The Charlemagne Legend in Medieval Latin Texts 1843844486, 9781843844488

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Purkis and Gabriele (eds)

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his book explores the multiplicity of ways in which the Charlemagne legend was recorded in Latin texts of the central and later Middle Ages, moving beyond some of the earlier canonical ‘raw materials’, such as Einhard's Vita Karoli Magni, to focus on productions of the eleventh to fifteenth centuries. A distinctive feature of the volume's coverage is the diversity of Latin textual environments and genres that the contributors examine in their work, including chronicles, liturgy and pseudo-histories, as well as apologetical treatises and works of hagiography and literature. Perhaps most importantly, the book examines the ‘many lives’ that Charlemagne was believed to have lived by successive generations of medieval Latin writers, for whom he was not only a king and an emperor but also a saint, a crusader, and, indeed, a necrophiliac.

THE

CHARLEMAGNE LEGEND IN MEDIEVAL LATIN TEXTS

WILLIAM J. PURKIS is Reader in Medieval History at the University of Birmingham.

Jeffrey Doolittle, Matthew Gabriele, Miguel Dolan Gómez, Oren Margolis, William J. Purkis, Andrew J. Romig, Sebastián Salvadó, Jace Stuckey, James B. Williams. CONTRIBUTORS:

Cover image: The bishop of Cologne hunts for a magic ring to rescue Charlemagne from his necrophilia. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Cgm 5, fol. 212v, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12bsb00079954-3.

Bristol Studies in Medieval Cultures

THE CHARLEMAGNE LEGEND IN MEDIEVAL LATIN TEXTS

is an Associate Professor of Medieval Studies in the Department of Religion & Culture at Virginia Tech. MATTHEW GABRIELE

EDITED BY WILLIAM J. PURKIS AND MATTHEW GABRIELE

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The Charlemagne Legend in Medieval Latin Texts

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Bristol Studies in Medieval Cultures issn 1757-2150

Series Editor Dr Peter Dent Editorial Advisory Board Dr Marianne Ailes Dr Rhiannon Daniels Professor Helen Fulton Dr Emma Hornby Professor Carolyn Muessig Dr Benjamin Pohl Professor Ad Putter Dr Leah Tether Dr Ian Wei Dr Beth Williamson The remit of this peer-reviewed interdisciplinary series is to publish scholarly works on the cultures of the Middle Ages, from late antiquity up to and including the beginning of the sixteenth century. Queries about the series, or proposals for monographs, editions, or collections of essays, should be sent in the first instance to the Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies, who acts as General Editor of the series, at the address below. birtha, Faculty of Arts, 3–5 Woodland Road, Bristol, bs8 1tb email: [email protected] Previously published titles are listed at the back of this volume

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The Charlemagne Legend in Medieval Latin Texts

Edited by William J. Purkis and Matthew Gabriele

d. s. brewer

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© Contributors 2016 All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, trans\mitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2016 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge isbn  978 1 84384 448 8 D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk ip12 3df, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, ny 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate This publication is printed on acid-free paper Designed and typeset in Adobe Arno Pro by David Roberts, Pershore, Worcestershire

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For our families

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Contents List of Illustrations  viii Contributors  ix general preface Charlemagne: A European Icon  xii •  Marianne Ailes and Philip E. Bennett Acknowledgements  xv List of Abbreviations  xvii introduction The Many Latin Lives of Charlemagne  1 •  William J. Purkis 1 Frankish Kingship, Political Exegesis and the Ghost of Charlemagne in the Diplomas of King Philip I of Francia  9 •  Matthew Gabriele 2 The Twelfth-Century Vita Karoli and the Making of a Royal Saint  33 •  Jace Stuckey 3 Performing Sacrality: The Liturgical Portrait of Frederick Barbarossa’s Charlemagne  59 •  Sebastián Salvadó 4 Rex Parvus or Rex Nobilis? Charlemagne and the Politics of History (and Crusading) in Thirteenth-Century Iberia  92 •  Miguel Dolan Gómez 5 Charlemagne in Girona: Liturgy, Legend and the Memory of Siege  115 •  Jeffrey Doolittle

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6 ‘For the Honour of the Blessed Virgin’: The History and Legacy of Charles’s Devotion to Mary in the Gesta Karoli Magni ad Carcassonam et Narbonam  148 •  James B. Williams 7 Charlemagne the Sinner: Charles the Great as Avatar of the Modern in Petrarch’s Familiares 1.4  181 •  Andrew J. Romig 8 The Quattrocento Charlemagne: Franco–Florentine Relations and the Politics of an Icon  202 •  Oren Margolis Index  231

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Illustrations Figures 5.1 Fresco depicting the defence of Girona during the 1285 siege, from the chapel of Sant Vicenç de Cardona (Bages), completed soon after the crusade against Aragon (1284–5) © Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona (2016). Photo: Jordi Calveras

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8.1 The façade of SS Apostoli, Florence. Photo: Nicholas Scott Baker

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8.2 Plaque on the façade of SS Apostoli, Florence, commemorating Charlemagne’s building of the church, fifteenth century (copy). Photo: Nicholas Scott Baker

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Music Examples E x. 1 Matins Responsory 4: Fusa prece mentis74 E x. 2 Matins Antiphon 3: Qui Constantino veniens77 E x. 3 Matins Responsory 7: O quam felicis82

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Contributors Jeffrey Doolittle is a doctoral candidate in the History Department at Fordham University in New York City, with an interest in the medieval history of the Mediterranean. His dissertation explores the monastic culture of early medieval Montecassino through the close study of a series of medical manuscripts produced by the community. He is also completing an article on the meaning of homicide in Gregory of Tours to be published in a forthcoming volume. Matthew Gabriele is an associate professor and Coordinator of Medieval & Early Modern Studies in the Department of Religion & Culture at Virginia Tech. He is the author of An Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne, the Franks, and Jerusalem before the First Crusade (2011), and several articles on the religious and intellectual life of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. He has also co-edited with Jace Stuckey The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages: Power, Faith, and Crusade (2008), and with Michael Frassetto and John Hosler Where Heaven and Earth Meet: Essays on Medieval Europe in Honor of Daniel F. Callahan (2014). His next projects involve a new biography of King Philip I of Francia (1060–1108) and an investigation into prophetic language and history in the eleventh century. Miguel Dolan Gómez completed his BA in History and Political Science at the University of North Carolina, his MA in History at Appalachian State University, and earned his PhD in 2011 from the University of Tennessee, working under the direction of Dr Thomas Burman and Dr Jay Rubenstein. His dissertation research explored the culture and practice of crusading in thirteenth-century Iberia, focusing on the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. Parts of that dissertation, as well as subsequent research into the nature of Iberian crusading, have appeared in a number of articles and book chapters, and will soon culminate in the publication of a monograph. He is also beginning work on a new research project focused on crusade preaching in Spain. Dr Gómez is currently a lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Dayton.

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Oren Margolis is Departmental Lecturer in Early Modern History at Somerville College, Oxford. He is also a member of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies, and a past award holder at the British School at Rome. He has published on topics including Renaissance humanism, Franco-Italian relations, and Jacob Burckhardt, with articles appearing in journals such as I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, Journal of Medieval History and Renaissance Studies. He has written a monograph titled The Politics of Culture in Quattrocento Europe: René of Anjou in Italy (2016), and is currently working on a cultural history of the Aldine Press. William J. Purkis completed his PhD in Medieval History at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 2005. He is Reader in Medieval History at the University of Birmingham and a convenor of the Crusades and the Latin East seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, London. His publications include Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c. 1095–c. 1187 (2008) and a number of peerreviewed articles and essays on crusading, monasticism and historical writing during the period c. 1050–c. 1250. He is currently Principal Investigator on the AHRC Leadership Fellows project ‘Bearers of the Cross: Material Religion in the Crusading World, 1095–c. 1300’ (www. bearersofthecross.org.uk), which is exploring the devotional worlds of crusaders and other Latins associated with the crusading movement from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries. Andrew J. Romig is an assistant professor at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. A specialist in early medieval cultural history, Romig received his PhD from Brown University and has previously served as lecturer and assistant director of studies for the History and Literature programme at Harvard University. He has taught and written on such wide-ranging subjects as the history of emotion, masculinity, and medieval Latin and vernacular comparative literature, and he is currently finishing a monograph project which explores caritas discourse in ninth-century Frankish aristocratic culture.

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Sebastián Salvadó (PhD Stanford 2011) is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Norwegian Institute in Rome (University of Oslo). His contribution to this volume stems from his postdoctoral work (NTNU, Trondheim) under the European Science Foundation and Research Council of Norway funded project, ‘Symbols that Bind and Break Communities: Saints’ Cults as Stimuli and Expression of Local, Regional, National and Universalist Identities’. He is currently finishing a monograph entitled Historiae and Monastic Representations of Kingship: The Crafting of SS Oswald and Edmund in Anglo-Norman England, and is working on a critical edition of the Latin liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem for the series Spicilegium Friburgense. Jace Stuckey received his PhD in 2006 from the University of Florida. He is currently Associate Professor of History at Marymount University in Arlington, VA, where he teaches a variety of courses on Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Europe. Previously, he taught at Louisiana Tech University and was a Fulbright Scholar in 2010/11 at Cardiff University. His research is centred on the legend of Charlemagne and the crusades. Among his works, he has co-edited with Matthew Gabriele The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages: Power, Faith, and Crusade (2008), to which he also contributed, and edited The Eastern Mediterranean Frontier of Latin Christendom (2014). James B. Williams is Assistant Professor of History and Interim Executive Director of the Ron and Laura Strain Honors College at the University of Indianapolis. He received his doctorate in History from Purdue University, his Master of Studies in History from Oxford University, and his BA from The College of William and Mary. His most recent publication is ‘Working for Reform: Acedia and the Transformation of Working Culture in Carolingian Monasticism’, in Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (2012). He also has a forthcoming article in Revue Bénédictine entitled ‘Forming Orthodoxy through Friendship: Alcuin, Guarnarius, and Benedict of Aniane’s Munimenta verae fidei’ (2016). He is currently working on a monograph based on his dissertation, ‘The Adoptive Son of God, the Pregnant Virgin, and the Fortification of the True Faith: Heterodoxy, the Cult of the Virgin Mary, and Benedict of Aniane in the Carolingian Age’, which received the 2010 Distinguished Dissertation Award from Purdue University’s College of Liberal Arts.

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general preface Charlemagne: A European Icon

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his series of volumes examining the reception of the Charlemagne myth in different linguistic cultures of medieval Europe springs from ‘Charlemagne in England’, a project supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to study the literary presence of the emperor in medieval England, an area where the historical Charlemagne never set foot, let alone reigned. The spread of Charlemagne’s myth after his death was even more extensive than was his empire during his life. This larger enterprise, therefore, an investigation of the appropriation of the matter of Charlemagne across Europe, required a network of specialists working on texts written in different languages and different geographical areas. Yet these languages were culturally interdependent: it was largely through the medium of French with its cultural hegemony that the legend of Charlemagne spread widely, though Latin was also an important vehicle for texts perceived as historical truth. Furthermore, the same geographical area could also be the ‘host’ for more than one language, the literatures of which would draw upon each other. One particular challenge for the project was thus the question of overlap between geographical areas and cultural or linguistic zones. This is exemplified by the original project focused on Charlemagne in England, a multilingual land of overlapping cultural zones in one geographic area, with Latin, French and English literary cultures and other languages operating in particular areas or social groups. The solution was to allow some overlap in coverage with, for example, French texts written in England covered from different perspectives in both Charlemagne in England and Charlemagne in Medieval Francophonia, and with awareness that texts in Latin were circulating at the same time and in the same geographic areas as the vernacular narrative. Given the variety of material in different languages and the varying amounts of research that have been produced, the volumes do not all follow the same pattern. Some areas, notably France, have been the object of more than a century of study. Others, such as the Celtic narratives, have received far less critical attention; indeed, one of the xii

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aims of the project has been to stimulate research in these under-studied areas. The legends and myths of Charlemagne found expression in epics and romances, chronicles and pseudo-chronicles and were alluded to in political and ecclesiastical documents across medieval Europe. Charlemagne was at the same time king of the Franks / the French and ‘empereur d’Occident’. Even in seven volumes we could not aim for encyclopedic coverage of the Matter of France. We aim rather to address the same research question, a consideration of how the matter of Charlemagne was appropriated in different contexts, whether that exploitation was for political purposes or was more concerned with literary responses. We also limited ourselves in this series to written texts. A similar series of volumes could have been written about the visual representations of Charlemagne. The geographical areas covered include much of Charlemagne’s empire, but also areas beyond its reach, such as England and Scandinavia and medieval Spain, where he was often seen as an aggressor, rather than a heroic kingemperor. We found a mythic emperor whose legend was infinitely malleable and open to (re)interpretation. Even in his own lifetime Charlemagne was the pater Europae, but the phrase no doubt meant something different to the poet of the Paderborn epic from the resonances it has today in a European Union of nation states. In the Middle Ages Charlemagne was often cited to promote local interests and cults, while at the same time he served as an exemplum of Christian unity. Our project will, we trust, shed some light on the many faces of Charlemagne: ‘Karles li rois, nostre emperere magnes’, as he is named in the opening line of the Oxford Chanson de Roland. This interdisciplinary project was made possible through work of many. We are grateful to the collaborators who have contributed to this, and in particular to the editors of the volumes. We would also like to thank the British Branch of the Société Rencesvals for their support and the opportunities offered to present research papers at both British Branch and International conferences. The Bristol Institute for Research in the Humanities and Arts at the University of Bristol funded a workshop on translating Charlemagne material, as part of a series of workshops on premodern translation, which enabled many of the collaborators to meet and develop the project in its early stages. We would also like to thank colleagues from the University of

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general preface • Charlemagne: A European Icon

Bristol's IT department and the web-designers from Dirty Design for the work on the project website: http://www.charlemagne-icon.ac.uk/. We are grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for its financial support to the network, giving us opportunities to meet and discuss research findings and to develop the website for the project. Marianne Ailes Philip E. Bennett Project directors

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Acknowledgements

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his book was born of two almost chance encounters. The first was at a symposium at the University of Reading in 2008, where the idea of the ‘Charlemagne: A European Icon’ project was introduced to one of the two editors, who willingly agreed to work on a volume on Latin texts. The next was at a conference on crusade studies at Saint Louis University in 2010, when over his shoulder the second of the two editors heard, ‘Matt, I’d like to introduce you to William Purkis. You just reviewed his book.’ Looking back, we are reasonably sure Nicholas Paul knew what he was doing in creating that tense moment, and that he enjoyed it immensely. Regardless, that encounter blossomed into this collaboration, nurtured by a shared fascination with issues of memory, religion, politics and culture of the central Middle Ages. We are fortunate that so many of our colleagues shared those interests, revolving as they do here around the fulcrum of the Charlemagne legend. The volume itself was first tested at the 2013 Leeds International Medieval Congress in a three-panel strand, then developed and supplemented thereafter. We must first, of course, thank all our contributors for their enthusiasm for the project and more especially for the tremendously erudite and insightful essays that grew from those presentations. Thanks also go to Marianne Ailes, the Principal Investigator of the ‘Charlemagne: A European Icon’ international network, who first invited us to put together this particular volume and provided valuable advice on its subsequent development; to Peter Dent of Bristol Studies in Medieval Cultures; and to Caroline Palmer and the editorial team at Boydell & Brewer, with whom it is always a pleasure to work. Thanks as well must go to our colleagues at Virginia Tech and the University of Birmingham, who have unfailingly supported the type of interdisciplinary research that lies behind this collection of essays. We are particularly grateful to Bethan Strange for her assistance with the editorial work; to Birmingham’s Centre for the Study of the Middle Ages (CeSMA) for sponsoring the Leeds IMC sessions in 2013; and Birmingham’s College of Arts and Law Research and Knowledge Transfer Fund for their assistance with the costs of image permissions. Finally, and most importantly, thanks to our families who, over the past xv

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Acknowledgements

years, have put up with a sometimes unwanted house guest: a long-dead Frankish king and emperor perpetually emerging from this tomb in various guises and finding new life in texts both medieval and modern.

