had a different

significant that the public debate

undoubtedly held

his

was

entirely

views sincerely (he had

protested to the Thionville assembly against Amalarius’

initial

appoint-

ment), and Amalarius’ chosen defence, once he was forced to give

would have sunk him, no matter what politics

it,

the political context. ‘Practical’

and abstract theological debate could run along

parallel lines,

reinforcing each other, thanks to the intensity of the moral imperatives

of correctio.

map

The Gottschalk dispute

is

a different case, for

it

did not

straightforwardly onto other political rivalries. Here, however, the

whole

intellectual

underpinning of

the Carolingian reform project. Authority

was not an

issue here (both

issue of predestination bit into the

sides rooted their

arguments

in Augustine); but

if

Gottschalk’s hardline

predestination was to prevail, which (unlike that of porters) ignored the need for faith action, to get into heaven, then pointless. This

many

and good works, that

much

of his supis,

human

of the Carolingian project

was

was one of Hincmar’s core concerns, and, although

extensive arguments were not always coherent, his personal influence

The Carolingian

it

was this, plus doubtless

with Charles the Bald, that

project could not, he

to be ruined by an intellectual

was

won

the day for him.

in effect arguing,

argument devoid of

418

his

be allowed

social context.

Of

INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS

many

course,

would have seen

himself,

was

disagreed with him; but

all

of them, including Gottschalk

the project as sacrosanct.

moral purpose

Its

at the root of their theological interests themselves,

whatever the

theological conclusions they each reached.

One

essential element in the Carolingian politico-cultural

Rome. Rome did not contribute much just discussed, but

to the intellectual elaborations

had an authority that went back

it

Carolingian kingship, and the king/emperors treated

most emperors were crowned of

Rome,

the Patrimony of St

the empire.

much

20,000-25,000 people, its

own

a

with great care:

Rome, after all. For a start, the territory Peter, was not formally incorporated into also local

on Rome, but they never

attempts) seldom had

it

to the start of

in

The Carolingians, and

Spoleto, leant

world was

powers

fully controlled

say in papal elections.

huge and rich

city

marquis of

like the

and

it,

Rome

(despite

was, with

by western standards, with

political procedures, a set of rituals as elaborate as those of

Aachen, an equally complex network of factional politics

official hierarchies,

and a dense

which the Carolingians openly admitted they did not

understand. They constantly sent representatives to try to

work

but only too often, as the Royal Frankish Annals put

in 823, they

‘could not determine exactly

it

it

out,

what had happened’. The ever-changing

succession of popes (there were twenty-one in the ninth century) meant that the factions

had to be understood anew

popes, like Hadrian

Nicholas

I

I

(772-95), Paschal

I

at

each election.

And tough

(817-24), Leo IV (847-55),

(858-67), John VIII (872-82), had unpredictable political

positions, at least to Frankish eyes.

Hadrian and

Leo

his successor

III

(795-816) were very close to Charlemagne, and keen to do what he asked in return for a free hand (and armed support when needed)

Rome and

central Italy. This

was

a position shared by

many

of their

successors; the presence of Gregory IV (827-44) at the Field of Lies

well have been his

own

By contrast. Paschal

I

choice, but he

in

may

was part of Lothar’s entourage.

seems to have executed two

officials in

823 (the

year of the Annals quote cited earlier) because they were supporters of

Lothar; Paschal, a major church-builder, was locally controversial, but

he was probably

power

less

controversial in seeking to undermine a Carolingian

that seemed, in those years at least, too close (above.

ter 10).

Chap-

Lothar reasserted that power after Paschal’s death, but from

then on, in practice, the Carolingians usually restricted themselves to intervening

when

factional struggles

seemed too out of control.

419

THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-C ARO LINGI AN WEST, 75O-IOOO The all,

detail of

papal authority vis-a-vis the Franks fluctuated. Over-

what

the Carolingians did not care

the popes thought, any

more

than the Merovingians had done, as long as they maintained their

which was not

legitimization of Carolingian power, hostility to

Alps.

And

in doubt.

Papal

Iconoclasm, for example, had no effect whatsoever over the the Franks could easily look

that they did not understand

down on Roman

intrigue, given

complexity. (Admittedly, sometimes

its

they were right, as in the gothic events of Christmas 896,

corpse of Pope Formosus (891-6) was dug up by his

Stephen VI and put on

trial;

when

the

enemy and successor

but that horrified the Romans, too - Stephen

did not survive another year. Normally,

Roman violence to losers had its

own stately logic.) But the intensity of the Carolingian theoretical debates of the second quarter of the ninth century, and the perpetual pacing of

church

politics

through appeals to episcopal councils, gave the popes a

new prominence as the final court of appeal in the Latin church. Nicholas I in particular

found that his judgement was sought, for example over epis-

copal depositions, or in marriage cases (as also over theological issues

we shall see in a moment), and

- Gottschalk appealed to him

after

Tusey for

example, though Nicholas died before he heard the case. In return, Nicholas, in his conflicts with the Byzantines over the legitimacy of Patriarch Photios and the conversion of Bulgaria (above. Chapter 13),

which were international problems

specific to

links with the eastern patriarchates, sought

Hincmar and other Frankish

bishops,

who

Rome, given its continuing

and obtained the support of even wrote treatises for him.

Nicholas used the legal superiority of the papal effect, in a

Carolingian world attuned to such issues. His successors did

not, however, at least not so effectively.

emperors

office to considerable

in

to

make

875 (he would have liked to the south of Italy), but choosing them, as

after the death of Louis

persuade them to fight Arabs

John VIII sought

II

in

opposed to crowning them, was out of his control.

When the Carolingian

project receded at the end of the century, the international standing of the papacy lost force again, even

if

the pope’s legal

powers remained.

All these different trends converged in the great querelle over Lothar IPs

divorce from Theutberga, in 857-69. This ought to have been simple.

Lothar had married Theutberga, from the prominent aristocratic family of the ‘Bosonids’, in 855 but soon turned against her and sought in 857 to return to his former partner

Waldrada, with

Hugh. Marriage law was tightening up

420

whom he had had a

in the ninth century,

son,

however;

INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS Charlemagne could put away

He came up

a wife, but Lothar

had to have reasons.

with the claim that Theutberga had had anal sex with her

brother Hubert, had become pregnant as a result (impossibly, of course; his supporters

sodomy and an ordeal in 860, tery.

invoked witchcraft), and had aborted the foetus:

infanticide all at once.

in 858, but

incest,

Theutberga proved her innocence

Lothar staged a show

where she was forced to confess her

in

trial at a

council in

Aachen

and

retire to a

monas-

guilt

This was carefully ratified at a synod in 862, in which Waldrada

was proclaimed queen; papal

Metz

legates agreed at

the following year,

where Theutberga confessed again; Lothar’s two senior archbishops, Gunther of Cologne and Theutgaud of Trier, then took the case to for final ratification in 863. But Nicholas

a

coup de

theatre, he annulled the

Italy,

his

where he and

Nicholas’s perhaps

refused to support them; in

synod of Metz, demanded that Lothar

take Theutberga back, and deposed the

Lothar never got

I

Rome

two archbishops themselves.

marriage dissolved, and died of fever in 869 in

his brother Louis

more

II

of Italy were trying to ‘persuade’

pliable successor

Hadrian

II

(867-72) to

change the judgement.

The malignly for

Theutberga was so extreme that

failure. it

inventive humiliation Lothar it is

and

his advisers devised

hard not to be pleased at

That apart, however, the case had important implications.

involved realpolitik:

if

Lothar had no legitimate male

Carolingians would take over Lotharingia, and indeed in uncles Charles the Bald and Louis the ingly, the latter in,

German

its

First,

heir, other

869-70

his

did just that. Unsurpris-

supported Theutberga; Charles took her and her brother

and Hincmar,

as his

major

theorist,

whereas Lotharingian bishops wrote

wrote a long

tract in her favour,

tracts against her. But,

once again,

there were issues of principle: of the inviolability of marriage; of the finality of a successful ordeal

(Hincmar and Nicholas thought the case

should have stopped in 858); of the disaster for the body politic

if

a

queen confessed such misdeeds (Lothar’s supporter Adventius bishop of

Metz argued

that Theutberga’s confession alone

was enough

her as queen); of the disaster for the body politic

enough

if

a king

to get into this kind of marriage difficulty in the

first

to disbar

was weak place;

of the rights of the pope as supreme judge in the West. Except the these were

all

issues that

had been

it

was the

last,

explicit or implicit in Carolingian

theorizing in recent decades, and, as in the 830s

Amalarius,

and

theoretical issues

421

which were

crisis,

or as with

at the front of the

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

And

debate.

this time,

who

axe to grind over

it

PO

S

T- C AR O LI N G I AN

was theory which won; Nicholas

political

and

one), his synod

environment of the

expected

had no

I

should succeed in Lotharingia, but his violent

condemnation of Lothar (who, he correctly

women, not

WEST, 75O-IOOO

could not,

his archbishops,

be got around.

8 60s,

had misused two

said,

in the

No one in Francia had

Nicholas was genuinely trying to exert a real authority

this;

over at least the sectors of Frankish politics which came into an ecclesiastical remit,

and

outraged, and sentence

.

.

this, as

we have

we have

was

seen,

Gunther of Cologne was

a lot.

the text of his rejection of Nicholas’s ‘abusive

delivered against us without justice or reason

.

the canonical laws’.

Nicholas followed

and Louis and

and against

Hincmar had no sympathy with Gunther, but when this

up

865 with disrespectful

in

letters to

Charles

also, in a separate case, reversed the deposition of a

bishop of Soissons by senior Frankish prelates including Hincmar, the tone of his account changes substantially too. But the Frankish

were too committed to correct

legal

procedure by now,

so,

elite

when an

obstinate pope stuck to legal decisions which the Franks themselves had

asked

for,

they were stuck too. At least until the pope died, for Nicholas

was unique

in this period;

Hadrian

II

totally failed to prevent Charles

and Louis from taking over Lotharingia, and retreated over the appeal of another deposed bishop,

meantime

The

a theoretical debate

of Laon, in 871-2. But in the

had caused the

kingdom.

eclipse of a

three major political systems of the ninth century, Francia, Byzan-

tium and the caliphate, or another, and

The

Hincmar

it is

fact that they

had an

all

worth looking

intellectualized politics in

them comparatively

at

were roughly simultaneous seems to

for a

me

one form

moment.

to be chance;

nothing links together the military success and sense of ecclesiastical mission of Charlemagne, the stabilization of the reduced Byzantine

empire

in the eighth century

the capital by

Baghdad and

800 or

the

which allowed

and the

so,

enormous

for the revival of writing in

fiscal centralization

intellectual activity of the

All the same, their contemporaneity at least

makes

which funded

‘Abbasid period. it

harder to see

each of them as unique, as historians often do. Medieval governments characteristically religious all

saw themselves

moralism (governments

as

still

legitimized do);

by

their

superior

and strong governments,

three of these were, could develop a considerable density of

and

intellectual initiatives.

moral

But they were by no means identical, for

422

as

all

INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS

more

that; their differences are, indeed,

interesting than their similarities.

In Byzantium, an educated ruling class steadily developed across the

ninth and tenth centuries. This class was very largely a secular

elite;

Byzantine education, and some ninth-century institutional reform as well (notably in the field of law), were aimed at reviving .traditions, state

Graeco-Roman

which included the assumption that the men who ran the

should have a developed literary culture. But that culture had a

strong religious element by now; and this in turn was linked to the religious

importance of the emperor as the focus of Orthodoxy and as

the centre-point of elaborate political rituals. the Byzantines did not have the political

We saw in Chapter

and moral urgency that can be

seen in Carolingian correctio. That urgency perhaps in part the relatively recent roots of the Carolingian project.

knew

that they

half of

it

had

Christian,

a millennium of imperial

and that

its

revival

came from

The Byzantines

power behind them, over

ought to be enough, given

success in the past; but Frankish religious self-esteem late eighth century,

13 that

Roman

was new

in the

and very much bound up with Charlemagne’s

in his

own

task.

The Byzantine

belief

uniqueness and Louis the Pious’s sense of his personal moral state

was

also, of course,

more

solid than the

Frankish one, and education and literary culture could build up slowly over several centuries, unlike the three-generation history of the Carolingian experiment. If the Byzantines felt less need of urgency, given that

they were, in their

own

minds, simply rediscovering their

they were not necessarily

The ‘Abbasids were, role in it

human

worked

wrong

Roman

past,

in that.

in a general

way, as convinced of

their central

religious salvation as either of the other two; but the

in the caliphate

was

was

different.

The

way

religious centrality of the

750 (above. Chapter 14); only the mihna of 833-47, introduced by al-Ma’mun, sought to reinstate it, without success. The absence of a specialized priesthood in Islam meant caliph himself

slipping after

that the interpreters of the sole guardians

Muslim

religion,

who

effectively

became

its

by 850, were much more loosely defined as an educated

class, the ‘ulamd’.

Education trained one for

statecraft, in the ninth-

century caliphate as in ninth-century Byzantium, in the increasingly elaborate traditions of adab, but

one for religious authority.

On

it

also, often simultaneously, trained

the other hand,

personified that authority in Islam;

philosophical rhetorical

skill

it

was

no formal hierarchy

religious

knowledge and

that established one as a religious leader.

423

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

PO

T- C AR O LI N G I AN

S

WEST, 75O-IOOO

not one’s appointment as emperor, patriarch/pope, bishop or abbot.

The

result

ing, but

was a

plurality of voices,

which seldom moved the

which

at its best

was highly

stimulat-

any particular direction

state in

after

847. Indeed, the caliphs and other political leaders were largely cut out of moralized politics from then on, except in the Fatimid caliphate; as a

although education, including religious education, was a core

result,

training both for a political career

and

for religious prominence,

it

did

not produce the equivalent of the political intellectuals of the Carolingian

on

court, simply because attendance

was not so

policies,

essential for moralists.

powerful intellectuals

politically

Nizam al-Mulk

(d.

and involvement

rulers,

in their

There were certainly some

in the Islamic

world; one thinks of

1092), vizir to the Seljuk Turks and an important

men

theorist of government;

of course, Alcuin and

like

Hincmar

part and parcel of being a

him match Photios

Byzantium, and,

But political power was not

in Francia.

Muslim

in

intellectual;

it

was simply the most

remunerative career path. Moral reform did not proceed through the state, as

and

as

it

it

did in Byzantium, given the emperor’s religious centrality,

Arab

did in the West.

that of Constantinople -

systematically written

The

had

up than

less

of a religious charge,

either in

Byzantium or

and Arab

solidity of the Byzantine

ceremonial - as elaborate as

political

and was

less

in Francia.

political systems (in

each case

derived from a complex tax structure, absent in the West), reinforced in the

Arab case by

between the caliphal and post-

a steady separation

and the question of

caliphal political system

religious salvation, thus

gave plenty of space to the idea that education was a passport to political

prominence; but

it

did not produce the conclusion that a specifically

religious education for the elite state,

was

essential for the survival of the

or that the task of the state was in large part the salvation of the

community of project.

the realm. This

The Carolingian

successful indeed,

seemed actually

marks the

state

was, for over a hundred years, very

and so confident of

possible.

originality of the Carolingian

itself

The network of

that the task of salvation

intellectuals that

surrounded

three generations of Carolingian rulers existed precisely for this purpose.

So did the public space of in the East,

was

at least as

as in Byzantium,

and

at

political ritual,

which, although simpler than

charged with meaning, watched and analysed

key moments

obvious case) was perhaps even more

were theorized, moralized,

(as in

so. All

833-4, to name only one

major

political

in ninth-century Francia, often

424

moments

with compet-

INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS ing interpretations. There intellectual,

was space

men who were important

in Francia for the

pure political

heard

in its councils

in the state,

because of their knowledge and intelligence, even though they never

just

had an administrative

way

role in

it,

like

Einhard or Lupus of Ferrieres,

in a

unknown in Byzantium or the Arab world; and there were, for a time, many more Hilduins or Hincmars, men who held official positions but who also had a political or moral programme, than there were Photioses or Nizam al-Mulks. that

was

one looks

If

rare

if

not

at the Carolingian

of the early medieval West,

reform programme from the standpoint

can sometimes seem

stately: as the

product

of the most successful political regime in Latin Europe between

400 and

1200

(at the earliest),

self-confidence

and

it

does not seem surprising that

as dense a cultural activity as

it

had

it

did. If

as

much

one looks

at

same programme from the standpoint of contemporary Constan-

that

tinople or Baghdad, then its

it

roots,

and - of course - temporary.

structural

weakness of

(The over-anxiousness

God

But

all is

in

Essentially, given the underlying

western medieval

also forgivable;

it

polities, this latter is true.

must have been hard to have

an audience to one’s every action as the Carolingians

as attentive

believed.)

seems over-anxious, hyperactive, shallow

it

it is still

interesting, indeed striking, that the Carolingians

achieved so much. In the moralization of Erankish politics, in the education of at least

two generations of

lay aristocrats, as also in the

increasing systematization of government, the Carolingians had an effect: different

from the Byzantines or the Arabs, but an

effect all the

same.