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Abbreviations CCCM Corpus Christianorum: Continuatio Mediaeualis Folz, Souvenir  R . Folz, Le souvenir et la légende de Charlemagne dans l’Empire germanique médiéval (Paris, 1950) Gabriele, Empire of Memory M. Gabriele, An Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne, the Franks, and Jerusalem before the First Crusade (Oxford, 2011) Latowsky, Emperor of the A. A. Latowsky, Emperor of the World: World Charlemagne and the Construction of Imperial Authority, 800–1229 (Ithaca, NY, 2013) Legend of Charlemagne The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages: Power, Faith, and Crusade, ed. M. Gabriele and J. Stuckey (New York, 2008) MGH

Monumenta Germaniae Historica

MGH SRG Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum MGH SS

Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores

PL

Patrologia Latina

RHC Occ. Recueil des historiens des croisades: Historiens occidentaux Remensnyder, Remembering A. Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past: Kings Past Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca, NY, 1995)

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introduction The Many Latin Lives of Charlemagne William J. Purkis

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s all medievalists know, 2014 marked the anniversary of a significant  moment in European history: the twelve-hundredth year since the death of Charles, later Karolus Magnus, Charles the Great   –  Charlemagne. From that moment, the life of Charles as an historical actor  –  a king, an emperor  –  began to give way and transform into something else: the Charles of history became the Charlemagne of legend.1 The so-called ‘raw materials’ for this transformation included Einhard’s Latin life of Charlemagne, the Vita Karoli Magni, which was probably composed in the late 820s and which portrayed the emperor as ‘an ideal ruler who ruled over an ideal age’. 2 From that starting point, through Notker the Stammerer’s Gesta Karoli Magni (885–7), the Historia Turpini (c. 1140), and many other texts,3 the Charlemagne legend gathered momentum and was elaborated, so that by the close of the twelfth century Charles was being celebrated as, among other things, a founder of monasteries, a donor of relics, a Jerusalem pilgrim, a protocrusader, and, indeed, a saint. All studies of the process by which Charlemagne passed from history into legend are indebted to the foundational work of Robert Folz, especially his Le souvenir et la légende de Charlemagne dans l’Empire

1 See P. E. Dutton, ‘karolvs magnvs or karolvs felix: The Making of Charlemagne’s Reputation and Legend’, in Legend of Charlemagne, pp. 23–37. 2 Gabriele, Empire of Memory, p. 17. For a useful survey of the earliest sources, see T. F. X. Noble, ‘Greatness Contested and Confirmed: The Raw Materials of the Charlemagne Legend’, in Legend of Charlemagne, pp. 3–21, which also refers to the more negative memories of Charles’s rule that preceded Einhard’s myth-making text. 3 On these texts, and for further bibliography, see Gabriele, Empire of Memory, pp. 13–40, and W. J. Purkis, Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c. 1095–c. 1187 (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 150–65.

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germanique médiéval,4 but recent years in particular have seen a renewed enthusiasm for the subject  –  a historiographical development that Thomas Noble has memorably dubbed ‘Charlemania’.5 The publication of a collection of essays titled The Legend of Charlemagne: Power, Faith, and Crusade in 2008, for example, demonstrated the value and potential of a broader interdisciplinary approach to the subject, incorporating work by historians, art historians and literary specialists on source materials originating from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries; the volume’s significance for the field is evident from the frequency with which it is cited in the chapters below.6 In 2011 one of the editors of that volume (and the co-editor of this one), Matthew Gabriele, went on to add significantly to our knowledge and understanding of the legend’s early history through a wide-ranging examination of Carolingian memory during the period 814–c. 1100. He showed how the reach of Charlemagne’s imperial power and authority became ever more extensive in the collective memory of European elites during this period, arguing that the Charlemagne legend may, in fact, have been formative in stimulating recruitment to the ‘Frankish’ First Crusade and Latin Christian ambitions to reconquer the Holy Land in the 1090s.7 Most recently, in 2013 Anne Latowsky explored how memories of the Frankish ruler’s journey to the East influenced, and were called upon to shape, ideals and practices of imperial authority from the ninth to the early thirteenth centuries, demonstrating the significance for the politics of empire of the fact that Charlemagne could be remembered not only as a ‘humble pilgrim’ but also as a ‘conquering emperor’. 8 The present volume adds to this growing body of scholarship, but it seeks to lead study of the Charlemagne legend in new thematic, geographical and chronological directions too. It has its origins in 4 Folz, Souvenir. For further bibliography, see S. E. Farrier, The Medieval Charlemagne Legend: An Annotated Bibliography (New York, 1993), and Gabriele, Empire of Memory, pp. 2–4. 5 T. F. X. Noble, Review of Gabriele, Empire of Memory, The Medieval Review 11.12.14 (2011), available through https://scholarworks.iu.edu/ journals/index.php/tmr (accessed 2 October 2014). 6 Legend of Charlemagne. 7 Gabriele, Empire of Memory. 8 Latowsky, Emperor of the World, p. 17 and passim.

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a series of sessions on ‘Charlemagne in Latin’ that were held at the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds in 2013. The sessions were conceived and initiated as part of the ‘Charlemagne: A European Icon’ research project, which seeks to explore how the Charlemagne legend was received and appropriated by different European linguistic cultures across the medieval centuries.9 The emphasis in this volume is therefore specifically on the multiplicity of ways in which the Charlemagne legend was recorded in Latin texts of the central and later Middle Ages, moving beyond some of the earlier canonical ‘raw materials’ to focus on productions of the eleventh to fifteenth centuries from across the Latin West. A distinctive feature of the volume’s coverage is the diversity of textual environments and genres that the contributors examine. In addition to studies of chronicles and ‘straight’ historical narratives, there are analyses of pseudo-histories, diplomas, letters and liturgical texts, as well as apologetical treatises and works of hagiography and literature.10 Some of the chapters focus on specific works, while others take a more comparative approach; and some of the Latin texts considered  –  most notably the Historia Turpini  –  appear in several of the chapters, revealing the extraordinary cultural impact they had across Latin Europe in the central and later Middle Ages. But perhaps most importantly, the volume examines which aspects of the Charlemagne legend subsequent generations of Latin writers were concerned with, how these changed over time, and why. Accordingly, the volume’s eight chapters illuminate some of the ‘many lives’ that Charlemagne was believed to have lived by the authors of these various medieval Latin texts.11 9 For further details about the project, which is under the overall direction of Marianne Ailes (University of Bristol) and Philip E. Bennett (University of Edinburgh), see the General Preface to this volume and the project website: http://www.charlemagne-icon.ac.uk (accessed 15 March 2016). 10 For the issues raised by the imposition of these modern divisions on medieval sources, see especially F. Lifshitz, ‘Beyond Positivism and Genre: “Hagiographical” Texts as Historical Narrative’, Viator 25 (1994), 95–114. 11 For further comment on the plurality of legendary Charlemagnes, and on ‘Charlemagne as discourse’, see M. Gabriele, ‘Prologue’, in Legend of Charlemagne, p. xiv, which draws on E. Vance, ‘Semiotics and

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The volume begins in the late eleventh century, with a study by Matthew Gabriele that examines an instance of Charlemagne’s absence rather than his presence. For Gabriele, the memory of Charlemagne’s rule as an idealized form of kingship  –  although rather nebulous  –  can be detected through close analysis of diplomatic evidence pertaining to the reign of Philip I of France. While Charlemagne himself is not cited as explicitly in these texts as he is in some of the later sources under consideration in the volume, his ‘ghost’ can nevertheless be traced through the scriptural exegesis enacted at the moment of these documents’ composition, to demonstrate how Carolingian memory was formulated and deployed in the later eleventh century. Moving into the twelfth century, Jace Stuckey conducts a detailed examination of events surrounding Charlemagne’s canonization in 1165. He demonstrates the broader historical context within which this event should be situated, before subjecting the texts produced to support Charlemagne’s elevation to sanctity  –  including a new Vita Karoli Magni  –  to close scrutiny. As Stuckey makes clear, the novelty of the Vita Karoli Magni lies in its compilation and codification of legendary material relating to Charlemagne  –  a process that has parallels with efforts made at Santiago de Compostela for the cult of St James the Great c. 1140 and, subsequently, with the thirteenth-century ‘tidying up’ of materials relating to the legend of St Francis of Assisi.12 As such, the Vita represents a kind of cultural barometer for the way the main strands of the Charlemagne legend were developing in Latin texts before 1200. Sebastián Salvadó then develops this theme through detailed analysis of the associated liturgical texts that were created to celebrate Charlemagne’s elevation to sanctity. His chapter complements Stuckey’s by offering a close reading of the Latin text of the liturgy, which provided endorsement for ideas of holy war and sacred kingship, and also by Power: Relics, Icons, and the Voyage de Charlemagne à Jérusalem et à Constantinople’, Romanic Review 79 (1988), 164–83. 12 For Compostela, see, for example, R. Fletcher, St James’s Catapult: The Life and Times of Diego Gelmírez of Santiago de Compostela (Oxford, 1984), and Purkis, Crusading Spirituality, pp. 139–65. For St Francis, see, for example, J. Röhrkasten, ‘Reality and Symbolic Meaning among the Early Franciscans’, in Self-Representation of Medieval Religious Communities: The British Isles in Context, ed. A. Müller and K. Stöber, Vita Regularis 40 (Münster, 2009), pp. 21–41.

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reflecting on the power and meaning of the performance of the liturgy through its musical setting. Salvadó thus approaches the liturgy as a ‘narrative body’ that can be examined as one would any other textual source and demonstrates how distinctive it was when compared with the liturgical texts created for other royal saints in the central Middle Ages. One of the main features of the twelfth-century liturgy’s creation of Charlemagne-as-saint is the emphasis on the emperor’s ‘crusading’ deeds in the Iberian peninsula. This particular aspect of the Charlemagne legend is approached directly in the volume first by Miguel Dolan Gómez, who examines a range of chronicle evidence from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and identifies voices of scepticism and dissent with regard to Charlemagne’s achievements as a holy warrior in the Iberian peninsula. While acknowledging the importance and popularity of the two key foundational texts for Charlemagne’s Iberian legend  –  the Historia Turpini and the Chanson de Roland  –  Gómez shows that these (very French) tellings of Charlemagne’s ‘crusades’ were not always received favourably south of the Pyrenees, especially when they jarred with contemporary political and cultural claims within the peninsula.13 Further, Gómez discusses the tensions that arose between Iberian and French contingents of crusaders during the great Las Navas crusade of 1212 as an example of divergence between the expectations and realities of frontier warfare in the early thirteenth century. In so doing, he shows that even in his celebrated role as a proto-crusader the legendary deeds of Charlemagne could in fact be interpreted in a variety of ways  –  not all of them favourable. Having established the broader landscape within which the Charlemagne-as-crusader legend was operating in Iberia in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the fifth chapter of the book provides a close reading of one particular site of proto-crusade and Carolingian memory from the fourteenth century: Girona. Adopting a methodological approach similar to Salvadó’s, Jeffrey Doolittle examines the corpus of texts produced for the cult of St Charlemagne in Girona in 1345 as a narrative body containing a ‘liturgical vision’ of the emperor’s legendary 13 For the broader context, see S. L. Martínez-Morás, ‘Le Pseudo-Turpin en Espagne’, Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes 25 (2013), 471–94, and, more generally, Charlemagne and his Legend in Early Spanish Literature and Historiography, ed. M. Bailey and R. D. Giles (Cambridge, 2016).

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achievements. Much of this vision of Charlemagne is familiar from the twelfth-century predecessor discussed by Salvadó in Chapter 3: specifically, the liturgy testifies to the emperor’s military prowess, his piety, and his commitment to addressing the perceived threat from peninsular Islam. Here, though, the grand narrative of Charlemagne’s Iberian crusade is given a local, Girona-centric twist, and Doolittle shows the importance for the city’s fourteenth-century elites of the (largely invented) legend of Charlemagne conquering Girona from its Muslim rulers in 785. Doolittle argues that this fourteenthcentury creation of Carolingian legend was influenced and informed by the more recent, traumatic history of the city’s short-lived siege and conquest, in 1285, by an army of French crusaders. Whereas Gómez studies Iberian criticism of trans-Pyrenean crusading activity in Hispania from the time of Charlemagne onwards, Doolittle demonstrates how in 1345 a positive memory of the emperor’s pseudohistorical achievements could be used to condemn the impiety of more recent French peninsular adventures. A major theme in Doolittle’s analysis of the liturgical corpus from fourteenth-century Girona is the importance of the intercession of the Virgin Mary in the eighth-century conquest of the city. A fuller examination of the legendary Charlemagne’s association with the Virgin is offered in the chapter that follows, which takes as its point of departure a Latin text referred to first by Doolittle: the Gesta Karoli Magni ad Carcassonam et Narbonam. Where Doolittle considers this text as a possible source for the liturgical materials developed in Girona (thus underscoring once again the intertextuality of the Charlemagne legend), Williams uses it as a way in to another of the legendary emperor’s many lives  –  Charlemagne as Marian devotee. The Gesta portrays Charlemagne in a variety of ways: as the builder of churches; as the protector of Christian orthodoxy; and, especially, as a champion of the Virgin. Williams situates the Gesta within the context of its production at the monastery of Lagrasse, near Narbonne, before proceeding to explore other Latin texts, including the Historia Turpini and the Vita Karoli Magni, for additional traces of the idea that Charlemagne enjoyed a particular attachment to the Virgin. He argues that the Gesta’s depiction of Charlemagne’s Marian piety can in fact be traced to a historical reality and thus, unlike many aspects of the emperor’s many lives considered in the volume, the Gesta was drawing on what Williams characterizes as a ‘plausible past’.