The Carolingian

project receded in the 8 80s, even before the

Charles the Eat in 887. Hincmar,

who

fall

died in 882, was the last political

leader really to be committed to theory, just as Charles the Bald

probably the

last

king

who

really

of

wanted

to read

it.

The

latter

was

may

be

the crucial point. Tenth-century Erankish bishops presided over reform councils, but they

were mostly

local,

and

less

connected to royal

politics,

except occasionally in late tenth-century Germany; education (and

manuscript copying) continued but

it

in

monasteries and cathedral schools,

did not have an effect on political decisions after the 870s.

ecclesiastical

world did not change so much, that

political context

is

The

to say; but the

changed substantially. The optimism and confidence of

the Carolingian century, the sense that

what Frankish

politicians decided

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

PO

S

T - C A R O L I N G I AN

WEST, 75O-IOOO

mattered to God, was what kept the reform project going; and the failure of the dynasty in the years 877-87, followed by a politics in the

non-Carolingian successor

states,

much

less

ideologized

pushed reform onto the

local stage of episcopal pastoral activity.

Successful political systems could nonetheless return to parts of the

Carolingian programme. The early eleventh century in Germany, and also the late tenth century in England, both

reform imagery as part of high

was

politics.

there waiting to be used, even

could not re-establish the

critical

if

saw

partial revivals of

The programme,

that

is

in order to return.

And

to say,

the smaller polities of the future

mass of competitive writing which

marks the middle decades of the ninth century; that would need environment, the towns and the

moral

money economy

a

new

of the twelfth century,

the political presupposition that kings

and

bishops were in partnership, with kings choosing bishops but bishops

having the right to ‘correct’ kings,

moral

rule,

and prosperity

in

both

ail in

this

the aid of both effective

and

world and the next, continued

to be axiomatic in western politics, at least as an aspiration, until the late eleventh later.

and

it

century at the

earliest,

and

in

many respects

for a long time

This presupposition was pushed centre stage by the Carolingians,

had

a long legacy.

426

The Tenth-century Successor

States

Gerbert of Aurillac, arguably the leading intellectual of the tenth-century

He was born around 940

West, had a remarkable career.

seems, a non-noble family, and educated in his

to, as

it

home-town monastery

of Saint-Geraud at Aurillac, a regional pilgrimage centre but isolated

mountains of south-central France. Around 967 he was talentspotted by Count Borrell of Barcelona, and trained in Catalonia for

in the

some on

years; he

accompanied Borrell to

to the entourage of

Rome around 970 and moved

Pope John XIII and the emperor Otto

(936-73) as a teacher, of mathematics, astronomy, logic and rhetoric - basic I

elements in the central medieval curriculum. In this role he

Reims

in

The only break here was

982-4, when he impressed the emperor Otto

philosophical and debating

skills,

to flee

II

at

ently.

He

and he had

Otto IPs death. From then on, as

his letters,

both on behalf of

his

mother the queen-regent Theophanu of

was an

active

patron Adalbero and independ-

operated in support of the infant Otto

Duke Hugh Capet

in

interests,

surviving as a collection for the years 983-97, show, he political dealer,

his

was made abbot of Bobbio

Bobbio, however, Gerbert offended vested

back to Reims

(973-83) with

according to his pupil the historian

Richer, our source for most of this, and Italy; at

to

972, and was for two decades both a renowned teacher and

the private secretary to Archbishop Adalbero. in

moved

III

(983-1002) and

in East Francia

West Francia, the main

and

rival to the

Italy,

his

and also

West Frankish

king Lothar (954-86). Adalbero and, secondarily, Gerbert facilitated

Hugh

Capet’s non-hereditary succession as king of West Francia (987-

96). After Adalbero’s death in 989, Gerbert

archbishopric, but largely to

Hugh

chose Arnulf, King Lothar’s illegitimate son,

undermine support

Lower Lotharingia

(d.

might have expected the

991),

for Lothar’s brother Charles,

who was 427

duke of

fighting for the throne. This

was

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

P O ST- C AR O

LIN G I AN WEST, 75O-IOOO

once handed Reims to Charles.

a miscalculation; Arnulf almost at

he captured Charles and Arnulf in 990,

Hugh deposed

When

the latter for

treachery in a synod at Saint-Basle-de-Verzy, organized by Gerbert,

Hugh had

who

now succeeded him as Pope John XV, who

archbishop (991-7). But

objected to the deposition.

The West Frankish

bishops argued that

was canonical, but pressure

built

and

after

it

Hugh’s death he

left

promoted away from Reims; 999, to the papacy

itself.

to the archbishopric of

He

up on Gerbert,

Saxony and the court of Otto

for

Here he became the still-young emperor’s tutor

III.

in

Reims

not consulted

in

997, and was

Ravenna, and then,

died in 1003 as Pope Silvester

II.

Gerbert’s career had serious setbacks, but the favour of the great

always

set

him

right again. If

dealer, playing a later, for

complex

himself alone.

one reads

political

It is

his letters, they

game

for himself

true that he

was

and

also, increasingly, of

wind

so close to the

Hugh

in his dealings that

and Adalbero, and,

consistent, in his support

of the Ottonian king/emperors (even though he the time)

show an assured

was

in

West Francia

at

Capet. All the same, he sailed

one constantly might expect,

if

know how his career would end, that he would come a man with no social background, entirely reliant on patronage,

one did not unstuck:

playing high politics in a period of switchback political

an archbishop

in

shifts,

and made

dubious circumstances - such a situation destroyed

we saw in Chapter 17, and Gerbert was incredibly lucky not to fall too. What saved him was his scholarship: Gerbert was always welcome as a court intellectual. He wrote letters Ebbo of Reims

in the 830s, as

asking for manuscripts (particularly of mathematical works, and of Cicero) as systematically as Lupus of Ferrieres had done a hundred and fifty

years before. His skills ensured that he could and did travel with

ease across every part of the old Carolingian empire. Gerbert illustration that

many

aspects of the ninth-century political

tual practice described in the last chapter

century

One was

programme. Even second-level on

their

wrote to

invite

lecture kings III

an

intellec-

had by no means gone away a

later.

But there are differences.

Otto

and

is

in the fate of the Carolingian

intellectuals like

moral duties

Lupus had been able

in the ninth century; but,

to

when

Gerbert to be his tutor, Gerbert replied, not with

moral advice, but with an enthusiastic evocation of the mathematics he could teach him. (The Saxon historian Thietmar bishop of Merseburg, d.

1018, remembered him for the astronomical clock he built for Otto

428

THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES at

Magdeburg.) None of

his letters

admonish the

make practical suggestions, ask for although in many ways as ambitious as the formation,

compared Otto

great; they give in-

favours.

The Ottonians,

Carolingians (Thietmar

to Charlemagne), did not inherit their moralized politics,

except to an extent with Henry

II

after

1002; they barely even issued

any laws. The rhetorical frame of ruling had changed. And so had

its

Among non-royal political operators, Adalbero and Herbert were by now rare in their interest in more than one kingdom (Reims was near

scale.

a

boundary, and Adalbero had close kin

certainly

were not

West Frankish and

Italy,

interested;

in Lotharingia). Historians

Flodoard and Richer, the tenth-century

historians, recount almost nothing of East Francia or

in the East the

Saxon historians Widukind and Thietmar

similarly only chronicle East Erankish affairs, adding Italy,

somewhat

when Otto I conquered it in 962. The only exception was Liutprand of Cremona (d. 972), the historian of Italy, who paid attention

perfunctorily,

to East (but not West) Frankish politics because he

Otto

I,

The

for

in exile in Frankfurt.

future countries of Italy, France

then. This see,

was writing

was not complete,

not only took over

as well, without

‘France’

it

Italy,

and Germany were diverging,

as Gerbert shows.

Otto

I,

too, as

we

shall

but was a player in West Frankish politics

seeming inappropriate.

and ‘Germany’ did not yet

exist;

And

the separate concepts

nor even, except occasionally,

did ‘West’ and ‘East’ Francia, the terminology historians currently use;

both were normally

just Francia^ or

eastern kingdom, to reflect the

Ottonians. (‘France’ contrast in the

among and so a new

region

Francia et Saxonia in the case of the

Saxon

origins

and

political base of the

of course simply the French for Francia; by

is

German

lands, the Frankish heartland

was only one

the old ethnic territories of Saxony, Alemannia, Bavaria, inclusive

nicum, though not

name

eventually appeared, the

until the eleventh century.)

regnum Teuto-

But the lack of interest

of the historians reflects a slow cultural separation. For Flodoard and Richer, Francia

was

‘really’

(northern) France; the East Eranks were

Transrhenenses, from over the Rhine, or else the inhabitants of Ger-

mania^ the old

Roman geographical term. For Widukind, similarly. West

Francia was Gallia^ proto-French the Gallica lingua^ and Francia was seen as ‘really’ being in the East. foreigners

the

is

When

Thietmar says that

the greatest punishment’, he certainly

West Franks. The

by

would have included

political history of these three regions will

429

‘rule

have to

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

P O ST- C ARO LI N G I AN

WEST, 75O-IOOO

be discussed separately as a result. But the procedures of political practice

had not diverged very

of the chapter

greatly, all the same,

and

in the last section

shall discuss these for all the post-Carolingian regions,

I

seen as a whole.

East Francia was easily the most powerful of the successor states. This

was not because of its in the centre

infrastructure.

and south, and

rivers: for centuries, the

and expert

single

the kingdom,

were

a

was heavily

forested, particularly

communications were dependent on

its

only practicable north-south route, except for

travellers,

which was

and East Francia’s major

It

was the Rhine corridor

also the

cities,

main ex-Roman

west of

in the far

region, with roads

Cologne and Mainz. Saxony and Bavaria

month’s travel apart, and had

little

to

do with each

other; rulers

based in one tended to leave the other alone. But the regional political system created by Louis the

German

decades around 900, and could

largely survived the troubles of the

still

be used by the Ottomans, and

indeed for another century or more on from them.

who

Arnulf of Carinthia (887-99),

seized

power from

his uncle

Charles the Fat, ruled from Bavaria. Fie was clearly the senior ruler of his time in all the Carolingian lands;

Burgundy (888-912) and Berengar

he was the lord of Rudolf I

of Italy (888-924), and had per-

haps even been offered the throne of West Francia

took

Italy briefly

his

894-6 he

by new regional

a

in

896

young son and successor Louis the Child

last eastern

The years 896-911 saw filled

in 888. In

and made himself emperor. But he had a stroke

and soon died; and (900-9 1 1 ), the

king of

I

Carolingian, never

power-vacuum

made much

in the eastern

rulers, called dukes: of

Bavaria

impression.

kingdom.

It

was

(in particular the

duke 907-37), of Alemannia (now increasingly particular Burchard I, d. 911), of Saxony (in particular

‘Liutpolding’ Arnulf, called Swabia: in

the ‘Liudolfing’ Otto, d. 912), of Lotharingia (at least after 903, under

the ‘Conradine’ Gebhard, d. 910), land,

which seems

and even of the East Frankish heart-

to have crystallized as a

duchy under Gebhard’s

nephew Conrad around 906. Bavaria and Swabia had been Carolingian kingdoms with their own local political structures (and an autonomous political past),

how

it

and

is

it

was possible

relatively easy to see, particularly in Bavaria,

for a local ruler to

move from being

a

duke

in

Bavaria to being duke o/^the region; Arnulf ran Bavarian-wide assemblies

and armies, appointed

his

own

bishops, and even briefly called himself

430

THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES Saxony was harder,

king, in 918.

mous

region,

Brun

(d.

it

had never been

a unified autono-

and Duke Otto’s father and brother Liudolf

866) and

(d.

880) had, although each were called dux, only a frontier

command; but ians or Slavs

to be

for

that

and

more or

command

involved successful wars against Sclaven-

and Otto by

a military machine,

less in full

his

control of Saxony, which he passed on to his

son Henry. Lotharingia and the Frankish heartland took longer these were core Carolingian territories

and

still

it is

power of

a sign of the

too had more or

Conrad

Mainz

respectively;

as a political concept that they

‘royal’

duchy, was a natural successor

(911-18), but he failed to gain the respect from

I

his ducal ex-peers that

he hoped

Arnulf of Bavaria; he also

for, in particular

Henry of Saxony and

lost Lotharingia to the

Charles the Simple (898-923). et

for

hegemonic dukes by Louis the Child’s death. The

less

Frank Conrad, ruler of the most to Louis, as

duchy

the

still,

contained the largest

concentrations of royal lands, around Aachen and

but

come

death had

When

West Frankish king

he died, the magnates of Francia

Saxonia chose Henry of Saxony as the new king (Henry

I,

919-36),

possibly even at Conrad’s suggestion, and certainly with the agreement

of Conrad’s brother and heir, Eberhard duke of the Franks

The Swabians and Bavarians were, however,

(d.

absent.

East Francia at this point could have been easily divided into three, as

it

had been

traditions, after

all,

and

a

Saxon king was

Frankish, so not obviously

Henry proceeded with not to claim too

two southern duchies had

in 876; the

more

‘royal’

far

much authority, and he established pacts

make them, however, and Henry

own

also not

than a Swabian or a Bavarian.

implicitly of quasi-equality, with the other dukes.

to

(at least)

their

away - and was

was probably not anointed

care; he

939).

king, so as

of ‘friendship’,

They were prepared

also established

momentum by

retaking Lotharingia in the 920s. Saxon armies were, furthermore, active against Slavs, and above

all

against the

Magyars or Hungarians,

a

who had overthrown Moravian power in the decade after 894 and established themselves in what is now Hungary. The latter were very effective raiders across much of central Europe and semi-nomadic people

Italy in the early tenth century,

(not least in Bavaria,

and Henry achieved considerable

on the front

line of their attacks)

status

by defeating them

933 and quietening them for two decades. Henry’s supremacy was also, like Arnulf ’s, recognized in Burgundy (though not Italy). When he in

was succeeded by

his

son Otto

I

in

431

936, Otto could choreograph an

THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-C ARO LINGI AN WEST, 750-IOOO election

and coronation

in

Aachen

itself,

with a very formal anointing

by the archbishop of Mainz, and a banquet the king’s deputy (a rege secundus) in his

him dinner, the

which

in

all

home duchy

four dukes, plus

of Saxony, served

clearest sign of subjection.

Otto when he inherited the throne had brothers, for the

kingdom

the eastern

since the 870s (and the last until 1190);

had excluded them from succession,

revolted, fortunately (for Otto) not at the

Hermann

in the

won

it

directly himself.

They were almost

inside

Saxony

the wars,

itself;

Henry

I,

only

was

and was able

to

Frankish heartland, he abolished the

him and Hermann, and

Otto consistently chose

from the ducal

all

from

and found consider-

time,

after Eberhard’s death in battle against

ruled

Henry

Thankmar and Henry,

of Swabia (926-48), a Conradine put in by

consistently loyal to the king. But Otto

title

same

from other dukes and from

remove dukes everywhere;

time in

in a deliberate departure

Carolingian norms. In 939-41 two of them,

able support both

first

his

families that

dukes from

now on.

had already emerged,

which did not give him a wide range of choice; the Ottonians, unlike the Carolingians, could not create a

But often Otto chose his

Henry his

own

new Reich saristokratie on any scale.

relatives, his

now-reconciled brother

Bavaria (947-55), his son Liudolf in Swabia (948-53),

in

youngest brother Brun, archbishop of Cologne, in Lotharingia

(954-65), before going back to more local families. Liudolf revolted in

953-4

as well. But his revolt, although widely

supported, was subverted by the

last great

Hungarian invasion, which

Otto destroyed on the Lechfeld outside Augsburg, on the Swabian

hegemony was unquestioned.

border, in 955. After that, Otto’s

It

extended to West Francia, as already shown by the synod of Ingelheim in

948, in which King Louis IV (936-54) brought his grievances against

Duke Hugh

the Great

the East Frankish king

himself to Italy,

by Berengar

II

(d.

956) to Otto’s

and the papal

first in

own

legate.

951-2, when

assembly, to be judged by

Otto was also able to extend

his overlordship

(950-62), then in 961-2,

was recognized

when he annexed

the Italian

kingdom and was crowned emperor. Otto was strong enough to spend most of the rest of his reign in Italy, and was, in the last two decades of his life,

by

far the

was not wrong structure his

to

most powerful

make

the

was strong enough

son Otto

II

(973-83),

ruler of the tenth century

- Thietmar

Charlemagne comparison. Otto’s

political

to survive the relatively lacklustre reign of

who was 432

unsuccessful in his wider forays.

THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES outside Paris in 978, and, most disastrously, the Arabs in

982

in the far

south of

Italy,

royal minority of the three-year-old Otto

when he was

near Crotone; and the long

(983-1002). The younger

III

Ottos, however, had Otto IPs mother Adelaide

Theophanu

defeated by

999) and wife 991) to look after them: tough queens-regent in the

(d.

(d.

Merovingian mould, and themselves proof of the now-established cenLiudolfing/Ottonian family as East Frankish kings. At

trality of the

Otto

death without children the magnates of the eastern kingdom

Ill’s

Hermann

hesitated between

II

of Swabia and Ekkehard, marquis of the

Saxon march of Meissen, but without much

plumped brother’s

difficulty in the

Henry IV of Bavaria (Henry II, 1002-24), who was Otto Ps grandson and Otto Ill’s male-line heir. There was no doubt at

for

any of these royal accessions that East Francia was a system, which by

How

end they

this

now

single political

included Italy as well.

system actually worked

is

more of

a problem.

The Mero-

vingian and Carolingian assumption that assemblies were the key

moments

of political aggregation

new Saxon

was

certainly maintained,

and indeed

Magdeburg and Quedlinburg attracted aristocrats and bishops from all over the kingdom at the big Easter feasts. Royal diplomas show that the legitimacy of royal heavily stressed: the

royal centres of

grants of land and rights were important throughout the kingdom, too.

But Ottonian local control was more mediated than their predecessors.

the

The king/emperors chose

two southern duchies controlled

all

Bavaria; indeed, Otto Ps son Liudolf

it

the dukes, but the dukes of

the ex-royal land of Swabia

implying that

with

little

were

all

if

all

Hermann had had

and

when he succeeded Hermann

Swabia had to be married to Hermann’s daughter succeed, ‘with the duchy, to

had been under

his property’, as

in

Ida, in order to

Widukind put

sons, Liudolf might have been a

land. Inside duchies, assemblies, army-muster

and

it,

duke

justice

under ducal control; there had never been many royal missi

in Carolingian East Francia,

and the court chaplains the Ottomans

sometimes sent out were very ad-hoc representatives. Kings chose bishops too, often from the court chaplains; an episcopal presence in the royal entourage interest

back into

was important, and they could

their duchies.

families, except for the

the kings could

also carry royal

But they, too, tended to be from local

key archbishops of Cologne and Mainz. The best

do was to undermine ducal power, sometimes by dividing

duchies (Carinthia was carved off from Bavaria in 976, Lotharingia was

433

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

O ST- C AR O LI N G AN WEST, 75O-IOOO I

Upper and Lower from

split into

autonomous

ing the

P

interests of

the late 950s) and, often, by encourag-

both bishops and other local magnates,

especially through grants of judicial immunity. In the end, the default

Ottonian

political practice in the outlying duchies,

and

also in Italy,

and rule. This, plus assembly ceremonial and frequent royal presence - for the Ottonians moved around a lot, far

was simply

more than

to divide

the Carolingians had,

and could be found

in

most places

except Bavaria - was a large part of Ottonian government, outside

Saxony

at least.

All the same, the Ottonians

had major

strengths, too: in their royal

land, in the still-surviving Carolingian heartland regions

and Mainz-Frankfurt, to which they added

their

own

around Aachen

family heartland

south of Saxony, between Hildesheim and Merseburg; in their

in the

powers of patronage, to

benefices, duchies, bishoprics, which, as with

the Carolingians, kept their courts essential locations for the distribution

of political power; in the silver-mines providentially discovered in their

Saxon heartland around Goslar about 970, which funded the kings for two centuries; and, above all, in their large army. The core of the latter

was Saxon, and

Henry

I

aimed

at

the East

was honed on the eastern marches, which under

it

and Otto

I

had become

tightly organized military territories

eastward aggression. The Slavs of the Elbe-Oder lands (roughly

Germany of 1945-90) were largely subjected, and they and their

eastern neighbours paid tribute; the

from

this,

Saxon aristocracy gained massively

which helped the loyalty of most of them, but the king/

emperor kept control of the whole process. (Dukes of Saxony developed again in the tenth century, once the Liudolfings/Ottonians had become kings, but they

were

essentially based in the eastern marches,

and did

not yet displace direct royal power.) The core Saxon army was sup-

plemented by units from everywhere

when the Ottonians fought as

is

elsewhere,

drawn

largely

Erankish kingdom

from church lands,

seen in the Indiculus Loricatorum^ a rare administrative

from the tenth century, an army-list Otto

else in the East

II

in

document

for the reinforcements called for

by

southern Italy in 981. The Ottonians never lost control of

army-service from the whole kingdom. Even the great Slav revolt of

983, after Otto’s Italian defeat, which drove the Saxons out of

much

of the land beyond the Elbe and held off their advance for a century, did not break the Ottonian grip All

this

made

possible

on the army and on the Saxon

Ottonian

434

supremacy,

despite

the

frontier.

relative

THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES simplicity of the political structures in

no sign of slipping

The kingdom of

in

looo.

had

It still

its

down

Rome, an institutionally coherent polity whose peninsula stretching

Italy, the Italian

was the opposite to East Francia, kings were weak.

much of their realm, and it showed

to

capital at Pavia, the location of the royal

court and an increasingly active centre of judicial expertise. Italian court-case records are elaborate and relatively in the eleventh century,

and appeals

homogeneous

until late

were normal. Most such

to Pavia

court records are of county-based judicial assemblies, which were thrice-

(who continued

yearly public meetings headed by counts or royal missi to exist in Italy,

though the

inside Italy’s strong

assembly

more

office

was by now

network of

regular,

and

had

this

cities:

politics of East Francia, but

a local one), usually held

was much more

localized,

lay notaries. Italian revenues

who were

from

tolls

conquering

in

away from

way

as

it

had been

This institutional coherence coincided with a politics.

been

The

local,

of

aristocracy of the eighth-century

in

Saxon

the

what

Emilia, around the capital. Italy

962, in the same

full

and royal lands were also more

frontier at least, particularly in the royal heartlands of

Eombardy and

much

generally literate, as well as

systematic and larger-scale than in Germany,

called

were

also explicitly judicial; such assemblies

semi-expert lay iudices, judges,

with the

parallels

are

now

was worth

773-4.

much more regionalized Eombard kingdom had

and modest in its wealth. The Carolingians introduced Franks

from the great northern

aristocratic families,

who owned more

widely,

such as the ‘Widonids’ in the southern duchy of Spoleto and the ‘Supponids’ (kin to

Eouis IPs queen Angilberga), as

we saw

in

Chapter 16. But

these families failed in the early tenth century, or else localized themselves, or else both, as

from Bavaria

first

with the ‘Bonifacian’ counts of Lucca, a family

documented

in Italy in 812,

who became

entirely

regionally focused, as marquises of Tuscany for the period 846 to 931, after

which they were overthrown and died

out. After

gian period in which incomers monopolized almost

Lombard

an early Carolin-

all

families re-emerged in the later ninth century

who might

secular offices,

and onwards,

gain lands and offices on a substantial scale, as with the

Aldobrandeschi

in

southern Tuscany, proteges of Lothar

or the Canossa in eastern Emilia, proteges of

Chapter 21); but these, too, usually had major

435

I

and Louis

Hugh and Otto

I

II,

(see

interests only in three or

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

P

O S T- C AR O LI N G AN WEST, 75O-IOOO I

four contiguous counties, and most of the aristocratic players of the tenth century had interests in only one. Italy outside the royal heartland

was divided

marches as was East Francia:

into duchies or

north-east, Spoleto in the south,

Turin

in the

north-west (the

first

Tuscany

Friuli in the

in the centre, Ivrea

two of these had Fombard antecedents,

the others were Carolingian or post-Carolingian). These

autonomous

political structures

and then

and armies,

had semi-

as did their analogues north

of the Alps. But the particular point about Italy

was that the

solidity of

the majority of counties, usually coterminous with the local bishopric

and centred on that secular

a city

and

where most

local political players lived,

ecclesiastical aristocracies

single city-territories as their

meant

could very easily focus on

major points of reference, bypassing even

and Tuscany, but their constituent elements, such as Verona, Padua, or Pisa - and, in the royal heartland, Parma, Bergamo, Milan - began to have their separate the marches. In the tenth century, not only Friuli

histories.

They were

identities

and

territories

for the

institutionally

political rivalries

connected to Pavia, but city-focused

mattered rather more. These localized

were more coherent than

most part

less

dominated by

in

most of East Francia, and were

single families than in

They therefore absorbed more of the

political interests of local

and kings and even marquises intervened outside.

Beyond the

city

West Francia.

in

them very

largely

powers,

from the

network, only Tuscany survived as a

fully

coherent regional territory into the eleventh century. This was the backdrop for the political shifts of the tenth century.

Berengar marquis of Friuli was the

first

make

to

Charles the Fat was overthrown; he faced no

less

himself king after

than

five rivals in his

Guy and Fambert of Spoleto (889-95; 891-8), north, as we have seen, and later Fouis III king of

thirty-five-year reign,

Arnulf from the

Provence (900-905 ), and Rudolf II king of Burgundy (922-6). Berengar I

survived the early deaths of the

three

first

and blinded the fourth;

between 905 and 922 he enjoyed the widest and most uncontested power of any king of his time. But he was not actually very popular outside his

own power-base

in north-east Italy (all his rivals except

actively supported in the north-west;

Tuscany usually remained

nor was he a great military leader (he and,

later, to

Rudolf of Burgundy).

He

lost battles to the

initiated in the

local structures of defence, concentrated

owned

fortifications, to

Arnulf were

on

cities,

which he often gave

436

neutral);

Hungarians,

900s a trend to

or else on privately

judicial immunities.

Guy

THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES and Louis

and then Berengar, also granted comital

III,

walls of cities to bishops, thus breaking

up comital

rights inside the

jurisdiction further.

This should be seen as Berengar exercising a well-structured and largely successful political protagonism, to reward support both inside

outside his heartland; but

it

already referred to. There

and

also strengthened the trends to localization little

is

sign under Berengar

I

of either a

Carolingian programmatic politics or the ceremonial royal assemblies of the Carolingian and Ottonian systems north of the Alps. Even the

on Berengar from around 915 (an atypical but not both Charlemagne and Otto I had them) makes no reference

verse panegyric

unique

text;

ended badly, when

to such initiatives. Berengar

up

aries stirred

new

a

Hungarian mercen-

his

and Rudolf’s invasion, the Hungarians

revolt

then sacked Pavia, and in 924 Berengar was, unusually for the period,

murdered.

The

magnates were

Italian

925 they

tried

still

Hugh, count of

decades, 926-47. Hugh,

looking for an effective ruler, and in

Arles,

who had no

who

ruled energetically for

local power-base, operated

two

from

the royal heartland around Pavia, and sought systematically to control the marches by choosing their rulers. In this respect he operated in

almost exactly the same

moved

way

as his

younger contemporary Otto

I:

he

established families around (more than Otto did, in fact), and

appointed his

own

kin, as

with his brother Boso and illegitimate son

He

also relied

his relatives or

from more

Hubert, successive marquises of Tuscany (931-69).

on

greatly

a

network of bishops, whether

who had considerable powers (as with his son Boso, bishop of Piacenza, who was also arch-chancellor in Pavia). Again, we lack much evidence for a more public, assembly-based politics (except local families,

although this might be expected to have been normal

in the field of law),

at least in Pavia.

Our main

narrative source for

Hugh, Liutprand of

Cremona, systematically disregarded the standard markers of royal imacy when he discussed the Otto

I,

Hugh,

Italian kings, faithful protege as he

are absent in our other evidence as well.

Italians,

and he

fell

when the Erankish army

too, in the end,

himself with no supporters. Berengar after

We

gain the sense that

outsider to the local political preoccupations of the

of Ivrea invaded with an East

I

was of

but clear signs of royal ceremony, or political aggregation around

Hugh remained an

Otto

legit-

II

exiled Berengar marquis

945 and Hugh found ruled under the hegemony of in

951, and was easily removed in 962.

437

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

A political

P

O ST- C AR O LI N G AN WEST, 75O-IOOO I

system which has both wealth and institutional coherence,

but whose rulers are relatively marginal politically and have tary support,

Berengar

by

rule

II

is

mili-

both attractive and easy to conquer, as Rudolf, Hugh,

and Otto I found in turn.

now

little

arguable, though, that Ottonian

It is

suited Italy best. Otto

I

and Otto.

spent

Ill

some time

in

nine and five years respectively, but kings were present in the

Italy,

kingdom

itself for less

than a third of the period 962-1000, and in the

eleventh century the figure dropped precipitously.

moted episcopal immunities where counts were

The Ottonians proand appointed

strong,

and endowed counts where bishops were strong: an ad-hoc procedure aimed

do much armies, rare,

to

beyond the Alps. They did not

at reducing local power-bases, as

they imported no

else;

when

families.

The

strength of their

made explicit opposition trouble in Rome, which he tried

they were present in the country,

although Otto

make

new

III

had considerable

his political base in

998-1001,

rhetorical attempt at a renovatio of the

in a

Roman

romantic and largely

empire. But most of the

time they were absent, and the local politics of the Italian bishops

and urban aristocracies could continue with

little

external interference,

linked together essentially by the Pavia-focused network of judicial

assemblies and also by the regular seeking of diplomas granting lands

and

rights

from the king/emperors beyond the Alps. This was a pattern

which would Italian city

wars of the 1080S-1090S forced

persist until the civil

communities to think about ruling themselves; on the other

hand, the coherence of city territories was, after 1000, the crystallization of even smaller lordships with rights (see below.

Otto I and

III

intervened directly in

autonomous

political

Roman politics, and all three Ottos

Rome. The independent

Benevento had held Charlemagne it

eroded by

Chapter 21).

also sought to intervene south of

war,

itself

off,

principality of

but in 849, after a ten-year

divided into two, Benevento and Salerno, and

from Salerno by the 860s. These three

Capua

split off

principalities then variously

combined, fought each other, and fought the small ex-Byzantine states in the

same

area, Naples, Amalfi

They were not very

civil

and Gaeta,

internally coherent as polities,

for

two

city-

centuries.

and already

in the

mid-tenth century they were dividing into smaller lordships, with the exception of Salerno. They were also militarily weak: Louis

II

had

already sought to dominate them in the 860S-870S, though he failed; the

Byzantines had also, more definitively, annexed the southern portions of

438

THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES Salerno and, in particular, of Benevento in the 880S-890S. The southern principalities thus

and,

looked

they did not become so,

if

away from

the

new

like possible

was only because they were so

it

main Ottoman power-bases, and because Otto

Conversely, however, inside southern

This

independent princi-

Italy, the

own ruling dynasty was the unchallenged political model. doubtless why Rome, under four generations of the Theophylact

family

ruler,

982

under its

is

well.

IPs

far

was so traumatic.

defeat

pality

conquests to the Ottonians,

It

(c.

904-63), moved

in the direction of the dynastic pattern as

was one strong enough even

Marozia senatrix

et patricia

to tolerate an independent female

(c.

925-32), one of a small handful

were

in the tenth century (the others, discussed later,

who

Rus); her son Alberic (932-54),

Mercia and

in

overthrew her, called himself

princeps, prince, in clear imitation of the princes just to the south. These rulers chose their bishops

- that

Capua-Benevento and Salerno in the north. Alberic

is,

did,

the popes - just as the princes of

and

drew back from the

also just as the Ottonians did

pattern, however,

when he was

not only succeeded by his son Octavian (954-63/4), but persuaded the

Roman in

aristocracy to elect the latter pope,

which they

did, as

John

956. Rome’s traditions and papal-orientated bureaucracy

episcopal leader leader.

Otto

I,

But

this

brought renewed

as rival families

century. Otto violent

more appropriate

I

and

III

in the long

only exacerbated this in their

Roman

to be

faction-fighting

Gerbert), for the it

own

high-handed,

and temporary interventions. But although the king/emperors

Rome, where they needed

but

John’s overthrow by

rival pontiffs across the rest of the

could and did give up on the south of

solve

made an

term than a princely

instability, after

supported

XII,

first

Italy,

they could not give up on

crowned emperor. Otto

III

tried to

by choosing non-Italian popes (including

time since the mid-eighth century. This failed,

would be imitated by Henry

III

with unpredictable

in the 1040s,

future effects.

West Francia was

easily the least successful of the post-Carolingian

kingdoms. Even the shadowy kingdom of Burgundy

managed an

in the

essential durability (except in the south,

and also dynastic continuity, between 888 and

its

Rhone

valley

ravaged by Arabs)

absorption into the

East Frankish kingdom/empire in 1032. West Francia, however, com-

bined the personalized kingship of the Ottonian East with the political

439

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

P O ST- C ARO LI N

- a

instability of early tenth-century Italy

G I AN WEST, 750-IOOO

Already by the

fatal mixture.