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introduction • The Many Latin Lives of Charlemagne

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Although the evidence considered in the first six chapters of the book certainly presents some challenges to the notion that Charlemagne was continually and universally glorified from Einhard onwards  –  perhaps most notably in the Iberian scepticism surrounding Charlemagne’s ‘proto-crusading’ and his supposed penchant for luxurious bathing, as discussed by Gómez  –  it is not until Chapter 7 that an openly subversive depiction of the emperor comes to the fore. Indeed, in Andrew Romig’s study, Charlemagne’s life is remembered as nothing less than that of a sexual deviant. Romig discusses Petrarch’s Familiares 1.4, a letter sent to Cardinal Giovanni Colonna in which the Italian poet recounted his visit to Aachen in 1333 and relayed the stories he had heard and read at the shrine of St Charlemagne. The most scurrilous of these was the account of the emperor’s ‘desperate and immoderate’ love for ‘a certain ordinary woman’, in which Charlemagne was eventually portrayed as having lived a life that involved lust, necrophilia and homosexuality. Romig notes the possible derivation of this story from those that circulated in the immediate aftermath of the historical Charles’s death in 814, against which the work of Einhard was supposed to have been a corrective. But as Romig shows, Petrarch was using the idea of Charlemagne-as-sinner to make a broader point about something else  –  specifically, that the ‘greatness’ of Charles only served to demonstrate the relative poverty of medieval modernity, when contrasted with the glories of the ancient world that Petrarch yearned for. The volume’s final chapter takes us into the 1400s, where Oren Margolis analyses the changing ways in which three Florentine humanists understood Charlemagne’s relationship with their city, its post-Roman reconstruction and restoration, and its relationship with the emperor’s French heirs. Through consideration of Leonardo Bruni’s Historia florentini populi, Donato Acciaiuoli’s Vita Caroli Magni, Ugolino Verino’s Carlias, and the immediate political contexts in which they were composed, Margolis shows how the Charlemagne legend was being adapted in fifteenth-century Florence to suit presentist concerns, both through the production of new texts and, indeed, subsequent recensions of the same text. He demonstrates that the three works were ‘products of distinct political moments’, which at times amplified or minimized Charlemagne’s contribution to Florentine civic identity, depending on contemporary diplomatic circumstances. Margolis therefore demonstrates once again the mutability of the Charlemagne legend, illustrating how the emperor’s life, deeds and reputation could

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be cast and then recast to suit shifting conditions in a turbulent political environment. All of the contributors to the volume underscore the recent observation that ‘Each [medieval] scribe who recorded the great one’s deeds or narrated the events of that [Carolingian] Golden Age added a layer, pressing his particular memories and preoccupations into the fabric of the Charlemagne legend.’14 This volume does not seek to offer a full study of Charlemagne’s many avatars across an encyclopaedic corpus of medieval Latin texts; any attempt to do so would surely require a multi-volume series in its own right. Instead, and in keeping with the primary aim of the ‘Charlemagne: A European Icon’ project, it attempts to identify and analyse some of the many layers of meaning that medieval authors ‘pressed into the fabric’ of the Charlemagne legend using the European language of learning from the late eleventh century onwards. The volume seeks to explore the contexts in which those layers of meaning emerged, were appropriated and exploited, and to demonstrate how the Latin texts concerned were products of particular moments in time and thus always culturally and politically contingent. While certain elements of the legend appear to have remained reasonably stable, such as the notion that Charlemagne was a valiant proto-crusader and a beneficent founder of churches, other themes  –  from a love of bathing to an attraction towards corpses  –  recurred much less frequently and were often anchored to very particular historical circumstances. One of the tasks of subsequent volumes in the current series will be to establish whether the themes and ideas that were prioritized by our Latin authors can be observed in vernacular texts too  –  a task that will enable scholars in future to undertake much broader comparative studies of the place of the Charlemagne legend in the interactions between medieval European literary cultures.15

14 Gabriele, Empire of Memory, p. 1. 15 For further details of other volumes in this series, see: http://www. charlemagne-icon.ac.uk/research-groups/ (accessed 15 March 2016).

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1 Frankish Kingship, Political Exegesis and the Ghost of Charlemagne in the Diplomas of King Philip I of Francia Matthew Gabriele

F

ew manifestations of the Charlemagne legend in Latin sources written before c. 1100 focus on the man himself. Particularly in tenthand eleventh-century texts, Charlemagne was there but wasn’t there; he was the eye of the hurricane, the stable focal point around which the real action swirled. Sometimes he was directly invoked in order to make a larger point about the claims of a religious house or political dynasty. Other times he was an allusive presence, with his reign serving as the backdrop for a more important cast of characters. In other words, early manifestations of the legend tended to be about projecting the great Frankish ruler as an archetype of remembered Frankish identity, one tied to militant Christian empire, and a font from which religious, political and cultural legitimacy flowed. The image of Charlemagne the man  –  the imagined contour of his life  –  was primarily important in each Latin source because one could use him to say something about the imagined Frankish Golden Age.1 Thus, it is particularly important for modern scholars to be sensitive to the interpenetrating ways particular historical circumstances could generate instances of the Charlemagne legend.2 Using his name, evoking his reign with a particular phrase, was never a value-neutral act during the ninth through Research for this paper was first presented at the 2013 Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America in Knoxville, TN, and the 2013 Leeds International Medieval Congress. I thank the participants and attendees of those sessions for their helpful comments and suggestions.

1 See especially Gabriele, Empire of Memory, chs. 1 and 4. 2 Still useful here is G. Spiegel’s ‘Social Logic of the Text’, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore, 1997), pp. 3–28.

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eleventh centuries. Charlemagne’s presence  –  or conspicuous absence  –  therefore meant something to the scribe, it meant something to the intended audience, and so it should mean something to us.3 In some ways, the pro-Carolingian programme evident during much of the reign of King Philip I of Francia (r. 1060–1108) serves as a microcosm for the elements described above.4 The son of King Henry I (r. 1031–60), Philip became king of the Franks at the age of seven, achieved majority in 1068 at the age of fifteen, expanded royal power outwards from the Île-de-France, fought early and often with the dukes of Normandy, patronized monasteries, married into the family of the count of Flanders, repudiated his first wife, Bertha of Holland, and married the wife of the count of Anjou, quarrelled with popes Urban II (1088–99) and Paschal II (1099–1118) about both the appointment of bishops and his second marriage, sent his brother and much of his court on the First Crusade, married his daughter to a hero of that crusade, set his son Louis VI (r. 1108–37) on the throne, and was buried at Fleury. Unlike his grandfather Robert the Pious (r. 996–1031) and son Louis VI, he earned himself no contemporary biographer and few modern ones.5 3 An approach forcefully argued in G. Koziol, ‘Is Robert I in Hell? The Diploma for Saint-Denis and the Mind of a Rebel King ( Jan. 25, 923)’, Early Medieval Europe 14 (2006), 233–67. 4 My initial thoughts on this programme can be found in M. Gabriele, ‘The Provenance of the Descriptio qualiter Karolus Magnus: Remembering the Carolingians at the Court of King Philip I (1060–1108) before the First Crusade’, Viator 39 (2008), 93–117 (pp. 110–12). Since that article’s publication, Peggy Brown has looked more closely at the stitching of the earliest codex of the Descriptio qualiter and brought to my attention a problem with my tentative reconstruction of Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 1711. Folios 1 and 10 are probably conjugates, with folios 2–9 contained therein. Folios 11–18 are the next gathering. This important reconsideration of that particular manuscript does not, however, change my conclusions about the meaning of the text to Philip I and his entourage, which I will supplement below. My thanks to Peggy Brown and Tom Waldman for much interesting discussion on this manuscript that revealed their intellectual generosity. 5 There remains, oddly, no recent, substantive, academic biography of Philip. The best is still A. Fliche, Le règne de Philippe Ier, roi de France (1060–1108) (Paris, 1912); though there is also I. Gobry, Philippe Ier: Père de Louis VI le gros (Paris, 2003).

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Frankish Kingship, Political Exegesis and the Ghost of Charlemagne 11 He did, however, earn the enmity of Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis (d. 1151), who vilified Philip’s reign as one consumed by his insatiable lust, which led to Philip’s inevitable failure. The kingdom was only saved by the merit of his successor and son, who was coincidentally both educated at Saint-Denis and the subject of Suger’s work.6 Historians have unfortunately too often listened to Suger’s polemic in offering their own assessments of Philip’s reign, with tradition holding that Philip either had no overall plan for his kingdom  –  too often swayed by his whims, sexual or otherwise  –  or was simply too weak to accomplish anything.7 Philip’s diplomas, however, reveal a very different picture. After achieving majority in 1068, and especially after his marriage to Bertha of Holland in 1072/3, his diplomas reveal a discussion about power, with Philip consistently projecting that power in a mode meant to evoke an eleventh-century memory of the ninthcentury Franks. His audiences seemed both to understand what he was doing and to project that same image of power back upon him. This essay will therefore consider the ghost of Charlemagne haunting Philip I’s reign, a remembered ideal of Frankish kingship, how it shaped Philip’s attempts to exercise power, and how others experienced those attempts. These diplomas reveal that different constituencies in the kingdom of the Franks were still carrying on a conversation about what it meant to be the rex Francorum, one begun in the eighth century, reworked in exegesis during the late ninth century, embroidered by the monastic reform of the tenth, and revived to fit the political situation of West Francia in the late eleventh.8 6 On Philip’s ‘legacy’, see Suger, Vie de Louis VI le Gros, ed. H. Waquet (Paris, 1929), pp. 80–4. On Louis’s education at Saint-Denis, see R. Grosse, Saint-Denis zwischen Adel und König: Die Zeit vor Suger (1055–1122) (Stuttgart, 2002), p. 62. 7 Note that Gobry’s 2007 biography of Philip identifies him in the title as nothing more than the father of Louis VI (see n. 5, above). That said, a recent chapter on Philip is at least entitled ‘Successful Failures’: see J. Bradbury, The Capetians: Kings of France, 987–1328 (London, 2007), pp. 97–128, especially pp. 112–13; also on the historiography of Philip I, see E. M. Hallam, Capetian France, 987–1328 (London, 1980), pp. 75–7. 8 I will explore more broadly how the ninth century echoed into the twelfth in M. Gabriele, Prophecy, Apocalypse, and the Intellectual Transformation of the Medieval West (Oxford, forthcoming).

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T

he eleventh century, probably more so than at any time previously, witnessed a veritable explosion of interest in Charlemagne. Bishoprics and monasteries throughout Europe wrote him into their histories as their ‘true’ founder or most benevolent patron.9 Annalists, chroniclers and hagiographers recast the Annales regni Francorum in order to embellish Charlemagne’s accomplishments. For example, Jocundus of Maastrict wrote in the 1080s that ‘the pious Charles  … journeyed around the whole world to combat the enemies of God; and those he could not subdue with the word of Christ, he subdued with the sword’.10 Such expansive remembered scope of these conquests was a commonplace, repeated and repeated as 1100 approached.11 Memory even shifted into prophecy, as the Charlemagne legend began to merge with the Last Emperor legend, thanks in large part to Adso Dervensis’s mid-tenth-century elision of the two in his De antichristo. In Benzo of Alba’s long 1080s letter to Emperor Henry IV (r. 1056–1106), Henry became the ‘new Charles’, who surpassed the old and was therefore the potential Last Emperor. Pseudo-Alcuin’s late eleventh-century reworking of Adso’s text more clearly suggested Charlemagne himself was the Last Emperor, the man who would resurrect the imperium christianorum so as to defeat all the enemies of Christ.12

9 Gabriele, Empire of Memory, pp. 24–6; and more generally Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past. 10 ‘Hoc pius attendens K  … terram circuit universam, et quos Deo repugnare invenit impugnabat, et quos Christos subdere non potuit verbo, subdidit ferro.’ Jocundus, Translatio sancti Servatii, MGH SS 12:96. 11 For example in the eleventh century, from Saint-Bénigne of Dijon, Niederaltaich in Bavaria, and in the Anglo-Norman Oxford Chanson de Roland. See, respectively, Chronique de l’abbaye de Saint-Bénigne de Dijon, ed. E. Bougaud and J. Garnier (Dijon, 1875), pp. 83–4; Annales Altahenses Maiores, ed. E. L. B. A. B. Oefele, MGH SRG 4, p. 4; Chanson de Roland, in The Song of Roland: An Analytical Edition, ed. G. J. Brault (University Park, PA, 1978), 1: ll. 383–8. For more on the image of Charlemagne in the Oxford Roland, see M. Gabriele, ‘Asleep at the Wheel? Apocalypticism, Messianism and Charlemagne’s Passivity in the Oxford Chanson de Roland’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 43 (2003), 46–72. Also, more generally, Gabriele, Empire of Memory, ch. 2. 12 Adso of Montier-en-Der, De ortu et tempore Antichristi, ed. D. Verhelst, CCCM 45 (Turnhout, 1976); Benzo of Alba, Ad Heinricum IV.

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Frankish Kingship, Political Exegesis and the Ghost of Charlemagne 13 Although we may speculate that Pseudo-Alcuin had some connection to Philip I, with the tract first appearing somewhere in the Chartrain towards the end of his reign, the narrative that most clearly associated the legendary Frankish king with Philip is the so-called Descriptio qualiter Karolus Magnus.13 Briefly, the text describes how God instructed the Byzantine emperor to call Charlemagne to the East, so that Jerusalem could be liberated from the Muslims. Charlemagne heeded the call, liberated the city, then acquired rich relics (pieces of the Crown of Thorns and True Cross, the Holy Shroud, Mary’s tunic, and the arm of St Simeon) that he brought back to Aachen. After Charles’s death, Charles the Bald moved the relics to Saint-Corneille of Compiègne and Saint-Denis.14 Traditionally, the origins of the Descriptio qualiter have been linked to the abbey of Saint-Denis and the second half of the eleventh century. This has been restated most recently by Federica Monteleone and Jerzy Pysiak.15 Anne Latowsky’s Emperor of the World Imperatorem, ed. H. Seyffert, MGH SRG 65; and Pseudo-Alcuin, Vita Antichristi ad Carolum Magnum, in De ortu et tempore antichristi, ed. D. Verhelst, CCCM 45 (Turnhout, 1976), pp. 117–28. 13 The earliest manuscript of Pseudo-Alcuin, unfortunately destroyed in World War II, was from Saint-Père of Chartres and dated to the last quarter of the eleventh century. See Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France: Chartres, XI (Paris, 1890), pp. 58–60; and De ortu, ed. Verhelst, p. 110. The earliest manuscript of the Descriptio qualiter (just before 1100 and probably from Normandy) simply begins ‘Incipit clavi et corone Domini descriptio’, thus perhaps betraying an initial focus on the relics of the text rather than Charlemagne. See Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 1711 fol. 2r. 14 The text is available in Descriptio qualiter Karolus Magnus clavum et coronam Domini a Constantinopoli Aquisgrani detulerit qualiterque Karolus Calvus hec ad Sanctum Dyonisium retulerit, in Die Legende Karls des Grossen im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert, ed. G. Rauschen (Leipzig, 1890), pp. 103–25. Rauschen’s edition has now been printed, with Italian translation, in F. Monteleone, L’Anonimo di Saint-Denis: Una fortunata storia di reliquie (Bari, 2012). 15 See the historiographical survey in Gabriele, ‘Provenance of the Descriptio qualiter’, pp. 98–101; and Monteleone, L’Anonimo di SaintDenis, pp. 12–13; J. Pysiak, ‘Les origines de la légende de la translation en Occident par Charlemagne des reliques de la Couronne d’épines’, in Hagiographie, idéologie et politique au Moyen Âge en Occident: Actes

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(2013) argues that the Descriptio qualiter is a composite work that perhaps originates earlier in the eleventh century and participates in a longer imperial tradition that can primarily be found east of the Rhine.16 I have argued elsewhere that the origins of the text should be more closely tied to Philip I himself: that it was probably composed around 1080 by an ecclesiastical element within his entourage, perhaps specifically linked to his chancellors.17 Let me supplement that conclusion here. As regards Saint-Denis, we should note that a text’s being for a religious house does not mean that it was composed at the religious house. There are a number of contemporary examples in which authors from elsewhere were commissioned to write narratives benefitting a certain location. Moreover, and more tellingly, there is simply no evidence that Saint-Denis knew of the text until the middle of the twelfth century.18 We have a tendency to think that Suger of Saintdu colloque international du Centre d’Études supérieures de Civilisation médiévale de Poitiers, 11–14 septembre 2008, ed. E. Bozóky (Turnhout, 2012), pp. 477–501 (pp. 478–9, 500). 16 Latowsky, Emperor of the World, pp. 59–98. Her suggestion that the Descriptio qualiter was a composite work follows, as she notes, the unpublished thesis of Marc du Pouget. See M. du Pouget, ‘Recherches sur les chroniques latines de Saint-Denis: Édition critique et commentaire de la Descriptio clavi et corone domini et de deux séries de textes relatifs à la légende carolingienne’, Positions des thèses soutenues par les élèves de la promotion de 1978 pour obtenir le diplôme d’archiviste paléographe (1978), pp. 41–6. 17 Gabriele, ‘Provenance of the Descriptio qualiter’, pp. 93–117. 18 For example, Fleury was particularly active in writing hagiographic tracts for other houses, as were Flemish houses such as Saint-Bertin. On Fleury, see R.-H. Bautier, ‘Place de l’abbaye de Fleury-sur-Loire dans l’historiographie française du IXe au XIIe siècle’, in Études Ligériennes d’histoire et d’archéologie médiévales: Mémoires et exposés présentés à la semaine d’études médiévales de Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire du 3 au 10 juillet 1969, ed. R. Louis (Auxerre, 1975), pp. 25–33 (p. 31). On Flanders, see the summary in E. van Houts, ‘The Flemish Contribution to Biographical Writing in England in the Eleventh Century’, in Writing Medieval Biography, 750–1250: Essays in Honour of Professor Frank Barlow, ed. D. Bates, J. Crick and S. Hamilton (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 111–27. On the Descriptio qualiter at Saint-Denis, see Gabriele, ‘Provenance of the Descriptio qualiter’, pp. 102–5.

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Frankish Kingship, Political Exegesis and the Ghost of Charlemagne 15 Denis effectively launched the French monarchy, to see his partnership with and support for Louis VI and think it normative, to think that he invented the royal mythology that would dominate the later Middle Ages; then we look back at Philip, see him warring with (and sometimes losing to) local lords, and think him a monarch of limited powers and ambitions. Yet, by c. 1080, Philip was doing not at all badly for himself. He had added the county of the Gâtinais to the royal demesne at the expense of the count of Anjou, taken control over the monastery of Corbie and forged an alliance of marriage with the count of Flanders, and taken the Vexin from the lords of Crépy. In addition, Philip’s younger brother Hugh would soon take over the county of Vermandois. Finally, in 1079/80 Philip had just helped establish a tense balance of power between William I of England (r. 1066–87) and his rebellious son Robert I of Normandy (d. 1134), one which promised to keep both occupied for some time and thereby (hopefully) secure his northern frontier.19 Most importantly, Philip was the one and only rex Francorum  –  a ruler who could, and did, position himself as the legitimate heir to the Descriptio qualiter’s Charlemagne and Charles the Bald.20 It was a title that still meant something. Philip, like the Charlemagne of the Descriptio qualiter, conceptualized himself  –  and was recognized by others  –  as the ultimate authority in the regnum Francorum, with power over all of his lay magnates, bishops and monks. Indeed, as Charlemagne did in the Descriptio qualiter, Philip I held tightly to his prerogative of episcopal appointments and worked to expand that authority. Again like 19 On the Gâtinais, see J. Bradbury, ‘Fulk le Réchin and the Origin of the Plantagenets’, in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. Allen Brown, ed. C. Harper-Bill, C. J. Holdsworth and J. L. Nelson (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 31–2. On Philip’s expansion more generally see Bradbury, Capetians, pp. 123–5; and J. Dunbabin, France in the Making, 843–1180, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2000), p. 193. 20 It is particularly telling that the earliest manuscript tradition for the Descriptio qualiter is not merely West Frankish, but specifically tied to Normandy. Normans, at least under Robert I of Normandy, recognized the authority of the reges Francorum. On Philip I and Normandy in this period, see W. M. Aird, Robert Curthose: Duke of Normandy, c. 1050–1134 (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 83–90. On the manuscripts of the Descriptio qualiter, see Gabriele, ‘Provenance of the Descriptio qualiter’, pp. 105–9.

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Charlemagne and Charles the Bald from the Descriptio qualiter, Philip also patronized monasteries such as Le Bec and Jumièges in Normandy, Saint-Bertin in Flanders, Saint-Nicolas of Angers and Saint-Pierre of Bourgueil in Anjou, Saint-Hilaire of Poitiers and Charroux in Aquitaine, and Flavigny and Saint-Philibert of Tournus in Burgundy, in addition to those he controlled directly in and around the Île-de-France. Philip well understood that his interventions at these ecclesiastical locations, with both his bishops and his monks, were a means of exerting power where his influence might otherwise have been marginal.21 Ninthcentury Frankish kings ‘did not just favor and reform monasteries: they saw themselves as arising from monasteries and churches’. 22 Carolingian royal interventions in monasteries created ‘islands of sacrality’: houses that would fall under royal protection, so that they could be left undisturbed to pray for their king and the kingdom. The king gained not only prayers but those houses’ patron saints as well.23 This relationship was reciprocal, and it was remembered by both king and monastery into the late eleventh century. The king wrote to religious houses so as to draw on their sacred power; monasteries and bishops wrote back to the king in order to bolster their own legitimacy. This becomes particularly evident in Philip’s diplomas. Before we discuss the contents of the diplomas, we need to say a few words about their production. Throughout his reign Philip moved constantly, but only rarely ventured beyond Orléans in the

21 See the map of houses that benefitted from Philip’s diplomas in J.-F. Lemarignier, Le gouvernement royal aux premiers temps capétians (987– 1108) (Paris, 1965), appendix 2.2.5. Note, however, that some care must be taken with this map because it shows only the ‘primary’ beneficiary of the diploma. For instance, when Philip transferred Saint-Magloire of Paris to the monks of Marmoutier in 1094, Lemarignier’s map only notes Saint-Magloire. A more accurate map would be much larger. See below for more on that particular diploma. 22 B. Rosenwein, Negotiating Space: Power, Restraint, and Privileges of Immunity in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY, 1999), p. 99. 23 M. de Jong, ‘Charlemagne’s Church’, in Charlemagne: Empire and Society, ed. J. Story (Manchester, 2005), pp. 103–35 (p. 120); R. McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 297–8.

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Frankish Kingship, Political Exegesis and the Ghost of Charlemagne 17 south and Senlis to the north.24 He was ever surrounded by bishops from the Île-de-France, Champagne, Picardy, Burgundy, Normandy and Aquitaine, and the lower nobility from locations in and around Paris.25 These were the men of the palace, often occupying the offices of seneschal, steward, constable, chamberlain and chancellor, as well as other minor posts.26 Philip’s chancellors are particularly important to understanding his diplomas, especially given that charters and diplomas are not the transparent documents modern historians so often treat them as. Traditionally (in the ninth century, that is), diplomas from the kings of the Franks had originated at the royal court, with the documents themselves produced by a centralized chancellery and its coterie of trained scribes.27 Although we are a long way from that ninth century, it is still useful to consider who Philip’s chancellors were. While a minor, Philip was reliant upon men from his father’s court. Philip’s first three chancellors, as well as his first arch-chancellor, Archbishop Gervais of Reims (d. 1067), were all men who appear in Henry I’s diplomas.28 But around 1074/5, Philip began to put his own stamp on that part of his 24 Fliche, Le règne de Philippe Ier, pp. 103–6; and Lemarignier, Le gouvernement royal, pp. 121–3, 135. 25 On the bishops, see O. Guyotjeannin, ‘Les évêques dans l’entourage royal sous les premiers Capétians’, in Le roi de France et son royaume autour de l’an mil: Actes du Colloque Hugues Capet, 987–1987, ed. M. Parisse and X. Baral i Altet (Paris, 1992), pp. 91–8; and R. Kaiser, Bischofsherrschaft zwischen Königtum und Fürstenmacht: Studien zur bischöflichen Stadtherrschaft im westfränkisch–französischen Reich im frühen und hohen Mittelalter (Bonn, 1981). On the nobility, see Lemarignier, Le gouvernement royal, pp. 112–18, 146–7; and Fliche, Le règne de Philippe Ier, p. 106. 26 See the table of great officers in M. Prou, ‘Introduction’, Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, roi de France (1059–1108) (Paris, 1908), pp. cxlviii– cli. But see also the modifications to this list suggested in Fliche, Le règne de Philippe Ier, pp. 112–20; and Lemarignier, Le gouvernement royal, pp. 150–60. 27 See G. Koziol, The Politics of Memory and Identity in Carolingian Royal Diplomas: The West Frankish Kingdom (840–987) (Turnhout, 2012), especially pp. 17–62. 28 Prou, ‘Introduction’, Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, pp. xlviii–lvi.

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entourage, a development surely related to his recent marriage to Bertha of Holland. Bishop Geoffrey of Paris, the younger brother of Count Eustache II of Boulogne (d. 1089), was chancellor for the first time from 1075 to 1077, followed from 1077 to 1080 by a certain Roger (who may be the same Roger who became bishop of Beauvais in 1095). Bishop Geoffrey of Paris became chancellor again 1081–95 and was referred to as archchancellor in 1085. This, in some ways, may have semi-formalized the chancellor’s ‘office’ at Philip’s court, with three other chancellors appearing in his diplomas between 1085 and 1095: Gilbert by 1086, Hubert (later bishop of Senlis in 1099) beginning in 1091 at the latest, and Ursio (who was the current bishop of Senlis) in 1092  –  all while Geoffrey of Paris was still chancellor.29 29 See the summary in Prou, ‘Introduction’, Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, pp. xlviii–lxi; but particularly G. Tessier, Diplomatique royale française (Paris, 1962), pp. 130–4. Dufour and Guyotjeannin also saw a change in Philip’s diplomas after 1073: see their ‘Typologie des actes de Philippe Ier (1060–1108) et de Louis VI (1108–1137), rois de France’, in Typologie der Königsurkunden: Kolloquium de Comission Internationale de Diplomatique in Olmütz 30.8–3.9.1992, ed. J. Bistřický (Olmütz, Czech Republic, 1998), pp. 71–2; and O. Guyotjeannin, ‘Les actes établis par la chancellerie royale sous Phillipe Ier’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes: Revue d’Érudition 147 (1989), 41–4. After Geoffrey’s death in May/June 1095, we cannot be sure what happened with the chancellors because there is a lacuna in the diplomatic record from June 1095 to June 1100. It seems quite possible, however, that the lacuna is due to the fact that the First Crusade stole so many of Philip’s entourage, and drew so much attention from the nobility, ecclesiastics and religious houses close to him. Indeed, it could be particularly telling that the last diploma (before the lacuna) that can be comfortably dated was issued from the monastery of Mozac in the Auvergne in late May/early June 1095, when Philip met with his constable and seneschal, Duke Odo of Burgundy (d. 1103), Count Robert II of Auvergne (d. 1096), his son William VI of Auvergne (d. 1136), archbishop and papal legate Hugh of Lyon (d. 1106), bishops Ademar of Le Puy (d. 1098) and Agano of Autun (d. 1098), bishop-designee William of Clermont (d. 1105), and Abbot Ademar of Saint-Martial of Limoges (d. 1114). Ostensibly, they all met to discuss Philip I’s scandalous second marriage, but the coming crusade must have been discussed, as evidenced by the fact that almost every one of those subscribers was in the Balkans on his way to Jerusalem a year later. The diploma is no. 135 in Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, ed. Prou. On recruitment for the First

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Frankish Kingship, Political Exegesis and the Ghost of Charlemagne 19 So, what does all this tell us about Philip’s diplomas in this period? We are indebted to Maurice Prou, who collected, edited and published 171 of Philip’s diplomas in 1908. Yet, I mislead: there are not really 171 of Philip’s diplomas. For some time before the ascent of Philip I the court (and chancellor) had ceased to be the sole site of production for royal diplomas. Indeed, according to Olivier Guyotjeannin, only ~46% (78/171) were either produced by the king’s chancellors or bear marks of substantial ‘intervention’ by that office.30 This is a critical point that bears repeating. By the tenth century, and certainly by the late eleventh, most diplomas  –  and almost all private charters  –  were created at their destination, by their recipients (usually religious houses).31 But in other ways, things had perhaps changed less radically. One core characteristic of the ninth-century chancellery was that it functioned as a ‘ganglion of patron–client ties operating through a small number of ecclesiastical houses and their leaders’.32 This seems to have held true in Philip’s reign as well. In addition, diplomas from the ninth to eleventh century were mnemonic aids created to signify important moments and/or transactions and to list witnesses to those moments that created and/or modified networks and alliances. This means that the attention paid to certain places (mostly monasteries) in Philip’s diplomas  –  Fleury, Saint-Maur des Fossés, Cluny, Senlis, etc.  –  was almost certainly no accident. It also means that late eleventh-century diplomas were deeply intertextual, connected with other diplomas and narrative sources in a manner that often formed a separate conversation in its own right. The documents utilize a language of power and kingship that benefactor, recipient and audience were meant to understand.33 Crusade in and around northern Francia, see J. Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge, 1997); and Gabriele, Empire of Memory, ch. 5. 30 Guyotjeannin, ‘Les actes établis’, appendix. 31 A brief summary of the move away from the chancellery and towards the monastery as a site of production can be found in B.-M. Tock, Scribes, souscripteurs et témoins dans les actes privés en France (VIIe–début du XIIe siècle) (Turnhout, 2005), pp. 22–4. 32 Koziol, Politics of Memory, pp. 32–7, 56–7, quotation at p. 32. 33 For a specific example of diplomas as ‘conversation’ among different groups, see O. Guyotjeannin, ‘Diplôme de Hugues Capet pour l’abbaye de Fleury’, in Autour de Gerbert d’Aurillac: Le pape de l’an mil, ed.