940s the kings of the West had hardly any authority, and for the next

hundred and In

fifty

years they hardly gained any more.

Odo

888 the ‘Robertine’

of Paris took the throne of

West Francia

(888-98). The only surviving western Carolingian, Charles the Simple,

was

Odo

a child,

and an adult was needed to confront the Vikings.

In

889

held substantial assemblies, and counts and bishops from as far

south as Barcelona and Nimes came to them; but his non-Carolingian

blood did not help

his authority

south of the Loire, in Aquitaine and

elsewhere, and by 893 lack of success against the Vikings allowed

Archbishop Fulk of Reims

900) to get away with setting Charles as

(d.

Odo and

king against him. Civil war followed;

Charles

made peace

in

897, and Charles was recognized as Odo’s heir, in return for Odo’s brother Robert being recognized as in sole control of the family counties

and monasteries between the Seine and the Loire and around

When

Paris.

Charles succeeded as king (898-923), he was thus cut out of a

large section of the traditional royal lands in the Paris region.

The counts

943) themselves distant Carolingians, for the former was grandson of Bernard of Vermandois, Heribert

I

905) and his son Heribert

(d. c.

II (d.

of Italy - had occupied most of the royal properties in the Oise valley

north of Paris, too; Charles was political base,

for the royal properties

make good

It is

not surprising

his control of Lotharingia,

around Aachen would have increased

political influence dramatically.

of the

with Laon to the north-east as a

extending to Reims whenever he could.

that he spent the 910s trying to

and

left

West Frankish aristocracy

But he did not have the

for this enterprise,

his

full

wealth

support

and they also seem

to have resented his Lotharingian advisers. In

of [West] Francia’ revolted, as

made Robert king

920 ‘almost all the counts Flodoard of Reims put it, and in 922 they

against him. Robert

year, but the Franks

was

killed in battle the next

would not take Charles back, and chose instead

Rudolf duke of Burgundy, Robert’s brother-in-law (923-36). Charles

was captured by Heribert

II

of Vermandois, and died in prison in 929.

Charles was not an entirely useless king. His Lotharingian adventure

was

at least a sensible strategy,

even

if

a desperate one.

He

also

vision to deal with the Vikings of the Seine by recognizing settling their leader

manni

them and

Rollo as count of Rouen in 911. The Vikings (Nort-

in Latin) of the Seine

and held

had the

more or

less

off future attacks; they settled

440

respected their side of the deal,

down and soon began

to behave

THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES in

ways analogous

prone to

civil

and ‘Normandy’, though

to other Frankish magnates,

war, remained fairly firmly in the hands of

One was

But Charles had several insurmountable problems. very

count/duke.

its

that he

had

land in West Francia as a whole; in the two decades preceding

little

898 the counts and dukes of both the north and the south had occupied

most of

it

for their

own

purposes, except in the Paris heartland region,

which Robert and Heribert divided with him. The second was that he and

his successors

had no power

to choose counts

and dukes, unlike the

kings of East Francia and Italy; no tenth-century

had any unless

on the succession of

significant effect

its

ruler died without heirs. This

recently, for Charles the Fat exercised

a

West Frankish king

major county or duchy,

power had been in the 880s, but

it

it

lost

only

had now

gone, with the consequence that the territorial chequerboard of West

Frankish politics was strategically uncontrollable except by war; only

some of the bishops and abbots of the north, notably

the major regional

power of Reims, could

The

the magnates of

usually be chosen by the king.

West Francia were themselves

898 Robert, Heribert

I,

Baldwin

II

third

was

that

regionalized; already in

count of Flanders, Fulk of Reims,

Richard the Justiciar duke of Burgundy, William the Pious duke of eastern Aquitaine and

Odo

count of Toulouse had interests that were

restricted to the counties they controlled

bours, and not to the

kingdom

and

their

immediate neigh-

was

quite like the East

as a whole. This

Erankish or Italian situation, and

it

was Charles the Simple’s task

establish the political centrality of his assemblies, as

would do. But he had not to create

the landed resources to

do

to

Henry of Saxony

it,

and

his attempts

them were unsupported.

923 at least had a new landed base, in the duchy of Burgundy, and was strong there. But he also largely remained there;

King Rudolf

in

Elodoard’s Annals describe him as having to be ‘summoned’ to the West

Erankish heartland, not that far away, by Heribert of Vermandois or Robert’s son

Hugh

the Great

wars. At his death in 936, exile in all,

England to

rule.

(d.

Hugh

when he was needed

to fight

recalled Charles’s son Louis

IV from

956),

Louis had effectively no land or power at

and strove constantly, but without

success, to establish himself

who had become

‘duke of the [West] Eranks’ in

independently of Hugh, 936.

Hugh

Otto

I

more

even imprisoned him in 945-6, an action which brought firmly onto the scene,

and resulted

in Louis’s

appearance at

Ingelheim in 948 to seek Otto’s judgement against Hugh. (Hugh was

441

THE CAROLINGIAN AND excommunicated

for

P O ST- C ARO LI

make peace with Louis

he did

Louis died in 954, leaving a

in 950.)

Lothar (954-86), as king; Lothar’s mother

son,

thirteen-year-old

but paid no notice, although

later in the year,

it

N G I AN WEST, 75O-IOOO

Gerberga was regent for several years. But Hugh’s death king respite, as his

own eldest son Hugh Capet was only eleven. Gerberga

and Hugh Capet’s mother Hadwig were Otto

whose authority

I,

confirmation of the

grew up

fell

title

at its height in these years;

Brun of Cologne,

of duke on

Hugh Capet 978-80,

the latter in

who

it

often

is

orchestrated the

Lothar as he

in 960.

but with Otto

I

and Otto

II,

like that of sixty years earlier,

protagonism was

his greater

based on no greater strength on the ground.

Hugh

who

Hugh Capet

an attempt to regain Lotharingia. But

young

they were also sisters of

next decade, and

in the

out not only with

war with

fighting a in

their brother

West Francia

in

sisters;

West was

in the

was exercised through found

956 gave the

in

When

son Louis

his

V died

987, Archbishop Adalbero of Reims argued successfully for

in

we have seen. The running sore of Carolinwas ended when Charles of Lotharingia was

Capet’s succession, as

gian-Robertine rivalry

captured in 990, and male-line ‘Capetians’ then ruled West Francia/

France without any significant break until 1792, a record unsurpassed, as far as

I

know,

except in Japan.

in all history,

This was not the end of royal trouble,

all

the same. Adalbero (or

Gerbert) could already in 985 write a brief ‘secret and

anonymous letter’,

probably to the archbishop’s Lotharingian kin, saying that ‘Lothar king of Francia in

and

fact’; this

name

was 751

only;

all

not in name,

it is

true, but in

deed

over again, on the surface. But time had not

stopped for the Robertines a block of

Hugh

is

either.

Hugh

the Great’s power-base

around twenty counties stretching from

was

Paris to Orleans

in

and

west to Angers: a substantial area of land by tenth-century West Frankish standards. But during

Hugh

Capet’s minority the formerly subordinate

counts of the western half of this block, notably those of Angers and Blois,

local

gained effective independence, and began to operate their

and regional

politics;

Fulk Nerra of Anjou (that

Angers; 987-1040) was famously insubordinate to

Robert

II

(996-1031), and

Champagne around 1021,

Odo

thus

II

is,

own

the territory of

Hugh

Capet’s son

of Blois (995-1037) also took over

hemming

the Robertine/Capetian heart-

land in from both sides at once. The already small geographical scale of the political

and military operations described

the 920s became,

if

possible, smaller

still

in Flodoard’s

Annals

in the eleventh century.

in

Royal

THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES traditions such as assembly

looo than size of

before.

and army-muster had even

West Francia north of the

less force after

Loire, an area

much

the

Saxony, was by 1025 the terrain of six or seven effectively inde-

pendent

‘principalities’, Brittany,

Anjou, Normandy, Blois-Champagne,

Flanders, with the kings in the middle and the archbishops of the edge. South of the Loire there were

more

Reims on

again.

The Merovingian-Carolingian system of counties was stronger in West Francia than in the East, and there were no strong traditions of ethnic difference, except in Brittany, politics in the

eastern that

which was

absorbed into Frankish

fragmented tenth century, and, by now, Normandy. The

model of the ethnic duchy had

was

finally

less force here.

Each

political unit

larger than a single county, as all the small principalities north

of the Loire were,

and could

was thus

created, painstakingly, territory by territory,

back into

risk falling

its

constituent parts again, as the

Robertine lands were doing by 987. In the south, too, the ‘Guilhelmid’ counts of the Auvergne (see Chapter 21) had accumulated a string of counties in eastern Aquitaine and called themselves ‘dukes of the

Aquitainians’ by 900, but the west of Aquitaine, notably the counts of Poitiers, did

why

not recognize their authority, and there was no real reason

they should;

when

of Poitiers took the if

they took

it

927 the Auvergne dukes died out, the counts but could only exercise power in the Auvergne

in

title,

militarily,

and so on. Actually, the

Poitiers

dukes were

and William IV (963-93) and William V (993times, wider authority than anyone north of the

quite successful in this,

1030) exercised, Loire by now.

at

The regional church councils which preached

aristocratic violence

and

in

favour of the ‘Peace of God’ in the

against last half

of the century in Aquitaine were partly taken over by William

994 and turned,

in

effect,

assemblies, the only ones

still

V

after

back into Carolingian-style large-scale in existence in

West Erancia by the end of

the tenth century. But the core of William’s

power and land was

still

Poitou, and elsewhere he had to gain the fidelity of counts and other local lords,

by force or persuasion or ceremony. This was a

we can see in a surviving agreement around 1025 between William and Hugh of Lusignan (a powerful

had constantly to be reinforced, of

fidelity that

lord in Poitou

itself)

as

which discusses

in great detail the tense, prickly,

and armed stand-offs between the two reached. This was so everywhere.

sides before settlement

The counts of

was

Elanders, the count/

dukes of Normandy, the counts of Anjou, the counts of Toulouse, the

443

THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST, 75O-IOOO counts of Barcelona,

manage

quite large, did

powers

the different

to establish real

much

and

lasting

in their principalities. Others,

And

best intermittent overlords.

involution in

of

and

however, were at a further

West Francia, when counties themselves began

powers:

judicial

hegemonies over

looo or so there was

after

own

break up into smaller lordships, each with their military

some of them

ruling collections of counties,

all

all

huge empire reduced to the

to

localized political,

the political system of Charlemagne’s

few

scale of a

villages.

This process, the

so-called ‘feudal revolution’, will be looked at again later.

The

little

of French history-writing over

Middle Ages, which begin for these purposes around lOOO

the central

or a

hegemony

twentieth-century

late

made the West Frankish experience seem the typical

before, has

post-Carolingian development. As should be clear to readers of this chapter,

it

was

typical, for is

true,

Still less,

fidelity;

was more

and

local in

identity

as

we

shall see,

was the

only affected parts of West Francia

power was highly

oaths of

and

it

not.

was

and even

in Italy, too,

looo than 900. But

still

tied

up of

local, built

in

up with being

‘feudal revolution’

Everywhere,

itself.

lands, rights, armies

in

some of East

most places

it

and

Francia,

it

aristocratic status

close to kings, or at least

major

regional powers such as the duke of Bavaria, the marquis of Tuscany or

Even

the count of Flanders.

in Italy,

although identities could be closely

tied to city-territories, the institutional force of the

as an inheritance

elements of a lingians

kingdom remained,

from the Lombard and Carolingian periods. And

common

political practice, also inherited

and only partly modified

after

from the Caro-

900, existed throughout the

post-Carolingian lands, even in the West. Let us end this chapter by

looking at

how some

of

The tenth century gave

them worked.

less

space to Carolingian-style political theology.

There was some: Abbo of Eleury Carolingian legislation to isolated in his

(d.

1004), in particular, could praise

Hugh Capet and Robert II;

commitment. (The West Erankish kings around 1000

were also not the most suitable recipients of such also patronized in England,

next chapter.) Conversely,

which was it

in

The educational

ideas; but

different, as

would be wrong

absence that the tenth century had writing.

but he seems fairly

we

Carolingian centres such as

St.

shall see in the

to conclude

moved away from

traditions of the ninth century

Abbo was from

this

the world of

had continued

Gallen, Corvey and Reims, and indeed

444

THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES extended geographically, to remoter locations such as Gerbert’s Aurillac,

and to the new south-east Saxon royal heartland,

Some

dersheim, Magdeburg.

rhymed prose of

the Lotharingian Rather, bishop of

Verona

(d.

974),

Saxon historian Widukind of Corvey

knowledge (and pretentious

after 973), the

Italian

Quedlinburg, Gan-

of the literary results were striking: the

the heavy use of Sallust in the (d.

in

Liutprand bishop of Gremona

Greek

use) of

in the

972), and the Virgilian poetry

(d.

and - most unusual of all - Terence-influenced play-writing of the Saxon Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim niece)

975). Hrotsvitha and her patron (Otto Fs

(d.

Abbess Gerberga show that the

And

could be formidably educated.

women

of the Saxon aristocracy

named

the people

all

in this para-

graph, although undoubtedly trained in ecclesiastical milieux, had close court connections, usually but not only with the Ottonians. Translators are certainly

more commonly

referred to in tenth- than in

ninth-century sources, even for kings and dukes. Otto

thought not to have to translate for

him

known in

Latin, for example, because Liutprand

Rome

But

in 963.

it is

more

simply avoiding giving away that he did not have rhetoric in Latin, as well as ruler of

Rome, was

making

literary figures he

ing (in Latin)

was

him (and

and

it

would be odd

as regular a

means of

earlier,

even outside Italy with

letter collection

edited

it

its

it

all.

communication

had been

widespread lay

shows how dense

Capet, Lothar’s wife

Queen Emma,

in the

in the ninth

literacy. Gerbert’s if

he subsequently

a political correspondence

could be in the 980s. Gerbert and the people he wrote

Hugh

who

Furthermore, writ-

(probably a working collection, even

for publication)

II,

he had patronized so

if

political

new

worthwhile

it

to his son Otto

could not understand at

tenth century, alongside spoken messages, as

and

control of public

a Saxon-speaker. Hrotsvitha thought

certainly educated),

many

full

had

Otto was

likely that

the political point that he, the

dedicating her verse Gesta Ottonis to

was

sometimes

is

I

sent terse

and

Adalbero,

for,

practical mes-

sages to each other and to other significant political players, very fre-

when Hugh, now king, writes in December 988 to the empress Theophanu about her health, promises peace, and proposes a quently - as

diplomatic meeting in the next month,

enough that most certainly did not

aristocrats

match the

century. All the same, this

all in

were no longer

literary

it,

445

It

fully literate,

commitment common

was not an

romantic historians have described

eight lines.

‘oral’ culture, as

except in so far as

is

likely

and they

in the ninth

some more all

cultures.

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

PO

S

T- C A R O L I N G I AN

WEST, 750-IOOO

including our own, are essentially oral. And, whether with writing or

without

it,

some

aspects of tenth-century government could be (by early

medieval western standards) tightly organized and monitored. Berengar of Ivrea’s poll tax to pay off the Hungarians in 947

Another, perhaps more striking,

important Saxon border

headed by important

is

Otto

castle, the

Ill’s

decision in

is

one example.

997

to defend an

Arneburg, with four-week garrisons

local aristocrats,

who had

to

hand over

to each

when a handover slipped up and the Slavs sacked the emperor demanded an accounting. Meissen was similarly

other in relays; castle, the

garrisoned in the next decade. This represents systematic government, at least in

Saxony, and

it

was experienced by the and

just their ecclesiastical brothers

lay aristocracy too, not

sisters.

Side by side with this daily communication, tenth-century polities

maintained the large-scale public arena of political action of the Carolingian world. Assemblies were probably smaller in West Francia, whether for political or judicial purposes; indeed, judicial assemblies died out in

much

of the western

who

magnates

kingdom by 1000 or

Hugh Capet was

elected

more

‘court’, a rather

assembly surviving

restricted

in Italy, or

so.

The 987 assembly of

called a curia by Richer, a

word than placitum,

the large judicial

than the universalis populi conventus^ the

‘meeting of the whole people’, referred to often by

Widukind

for the

East Frankish lands. Even in West Francia, though, the peace councils of William

V of Aquitaine

and others could sometimes revive the image

of wider public participation; and elsewhere

kingdom-wide

political

all

the

members

of local or

communities could meet together and become

the audience for political acts,

which had power simply because of the

size of the audience.