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When the king’s chancellor created a diploma, he projected a particular language of power outwards. When a destination created a diploma for someone like Philip, the monks often echoed that language back to the king. For example, let us consider diploma no. 132 in Prou’s collection: a diploma given at the royal court (aula regia) in Paris on 14 February 1094, which placed the abbey of Saint-Magloire of Paris under the abbey of Marmoutier. It is an odd diploma for a number of reasons. This is the first  –  and only  –  diploma Philip issued for Marmoutier, which by-andlarge lay outside of the royal orbit.34 Moreover, though the diploma itself appears to have been created within the royal court, it directly references a number of biblical passages.35 This latter development is new in Frankish royal diplomatic, and seems to have borrowed from eleventh-century private charters.36 By themselves, the biblical O. Guyotjeannin and E. Poulle (Paris, 1996), pp. 111–18; Koziol, Politics of Memory, pp. 24–5, 38–9, 45, quotation at p. 39. Note that Philip gave twenty-eight diplomas during his minority (1060–7), thirty-three in the five years between achieving majority and his marriage to Bertha (1067–72), and twenty-nine in the five years after his marriage to Bertha (1072–7). That means that he offered 53% (90/171) of his diplomas in the first seventeen years of his reign, at the time when he would have been establishing himself on the throne and building his networks of support. He offered fewer diplomas over the next thirty-one years than he did in the first seventeen. In addition, note that Philip only offered five diplomas in the years immediately after his marriage to Bertrada of Montfort (from 1092 to the lacuna beginning in 1095), which perhaps indicates how unproblematic that marriage was, in that it did not require a full-scale recasting of political alliances. 34 See below at n. 56. 35 Its oddness is compounded by the lack of any reference to the diploma at Saint-Magloire itself, though it was kept and copied at Marmoutier. See Chartes et documents de l’abbaye de Saint-Magloire, ed. L. Fossier, I (Turnhout, 1998), p. 14 n. 4, pp. 527–9. 36 Guyotjeannin, ‘Les actes établis’, pp. 35–8; M. Groten, ‘Die Arengen der Urkunden Kaiser Heinrich IV. und König Philipps I. von Frankreich im Vergleich’, Archiv für Diplomatik, Schriftgeschichte, Siegel, und Wappenkunde 41 (1995), 67–71. Only 8% of the diplomas between 1067 and 1095 (9/106) meet these two criteria. See Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, ed. Prou, nos. 43, 45, 53, 70, 75, 82, 104, 116, 132. In addition, two more

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Frankish Kingship, Political Exegesis and the Ghost of Charlemagne 21 citations in Philip’s diplomas, taken from the Gospels (Matthew and Luke), Paul’s letters (mostly Galatians), Psalms, Ecclesiasticus and the Book of Wisdom, are not that odd, as they mostly concern the wages of sin, the need for charity, and the blessings accruing to those who give alms. Since most of Philip’s diplomas offered property or rights to religious houses in exchange for prayer, this fits with our assumptions. But our assumptions can sometimes let us down. What we think we know about the nature of a text may lead us to ask the wrong questions. Koziol has written that ‘reading diplomas  … is less like reading legal documents than like reading biblical exegesis’.37 Allow me to amend that observation by suggesting that sometimes diplomas can actually be forms of exegesis. The beginning of the 1094 diploma for Marmoutier, and the section in which the biblical citations can be found, styles Philip as seeking peace but cites Romans 13. 1 to acknowledge that ‘all power comes from God’. Thus, he knows he must heed God’s will, for otherwise ‘the mighty will be mightily tormented’ (Wisdom 6. 7); indeed, ‘to those whom much is entrusted, much is also expected’ (Rule of St Benedict II. 30, referring to the abbot).38 The quotation from the Rule was not a common one but it was not entirely unheard of either. It appears in a diploma of Emperor Henry II from 1020 for the canons at Saint Mary’s diplomas (nos. 56 and 103) cite from the Bible and bear Philip’s signature and/or seal, even though they otherwise lack intervention by the chancellor. 37 Koziol, Politics of Memory, pp. 14–15. 38 ‘Disponente ac moderante omnia prout vult auctore et ordinatore omnium Deo, quicumque aliis precellimus et recte sapimus, disponi nos ac moderari ab ipso non ignoramus, sicut scriptum est, quia omnis potestas a Deo est [Romans 13. 1]. Si ergo generis humani communem conditionem propter eam qua excellimus vanitatem obliviscamur, si propter eam que nobis arridet et blanditur terrena prosperitas, voluntati creatoris nostri et imperio parere negligamus, timendum nobis est ne id nobis eveniat, quod ipse interminatur, quia potentes potenter tormenta pacientur [Wisdom 6. 7], et cui plus committitur plus ab eo exigetur [Rule of Saint Benedict II. 30]’. Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, ed. Prou, no. 132. Prou incorrectly, though perhaps understandably, claims that the quotation from the RSB is a paraphrase of Luke 12. 48. This mistake is also made throughout the MGH.

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at Aachen, another from Emperor Henry IV in 1095 for the monks of Saints Felix and Fortunatus near Vicenza, as well as a letter from Peter Damian to Henry IV in 1065/6.39 In each of these cases, the object of the quotation was the emperor, not the leaders of the religious houses, which suggests a particular ideological statement about the nature of their rulership.40 Philip is doing the same thing, professing a monastic model of kingship that likens his role as rex to that of abbas.41 Indeed, understanding the rest of the citations in their original exegetical context only strengthens that reading. Hrabanus Maurus wrote that Wisdom 6. 7 should be understood as a warning to the ‘powerful’ (potentiores) of this world, for failure to heed God’s commands would lead to spiritual damnation.42 But most other Frankish exegetes were more political in their readings, seeing in the verse a counsel to right action in this world for those who wore the heavy crown of earthly authority. This reading burst forth in several episcopal documents during Louis the Pious and Lothar’s ‘reform’ year of 829.43 Later, Pope Nicholas I (858–67) would pick this language up and use the verse in 866 to counsel Bardas Caesar (who served Emperor Michael III of Byzantium [r. 842–67]) that he should restore 39 See MGH dd h ii: no. 433; MGH dd h iv: no. 448; and P. Damian, Epistolae, ed. K. Reindel, MGH Epistolae 4.3 (Münich, 1989), no. 120. 40 Noted in relation to Henry II in J. W. Bernhardt, ‘King Henry II of Germany: Royal Self-Representation and Historical Memory’, in Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography, ed. G. Althoff, J. Fried and P. J. Geary (Cambridge, 2002), p. 48. 41 Frederick Paxton has argued that this ideal came to the Capetians through Fleury, particularly by way of the ideological narratives produced there in the first half of the eleventh century. This makes sense for Philip, given his close connections to that house, but the roots are much deeper (see below). F. S. Paxton, ‘Abbas and Rex: Power and Authority in the Literature of Fleury, 987–1044’, in The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950–1350, ed. R. F. Berkhofer III, A. Cooper and A. J. Kosto (Burlington, VT, 2005), pp. 197–212. 42 Hrabanus Maurus, Commentariorum in librum Sapientae libri tres, PL 109, 693. 43 For example, Concilium Parisiense, MGH Concilia 2.2:652; Episcoporum relatio ad imperatorem, MGH Capitularia 2:47–8. Both instances cite Wisdom 6. 2–8 and refer to the proper actions of the king’s ministers.

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Frankish Kingship, Political Exegesis and the Ghost of Charlemagne 23 the patriarch Ignatius.44 This ‘political’ exegesis of the text meshes well with the other biblical verse in Philip I’s diploma from 1094. Haimo of Auxerre’s commentary had specifically linked Romans 13. 1 to Proverbs 8. 15 (‘through me kings reign and lawmakers decree just things’), thus making a more general statement about how power in this world flows from God to the king and how kings can act as avatars for true justice.45 A similar sense of the verse from Romans is evinced in an 857 letter by Archbishop Hincmar of Reims to Charles the Bald, in an 862 letter from Pope Nicholas I related to Lothar II’s divorce, and in a capitulary from the reign of Charles the Simple (898–922) in 920, among others.46 There is only one earlier source that uses any of these citations together. In 865, Archbishop Hincmar of Reims wrote to King Louis the German (840–76) because the king had asked for the meaning of a peculiar phrase in Psalms, ‘The leader of them is the house of the heron.’ 47 Hincmar took this as an allegory of kingship and offered the aforementioned references from the Rule of Saint Benedict and Wisdom 6. 7 as a warning to King Louis. The phrases for Hincmar were echoes of one another. In closing his admonition to Louis, he wrote, ‘because to whom more is entrusted, more is demanded, as it is written in scripture the mighty shall be mightily tormented, mercy is given in small measure’. 48 This is the same connection that Philip’s chancellor Hubert (maybe in concert with the monks of Marmoutier) made some 230 years later. The late eleventh-century diploma states that sometimes ‘we neglect to follow the will or commands of our creator, [but] lest 44 Pope Nicholas I, Ad Bardam Caesarem, MGH Epistolae 6:543. 45 Haimo of Auxerre, In divi Pauli expositio, PL 117, 479. 46 Hincmar of Reims, Ad Karolus Calvus, MGH Epistolae 8.1:53; Pope Nicholas I, Ad Ludovicum et Lotharium, MGH Epistolae 6:213; and Capitula de Tungrensi episcopatu proposita, MGH Leges 2:379. 47 Psalm 103. 17: ‘erodii domus dux est eorum’. 48 ‘quia cui plus committitur, cui plus ab eo exigitur, et iuxta scripturae sententiam potentes potenter tormenta patienter, exiguo concedetur misericordia’. Hincmar of Reims, Ad Ludovicum regum, MGH Epistolae 8.1:171. In the early twelfth century William of Malmesbury would also link these two quotations in explaining why the church of his ‘modern times’ was in such disarray. See William of Malmesbury, Liber super explanationem Lamentationum Ieremiae prophetae, ed. M. Winterbottom, R. M. Thomson, and S. Sønnesyn, CCCM 244 (Turnhout, 2011), p. 56.

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this happen to us [Philip], God himself offers a warning, because “the mighty shall be mightily tormented”, and to whom more is entrusted, more is demanded’.49 And what is entrusted in this instance? The diploma is clear: the cultus divinus in his realm, represented in the proper functioning of his monasteries. In context, Philip is taking responsibility for the proper practice of Christianity, just as a good king of the Franks should. This is why he was intervening at Saint-Magloire in 1094. Indeed, the entire diploma can be seen as a carefully constructed statement on the nature of Philip’s kingship and the critical role that monasteries played within it. He took it upon himself  –  not simply responding to a request by someone else  –  to effect this restoration of Saint-Magloire, affirming that it was his duty to correct the supposed inaction of Saint-Magloire’s abbot. Philip did this for the good of his soul and predecessors, but primarily on behalf of the safety of his regnum.50 A cross-section of that regnum is represented within the witnesses to the diploma. Third-party subscriptions were introduced to West Frankish royal diplomatic in the reign of Philip’s grandfather, Robert II the Pious, and seem to have been imported by him from reformed monastic circles.51 But a change began to occur, at first in private charters and then in royal diplomatic, over the course of the eleventh century. ‘Subscribers’ began to be replaced by ‘witnesses’. Subscribers were participants in what was enacted by the issuing of the diploma, committed to upholding its terms; witnesses were recorded by the scribe and their presence attested to, but they did not participate in the act.52 In diploma 132, the names appended to the end of the act are 49 ‘voluntati creatoris nostri et imperio parere negligamus, timendum nobis est ne id nobis eveniat, quod ipse interminatur, quia “potentes potenter tormenta patientur”, et cui plus committitur, plus ab eo exigitur’. Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, ed. Prou, no. 132. 50 ‘Quod est fecimus pro redemptione anime nostre et antecessorum nostrorum et pro incolumitate et statu regni nostri omniumque ad nos pertinentium.’ Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, ed. Prou, no. 132. 51 G. Koziol, ‘The Conquest of Burgundy, the Peace of God, and the Diplomas of Robert the Pious’, French Historical Studies 37 (2014), 173–214. 52 See the discussion in J. H. Prell, ‘Les souscriptions des chartes des comtes de Poitou, ducs d’Aquitaine (1030–1137)’, Bibliothèque de l’École des

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Frankish Kingship, Political Exegesis and the Ghost of Charlemagne 25 indeed witnesses. Bishop Ursio of Senlis was listed first, followed by Philip’s brother Hugh (noted as such and not as count of Vermandois), then Philip’s seneschal, his constable, four milites including the viscount of Melun, the royal chef, two of his chamberlains and two of the queen’s chamberlains. The diploma also lists a second set of witnesses  –  monks who were also present, namely Hilgod (who used to be the bishop of Soissons) and his brother from Marmoutier, the prior of Saint-Magloire, and another monk of an unnamed monastery who used to be Philip’s seneschal.53 These were Philip’s core advisers, the heart of his aula regia. Ursio was the bishop who presided over his marriage to his new queen Bertrada of Montfort; the milites and high officers demonstrated that Philip governed with the aid of his counsellors and that they too understood themselves to be responsible for the maintenance of the cultus divinus in the realm, the monks signalled Philip’s commitment to his monasteries. Bertrada, meanwhile, became an unspoken presence in the diploma not only through both sets of royal chamberlains but also by the subject of the act itself. In 1072, possibly not long after he married Bertha of Holland, in another diploma written by his chancellor, another diploma given from the aula regia in Paris, but this one subscribed  –  not witnessed  –  by a host of lay and ecclesiastical magnates, Philip had confirmed a donation by Bertrada’s father (Simon I of Montfort [d. 1087]) to Saint-Magloire, and simultaneously granted the abbey freedom from episcopal interference.54 But the latter act effaced the former. Whereas he used others to legitimize a donation in 1072, Philip I exercised Chartres 155 (1997), 211–19; also Tock, Scribes, souscripteurs et témoins. 53 Hilgod became abbot of Marmoutier in 1100. The former seneschal (Robert de Castello) may have been at Saint-Magloire, given that he was listed just after that house’s prior. On Hilgod and his brother, see Notitia seu Libellus: De tribulationibus, et angustiis, et persecutionibus Majorimonasterio injustè illatis ab archiepiscopis et clericis S. Mauricii Turonensis, in Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, XIV (Paris, 1877), pp. 95, 98. 54 See Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, ed. Prou, no. 62. Another donation to Saint-Magloire from 1075 can be found at no. 73. The connections between the Capetians, Saint-Magloire and the Montforts go back even further. See Catalogue des actes d’Henri Ier, roi de France (1031–1060), ed. F. Soehnée (Paris, 1907), nos. 33, 36, 39, 121.

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much greater autonomy in the diploma from 1094. Here, he took SaintMagloire, a monastery next to his royal palace in Paris and historically tied to Bertrada’s family, and reformed it with monks from a site deeply connected to the family of Bertrada’s first husband.55 Moreover, he did all this in favour of Marmoutier, a famous house with deep ties to the counts of Anjou but one that, before 1094, Philip had never himself acted in favour of.56 This makes the latter act all the more notable  –  a disjuncture, a singular moment in Philip’s reign that demonstrated that his power touched both Paris and Tours, that it touched both the Montforts and the counts of Anjou. And this was all witnessed by the bishop who performed his new marriage, Philip’s brother, the officers of his court, as well as one of Philip’s former bishops and one of his former seneschals, both of whom had embraced reform monasticism. Even the dating clauses  –  those seemingly banal phrases at the end of every diploma  –  state clearly what this 1094 diploma is about. It is dated in four ways: by the incarnation, by the indiction, by the epact, and by the year of Philip’s ordination (meaning his ‘anointing’).57 This last one stands out, alerts us to something, because it is the only time one of Philip’s diplomas was dated this way. It signals that the clauses should be read together, as offering four separate timelines that converge on the moment of the diploma’s issuance. Philip I’s ability to do what he was doing, where he was doing it, who he was doing it with, and who he was doing it for, relied upon the power conveyed through his ordination  –  the moment when God made him king. A real king. A king of the Franks.

55 Roughly concurrent with these events at Saint-Magloire, Philip wrote to the abbot of Marmoutier and asked him to reform the monastery of Faremoutiers because of the nuns’ dissolute lifestyle. See Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, ed. Prou, no. 137; and Ivo of Chartres, Correspondance, ed. J. Leclercq, I (Paris, 1949), no. 70. 56 Philip had confirmed donations by others but in the vast majority of these cases he simply affixed his seal to a pre-existing charter. See Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, ed. Prou, nos. 6–8, 34, 50, 70, 107, 128, 129, 164. 57 ‘anno ab incarnatione Domini millesimo xciii, indictione i, epacta xx, vix kal. martii, regnante philipo rege, anno ordinationis sue xxxvi’. Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, ed. Prou, no. 132.

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Frankish Kingship, Political Exegesis and the Ghost of Charlemagne 27

W

 hat is particularly striking about diplomas issued during Philip I’s reign is that even some of those created at their destination evinced the same type of idealized Frankish royal authority emanating from the royal court. The abbey of Charroux lies about fifty kilometres south of Poitiers. It was originally founded by Count Roger of Limoges (along with his wife, Eufrasia) near the end of the eighth century and quickly became one of the largest in the Carolingian world.58 Frankish kings patronized the abbey consistently from Charlemagne through to Charles the Bald, but thereafter the abbey appears to have been obscured from the royal gaze until the late eleventh century, when Charroux (arguably) reached the apex of its fame and power.59 In 1085 Philip I issued a diploma for Charroux from a royal assembly at Saint-Corneille of Compiègne, confirming Robert of Péronne’s donations to the abbey. It is, however, a deeply problematic source, probably authentic in substance, but likely to have been substantially rewritten in the thirteenth century, and so of marginal utility for our

58 O. G. Oexle, ‘Le monastère de Charroux au IXe siècle’, Le Moyen Âge 76 (1970), 193–204 (pp. 193–4, 197); G. Schwering-Illert, ‘Die ehemalige französische Abteikirche Saint-Sauveur in Charroux (Vienne) in 11. und 12. Jh.: Ein Vorschlag zur Rekonstruktion und Deutung der romanischen Bauteile’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Bonn, 1963), p. 13; and J. Becquet, ‘Deux prieurés de Charroux en Limousin: Rochechouart et Magnac-Laval’, Bulletin de la Société archéologique et historique du Limousin 123 (1995), 46–51 (p. 46). 59 The abbey developed in that period a particularly vibrant devotion to Charlemagne as legendary founder and patron, which elided relic, ruler, and religious house. See Gabriele, Empire of Memory, pp. 27–30, 44–51. The royal diplomas for Charroux can be found in Liber de Constitutione: Institutione, Consecratione, reliquiis ornamentis et Privilegiis, in Chartes et documents pour servir a l’histoire de l’Abbaye de Charroux, ed. D. P. de Monsabert, Archives Historiques du Poitou 39 (Poitiers, 1910), pp. 11–20. On Charroux in the eleventh century, see G. Beech, ‘Aquitanians and Flemings in the Refoundation of Bardney Abbey (Lincolnshire) in the Later Eleventh Century’, Haskins Society Journal 1 (1989), 75–86. On Charlemagne at Charroux, see Gabriele, Empire of Memory; C. Treffort, ‘Charlemagne à Charroux: Légendes de fondation, histoire architecturale et création épigraphique’, Revue historique du Centre-Ouest 6 (2007), 277–96.

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purposes here.60 Another diploma, ‘enacted’ (acta) at Charroux in 1077, has Philip invoking Charlemagne and Roger of Limoges as the abbey’s founders in order to confirm the monastery in its rights and privileges.61 Most likely composed by the monks themselves, this diploma opens with an eschatological meditation in Philip’s voice  –  a meditation on how the king of the Franks would stand before God at the Last Judgment. But, the diploma continues, the king would be judged not only by his private devotion to God, but also by right action in this world. The author of the diploma ‘proved’ this by offering quotations from the prophet Joel and an Augustinian paraphrase of Psalms. If one does right in the world, then on the day of eternal reward, ‘[God] drives those from the north far from us’ ( Joel 2. 20), for ‘according to the multitude of our sorrows, [God’s] consolations have made our souls rejoice’ (cf. Psalm 93. 19).62 Therefore, Philip, king of the kingdom of the Franks by the robust arm of God, mindful that he holds power over all kingdoms, will now confirm Charroux in all its rights and possessions.63 60 The diploma appears as ‘false’ in Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, ed. Prou, no. 175. But see Prou’s discussion at pp. ccxiii–ccxix. 61 Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, ed. Prou, no. 85. 62 ‘eum qui ab aquilone est procul a nobis faciat et secundum multitudinem dolorum nostrorum consolationes eius laetificent animas nostras’. Recueil des actes de Philipe Ier, ed. Prou, no. 85. The evocation of Psalm 93. 19 is actually an Augustinian paraphrase of that verse. Cf. Psalm 93. 19: ‘in multitudine cogitationum mearum quae sunt in me intrinsecus consolationes tuae delectabunt animam meam’; Augustine: ‘secundum multitudinem dolorem meorum in corde meo consolationes tuae iucandaverunt animam meam’. See Augustine, Epistolae, ed. A. Goldbacher, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 57 (Vienna, 1911), no. 248. 63 ‘ego Philippus, rex gratia Dei robusti brachii, regni Francorum scilicet, memor Domini, in cujus manu sunt omnia jura regnorum, qui in sentina hujus mundi, quibus ob meritum transgressionis concutiuntur regna terrarum, cuncta juste disponit, regia auctoritate, divina apposita majestate salvatoris nostri Jhesu Xpisti, locum qui vocatur Karrof, corroborans, volo atque jubeo …’ Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, ed. Prou, no. 85. This final statement phrase, following on from the other biblical citations, might be intended to evoke Isaiah 37. 16–20 and the prayer the good king Hezekiah offered to God, on behalf of his kingdom, in the face of the Assyrians who were devastating the lands of the chosen people.

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Frankish Kingship, Political Exegesis and the Ghost of Charlemagne 29 Once again, the key that unlocks the diploma is the biblical citation. The reference to Joel is virtually unseen in diplomas, letters, annals and chronicles from the ninth to the eleventh centuries. But we can learn something if we look at the exegetical tradition. Jerome linked ‘those from the north’ to those who devastated Israel, regardless of where they actually came from.64 A ninth-century commentary, most likely by Haimo of Auxerre, echoed Jerome (after a fashion) by simply reminding the reader that the north was where evil men dwell.65 And both of these commentaries make sense in the context of how other Frankish authors understood Ezekiel’s and Jeremiah’s mentions of the peoples ‘ab aquilone’. Indeed, particularly during the ninth century, the peoples ‘of the North’  –  the Vikings, the Northmen, the Normans, who raided throughout the Frankish empire  –  were seen as the instruments of God’s wrath against the new chosen people.66

64 Jerome, Commentariorum in Joelem, PL 25, 970–1. 65 ‘Aquilonem diabolum dicit: terram inviam et desertam, reprobos omnes in quibus regnat appellat.’ Haimo of Auxerre, In Joel Prophetam, PL 117, 103. This text could, however, have been composed by Remigius of Auxerre (one of Haimo’s students), though Remigius probably composed his own commentary. On the authorship of this particular text, see Burton van Name Edwards’s bibliography of Carolingian exegesis at https://risd.digication.com/bvnedwards/Bibliography; and E. A. Matter, ‘The Church Fathers and the Glossa Ordinaria’, in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists, ed. I. Backus, I (Leiden, 1997), pp. 83–111 (p. 104 n. 94). 66 S. Coupland, ‘The Rod of God’s Wrath or the People of God’s Wrath? The Carolingian Theology of the Viking Invasions’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 42 (1991), 538–41; K. S. Beckett, Anglo-Saxon Perceptions of the Islamic World (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 234–6; M. Alberi, ‘ “ Like the Army of God’s Camp”: Political Theology and Apocalyptic Warfare at Charlemagne’s Court’, Viator 41 (2010), 1–20; and especially J. Palmer, The Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2014), ch. 6. Even in 1097, a letter from the first crusaders to the archbishop of Reims referred to the Christians’ enemies  –  Muslims in the East  –  as ‘ab aquilonem’. See P. Demouy, ‘L’Église de Reims et la croisade aux XIe–XIIe siècles’, in Les champenois et la croisade: Actes des quatrièmes journées rémoises, 27–28 novembre 1987, ed. Y. Bellenger and D. Quérel (Paris, 1989), pp. 19–38 (pp. 35–6).

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Little had changed. Although it is unclear if (though not impossible that) Philip I was actually present at Charroux when this diploma was enacted in 1077, he was at least in the area, attempting to rally the duke of Aquitaine’s support against the Normans.67 In this context, the citations in the diploma allude to specific political events that Philip and his loyal monks at Charroux were confronting at that particular moment; Charroux was still a part of the regnum Francorum and the Northmen were still the Northmen. This diploma runs parallel to the one for Marmoutier in 1094. In both cases, the idealized ninth century was carried forward into the eleventh. In both cases, Philip acted autonomously  –  not in response to a request  –  to enact an idealized relationship between king and monastery that would benefit not only his individual soul but also, and more importantly, the whole kingdom of the Franks. But whereas Chancellor Hubert had written ‘towards’ the monks of Saint-Magloire and Marmoutier in 1094, the monks of Charroux ‘wrote back’ to the king. The monks of Charroux, not the court, not the king, were the ones saying that Philip’s diploma  –  and the specific activity enshrined therein  –  would encourage God to ease the king’s sorrows (Psalm 93. 19 via Augustine) so that, as foretold by the prophet Joel, those from the north (this time under the leadership of Duke William) would be driven back. And what was that specific activity which Philip must undertake? Ensuring the proper functioning of his monasteries by exercising his Frankish royal authority.

I

n the period 1074–95, the ghost haunting the diplomas of Philip I   was an ideal of Carolingian kingship carried with the Charlemagne legend. The spectre became visible in the 1077 diploma for Charroux, when Charlemagne was noted as one of the abbey’s founders, but it remained unseen in the 1094 diploma for Marmoutier. Ghosts are tricky; sometimes they try to remain hidden. Nonetheless, in both cases here examined the strategic use of certain scriptural citations betrayed this ghost’s presence, as he hovered just behind the parchment, guiding the scribes’ hands, firing their mental catenae, leading them back to

67 On the significance of the term acta in eleventh-century diplomatic, see H. Bresslau, Handbuch der Urkundenlehre für Deutschland und Italien, II (Berlin, 1958), pp. 446–50; Tessier, Diplomatique royale française, pp. 113, 223. On Philip in Poitiers, see Fliche, Le règne de Philippe Ier, pp. 272–4.

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Frankish Kingship, Political Exegesis and the Ghost of Charlemagne 31 the Carolingians via exegesis.68 When that spirit inspired the monks of Charroux to legitimize Philip’s intervention at their monastery, and when Philip moved Saint-Magloire into the orbit of Marmoutier in 1094, the traces of its presence are the biblical citations, which elevated the king’s actions from devotional undertaking to a display of royal power. But we must remember too that ghosts are not what they once were. The ideal of kingship evoked in these diplomas is a far cry from the reality of the ninth century.69 To conclude, let us return to that 1094 diploma given from the aula regia in Paris. One could look at the claims Philip made there, compare them to their performative setting, and read the diploma as pretension without substance; this could be seen as the act of a king who aspired to be a great Carolingian but came up far short. We could note that there are no abbots, no archbishops, no great magnates who attended the king and witnessed the act. We would also note those who did subscribe: one bishop and fourteen middling local nobility. But that is not entirely fair. The diploma as a whole  –  and it must be taken as a whole  –  should be read as a statement that Philip, his entourage, and his monks at Marmoutier, who may not have been physically present at the palace in Paris but were still there, took seriously what had been enjoined upon him. Just after putting aside Bertha of Holland, niece of the count of Flanders, and marrying Bertrada of Montfort, former countess of Anjou, mother of the potential heir to the county of Anjou, daughter of the lords of Montfort, Philip I was acting to extend his regnum by establishing a relationship with a famous abbey. At a particular moment when his northern frontier seemed secure, space was opening to the southwest and it was time to reassert what he thought to be his royal prerogatives in those lands  –  to pull Marmoutier away from both Angevins and Blésois and into the royal orbit.70 Philip was the rex 68 On memory and catenae, see M. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1990), p. 6. 69 See the discussion in Latowsky, Emperor of the World; and Gabriele, Empire of Memory, especially ch. 4. 70 Philip’s interest in Marmoutier at this particular moment may also have had something to do with the politics of the counties of Maine, Anjou and Blois. More generally on Marmoutier and the politics of Blois– Chartes and Anjou, see D. Pichot, ‘Les prieurés bretons de Marmoutier’, Annales de Bretagne et des pays de l’Ouest 119 (2012), 153–75; J-H. Foulon,

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Francorum, positioning himself in line with his Carolingian predecessors, the new ‘house of the heron’, one who had been divinely ordained into his kingship, to whom God had entrusted the maintenance of the cultus divinus. Seventeen years earlier, 400 kilometres to the south, and without the king’s intervention, the monks of Charroux had demonstrated the same vision. Ultimately, these diplomas were parallel Carolingian exegetical statements about the nature of kingship and its relationship with the Christian religio. In diplomas such as these, perhaps contemporary readers and authors read ‘us’ a bit more expansively than the royal ‘we’. That ‘we’, that ‘us’, extended beyond the court. Indeed, one could argue that the idea of kingship in Philip I’s diplomas bypassed the court entirely in order to engage different times (the ninth century) and different places (beyond the royal demesne), a political and religious relationship between king and monastery, filtered through an exegetical tradition involving Haimo, Hrabanus, Hincmar and herons. Charlemagne the man became Charlemagne the archetype became Charlemagne the ghost. He was there even when he was not. These diplomas from 1077 and 1094 signpost the special conceptual relationship between Philip and his regnum’s monasteries, which entailed his ideological protection of those religious houses in order to ensure the continued health of his realm.71 The king acted in 1094, the monks of Charroux in 1077, but both were drawing from the same well and were seeking to benefit the same king. It seems the ghost of Charlemagne not only haunted King Philip I of Francia but also, through the king’s monasteries and in the king’s diplomas, roamed across the bounds of the regnum Francorum   –  a territory whose imagined borders, to both king and subject, more closely resembled those of the ninth century than the late eleventh.

Église et réforme au Moyen Âge: Papauté, milieux réformateurs et ecclésiologie dans les Pays de la Loire au tournant des XIe–XIIe siècles (Brussels, 2008); K. A. LoPrete, Adela of Blois: Countess and Lord (c. 1067–1137) (Dublin, 2007), pp. 52–9; S. Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin: Legend and Ritual in Medieval Tours (Ithaca, NY, 1991); and O. Guillot, Le comte d’Anjou et son entourage au XIe siècle, I (Paris, 1972), pp. 173–93. 71 As noted at the beginning of the essay, this included locations in Normandy, Flanders, Anjou, Aquitaine and Burgundy, among others (see above at n. 21).