These acts could be very elaborate. Otto referred to,

I’s

coronation, already

was one, potent with images of Carolingian legitimacy and

supremacy. There was a stateliness about

many

of them, a rule-

boundedness, which has been influentially characterized by Gerd Althoff in his

phrase Spielregeln, ‘the rules of the game’, rules which everyone

in the

community knew, and which held

This was

all

the

off

more necessary because

open disagreement

the single court hierarchy of

the Carolingian world had, in reality, gone; there were by players,

whose

relative position could

in public.

now

far

no longer be established from

above. Equality between kings was carefully choreographed, as

Otto

I

and Louis IV

in

948

sat

down 446

more

at the

synod of Ingelheim

when at the

THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES same moment, or

as

when

kings met at the boundaries of kingdoms:

Charles the Simple, for example, met Henry their fideles, in a their

own

I

921, each watched by

in

boat on the Rhine, to which they had each come in

separate boats. In a parallel case, Rudolf of West Francia met

Duke William II of Aquitaine at the River Loire in 924, when Rudolf was threatening

war

him

to get William’s submission to

Messengers

as king.

crossed by day to negotiate, then William crossed at night, got off his

and met the still-mounted king on

horse,

the kiss of peace; this

was the

crucial element that

process, involving a symbolic river-crossing

but taking place in the dark, so

must have

from

foot,

whom

he received

began the submission

and a posture of inferiority,

less publicly visible (the

negotiations

largely been about that). Subjects regularly greeted their lords

kneeling, or even prostrate

on the ground

when particularly when askdid kings,

(as also

kneeling or prostrating themselves before altars):

ing for favours, but even in normal greeting, as with the story by Rodulf

Glaber

(d.

1047) of the unfaithful Heribert

of Vermandois receiving

II

Charles the Simple’s kiss of peace while prostrate in 923. kings (or even, later, counts)

came

to cities there

rituals of greeting, in a tradition surviving

And when

were regular adventus

from the

Roman

empire and

Rome had by far the most elaborate Rome’s own status, but all cities had their own,

continuing to the modern period. ones,

which signalled

when the cives fortiores, leading citizens, of Pavia came out to greet King Hugh ‘by custom’ in about 930, according to Liutprand, or when as

Louis IV was formally received at his accession in 936 at Laon and

nearby

cities,

according to Richer. All of these

reconstructions, but the imagery

was

latter

accounts are literary

a recognizable

and

Rituals could also be used to humiliate. Prostration

commonly used by people kings could demand very

a strong one.

was

particularly

confessing crimes and seeking pardon; and specific public humiliations, like the

dogs

which the leading supporters of Duke Eberhard of the Franks had to carry publicly into

Magdeburg

in

937

Carolingian antecedents (under Louis saddles), but as a sign of royal right,

of the guilty,

it

after a II

of Italy

must have had quite an

icler,

when Dudo

had

would have been

it

effect.

conversely, this

is

the

is

that they

work

of the

Norman chronof Normandy’s follower, when kissing

of Saint-Quentin

supposes that in 911 Rollo

revolt. This

and of the subjection and penitence

The point about elaborate systems of rules, can be subverted to make points. Sometimes writer, as

minor

447

(d. c.

1020), the

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

P

O ST- C ARO L N G AN WEST, 75O-IOOO I

I

Charles the Simple’s foot to represent the formal submission of Rollo’s Vikings, pulled the foot up into the air to kiss

it:

Dudo

here simply

wants to convey Viking/Norman egalitariarlism and disrespect. More

complex was Duke Hermann Billung of Saxony’s decision an assembly

in

Otto

city of

I’s

throne after Otto and,

when he

laid

on

allies.

had

realized he

rely

own

had

came

Ill’s sisters,

and

ate

it

had been

himself with his

and he

for these stories,

critical

comment

certainly

making

were potentially replaceable

Hermann’s

(in

that Otto

I

case,

more

had been too long away

and the claim that the duke of Saxony himself had, or should

have, considerable formal power. Watchers points were being made; Ekkehard

Magdeburg (though

by an angry Otto

I.

was

knew

killed for

not, interestingly,

it,

that these sorts of

and the archbishop

Hermann) was

heavily fined

As with the Carolingians, once again, public

always had audiences,

who

a feast that

Hermann and Ekkehard were

Ekkehard’s case, certainly), and also

ambiguously) the

of

seeking the

agendas, inevitably, but his close relatives were anxious

points: about the fact that the Ottonians

in Italy,

slept in his bed; or

who was

commandeered

lost,

Otto

to call

to the electoral assembly at Werla,

on Thietmar of Merseburg

witnesses in each case.

(in

and

of Meissen in 1002,

death,

in the palace for

We

his

Ill’s

968

Magdeburg, where he was received by

the archbishop, dined in the emperor’s place,

when Marquis Ekkehard

in

who needed

to be persuaded of arguments,

acts

and

could be convinced by creative reworkings of the rituals they were

new

familiar with. This in turn generated like the

Peace of God councils:

I

and public procedures,

rituals

have described these in terms of Carolin-

gian antecedents, but they were also seen as collective religious responses

and counters

to aristocratic violence, organized locally (as

lence), rather

hierarchies.

was the

than necessarily as the product of traditional political

As the tenth century moved

into the eleventh, the readings

of public acts by local political actors could change quite a in the

West Erankish

Rome was centre

vio-

still

lot, at least

lands.

one element of legitimization.

and the location

for imperial coronation,

It

was

still

a pilgrimage

and most major

political

players found themselves there at one time or another. Popes, too,

maintained some of their of law. Both John

XV

late

Carolingian authority, at least in the

and Gregory

V

demanded

of Reims’s deposition in 991, and got their

Gerbert himself, as Pope Silvester

II,

448

way

field

the reversal of Arnulf in the

end

(his

enemy

reconfirmed him in office in 999).

THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES Agapitus

Earlier,

II

Arnulf’s predecessor

suaded to reverse

had

demanded

at least initially

Hugh was deposed

same when

the

947; although he was per-

in

949, his opinions mattered, and his

his position in

agreement needed to be obtained. Not many bishops were actually

deposed

in this period, but they

were

politically

important in every

Rome in certain limited respects.

kingdom, and they answered to

Tenth-

century popes were not usually protagonists; they were mostly in rather

weak positions

inside the city of

Rome, and,

rather than act, they reacted

to requests, usually along the lines the powerful wanted. But

to

make

on

decisions

their

as over Arnulf of Reims,

-

it

was hard

to force

own, against the

who had no

them

if

interests of the

significant support

to change their minds,

they were

powerful -

among the

laity

and the powerful

might have to back down. The Latin church thus maintained the skeleton ‘international’ values

and procedures that had begun

in the Carolingian

period.

One more

respect in

which

dynastic. This

was

political practice

changed was that

it

became

a recognizable Carolingian inheritance, too; the

Carolingians themselves had a strong dynastic consciousness, and the families of the Reich saristokratie

inheritance to land,

were also conscious of

their rights of

which included an expectation that sons would

we saw

succeed fathers in office at least somewhere, as

in

Chapter 16.

In the tenth century, however, nine of the great Carolingian aristocratic families gained the royal less

title,

at least for a time,

thought they might join them; and

autonomy

in a

many

and others doubt-

others gained practical

duchy, march, or accumulation of counties, which they

could expect to pass to their heirs in a regular way. They appropriated

some of the public rituals described above; they also appropriated a much more direct sense of hereditary entitlement than aristocrats had had in the ninth century.

The West Frankish kings could not

comital succession at

all,

as

only with some care, or in died without sons, a result,

it

when

was possible

and even the Ottonians did so response to revolt - or else when magnates

noted

for the first time to suppose that dukes or counts this

East, Lothar in the West), as

Queen-mothers reappeared

we have

earlier,

they could manipulate marriage alliances. As

might inherit as children; and

forces, as

intervene in ducal or

seen,

and

as

it

was

also true of kings (Otto

had not been

III

in the

in the ninth century.

important and recognized political

a less contested force than

the powerful queens of the century before.

449

Women

were some of

were sometimes

THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST, 75O-IOOO

when

powerful even

of Quedlinburg Italy in

kings were adults: Otto

III

used his aunt Matilda

when he went

999) as a regent in the north

(d.

we

998. And, interestingly,

to

begin to find quite a few active

duchess-mothers and marquise-mothers as well: powerful dealers for their deceased

husband’s families,

Guy

for her son

like

Bertha (d.‘926), regent of Tuscany

Hadwig, widow of Hugh the Great,

after 915, or

956-60, or her daughter

politically active in

Beatrice,

who

Lotharingia for a decade after her husband’s death in 978.

how

little

hostility

expressed towards these ruling

is

our sources, even though our writers are female

fragility.

The one exception

who

misogynist,

is

full

It is

women

ran Upper interesting in

most of

of patriarchal cliches about

Liutprand of Cremona, a selective

frequently explained female

power

as the result of

sexual licence; but his targets were essentially Italian, and this can be linked to his desire to delegitimize

may

all

aspects of Italian independence.

It

be that the weakening of the heavily moralized politics of the

female power

Carolingian period

left

censure, outside the

work

A more

less

exposed to suspicion and

of Liutprand.

meant a

dynastic set of political assumptions also

more rooted

in the control of specific lands. Aristocrats

politics

needed

still

Konigsndhe, ‘closeness to kings’, to keep their power and wealth and to gain more, except, increasingly, in West Francia, but they looked to the royal court from a clearly defined regional base by

not it

shift

now, which would

geographically except in very rare cases, and which would,

own

grew, result only in a greater domination of their

effects this

local

would have on

domination

itself,

aristocratic identity,

we

shall

which deals with the aristocracy.

West Frankish

kings, as

and on the structures of

It

had an had

effect

on wider-scale

politics

led to the eclipse of the relevance

we have

seen.

They

also contributed to

the readiness of Italian magnates to cope with absentee kingship,

focus instead on the Ottonians

much more

The

look at in more detail in Chapter 21,

as well, however. Regional interests

of the

region.

if

localized rivalries.

had to deal with five separate

Even

political

and to

in East Francia,

networks. Bavarian,

Swabian, Frankish, Saxon and (crystallizing more slowly) Lotharingian, with their

own

identities

their neighbours.

actually not

and

Thietmar

much about

loyalties

tells

us

I

had been

in

(relative) lack of interest in

about

Italy or

West Francia, but

Bavaria and Swabia either,

about the most immediate Saxon

Otto

little

and

rivals to the east,

Bavaria in the 960s and not

450

much

less

than

such as the Poles.

Italy,

Hermann

If

Billung

THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES might well

still

have staged

his critical

ceremony

in

Magdeburg. One

long-term result of this localization of identity was that, everywhere,

was not

it

quite as entirely essential as in the past to go to kings, or to

dukes or marquises or counts, to gain social status and legitimacy as an aristocrat.

was or

no

still

contest: significant players

it

oneself. In East Francia there

needed

offices

and Konigsndhe

ducal equivalent, and so would they for another century and more.

its

But

At a pinch, one might claim

it

would be

Francia. In the

who were eleventh.

just possible to

West

imagine the choice by now, even

there were already

beginning to go

it

The parameters of

alone,

some people

in East

in the tenth century

and there were many more

political

power

itself

in the

would change when

they did.

The tenth century has had historians: should

it

a problem of double vision in the eyes of

be seen as a post-Carolingian century, prolonging

ninth-century political structures and values (although, in the eyes of

some, not so politics

prelude to the often quite different

effectively), or as a

and polemics of the centuries

stops in 1000, as this does, attention to the

is

century does indeed seem to

looo or 1050?

A book which

probably inevitably going to pay more

of these, and

first

after

I

have done so here. But the tenth

me more

eleventh, including in the fragmented

‘Carolingian’ than does the

world of West Francia: even a

small western principality like Anjou or Catalonia was

still

using

many

Carolingian public procedures in the late tenth century, and Tuscany or

Saxony, or the Ottonian kingdom/empire as a whole, was using nearly all

of them.

political

violence,

me -

if

Above and

do not want

and indeed the

stability,

But the

I

and

to argue here for a simple

last

and unchanging

couple of pages have argued the opposite.

parameters of the tenth-century world, including

a fair

its

measure of cynicism and opportunism, seem to

one has to choose - to look backwards rather than forwards.

all,

the tenth-century emphasis

large-scale collective rituals

on the public world of assemblies

would

lessen in the future.

It

was

already beginning to disappear in the last decades of the tenth century in

West Francia;

in Italy

it

would continue

for another century, but

disappear quite fast around 1100; in East Francia rather longer at the level of the kingdom, but

some of

the localities.

Assembly

it

would

persist for

would fade much

politics slowly

faster in

turned into the politics

of royal and princely courts, groups selected by rulers rather than being

451

THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-C ARO LINGI AN WEST, 750-IOOO representatives (however

communities.

A

much

in practice aristocratic ones) of political

sense of belonging, of loyalty,

become more personalized

as these

and of hierarchy would

changes took place, and the lord-

dependant relationship would come into the foreground more, gaining as

did a

it

more elaborate ceremonial and

etiquette.

These are markers

of the central Middle Ages, not the early Middle Ages; and they were

hardly more than at their beginning in looo.

One

result of that

change

is

Francia but to an extent also in

Italy,

tenth. History-writing in Italy after

attention to the politics of the gets

remembered

seldom looked back much to the

looo

kingdom

in tiny vignettes,

is

very localized, and pays

in the kings of his

mation, and

it is

own

little

at all; the tenth century only

such as Hugh’s lustfulness, or Otto

saving of his second wife Adelaide from Berengar

West Francia, writing only

West

that the eleventh century, at least in

II.

a generation after Richer,

is

I’s

Rodulf Glaber

in

at least interested

time, but before the 990s has almost

no

infor-

again expressed in isolated stories, Heribert IPs capture

of Charles the Simple, or Lothar’s

war against Otto

II,

or the

Arab

capture of Abbot Maiolus of Cluny in 972; his highly detailed account of his

own

times needs no back history to explain matters, and

would not have explained them,

maybe

it

to his eyes. This reordering of historical

consciousness marks the failure, in the west and the south of the Frankish lands, of the Carolingian political

of legitimization: too

much

world and

its

of the past did not

traditional

methods

mean anything any

more. Only Charlemagne survived, as an increasingly mythic and dehistoricized figure, flanked in

and Clovis:

safe

not explaining players in

still

some areas of West Francia by Pippin

III

symbols of the distant past, legitimizing the present but

it.

The tenth century was thus

eclipsed;

cannot easily be understood. But

this

some of its major

would not have been

anyone’s mind in 1000, when, to a Cerbert or a Thietmar, the world,

even

if

dangerous and unpredictable, was carrying on

452

just fine.

800-1000

‘Carolingian’ England,

990 or 991,

In

landowner named Wynflsed made a plea against

a

Leofwine (possibly her stepson) before the English king ^^thelred about the ownership of two estates set of witnesses, the king’s

archbishop of Canterbury the

powerful mother ^Ifthryth

and

a bishop

(see

below), the

and an ealdorman,

Anglo-Saxon equivalent of a Continental duke or count. Leofwine

insisted that the matter be first

the

She had a heavyweight

in Berkshire.

Sigeric,

II,

heard

at a shire

assembly (scirgemot),

Anglo-Saxon equivalent of the county-level placitum

lands; this

was correct

in law, but

was

Frankish

in the

also important to Leofwine,

presumably, because the twenty-five-year-old king might not easily judge against his mother, even in the period before 993 arily

not part of his court. The

much, however,

move

when

she was tempor-

of venue did not help Leofwine

for after ^Tthelred formally

committed the case to the

Berkshire assembly, with his seal and (apparently verbal) instructions, the queen-mother

and swore

and twenty-four named men and

would

risk a

huge

if

was pointed

the case reached the oath-swearing

moment, he

and

fine,

parties (though that had,

handing over the land,

which Wynflsed

still

appeared

It

in favour of Wynflsed’s

out to Leofwine that,

women

one

ownership of the land.

also the feels,

end of

‘friendship’

long gone).

in return for the

He

therefore conceded,

gold and silver of his father,

had. She was very reluctant to return

which had probably sparked

between the

it; it

was

this

off Leofwine’s occupation of the land.

But the document relating the case (an original

text)

ends here, and

we

cannot follow the parties further. English court cases often ended in deals; Leofwine had done quite well to get this rather half-hearted one, given the odds against

him

(perhaps he was even in the right over the money, hence the court being

prepared to broker an arbitration). But

453

it is

equally important that the

THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST,

75 O-IOOO

deal took place in public, in the Berkshire judicial assembly.