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2 The Twelfth-Century Vita Karoli and the Making of a Royal Saint Jace Stuckey

S

aints are one of the most enduring and recognizable aspects of medieval society and culture. They characterized the regional and local diversity throughout the late Roman and post-Roman West while also becoming established as one of the defining elements of medieval religiosity throughout Christendom. But in the twelfth century something fairly new was happening in that the Church increasingly embraced the idea of canonizing secular rulers.1 In the twelfth century, king-saints were a product of a society that increasingly embraced a type of kingship and sanctity marked by a powerful ruling warrior class. The twelfth century was a landmark period for the canonization of former kings and emperors: four major canonizations occurred during a twenty-year mid-century span. The German emperor Henry II was canonized in 1146, which was the first papal sanction of a former king’s canonization; the English king Edward the Confessor in 1161; Canute, king of England, Denmark, Norway, and parts of Sweden, in 1165; and Charlemagne in 1165 at the Christmas court in Aachen under the direction of Frederick I Barbarossa.2 This trend would eventually come to include queens as well, with the canonization of St Margaret of Scotland and St Elizabeth of Hungary in the thirteenth century.3 At first 1 R. Folz, Les saints rois du Moyen Âge en occident (VIe–XIIIe siècles) (Paris, 1984); and R. Folz, Les saintes reines du Moyen Âge en occident (VIe–XIIIe siècles), Subsidia hagiographica 76 (Brussels, 1992). See also P. Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, 1981), and P. Brown, Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of Christianization in the Roman World (Cambridge, 1995). 2 R. Folz, Études sur le culte liturgique de Charlemagne dans les églises de l’Empire (Paris, 1951). 3 See Medieval Saints: A Reader, ed. M. Stouck (Ontario, 1999), pp. 273–94; and K. B. Wolf, The Life and Afterlife of St Elizabeth of

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glance, the association between Christian rulers and a sense of holiness and sanctity may seem obvious, but the developments that led up to this practice are extraordinarily complex. In fact, this was an exceptional phenomenon that would probably not have been anticipated throughout much of the early Middle Ages. In particular, the canonization of Charlemagne represents a fascinating case study, revealing how his legendary biography was embraced to fit the new model of sainthood. For one thing, his canonization required a new, updated, vita. After all, Einhard’s glowing panegyric was more than three centuries old and Charlemagne had accomplished quite a lot since that time, at least in legend.4 Nevertheless, few scholars have studied the Vita and the context in which it was commissioned and produced.5 This is not entirely surprising since the source is decidedly unoriginal in content, containing biographical material and several legendary stories already in circulation. However, what is new is the context, and the act of compilation itself. Seen in this light, it is an extraordinary source that demonstrates the depth to which the legend had penetrated Latin culture. It represents a synchronic moment that encapsulated the main elements of Charlemagne’s legend in the late twelfth century. There is something new here in that the stories were being written down for the explicit purpose of describing the great deeds of a saint rather than just a former king and emperor, all within the context of Staufer imperial ideology and ambition. Most of the royal saints created in the 1100s were contemporary or near contemporary, whereas Charlemagne is a singular figure from the increasingly idealized Carolingian period whose memory was used as a model for saintly rulers in the twelfth century. Furthermore, his eventual canonization came in the midst of some of the most intense conflicts Hungary: Testimony from her Canonization Hearings (Oxford, 2010). 4 See M. Tischler, Einharts ‘Vita Karoli’: Studien zur Entstehung, Überlieferung und Rezeption, I (Hanover, 2001); T. F. X. Noble, ‘Greatness Contested and Confirmed: The Raw Materials of the Charlemagne Legend’, in Legend of Charlemagne, pp. 3–21; and D. Ganz, ‘Einhard’s Charlemagne: The Characterization of Greatness’, in Charlemagne: Empire and Society, ed. J. Story (Manchester, 2005), pp. 38–51. 5 For the most recent analysis see Latowsky, Emperor of the World, pp. 183–214.

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of the schism between the empire and the papacy. This chapter will analyse the case of the canonization of Charlemagne at the behest of Frederick I Barbarossa in 1165. The analysis has a dual focus: it evaluates the politicized context of the ‘official’ elevation of Charlemagne to sainthood in mid-twelfth-century Germany; and it considers the text of the new Vita itself  –  especially its structure, the sources it draws upon, and how it compares with the other royal saints and other ‘lives’ of Charlemagne.

The Emergence of ‘Royal Sanctity’

I

n general, the emergence of royal saints represents a marked change   from the cult of saints in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, since at that time the ‘very special dead’ were often in opposition to the ruling elites of their era, and sometimes suffered martyrdom as a result of their oppositional status. Gábor Klaniczay has argued that the idea of royal sanctity could not have developed in the early Middle Ages since neither the political climate nor the Church policies were in place to make it possible.6 Instead, ‘the royal saint as a type emerged step by step and grew into the ultimate symbol of power, a paradox, which peaked in the twelfth century’. 7 Charlemagne’s canonization, as well as that of other kings and queens of the period, is likely the result of a number of other contemporary developments. Alongside the emergence of the canonization process and the dynamic and ever-changing state of the cult of saints was a kind of ‘king-worship’, sanctification, and spiritual elevation of royalty that at times became intertwined with sainthood. With the increasing number of powerful and sometimes charismatic monarchs in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the veneration of royalty and the emergence of a new kind of sacral kingship would be a central feature of canonization in the

6 G. Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 392–8. 7 Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses, p. 396. See also E. W. Kemp, Canonization and Authority in the Western Church (Oxford, 1948), and G. Klaniczay, ‘The Paradoxes of Royal Sainthood as Illustrated by Central European Examples’, in Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe, ed. A. J. Duggan (London, 1993), pp. 351–74.

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twelfth century, and in particular for the memorialization and eventual canonization of Charlemagne. Beginning in the eleventh century, a change concerning the way monarchs were depicted can be detected in a number of sources. Monarchs were often put forth by the Church as a rex justus.8 They could also be depicted as knights, warriors, and defenders of the Church, and as pious and generous to the poor. Kings, by virtue of their position, were often viewed on the same plane as bishops and men of the Church, with whom they also often competed for power and legitimacy. Certainly, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries many sources also suggest that kings were considered sacred and that holiness came with their position. In fact, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, outside of the Mediterranean region, most of the ‘lay’ saints discussed in sources were kings and queens.9 There are some Carolingian antecedents to the idea of twelfthcentury sacral kingship. Indeed, the novelty of this phenomenon as a product of the eleventh and twelfth centuries may often be overemphasized by scholars seeking disconnects from an earlier tradition in an attempt to isolate the emergence of ‘new’ practices. The model of Old Testament kingship was often consciously adapted in the early Middle Ages and in particular in Carolingian circles. Subsequently, the development of the ‘acclamations’ to rulers (laudes regiae) had strong parallels with the litany of saints and demonstrates the height to which early rulers were elevated and their close connection to the concept of sanctity. Not surprisingly, Charlemagne’s coronation helped cement a close association between the Gallo–Frankish church and the ruling class, and increased the production of prayers and laudes 8 A. Vauchez, ‘Lay People’s Sanctity in Western Europe’, in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. R. Blumenfeld-Kosinski and T. Szell (Ithaca, NY, 1991), pp. 24–5. 9 Sanctity in the North: Saints, Lives, and Cults in Medieval Scandinavia, ed. T. Dubois (Toronto, 2008), pp. 103–28. See also W. A. Chaney, The Cult of Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England: The Transition from Paganism to Christianity (Manchester, 1970). It should be noted that there are a number of northern European areas that had royal cults in the early medieval period. For example, the cult of Sigesmond, the king of the Burgundians, appeared as early as the sixth century, and that of Oswald of Northumbria appeared in the seventh century.

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regiae.10 The prayers essentially invoked a conquering God through his royal vicars, among whom Charlemagne was the most prominent. Additionally, contemporary descriptions of Charlemagne by both Cathwulf and Alcuin clearly indicate a ‘sacredness’ associated with his kingship.11 And as early as the ninth century ‘Charlemagne appeared in a catalogue of martyrs  –  a calendar of the saints’. 12 As we move to the turn of the millennium, we see an increase in these kinds of depictions. A prime example of this phenomenon is the image of Otto III in the Aachen gospels. This depiction is distinctive in being a presentation of a secular figure with parallels to images of Christ in majesty.13 Karl Leyser described it as an image of Otto III: crowned by the hand of God and seated in a mandorla normally reserved for the enthroned Christ. The Gospels, which in the form of a scroll he seems at once to receive and to dispense, represented a form of divine investiture. Nowhere is Christocentric kingship depicted so uncompromisingly as in this painting.14

10 E. Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae: A Study of Medieval Acclamations and Medieval Ruler Worship (Los Angeles, 1974), p. 13–112. See also G. Tellenbach, Römischer und christlicher Reichsgedanke in der Liturgie des frühen Mittelalter (Heidelberg, 1934). 11 L. K. Born, ‘The specula principis of the Carolingian Renaissance’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 12 (1933), 583–612. See also K. F. Morrison, Imperial Lives and Letters of the Eleventh Century (New York, 1962), pp. 3–51. 12 M. Becher, Charlemagne, trans. D. S. Bachrach (New Haven, 2000), p. 136. 13 E. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton, 1997), pp. 61–87. See also M. Gabriele, ‘Otto III, Charlemagne, and Pentecost A.D. 1000: A Reconsideration Using Diplomatic Evidence’, in The Year 1000: Religious and Social Response to the Turning of the First Millennium, ed. M. Frassetto (New York, 2002), pp. 111–32 (p. 123). 14 K. Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society: Ottonian Saxony (London, 1979), p. 78. See also B. Arnold, ‘Eschatological Imagination and the Program of Roman Imperial and Ecclesiastical Renewal at the End of the Tenth Century’, in The Apocalyptic Year 1000:

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This depiction is of someone who seems to exist in this world and in the next, with a clear aura of power and sanctity. However, for all the Carolingian and Ottonian precursors, the developments of the eleventh and twelfth centuries do represent an important expansion within the tradition of sainthood and the perception of sacral kingship. This vision of royalty manifested itself in a number of ways both independent of and alongside the increased interest in royal sainthood.15

Frederick Barbarossa and the New Model of Royal Sainthood

T

he supernatural and sacral elements associated with Charlemagne’s life and death had been well chronicled from the eighth to the twelfth centuries. They connected with an early medieval tradition of modelling kingship on Old Testament kings, which came to the fore particularly in anointing ceremonies and was an important precursor to twelfth-century practices and policies. During Charlemagne’s lifetime, Alcuin would refer to him as being ‘chosen of God’ and Charlemagne himself certainly saw his actions as being divinely inspired.16 Subsequently, Charlemagne’s fame spread far and wide during the last years of his life, and his legendary exploits spread throughout the ninth century thanks in large part to the immensely popular biography by Einhard (c. 820s–830s), the late-ninth-century Visio Karoli Magni, Notker the Stammerer’s entertaining work of anecdotes, and numerous other works that would serve to add to the legend.17 Charlemagne’s Religious Expectation and Social Change, 950–1050, ed. R. Landes, A. Gow and D. C. Van Meter (Oxford, 2003), pp. 277–8. 15 For example, Guibert of Nogent in his 1125 work De sanctis et eorum pigneribus documented the ‘royal touch’ (the ability to cure disease through touching) in the lives of both Louis VI and his father, Philip I. See Guibert of Nogent, Opera varia, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, CCCM 127 (Turnhout, 1993), pp. 79–175. Also ‘On Saints and their Relics’, trans. T. Head, in Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology, ed. T. Head (New York, 2001), pp. 399–427. 16 K. F. Morrison, Introduction to Imperial Lives and Letters, p. 10. 17 See P. J. Geary, Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 1994), pp. 49–77; Noble, ‘Greatness Contested and Confirmed’, pp. 12–15; P. E. Dutton, ‘karolvs magnvs or karolvs felix: The Making of Charlemagne’s Reputation and Legend’, in Legend of Charlemagne,

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reputation and legend would continue to grow over the course of the next few centuries. By the time Frederick Barbarossa engineered the canonization of Charlemagne in 1165, the former Carolingian king and emperor’s reputation was well within the norm of the kings being canonized in the same period.18 The canonization processes for both Henry II of Germany and Edward the Confessor of England preceded Charlemagne’s. Both processes were long and difficult.19 Edward’s path to canonization was particularly problematic. There was a report within days of Edward’s death that a cripple was cured at the tomb, and another indicating that six blind men were cured within the first month.20 As such, Edward enjoyed the reputation of a saintly figure almost immediately.21 However, the initial popularity waned and there was not another report of a miracle until the 1130s. Ironically, at one point, monks reported that they could not even identify which tomb was Edward’s; clearly, there was no great flow of pilgrims coming to see him. It took three attempts before Edward’s sanctity was officially recognized by the Church. The first request was put on indefinite hold and the second virtually ignored.22 The third finally met with success in 1161, nearly a century after his death, when it was supported by the powerful English king Henry II.23 A number of writings then appeared after the canonization, describing Edward’s virtues and miracles and further justifying his sanctity. As with Charlemagne’s case, the process of canonization became about the posthumous reputation of the pp. 23–37; and C. Lecouteux, ‘Sur quatre mots énigmatiques de la Visio Karoli’, in Miscellania Mediaevalia, ed. C. Faucon, A. Labbé and D. Quérel, 2 vols. (Paris, 1998), pp. 865–8. 18 Die Legende Karls des Grossen im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert, ed. G. Rauschen (Leipzig, 1890), pp. 129–37, and Folz, Souvenir, pp. 203–23. 19 S. Ridyard, The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 1988). See also J. Rosenthal, ‘Edward the Confessor and Robert the Pious: 11th Century Kingship and Biography’, Mediaeval Studies 33 (1971), 7–21. 20 F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor (Berkeley, 1984), pp. 261–2. 21 See William of Malmesbury, Chronicle of the Kings of England, trans. J. A. Giles (London, 1968), p. 248. 22 See Barlow, Edward the Confessor, pp. 309–27. 23 B. Scholz, ‘The Canonization of Edward the Confessor’, Speculum 36 (1961), 38–60.

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individual more than his or her actual life. During his reign, Edward was described as ‘mild and merciful’ and upheld the laws of the land.24 But after his death, he became celebrated as a great warrior and the defender of churches. A little closer to home, and just two decades before Charlemagne’s canonization in 1165/6, one of Barbarossa’s other predecessors, Henry II (r. 1002–24), was declared a saint by Pope Eugenius III in 1146. Henry was depicted as pious and dedicated to the Church, as well as a ruler who sought to establish peace in a violent era. In a manuscript illustration of him in the Gospel Book of Monte Cassino (given to the monastery in 1022/3), Henry is depicted as a great and holy emperor who sits in judgment. The figure of Henry ‘shines forth on his ancestral throne of empire, Caesar and Augustus’, decked in the imperial robes and a clerical stole.25 Here, Henry successfully stands for both imperium and sacerdotium and fuses the two within an image of idealized sacral kingship. It would have been fairly easy for Barbarossa, in the midst of his struggles with the papacy, to co-opt a similar image of the emperor with respect to Charlemagne, who could easily be cast as the ‘founder’ of the ‘empire’. However, Charlemagne was different from all previous ‘king-saints’ in that his popularity and importance were not a local or regional phenomenon but were well chronicled throughout the Latin West, even reaching Scandinavia.26 Moreover, it was in the years leading up to the canonization that many of the most prominent historical and literary representations of Charlemagne would take root and make their way into the collective historical imagination and memory of the Latin

24 Barlow, Edward the Confessor, p. 279. 25 Morrison, Introduction to Imperial Lives and Letters, p. 13. 26 The promotion of the Charlemagne cult was a later development in Eastern Europe, where Charlemagne was elevated in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries along with other figures such as St Wenceslas in Bohemia. See G. Klaniczay, Uses of Supernatural Power: The Transformation of Popular Religion in Medieval and Early-Modern Europe, trans. S. Singerman, ed. K. Margolis (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 123–4. See also F. Curta and J. Stuckey, ‘Charlemagne in Medieval East Central Europe (ca. 800–1200)’, Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue canadienne des Slavistes 53 (2011), 181–208.