By the

later

tenth century, England, like the Carolingian lands, had a network of public assemblies a large

number

whose main purpose was

of locally powerful people.

the local bishop

and ealdorman,

to hear disputes in front of

By law,

these should include

as usually in Francia; in the event

two

MUgar by now the

bishops and an abbot presided over this one, and the king’s reeve

was

there too (probably he

was the

shire reeve, the ‘sheriff’,

king’s direct representative in the locality,

the king than

was the ealdorman). And

more

it is

clear just

witnesses that the assembly was substantial in of

the local notables of Berkshire

all

directly responsible to

from Wynflaed’s

size. It will

have consisted

who could get there, the

‘good men’

as the text called them, including the aristocracy, the thegns of the

county. This assembly heard local disputes, and also did royal business.

The

was royal

case

and was decided

in origin,

undoubtedly have wished, but

his will

as the king

would

was carried out by the whole

county community. This balance between royal power and collective validation

is

very Carolingian in

an oath. As we influence at

shall see,

work

here.

it

But

is

style; so is the large

likely that there

we

are also in 990.

regular royal-controlled public politics

is

penalty for losing

direct Carolingian

By now,

had vanished

this sort of

most of the

in

Carolingian lands, either because kings were themselves weak, as in

West Francia, or because

(as in Italy in particular,

but also parts of East

now had a rather intermittent image of how the local judicial

Francia) local assemblies and courts by relationship to kings. Charlemagne’s

assembly should work had come to be perpetuated only in England, even though no part of England was ever under Carolingian is

the paradox

which we

narrative of ninth-

shall explore in this chapter: first,

and tenth-century English

politics; then,

rule.

through a

through a

discussion of political structures and Carolingian influences

and

finally

This

on them;

through an analysis of English difference. For, however

influential Continental practices

had become, the structures of English

society remained distinct too.

We

left

Cenwulf

Anglo-Saxon England (d.

in

Chapter 7 with Offa

(d.

796) and

821) of Mercia dominant south of the Humber. After

Cenwulf’s death, however, Mercian hegemony quickly broke

under a

series of short-lived kings,

from

rival families.

down

Ecgbert of Wessex

(802-39) defeated the fourth of these, Wiglaf (827-40),

in

829 and

ruled Mercia directly for a year. Wiglaf recovered his throne in 830, and

454

‘CAROLINGIAN’ ENGLAND, 80 O-IOOO in

836 could

call all the

bishops of the southern English to his court, as

had the eighth-century Mercian kings, but from now on there were two major powers

in the south,

England was more or

less

Mercia and Wessex. By 840 Anglo-Saxon

back to the situation

with four roughly balanced kingdoms, for

it

was

in in

we must add

700, in

fact,

to these

two

East Anglia, ill-documented but by far the most economically complex

kingdom, and Northumbria, which Eardwulf

in the early ninth century

810) and his son Eanred

relative internal peace.

it

had

also contributed to the definitive eclipse

Mercia, and Essex, Sussex and Kent

autonomy, ruled

as

it

firmly developed

and linked the episcopal network more

of the smaller kingdoms, with the Hwicce

after 825, ruled stably

810-40) had a period of

The Mercian supremacy had

the structures of royal power, closely to government;

(c.

under

first

now

finally attached to

attached to Mercia, and then,

by Wessex. (Only Kent maintained a certain

was by Cenwulf’s brother Cuthred,

d.

807, then

informally controlled by Archbishop Wulfred of Canterbury, d. 832,

and then

825 governed by three West Saxon sons of kings

after

turn.) All the

same, eighth-century Mercian power had not changed the

geopolitics of England,

kingdom framework. civil

in

which could

easily revert to the older four-

In the mid-century

Northumbria

fell

back into

war, and Mercia and Wessex were increasingly clearly the major

kingdoms, cooperating quite closely on occasion, under Berhtwulf (840-52) and

his

probable son Burgred (852-74) of Mercia, and ^Tthel-

wulf (839-58) of Wessex,

who

married his daughter to Burgred and

helped him fight the Welsh. yEthelwulf had a wider prestige too, for in life

late

he married Charles the Bald’s daughter Judith; but he was happy

to concentrate

on controlling southern England. At most he nibbled

at

Mercia’s boundaries, taking over Berkshire in the 840s, although he retreated

from London, leaving

it

and

its

wealth as an isolated outlier

of Mercian rule.

What changed

this political pattern

was the Vikings. They raided the

English coasts from the mid-83os, just as they did in West Erancia and elsewhere; they were particularly active in Kent and East Anglia, and

they stepped up their attacks in the 850s, by

when

they were over-

wintering in some places. But, whereas in Erancia they always had to leave temporarily politics

when a royal army finally appeared, the scale of insular

- and armies - was

far smaller,

lose to Viking ones, as Berhtwulf of

and Anglo-Saxon armies could

Mercia found

455

in

851 and a Kentish

THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST, 750-IOOO

army found them

The Vikings had eventually

in 853.

the chance for

more permanent

gain, for

realized that this gave it

was

in

England that

leading Danish Vikings grouped together in a ‘Great Army’, micel here in the

Old English of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,

Army numbered

in the

raiding parties, and

thousands, rather than the hundreds of earlier

was

larger than

collective leadership, but

866-7 it

it

The Great

in 865.

it

had

it

a

acted as an effective conquering force. In

conquered Northumbria,

took East Anglia, again

any Anglo-Saxon army;

killing its

killing its king,

two warring

kings; in

869

Edmund, who was afterwards

venerated as a martyr; in 870-71 the West Saxons under ^thelwulf’s sons ^Tthelred

managed

I

(865-71) and Alfred (871-99) only

to hold the

Army

Mercia, leaving Ceolwulf south. In

876-8

873-7

off for a time; in

ll (c.

somehow,

just, it

took half of

874-8) with only the north-west and the

attacked Wessex again and cornered Alfred in the

it

Somerset marshes (the location of the famous, but sadly only eleventhcentury, ‘Alfred and the cakes’ story), before the latter

an army together

in

878 and defeat the Vikings

at

Edington

This was a key battle for Wessex. The Viking leader to

make

managed

to call

in Wiltshire.

Guthrum was

forced

peace, and even accepted baptism, retreating to East Anglia,

which he turned

into a stable Viking

kingdom. Thereafter, the wars

stopped for over a decade. Alfred was

London

in

left in

886. His

Viking onslaught.

control of

all his

father’s lands, to

kingdom was thus

And

which he added

the only one fully to survive the

he was probably also, by his death, the only

Anglo-Saxon king. Ceolwulf’s successor vTthelred

II

of Mercia

91 1), Alfred’s son-in-law, was called king on occasion, but entitled

dux or ealdorman

status of a

(d.

is

879-

usually

our sources; Mercia was slipping into the

sub-kingdom of Wessex, certainly

political choice.

Eadwulf

in

(c.

as a result of Alfred’s

The only other autonomous Anglo-Saxon

ruler

was

912) in Bernicia in northern Northumbria, where the

Vikings did not reach; his family’s rule survived off and on up to the

Norman

Conquest, but they

may

were Danish kings, of course,

not have used the royal

in East

title.

There

Anglia and in York (and also

apparently collective leaderships in the Live Boroughs of Danish Mercia).

We

do not know much about

were certainly they

less

their political infrastructures.

powerful in Denmark than anywhere in England, so

would not have brought strong

the kings of

York

Kings

leave

much

ruling traditions with them; only

impression in our (largely West Saxon)

456

‘CAROLINGIAN’ ENGLAND, 80O-IOOO evidence, and even then not until after 919, with Rognvald

and Sigtryg

Army had moved from conquering to ally

weaker.

had had

It

Alfred’s survival, for

ruling, in fact,

it

920)

Once

the Great

became

strategic-

927), both from a Dublin-based family.

(d.

(d. c.

to divide up; this fact in itself probably explains

Guthrum

were establishing themselves

him

did not have with

the Vikings

Northumbria; and the Vikings

in

in

who Eng-

land not only never united again, but also seem to have ruled stable polities than the increasingly coherent

kingdom

in

West Saxon

southern and western England. Alfred

on

success in 878 to luck, but he built

decades, above

all

- necessarily -

(plus

less

Mercian)

may have owed

this systematically in the

in military preparedness:

his

next two

he seems to

have developed a large-scale military levy from the population, and he

network of public

certainly established a dense

fortifications, burhs,

throughout southern England, defended by public obligation, which was sufficiently effective to

hold off a second large-scale Viking assault

892-6. Alfred died ‘king of the Anglo-Saxons’, words,

‘of the

Danish

rule’;

or, in the

in

Chronicled

whole English people except that part which was under

he

may have

been the

first

king to see himself in ‘English’,

not West Saxon or Mercian, terms, as his neat footwork with respect to y^thelred of Mercia’s

made

autonomy

also shows. But

it

was the Vikings who

that choice possible for him.

Alfred’s son at first in

Edward

‘the Elder’

(899-924) began to counterattack,

border wars, and then, after y^thelred of Mercia’s death,

systematically. In

911 Edward and

Mercians (911-18)

his sister ^thelflsed.

in succession to her

husband

y^lthelred,

Lady of the

moved

east-

wards, and had taken East Anglia and the Live Boroughs by ^^thelflsed’s death. In this period

Wessex and Mercia were

alliance of near-equals; but in

Mercia, sweeping aside core of the English

919 Edward

^Elthelflsed’s

still

operating as an

also fully

annexed English

daughter y^lfwyn. In the 910s, the

kingdom thus took shape, with

finality, for

across

the next century Alfred’s dynasty never lost control of Mercia

and

eastern England again, except for a brief conquest of the east Midlands

940 by Olaf Guthfrithson, king of Dublin and York, reversed in 942. Northumbria was a different matter; the English kings and two in

Norwegian

families fought over

it

the last Scandinavian king of York, Eirik

Stainmore

in the latter year.

927-54, before ‘Bloodaxe’, was killed on

for nearly thirty years,

But most of Northumbria was always a

peripheral, only half-controlled, part of England across the next

457

two

THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST, 75O-IOOO centuries,

and indeed

for a long time after,

and

arguable that these

it is

wars were only really fought for the increasingly rich trading entrepot of

York

itself.

Edward’s son ^^thelstan (924-39) and

his successors

indeed seem to have regarded successful war against, and hegemony over, kings in in

Wales and of Scotland

Northumbria,

as

is

as being as important as their rule

represented by the increasingly grandiloquent

claims in their documents. vElthelstan was ‘king of

931, 'basileus of the English and

imperator became increasingly

political

kingdom

common from now on too.

Overall, apart

of the tenth century, the

shift

of England, as being complete in military-

terms by 919.

Edward and was above

all

^thelflsed’s conquest of midland a

West Saxon conquest.

aristocracy, quite as families of

much

as the kings,

and

seems to be both

origin.

in the

next generation the

also, significantly,

Mercia

A surviving Mercian-focused

and quite

visible

and eastern England

involved the West Saxon

It

ealdormen of East Anglia and

were predominantly of West Saxon affinity

from

surrounding peoples’ in 938, and

all

from York, one could regard the major invention of the

Britain’

all

were tense or disputed between brothers, as

effective

when

successions

924 or 957-9, in each of which the Mercian-supported brother ended up as king, but the West in

Saxons had the

strategic edge,

lined

The Wessex dynasty thus created

further.

it

as the Carolingians

their aristocratic

had done, and

None

did not manage.

and

as their

placements under-

a Reichsaristokratie,

Ottoman contemporaries

of vTthelstan’s successors - his brothers

Edmund

and Eadred (939-46, 946-55), Edmund’s sons Eadwig and Edgar “ ~ (95 5 9 957 75 )? Edgar’s sons Edward ‘the Martyr’ and ^Tthelred II ?

(975-8, 978-1016) - were over eighteen at their accessions except Eadred, but, almost uniquely in history, this did not result in a weakened political system.

The

influence of queen-mothers, notably

Eadred’s mother Eadgifu (d. c.

(d. after

Edmund and

966) and ^thelred’s mother ^Tlfthryth

1000) was very considerable, which helped the continuity of royal

power, as often as important.

in Erancia.

But the loyalty of the leading ealdormen was

Under Eadgifu

of iTthelstan ‘Half-king’

(that

(d. after

is,

Edmund, Eadred, Edgar)

the family

956), ealdorman of East Anglia from

932, came to dominate in Mercia and East Anglia; Eadwig’s brief reign

saw

the emergence of a rival family, that of ^Tlfhere, ealdorman of

Mercia

(d.

983). These

two

families,

both West Saxon, thereafter shared

power, along with a handful of other inter-related ealdormen.

458

We

can

‘CAROLINGIAN’ ENGLAND, 800-IOOO see

them as an oligarchy, ruling through a succession of young kings with,

apparently, considerable coherence.

And

they needed to be coherent.

down, they could not hope

the English political system broke

to remain

as powerful, given the geographical range of their landholding

office-holding, extending as

and to royal generosity

to

in

of southern,

the Elder’s conquests

meant amity. Eadwig

shift

alignments; his reign was

and new

ordinarily large-scale royal gift-giving, result.

Edward

and

thereafter.

that this coherence necessarily

seems to have tried to

much

did in each case across

and eastern England, thanks

central

Not

it

If

in particular

marked by

extra-

families appeared as a

Eadgifu and vElthelstan ‘Half-king’ responded by setting up Edgar

Mercia against him, apparently without violent

however,

conflict

unlike in contemporary succession disputes in Erancia; the

two brothers

reigned together for two years until Eadwig died, and his protege

^Ifhere actually joined Edgar, presumably

Mercian

clientele.

Edgar and

in order

not to lose his

own

his supporters then patronized a large-scale

monastic reform movement, which after 964 converted even cathedral churches into monasteries, under Dunstan of Canterbury (d. 988), yEthelwold of Winchester (d.

all

992),

of

(d.

984) and Oswald of Worcester and York

them monk-bishops; free-standing monasteries were

founded and patronized by kings and

aristocrats, including the rival

Eenland houses of Ramsey (968) and Ely (970). The landed these increasingly rich houses

Edward

was

the Martyr in particular

or taking back, monastic lands. in

saw

controversial,

trouble, with aristocrats taking,

Edward was

actually

murdered II

in 978,

and

his

mother ^Elfthryth. But none of these tensions resulted

more than sporadic

into the 990s.

politics of

and the reign of

obscure circumstances, a bad start to the reign of ^thelred

(but not Edward’s) in

itself

also

violence,

^thelred

II

and the ealdormanic oligarchy survived

was by then strong enough

to end

it.

^Elfhere’s

probable brother-in-law and heir in Mercia, ^Ifric, was expelled for treason in 985;

when

^Ethelwine, the powerful son of yEthelstan ‘Half-

king’, died in 992, his sons did not succeed

1006,

all

^Ethelred

then,

who

in East Anglia;

most of them permanently.

the old families were gone, II,

him

decisively broke with the

930S-940S

system of vEthelstan and Eadgifu; his later proteges were tunately, they also

saw

seem to have been

all

It

by

was

political

new. Unfor-

less effective. ^Ethelred’s reign also

the return of Viking raiding, sporadic

from 980 and serious

after

990; from 1009 the invading armies were ever more successful, and

459

THE CAROLINGIAN AND English defences ever (d.

1014),

who had

P O ST- C ARO LI N G

more

led

AN WEST, 75O-IOOO

1013 King Svein of Denmark

feeble. In

some of

I

the earlier raids, engaged in a full-scale

conquest of England, which was completed, in 1016 by his son Cnut

(1016-35).

The wars and

which the southern English had managed to

instability

avoid for a century returned a hundredfold in the loios. The sense of political collapse that

is

so visible in the bitter pages of the Anglo-Saxon

Chronicle for these years has few parallels in the whole of English history since. But

Cnut nonetheless managed

We

kingdom from

^Tthelred.

factions in that

kingdom, and maybe the

identity stick in the face of

must not underestimate the

more

achieved, in the generations since

difficulties in

and the military ineptness of

how and why

look at

The

structures of

and

Edward

stable

stresses

and

making an English

local loyalties. All the same,

ence that could outlast the destruction of

will

to inherit a rich

it

had

the Elder, a structural coherits

ruling elites by vTthelred

their successors.

The

chapter

rest of this

this occurred.

government did not change much

century, except that royal entourages seem to have

in the early ninth

become more com-

plex in that period, with increasing numbers of officials travelling the

country and having to be Alfred. Exactly

fed.

Major

shifts

seem to have begun with

how this worked will never be fully known. Anglo-Saxon

sources are never generous, including by early medieval standards; even

those for Alfred, although father

and

who was

more numerous than

his son, are very

much

for the reigns of his

the mouthpiece for Alfred himself,

not only the patron of writers but an author in his

well aware of the possibilities of political spin,

and

own

visibly skilled in

covering cynical political calculation with a moralistic veneer. clear,

however,

is

that Alfred

of the Carolingian court. a letter

He

right,

was very influenced by the

What

is

political values

sought intellectuals from Erancia;

we have

from Archbishop Eulk of Reims rather reluctantly granting

Alfred’s request for

Grimbald of Saint-Bertin

Charlemagne was available

in

in 886. Einhard’s Life of

England, and was one of the models used

by Alfred’s Welsh protege Asset

in his

own

Life of Alfred.

That

text,

written in Alfred’s lifetime, creates an image of Alfred heavily influenced

by hagiography, including an chastity,

and another

years (the illnesses

illness (piles)

debilitating disease

may

which protected

his youthful

which undermined him

in later

well have been real, but their role in Asset’s text

460

‘CAROLINGIAN’ ENGLAND, 800-IOOO parallels hagiographical writing), as well as a

heavy emphasis on Alfred’s

learning and spiritual commitment. Alfred

was indeed unusually well

educated, even by Carolingian standards; he thought

it

essential to

sponsor translations into Old English of some of the fundamental Latin Christian works of the early Middle Ages, such as Gregory the Great’s

Pastoral Care, to

make them

accessible to the

own work.

three of these translations are his

Anglo-Saxon

and

Alfred’s often fairly free

shows

translation of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy familiar with a biblical

elites,

a king fully

and theological conception of kingship, prag-

matic (kings need resources) but also self-aware (when the rich and

who do

powerful go abroad and meet people realize

how much their position is owed

know

not

‘to the praise

them, they

of foolish people’).

Alfred looked systematically to the Bible; his law code goes further even

than those of Charlemagne in

its

insertion, as a preface, of a set of

from the laws of Moses

extracts

Exodus, which were evidently

in

intended to have at least meta-legal force. This sort of literary royal ideology was unparalleled in England before Alfred’s generation, but

it

has direct roots in the thought-world of Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald.

The Carolingian reform programme thus took root just the

decades in which

it

in

was running out of steam

England during

Alfred also borrowed political practices from the Erankish world. of the clearest is

the

first

law

is

the collective oath of loyalty

lingian legislation (Alfred states just before that

presume to is

set

down

many

in writing at all

typical Alfredian disinformation);

One

sworn to the king, which

and which looks

in Alfred’s code,

But

in Erancia.

of

straight

back to Caro-

law that he ‘dared not

my own

[laws]’ but this

one of the tenth-century develop-

Edmund’s code of about 943, quotes directly from a capitulary of 802. In England, indeed, that law was interpreted rather ments of

this law,

more harshly than of aristocrats that rarely

The

in Erancia, for the next century

who

lost all their

happened

great emphasis

related to this too.

on the oath

Channel, as far as

Carolingian or the

to the

we can

see.

Ottoman world.

Wynflsed-Leofwine case seems

in the

detail of Alfred’s

army reforms, looks back

scattered with cases

land for breaking their oath, something

in either the

The

is

own

government, including

his

Anglo-Saxon past rather than over the But the precedent he

set

allowed his

tenth-century successors, as they developed the increasingly coherent

and self-confident southern English

461

state,

to

draw from Erankish

THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGI AN WEST, 75O-IOOO example wherever necessary, alongside extensions of indigenous prac-

Edward

tice.

Saxon

and

the Elder

his successors

spread the pattern of West

Mercian regional

shires across Mercia, obliterating the old

isions (in a particularly overt act,

div-

perhaps dating to the 920s, the old

Mercian royal centre of Tamworth was actually bisected by the boun-

and Staffordshire, thus marginalizing

daries of Warwickshire after); the

seems increasingly

it

had a similar system of

new subdivision

in

Mercians had

likely that the

Conversely, the

fortified centres before as well.

of the shire, the hundred, seems to have been a Erankish

import, not a West Saxon one, and

it

too was established in the tenth

century. Tenth-century assembly politics (the king’s

own

large consulta-

assembly, the shire assembly, the hundredal assembly) similarly had

Anglo-Saxon - indeed,

common Germanic

visible judicial activity of these bodies,

direction, the king’s seal influence.

of

for ever

burh network of Wessex was extended to Mercia already

the 9 1 os, although

tive

it

it

So does royal

in itself

and

and attached

- roots; but the increasingly their association

with royal

instructions, betrays Erankish

legislation, as already implied; Alfred’s revival

probably shows his awareness of Carolingian law-making,

and the numerous codes of the 920S-1020S resemble Frankish capitularies,

in

sometimes quite closely. As with Edmund

1009 decreed a three-day

in

94 3 when ^Tthelred II ,

fast in great detail in his

seventh code, as a

response to the great Viking invasion of that year, he was directly

echoing Charlemagne.

These Frankish influences are not surprising. (More surprising

is

how

seldom they were noticed before the 1970s.) Carolingian Francia was

much more powerful than any English kingdom, and its governmental technologies were so much more sophisticated, that, once the idea of so

borrowing developed,

it

could continue for a long time.

this the increasing integration of the tenth-century

into Continental politics.

Edward

the Elder

We must add to

West Saxon dynasty

was the

first

Anglo-Saxon

king to engage systematically in marriage alliances abroad, and his

daughters ended up married to Charles the Simple,

Otto

I;

^Tthelstan intervened in

West Frankish

Hugh

the Great

and

politics, sheltering his

nephew Eouis IV in his years of exile, and sending armies twice to the Continent. The English kings were increasingly regarded by the Franks as political players,

and mutual

interest increased: Asser

and the Anglo-

Saxon Chronicle include an account of the 887-8 Frankish succession crisis;

Flodoard and Thietmar both include

462

(a

few) English events in

‘CAROLINGIAN’ ENGLAND, 800-IOOO their chronicles. Cultural relationships

sometimes spent time

developed as well. English

from Grimbald

Archbishop Wulfstan of York for both y^thelred

II

also a rousing social

work

is

(d.

1023),

Abbo

who

to

and

political critic in the

in

to Fleury

England

in

of Fleury in 985-7.

wrote several law codes

and Cnut and some compilations of

own, was

his

Hincmar mould, and

his

by the idiom of Carolingian correctio. The

clearly influenced

later tenth-century

88os to

in the

monk

came

to learn local practices); Continental intellectuals their turn,

Oswald did

in Continental monasteries, as

Fleury and Dunstan in Ghent (vElthelwold, too, sent a

clerics

monastic reform

in

England was

sister to that of

Gorze, or that favoured by the abbots of Cluny (see below. Chapter

and the new English national monastic

21),

Concordia^ drawn up by ^thelwold in the

drew from contemporary example

in

late

rule, the Regularis

960s, both explicitly

Ghent and Fleury and owed

wider ambition to the unification of monastic practices

its

motion by

set in

Louis the Pious after 816. This international dimension, so visible in tenth-century England,

does bring a paradox

the same. For tenth-century Francia, as noted

all

at the start of the chapter,

was by no means

still

Carolingian in

aspiration. In Alfred’s time the values of Charles the Bald

were

still

alive,

and Hincmar

but they were far weaker on the Continent by the time

came

of vTthelstan or Edgar. Carolingian institutions, rituals, values

England not practice, but

(or not only)

through the observation and emulation of

and

it is

likely

enough that one had existed

in

since Alfred’s time. Alcuin (himself Anglo-Saxon, of course)

well

to

through books. Wulfstan owned a copy of Ansegis’s capitu-

lary collection,

tainly

its

known, Theodulf and Amalarius were

Hincmar may have been striking that the English

was

But

it

This

this literature so seriously.

part have been the legacy of Alfred’s highly moralized kingship;

cer-

and

available,

as well, at least second-hand.

took

England

is

still

may it

in

must

also have been a spin-off of the self-confidence of the tenth-century political

creators

community, whose members, however

and maintainers of the

stable polity in Britain since the

largest, strongest,

Romans

left,

fractious,

were the

and most

internally

and proud of

Tenth-century English government was both more and

it

too.

less

coherent

than that of the Carolingians. Although Old English, not Latin, was the

main language of

legislation

wider dissemination

and much theology, implying

in the country, the English court

463

a desire for

seems to have used

THE CAROLINGIAN AND writing

less;

PO

T - C AR O L I N G I AN

S

WEST, 750-IOOO

royal orders seem to have been largely (although not always)

verbal across the century, and writs, written orders, only clearly survive

from T^thelred IPs making,

it is

reign.

For

the elaboration of tenth-century law-

all

never explicitly referred to in our surviving court cases,

and one has to look hard even to

find implicit echoes;

it

often matches

the political theology of Charlemagne’s reign, rather than his practical institutional changes, although v^thelstan

did consciously innovate in their laws.

government, often written up relative

and some of

The

in recent years,

sophistication of English

has to be set against the

roughness of some ‘administrative’ practices:

habitants of Thanet robbed

some York merchants

simply ravaged the island; ^Tthelred

II

his successors

when in

the in-

969, Edgar

similarly sacked the diocese of

Rochester in 986, and, later on, Harthacnut (1040-42) sacked Wor-

1041 because two tax collectors had been

cestershire in

killed

in

Worcester cathedral. Conversely, there

clear evidence of royal strength.

is

The importance

of oaths to the king enormously widened the scope of ‘treason’ in the

and

period,

seems to have been easier

it

people to lose their lands and

lives

in

England than elsewhere for

because of the king’s displeasure.

Monastic reform was very heavily dependent on royal authority, and enhanced that authority

And

in its turn.

990s ^Tthelred

in the

II,

in

order to pay off the Vikings, instituted a tax system that in a few years

was capable of generating considerable sums;

went way beyond

this

anything the Carolingians ever attempted (Charles the Bald had begun the

same process, but only

managed such for

it

to run at

it

twice).

How

it

seems), and in a period of continuous military

and demoralization, cannot be explained

any other post-Roman generated,

which was necessary

without a very developed writing-based administrative

all,

successful; eleventh-century English taxation

it

the Anglo-Saxon state

a task, given the detailed assessment

infrastructure (as

defeat

tried

among

state

managed

in the

at present.

brought

was

was more elaborate than

West

until after

Domesday Book

was organized harshly; people who could not pay

who

it

1200, and

other things, the most systematic governmental

survey before the late Middle Ages,

people

But

of 1086. Taxation

it

lost their lands to

could pay in their stead, and collective rejection of taxation

reprisals, as at

here as elsewhere, ation continued.

It

Worcester

in

1041. The

late

Anglo-Saxon

state,

was heavy-handed and not notably benign. But further increased royal wealth,

464

tax-

and thus power, by

‘CAROLINGIAN’ ENGLAND, 800-IOOO

money

the time that Cnut’s conquest allowed the

England, and

it

made

was conquered,

that

William

I

in

possible the enduring solidity of the English state

by Svein and Cnut

first

1013-16, and then by

in

1066.

The tenth-century English kingdom had seen,

raised to stay in

one that saw

its

identity

and

we have much tied up

a rich aristocracy, as

political future as very

with the success of the West Saxon dynasty. In Wessex, and also in English Mercia, entirely

it

new, for

from Edward the

had deeper

its

is

new

much

of the country

it

was

wealth in Danish Mercia and East Anglia derived

911-18 and partial expropriation whose power in turn had presumably in most

Elder’s conquest in

of the political elites there, cases been

roots, but in

as well, a product of the Viking conquest of

869-78.

It

interesting to realize, however, that despite the great importance of

that conquest as a catalyst for the creation of a southern English state,

the effect of the Vikings themselves It is

not clear that either Danish or

settlement

many

was very

on the country (in

is

north-west England) Norwegian

extensive; Scandinavian place

areas, particularly

A

names

are dense in

Danish Mercia and Yorkshire, but

mostly to indicate the renaming of estates by peasant immigration.

very difficult to see.

this

new owners, not

a

seems

mass

distinctively Scandinavian material culture

seem

also hard to find in the archaeology; the settlers

whose

Christian fairly quickly; even Danish law,

to have

existence

is

is

become

implied by

the later use of the term ‘Danelaw’ for northern and eastern England,

seems, in the rare compilations that mention

it,

to have been

Anglo-Saxon law elsewhere. There must have been some

much

like

clusters of

people with a Danish culture and identity in later tenth-century England,

and there were certainly plenty of (Oswald was one), but, different either.

aristocrats with

overall, the eastern

Danish ancestors

‘Danelaw’ was probably

less

from Wessex and English Mercia than Northumbria was from

What

the Vikings

left

for the

West Saxon incomers was

a

more

complicated and fragmented estate structure, with more space for a

landowning peasantry (although even

Army’s conquests); and,

in the

this

may

predate the Great

southernmost part of Northumbria, the

notable cosmopolitanism and openness to long-distance links of tenth-

century York. Eor the

rest,

it is

the

West Saxon

aristocratic stratum,

overlaying the Viking period, that remains the most visible, at least

south of the Elumber.

The coherence of

the English

kingdom

465

is

perhaps best expressed in

THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST, 75O-IOOO one of the witnesses to

The

Battle of

its late

text celebrates the fight to the death

Maldon. This

Ealdorman Byrhtnoth of Essex and invading Vikings at

poem known

tenth-century defeat, the

Maldon

in

his

his

991. Byrhtnoth, an ally of the family of

kingdom

and an important patron of Ely abbey;

death came as a considerable shock. The

anonymous

best heroic style by an

by

entourage against the newly

vTthelstan ‘Half-king’, had been one of the major figures of the since the start of Edgar’s reign

as

poem

is

written up in the

poet, probably (though this

is

debated) shortly after the battle. Byrhtnoth’s troops have the same personal attachment to him that heroic warbands had in earlier poetry,

but there are differences.

One

is

that he has with him, a county levy

Essex, heir to the collective defensive levies set a core

who

group of personally loyal dependants. Another

fight on,

as well as

that the

is

men

with proud speeches, around their dead leader are from

England

different parts of tage, as well as (a

up by Alfred,

from

men

(a

Mercian

Northumbrian hos-

aristocrat, a

of Essex) and also from different social classes

simple peasant, an old retainer): they are intended to represent a

cross-section of English, not just Essex-based, identity

and

they explicitly fight not just for Byrhtnoth but for ‘the vTthelred,

loyalty,

and

kingdom

of

my lord’s people and his country’. This kingdom-wide identity

(at least in the vision

of the

Maldon

poet) briefly unravelled in the chaos

of the early loios, when, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle grimly claims, ‘in

the end

that.

no

shire

would even help

the next’, but

There was no permanent regional breakdown

it

revived after

in at least

southern

England, no equivalent to the increasingly separate marches, duchies, counties of the Continent.

Nor

did private lordships develop; the shire

and hundred assemblies controlled nearly

all

justice right

up

to the

Norman Conquest. By 1066 even Northumbria was beginning (although with

difficulty) to

be incorporated into the political system.

there were local differences, as

Domesday Book shows,

and also

local loyalties

course,

rivalries. But,

the wide geographical spread of the land-

owning of the tenth-century ealdormanic

elite

continued throughout the

eleventh century as well, and in 1066 that spread the next level

and

Of

down, the thegns,

is

equally visible for

the basic aristocratic stratum of the

country. That landowning, fully matched by the spread of lands of cathedrals and monasteries, held the country together.

The newly minted

tax system simply added to this pre-existing coherence.

466

‘CAROLINGIAN’ ENGLAND, 80O-IOOO England may have been Carolingian

in its aspirations;

lasting solidity of the political settlement of

has so

little

parallel

the Elder’s reign

on the Continent that we cannot ascribe

Carolingian lesson so systematically learned.

must remain

Edward

but the long-

What

its

we do not have enough

speculative:

Anglo-Saxon England to be sure of any argument of myself, however, associate

it

to the

it all

roots really were

evidence for late this kind.

I

would

with a ninth-century development entirely

separate from Viking conquest and Alfredian ideology: the formation of exclusive rights to property.

We saw in Chapter 7 that early Anglo-Saxon

land-units can best be seen as territories from aristocrats, and, tribute,

thanks to royal

which could be quite

churches and monasteries, took

gift,

light. In

which kings and some

such

substantial, covering the territories of a

territories,

dozen

some

cases, a variety of people could live,

with,

it

which were often

later villages or

from

more

in

aristocrats to peasants,

seems, a variety of rights of possession; only the unfree seem to

have paid heavy rents and services to lords or masters. That was the situation in the late seventh century,

by kings to churches)

initially gifts

when our documents

(all

of

them

By 900, though, a list of rents Hampshire shows a village with

start.

surviving from Hurstborne Priors in

much more serious obligations: here, the ceorlas, free peasants, had to pay money and produce in rent, and also do labour service, ploughing and sheep-shearing. These detailed requirements show tight control, and they are the

first

what would become

signs of

the standard landlord-

tenant relationship in England: for the ceorlas of Hurstborne are best seen as tenants of the bishop of Winchester, the holder -

say

owner - of the

land.

sort of relationship

By the

late tenth to early eleventh century, this

seems quite generalized

Somerset, too, for this

is

we can now

in the

west Midlands and

the broad area of origin of a text, called

the Rectitudines Singularum Personarum, describing the standard dues

owed by

several strata of dependants

as a guide to

on an unnamed

estate,

apparently

good estate-management. By Domesday Book

in

1086,

such an estate pattern characterized the entire country, in the former Viking-ruled lands no

less

than in the west and south. The global wealth

deriving from rents and services

was by now both great and capable of

being described in detail.

These changes represent a revolution unfree, but also free, peasants ended

and

rulers,

in land tenure, in

up paying not

which not

just tribute to lords

but rents to landowners; these rents, importantly, were

467

just

much

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

PO

S

T- C AR O L I N G I AN

WEST, 75O-IOOO

The absence of any documented resistance to this process it was slow, certainly starting with the unfree (who were

heavier as well. indicates that

numerous), but then probably extending steadily to different groups of the free,

and

fringes

the centre of land-units,

first at

outliers,

into the central

Anglo-Saxon

and then coming to include

whose inhabitants paid lower rents and

Middle Ages. The more

most

territories for the

their

services well

influential inhabitants of early

part,

by contrast, ended up not as

tenants but as lords. Territories split up as time went on; a land-unit

covering a dozen later villages might turn into twelve smaller units,

which we can now

When

each covering a single village territory.

call estates,

held privately, these estates were characteristically in the hands

of thegns, whether they held the land outright their

(in gift

from the king,

former territorial lord, perhaps), or in lease from a church; the

relationship

is

particularly well

which kept

cathedral,

century cartularies.

from land-units

much

its

We

latter

documented on the lands of Worcester

leases

and recorded them

in

two

eleventh-

cannot easily date the main period of the

to estates, for the terminology of our

shift

documents remains

the same; but the break-up of larger units into village-sized blocks

seems, from documentary evidence, to be a feature of the ninth and tenth centuries. This

is

also the period of a generalized concentration of

settlement in the Midlands and central-southern England, into the lages at the centre of each of these blocks; this

was

vil-

a slower process, but

probably a related one. The Hurstborne document, however isolated,

would thus mark

a change that

was by then widespread, even, maybe,

already nearing completion: the creation of a landscape of estates, one

which had

for long been typical of Continental western Europe, but

which had not existed This

shift

ization of

But

its

One

it

is

in

England since the departure of the Romans.

as ill-documented as

was fundamental;

two paragraphs has

in the last

consequences are more

is

it

visible,

that disposable wealth

my

character-

to be seen as hypothetical.

and several of them are important.

was sharply concentrated, and

in

fewer

hands: those of kings, greater and lesser aristocrats and churches. As a result, an exchange

duction, are notably

economy, and more elaborate patterns of pro-

more

In the eighth, exchange

visible in the tenth century

was

still

than

in the eighth.

focused on a handful of ports, South-

ampton, London, Ipswich, York. In the tenth, York expanded dramatically, in

we

part thanks to the international links of the Viking world (as

shall see in the next chapter), but so also did a

468

network of inland

‘CAROLINGIAN’ ENGLAND, 800-IOOO centres, Lincoln, Thetford, Stamford, Chester, Winchester, and, to a lesser extent, a

Elder,

and

wide

their

burhs or boroughs of Alfred, Edward the

set of the

Danish opponents,

in particular the

network of county

towns, Eeicester, Worcester, Shrewsbury, Oxford. This can be seen as a capillary

urban network,

at least

one per shire and often more. And,

in

productive terms, wheel-thrown pottery with relatively wide distribution patterns begins to appear in the decades around 900,

the east

first in

Midlands, at Stamford, Thetford, St Neots, and then elsewhere;

refer-

ences to wool, England’s central medieval export strength, begin to

appear by the end of the century too. The tenth-century kings greatly increased the

money

supply, and exchange

for the tax system of the silver coin. initially,

was

it

was

still

widespread

990s to assume that taxes could be paid

That wealth may have been creamed

but

sufficiently

wealth.

The

off to

infrastructure for

Denmark,

its

in

at least

extraction from

the peasantry evidently existed fully by then. Rare excavations of thegnly residences, at also

Raunds

in

Northamptonshire and Goltho

show concentrations

in Eincolnshire,

of wealth that were invisible in the eighth

century; so do late Anglo-Saxon private churches, which were for the first

time becoming numerous, and which after 1000 were increasingly

built in stone.

This concentration of wealth was

all

the greater because of

its

geo-

graphical completeness, the second consequence of the estate-formation process.

Most

of England split into village-sized estates, or perhaps half-

or quarter-villages; any space for a free landowning peasantry virtually

vanished. This pattern was

less

regular in parts of the Danelaw, in

where some more independent peasant

particular the east Midlands,

groups persisted (many were called sochemanni^ ‘sokemen’,

day Book, indicating that they had

some autonomy from

lords, even

from Yorkshire to East Anglia, in itself

rights to seek justice with,

when they were tenants);

also

in

had more fragmented

the

Domesit

seems,

Danelaw,

estates,

which

gave more space for peasant landowning, and which allowed

for reduced subjection estate formation

on

estate outliers.

But even there, the process of

seems to have had the same sort of timescale; and even

there, the percentage of

landowning peasants was lower than on most

of the Continent. England had thus

moved from

being the post-Roman

province with least peasant subjection, in 700, to the land where peasant subjection

was the completest and most

Europe, by as early as 900 in

much

totalizing in the

whole of

of the country, and by the eleventh

469

THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGI AN WEST, 75O-IOOO century at the latest elsewhere. The lordships of France based on private

not develop in England, but they hardly needed

justice did

were already

entirely subject to lords tenurially,

and many were unfree

and thus had no

(unlike in France: see Chapter 22)

peasants

to;

rights to public

justice either.

A third

consequence

is

that this crystallization of landed power, with

the substantial increase in dues

from peasants that came with

it,

greatly

favoured kings. Kings had had rights of small-scale tribute from most

kingdoms -

of the land-area of their

already conceded to churches.

indeed lay aristocrats

more the

all

all

When this

found

their local

the land

which they had not

turned into rent, churches and

power (and

their

own wealth)

certain, in the village blocks they controlled, but kings

main

beneficiaries.

were

still

By the tenth century, kings ended up with

a

high proportion of the land under their direct control. Although that

proportion was higher in some areas than in others, the tenth-century kings of southern England controlled, overall, a far higher percentage of the land-area of their

kingdom than did Charlemagne;

king/emperor was certainly

much

the Frankish

richer than they, but only as a result

of his rule over ten times the land-area of the realm of ^Tthelstan. English

kings thus had a uniquely favourable position in Europe: they could be

enormously generous, creating

unknown

a

new

aristocracy or giving

it

hitherto

wealth, whether on a large scale (yTthelstan ‘Half-king’,

vTlfhere of Mercia) or a small, while

still

as a result of the extensive lands they

maintaining overall dominance, still

owned. They thus kept the

strategic

upper hand, which was further safeguarded when taxation

came

Royal courts and royal power, as we have seen, remained

in.

central even in the mid-

and

late tenth century, characterized as

it

was

by royal minorities and the oligarchy of the queen and her leading aristocrats; this centrality

No

land.

one

in early

was

greatly aided by royal

dominance over

medieval Europe was ever as generous as Eadwig

documented land grants of 956-9, but his successors were not weakened, and ^thelred II rolled back the tide of generosity when he in his

took

offices

and often private property

off the

ealdormanic

elite

again;

Cnut’s conquest displaced more aristocratic families, and William Es did even

more completely. Kings could thus remain crucial to all

political

calculation in England, simply because of their undiminished powers of

patronage.

marks out

It is this,

its

above

all,

that

trajectory as separate

marks England

from that

470

in

as different,

and

any of the Carolingian

‘CAROLINGIAN’ ENGLAND, 80O-IOOO successor states.

The

‘politics of land’

here definitely favoured royal

power, and, eventually, central government. This was further reinforced by another special characteristic of England, already referred to: the tenth-century kings’ continuing relation-

ship to free society.

One consequence

of the exclusion of the peasantry

from landowning might have been that they were

also excluded

any relationship to the public world, as indeed happened cia,

and often elsewhere

we have

just seen,

more of them were tenants

were

at least

(this

was

still

West Fran-

Carolingian world too. In England, as

in the

of the king than

case elsewhere; royal dependants seem to have

other tenants

in

had more

rights than

so later in the Middle Ages), and they

all free

men

persisted as well.

The national emergency of

Alfred’s reign required a wider military participation than

was by now

necessary on the Continent, and burh defence was added to

skilled

was the

not subjected to private lords. But the traditional public

obligations of

public

from

commitments continued without

it;

these

a break, alongside the

more

military strike forces of the aristocracy,

whenever national

defence required. Similarly, even shire judicial assemblies had space for the free peasantry, and the basic law for the hundredal assembly indeed

presumed that

their attendance

was normal;

continued without a break thereafter, as

it

this public role for the free

did not in most regions of

the Carolingian world.

England’s development thus remains paradoxical.

pean country where

aristocratic

was most complete, while

It

became the Euro-

dominance, based on property

also being the post-Carolingian country

rights,

where

kings maintained most fully their control over political structures, both traditional (assemblies, armies)

dox seems

to

me

the oligarchical rest of

and new

(oaths, taxation). But the para-

expicable, nonetheless:

it is

the consequence of both

compact that allowed the West Saxon conquest of the

southern England in the 910s, and the crystallization of property

rights that

took place

in the ninth century

and into the

tenth. England’s

history as the longest-lasting state of medieval Europe began there.

471

20 Outer Europe

Anskar was a missionary sent by Louis the Pious to evangelize the Danes and Swedes, which he attempted 865. His saint’s

Rimbert,

is

life,

off

and on between 826 and

his

death in

written by a well-informed younger contemporary,

a rare account of an unsuccessful conversion process. In

Denmark, Anskar might have got somewhere, thanks of kings Horic

I

(827-54) and Horic

to the patronage

870), not Christians but

II

not unsympathetic either. But the mission only had patrons (both royal

and

not any powerful and committed converts, except

aristocratic),

among some

of the merchants of Hedeby, and in the confusion after

Horic IPs death

it

folded. In Sweden, Anskar’s

in the 840s, involved a

Birka, in his

main attempt, probably

meeting with King Olaf at the trading town of

which Olaf said he could not accept the mission without asking

own gods

through drawing

lots,

(placitum in Rimbert’s Latin) ‘for

any public business

is

more

and without asking the assembly

it is

the

custom

in the will of the

than in [that of] royal power’. The

lots

the assembly argued that the Christian

for [the Swedes] that

unanimous people [populus]

were negative, but an elder

god might help

in

in the face of

dangers at sea, and the populus agreed to accept the mission. Olaf agreed to ask another assembly in his kingdom to accept

assembly

politics

seems to have been more powerful

Denmark (though must note that

in

as well. This

Sweden than

there were certainly assemblies there too), but

in

we

both kingdoms the discussion was only about whether

to accept a Christian mission, not about

whether actually to convert en

masse, which did not happen in either. Even Christian, as

in

it

Hakon

I (c.

934-61) was

in

if

kings were personally

Norway, they could not

easily

demand conversion from their countrymen, and Hakon is praised for not trying to do so in a probably contemporary poem. The wider conversion process only began in the late tenth century in

472

Denmark, and

later

still

OUTER EUROPE Sweden and Norway:

in

was, in part, a consequence of stronger

it

kingship, although, by Continental European standards, only a

little

stronger.

When

trying to understand

European

societies outside the

ex-Roman

and Carolingian kingdoms of the West and South (and, eventually, Anglo-Saxon offshoot), we need to recognize the weakness of

their

political

structures straight away. Royal politics did not delineate the history of

the Scandinavians or Slavs with any consistency until the late tenth

century. Indeed,

Anskar, that rulers had any consistent ‘kingly’

like the Life of

were independent powers

jarlar, jarls or earls,

heim

district of

seem

to have

Norway

had

was

that there

not clear, despite the certainties of external texts

it is

no

clear distinction is,

dependent but autonomous aristocrats, too,

looo, for example, and the Slavs

until after

‘aristocrats’ in either, that

between

‘kings’

between independent

rulers,

Trond-

in the northerly

a very eclectic set of titles for rulers.

as yet

titles;

be

and leading

rulers,

and more subject

may

It

nominally

political leaders;

were probably leaders of followers rather than landlords

of tenants for a long time. In Wales, Scotland, and Ireland before 800,

we saw

as

Chapter

in

7, rulers

reges of our sources ruled tiny

power was more

were regularly called

kingdoms (except

‘kings’,

in Scotland),

but the

and

their

easily assimilated to that of the small-scale rulers

and

leading aristocrats of Scandinavia than even to Anglo-Saxon kings, never

mind Erankish

ones.

Some

towards more centralized

move

of these regions were beginning to

political systems

with stronger rulers by the

very end of our period, 950-1000: Poland, Bohemia, the core lands of

what

is

now

building’ Ireland;

Russia, and

was

and

had hardly

highly incomplete in

still

in

Denmark. Conversely,

Sweden

(as in

some of

this process of ‘state-

Norway, Scotland, Wales and

the smaller Slav communities)

it

started.

These were slow developments, and by no means consistent; kings

were stronger

do

in

Denmark,

for example, in

800 than

in

900. But they

act as a guide to comparison, in these non-Carolingian regions.

also give a justification for

cultures together.

I

do

my

decision to consider such heterogeneous

this partly to

avoid a

set of

fragmented chapters,

each of them short because the evidence for each region thinner in the pre-iooo period than

it is

is

so very

much

for Erancia, Italy, or England.

But the ‘outer European’ lands do have features shall see.

They

in

common,

as

we

So also does post-Visigothic northern Spain, which had very

473

THE CAROLINGIAN AND

some

different antecedents, but

considered here too.

who had

a

major

One

effect in

also in England, as

P O ST- C A R O L I N G

came from

of these

will then

move to

-

it

is

seen). Scandinavia’s internal history it is

Already

is

shall start

cannot

undeniable that the Vikings at

with Scandinavia, therefore;

we

moving westwards

and Spain. terms by far the richest part of Scandinavia

Sweden and Norway - and

politically the

this region

was the Vikings,

an extension of the North European Plain, and

forested, as are

and

We

in agricultural

is

features

the Sclavenian or Slav lands, before

to Britain, Ireland

Denmark

common

and

Russia and in Scotland, Ireland and Wales (as

we have

there.

AN WEST, 75O-IOOO

parallels all the same,

be reduced to the Viking label, but least

I

was both economically

it

most complex northern region

in the fifth

and early

sixth centuries

centres, as archaeology shows, particularly

not heavily

is

looo.

until well past

had some very

it

Gudme on

rich

the central island

of Eyn, where several dozen houses and a large hall have been excavated,

and

and elsewhere, so

also a wealth of gold finds, in cemeteries

unparalleled in northern Europe.

Roman

of these were locally made;

most

likely that

a royal or princely centre: not the only one in

Denmark,

others were imported from the

Gudme was

Some

far

empire.

It is

but one which well shows the wealth that Danish rulers could already lay their

hands on,

at least in the period of

This concentration of wealth

hundred and

fifty

years

more fragmented, power and

villages.

fell

west

back

Roman

after 550,

crisis.

and

next

in the

Denmark shows more muted, and probably structures, focused

Around 700, however, we can

on isolated ‘magnate farms’ see signs of a larger political

system in the south of the Jutland peninsula, in western Denmark; a central

power of some

town

sort created Ribe, a trading

parallel to the

king-centred emporia of eighth-century England, in 705-10, and in 737 the Danevirke, a defensive wall across the south of the peninsula,

was

substantially rebuilt. (These unusually exact dates by archaeological

standards are based on tree-ring dating.) Southern Jutland was the political

zone of the reges Danorum, which Erankish sources begin to

name from

the 770s; by the time of Godofrid

(c.

800-810), the kings

seem to have had a hegemony extending throughout the medieval

Denmark (which

also north into Vestfold

also included

around Oslo

territory of

modern southern Sweden), and

in

southern

Norway and

south

into the territory of the Sclavenian Abodrites. Godofrid even faced off

474

OUTER EUROPE Charlemagne, attacking Frankish

town

Hedeby, too. Horic

at

instability all

and

seem from

hegemony

infighting for

names

their

was

I

him

his son;

it

took

It is

Gorm

dissolved.

set

trading

fifteen years of

know the names

Danish kingdom

of rival kings for over

entirely likely that the unity of the previous century

958) and his son Harald Bluetooth (958- 9-i9- For tant critique of the idea of feud in this period see G. Halsall, in idem (ed.), Violence and pp. 49-61,

p.

422

ff.;

Italy:

Society in the Early Medieval West (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 1-45; though I use a different definition of ‘feud’ from him, I have followed his analyses. Eor Erankish feud, see J. M.

Wallace-Hadrill,

The Long-haired Kings (London, 1962), pp. 121-47;

P.

Halsall (ed.). Violence, pp. 60-75; P- Depreux, in D. Barthelemy ct