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West.27 The writer(s) of the Vita would make use of the stories and legends that were rapidly growing to become the most popular parts of the Charlemagne legend.28 In Charlemagne’s case, the most immediate concern for Frederick Barbarossa and his supporters was the schism that had developed between the emperor and the papacy. A renewed conflict between the Roman curia and imperial prelates created a precarious political situation for Frederick’s tenure as emperor. In the late 1150s, a double election for the papacy that included Alexander III and Victor IV created a problem for Frederick, who initially may have attempted to remain neutral in the dispute.29 This clash, and Frederick’s handling of the situation, is discussed in extensive detail by Rahewin in the Gesta Friderici I Imperatoris.30 The elevation of Alexander is described as the product of conspiracy and a ‘wicked usurpation’, while Victor eventually gained the favour of Frederick and the imperial court.31 Rahewin writes that after Victor was accepted as pope, Frederick ‘the divine emperor also humbly showed him the customary reverence and the service as stirrup-holder before the doors of the church, as Constantine had done for the blessed Silvester’. 32 However, Alexander’s position and support proved strong enough to withstand opposition from the empire. Problems continued for Frederick through the early 1160s with 27 Folz, Souvenir, pp. 203–23. 28 Major issues that have vexed scholars for some time concern how long the compilation of the Vita took, and precisely where the sources came from. H. M. Smyser has cited the version of Turpin Chronicle used, and a letter from Baldwin of Hainaut, to suppose sources obtained from French territories in the 1180s as background; see The Pseudo-Turpin, Bibliothèque Nationale, Fonds Latin, MS. 17656, ed. H. M. Smyser (Cambridge, MA, 1937), pp. 5–11. Anne Latowsky has recently challenged this and placed the document within the imperial chancery of the 1170s; see Latowsky, Emperor of the World, pp. 183–214 29 K. Görich, Friedrich Barbarossa: Eine Biographie (Munich, 2011); P. Munz, Frederick Barbarossa: A Study in Medieval Politics (Ithaca, NY, 1969). 30 The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa by Otto of Freising and his Continuator, Rahewin, trans. C. C. Mierow (New York, 1953), pp. 181–93. 31 The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, trans. Mierow, p. 319. 32 The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, trans. Mierow, p. 318.

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Victor’s death in 1164 creating once again rival claimants to the papacy  –  this time Alexander III and Paschal III. This meant that Frederick was put into the position of supporting another alternative candidate to Alexander, who by now enjoyed the support of much of the European nobility and especially Frederick’s greatest rival, the French king.33 After his close ally Rainald of Dassel (archbishop of Cologne) secured the support of the English king Henry II, Frederick was able move forward with his support for Paschal III. It is even possible that Henry II and Rainald played a significant role in convincing Frederick to proceed with Charlemagne’s canonization, just as Henry had done with his own popular predecessor, Edward the Confessor.34 The canonization of Charlemagne became a clear statement and symbol of Frederick’s power and imperial ideology.35 The canonization ceremony itself began on Christmas Day 1165, when it was decided that Charlemagne’s remains should be transferred to a new location to be venerated by the people. At this time, more than three centuries after Charlemagne himself was crowned imperator Romanorum, one of his imperial successors began the process of making Charlemagne his own personal saint. But Charlemagne was to be much more  –  he was to be depicted as a kind of patron saint of the empire, since his reign symbolized what the empire was supposed to embody and how the emperor was supposed to rule, given his power by God alone. On 29 December 1165, with the blessing of Paschal III, the translatio was witnessed by various princes and Church officials. Charlemagne was solemnly canonized and declared a saint. He was to be honoured on 28 January.36 There is little doubt that Charlemagne’s canonization was directly linked to Frederick’s political goals, which meant in part reasserting the 33 J. Laudage, Alexander III. und Friedrich Barbarossa (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 1997). 34 Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, pp. 4–5. See also Folz, Souvenir, pp. 203–4; and K. Leyser, ‘Frederick Barbarossa, Henry II and the Hand of St James’, English Historical Review 90 (1975), 481–506. 35 K. Görich, ‘Die Kanonisation Karls des Großen 1165: Ein politischer Heiliger für Friedrich Barbarossa?’, Zeitschrift des Aachener Geschichtsvereins 113/114 (2011/12), 97–112; Folz, Souvenir, pp. 197–203. 36 M. Pacaut, Frederick Barbarossa, trans. A. J. Pomerans (London, 1970), pp. 117–20.

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primacy of imperial power over the German church.37 Ian Robinson maintained that the final state in this reassertion came [with] the canonization of Charlemagne  … The reputation of the great emperor, to whom the German church had owed so much, now conferred the aura of sanctity on Frederick’s emperorship and reminded his subjects of their obligations to the divinely ordained monarch.38 Although the French monarchs too had claimed descent from Charlemagne and viewed themselves as continuing Carolingian traditions, this act seemed to allow Frederick to trump his rival to the west.39 This was perhaps intentional and, in fact, was described by Horst Fuhrmann as an outright ‘hostile act towards France’.40 It is within this political climate that we must approach the canonization Vita. Connecting Charlemagne’s rule to Frederick’s was not merely symbolic, but also a political and religious statement, because Frederick made the conscious decision that only Charlemagne could legitimize and appropriately symbolize his own reign and imperial ideology, with its increased emphasis on the sacrum imperium. Charlemagne’s canonization, in particular, represents an ideological shift in emphasis on how king-saints were depicted. With significant influence from the ongoing crusades to the East and in Spain, as well as the rise of epic (heroic) literature, the image of the ‘knight’ and ‘warrior’ who fought and sometimes died in the name of God became quite prevalent. Many of the former kings who were canonized in the twelfth century took on this persona of ‘knight-saint par excellence’. 37 K. Görich, ‘Karl der Große  –  ein “politischer Heiliger” im 12. Jahrhundert?’, in Religion und Politik im Mittelalter / Religion and Politics in the Middle Ages, ed. L. Körntgen and D. Waßenhoven (Gottingen, 2013), pp. 117–56; Folz, Souvenir, pp. 150–250; Munz, Frederick Barbarossa, pp. 102–85. 38 I. S. Robinson, The Papacy, 1073–1198: Continuity and Innovation (Cambridge, 1990), p. 488. 39 Pacaut, Frederick Barbarossa, p. 118; R. Morrissey, Charlemagne and France: A Thousand Years of Mythology, trans. C. Tihanyi (Notre Dame, IN, 2003), pp. 66–8. 40 H. Fuhrmann, Germany in the High Middle Ages, c. 1050–1200, trans. T. Reuter (Cambridge, 1989), p. 154.

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This emerging model of a ‘king-saint’ sat well with the existing legend and biography of Charlemagne. Additionally, there are precious few examples of other similar kings being elevated before the twelfth century. The best parallel might be the figure of King Stephen I of Hungary (975–1038), who was canonized in the late eleventh century and bears a striking resemblance to the model of saintly kings that Charlemagne helped to define in the twelfth century. King Stephen was lauded for attributes similar to those Charlemagne would ultimately be given. Hartvic’s Life (c. 1112–16) describes Stephen as one who conquers lands; where the people of the land ‘were converted and baptized  … churches were established in many places’. 41 Subsequently, Stephen is described throughout the work as ‘Christ’s champion’, ‘soldier of Christ’, ‘the most Christian ruler’ and ‘blessed king’. There was even a connection to the Holy Land, as he was said to have ‘constructed a monastery of monks in that city of Jerusalem where Christ lived according to His humanity, and he enriched it with estates and vineyards, to provide abundant food daily’.42 This is very much in keeping with the representation of Charlemagne. Also like Charlemagne, Stephen’s canonization was largely organized by one of his later successors, Ladislas I (r. 1077–95), in 1083.43 For Ladislas, the previous elevations of St Wenceslas in Bohemia (c. 907–35) or the brothers St Boris (986–1015) and St Gleb (987–1015) of Kiev may have served as the ideal examples of ‘sacral legitimization through elevating the founder of the kingdom’.44 Thus, Frederick’s motivations with respect to Charlemagne were clearly not unheard of in this respect. Frederick certainly seemed to view his reign as one that perhaps could restore the empire to the power and glory it had enjoyed under his illustrious predecessor.45 Charlemagne’s 41 N. Berend, ‘Hartvic: Life of King Stephen of Hungary’, in Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology, pp. 379–96 (p. 380). 42 Berend, ‘Life of King Stephen of Hungary’, p. 386. 43 K. Szovák, ‘The Image of the Ideal King in Twelfth-Century Hungary’, in Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe, ed. Duggan, pp. 241–64. 44 Berend, ‘Life of King Stephen of Hungary’, p. 376. 45 R. L. Benson, ‘Political Renovatio: Two Models from Roman Antiquity’, in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. R. L. Benson and G. Constable (Cambridge, MA, 1982), pp. 359–79. See also T. Reuter, ‘The Medieval German Sonderweg? The Empire and its Rulers in the High Middle Ages’, in Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe, ed.

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image had far out-shone all others, and nothing short of having the great Charlemagne as his personal patron saint would do for Barbarossa.

Recording the Canonization

F

or all the pomp and circumstance surrounding the canonization and the controversy that would follow, the model of Charlemagne’s sanctification itself was not unique; nor were the sources that tell us the story. Rather than representing something markedly new, the writers for the most part simply recycled and adapted the legendary material already popularized in other sources. There were two diplomas, issued on 8 and 9 January 1166, shortly after the canonization, and the Vita was completed during the latter part of the twelfth century.46 The original of the first diploma has been lost, but a copy was issued during the reign of Frederick II in 1244.47 This document gives an expected litany of Charlemagne’s great deeds in justification for his sainthood. The writer immediately connects Barbarossa to Charlemagne’s model rule when he contends that Frederick had ‘the foremost desire and intention to follow, in manner of living and ruling, those divine kings and emperors who preceded us  –  especially the great and glorious Charles’.48 The issue that dominated much of the rhetoric of the previous century, the investiture contest, is immediately apparent as well, when the writer indicates the goal of imitating Charlemagne’s example by ‘preserving the right of the churches, the well-being of the state, and the integrity of the laws throughout the empire’. 49 The writer also makes reference to a forged charter supposedly from Charlemagne, which argued in

Duggan, pp. 179–211; and R. Folz, The Concept of Empire in Western Europe (London, 1969). 46 Folz, Souvenir, pp. 208–10. 47 Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, pp. 153–60. 48 MGH, Diplomatum regum et imperatorum Germania, ed. H. Appelt (Hanover, 1979), no. 502, pp. 432–3. Translation in M. Miller, Power and the Holy in the Age of the Investiture Conflict: A Brief History with Documents (New York, 2005), p. 166. 49 MGH, Diplomatum regum et imperatorum Germania, ed. Appelt, no. 502, pp. 432–3: ‘quasi formam vivendi atque subditos regendi sequeremur et sequendo pre oculis semper haberemus, ad cuius imitationem ius ecclesiarum, statum rei publice incolumem et legum integritatem per

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favour of the superiority of the empire over the papacy.50 This forged diploma was likely written in 1159 in the midst of Barbarossa’s reassertion of imperial power at the expense of the papacy. The canonization diploma subsequently provided Frederick with the perfect opportunity to re-emphasize that his vision of imperial authority rested on the precedent of his greatest predecessor  –  Charlemagne, who in fact ‘created the empire’. The diploma goes on to list the appropriate and expected deeds for a former king being canonized. It emphasizes Charlemagne’s work in building many monasteries and churches as well as spreading Christianity and converting barbarian peoples, such as the Saxons, Frisians, Westphalians, Spaniards and Vandals. As such, he is described as a ‘powerful athlete and true apostle’ of the faith. There is even perhaps an oblique reference to Charlemagne’s connection to the Holy Land, when the author writes that he gave alms and performed great deeds at home, but also ‘beyond the sea’  –  all to expand the glory of the Church.51 Additionally, as Michael McGrade points out, the charter makes a reference to the ‘composition of new liturgical chants, the most renowned of which was the Urbs aquensis, urbs regalis, a widely disseminated sequence that acclaimed the accomplishments of Charles the Great in terms of Hohenstaufen aspirations and ideologies’. 52 The source exemplifies the German interest in Charlemagne as ‘law-giver’ and seamlessly combines this role with the representation of a holy figure who is at once the rex mundi triumphator and a crusading figure who literally finds and defends the True Cross while converting infidels.53 Since the musical sequence survives in fourteen manuscripts spanning two and a half centuries, it does speak to the success of Frederick’s efforts to put his own dynasty in line with that of Charlemagne. totum imperium nostrum servaremus’. Trans. Miller, Power and the Holy, p. 166. 50 Munz, Frederick Barbarossa, p. 244. 51 MGH, Diplomatum regum et imperatorum Germania, ed. Appelt, no. 502, pp. 432–3: ‘fortis athleta fuit et verus apostolus  … etiam in transmarinis’. 52 M. McGrade, ‘ “O rex mundi triumphator”: Hohenstaufen Politics in a Sequence for Saint Charlemagne’, Early Music History 17 (1998), 183–219 (p. 184). 53 McGrade, ‘O rex mundi triumphator’, p. 202.

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The second diploma repeats many of the same epithets and justifications. Charlemagne is described as the ideal exemplum and predecessor and even records that ‘coins shall bear his image’. 54 It also lays out certain regulations concerning annual nundinis (fairs) in the city of Aachen, but this again is in keeping with the major emphasis on Charlemagne as a law-giver in Germany, which continued to be the focus of many subsequent sources.55 The Vita itself is an impressive collection of Charlemagne’s life and deeds within the context of describing him as a saintly figure. The prologue indicates that the explicit purpose of the source is to ‘celebrate the memory of Charles the Great’, which was known ‘through distant lands’.56 There are three extensive books that follow the prologue and cover various general issues concerning Charlemagne’s life and deeds. The Vita survives in fourteen manuscripts and scholars have dated its completion from the 1170s to the 1180s. Some of the material would come from the work of Einhard’s Vita, and much from the legendary material that developed in the century before the canonization. Some of the material taken from Einhard is reordered along with additions from the later source material. Gerhard Rauschen isolated the Vita’s sources, which besides Einhard included elements from the Descriptio qualiter, the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle, the writing of Hugh of Fleury (particularly his Chronicle, c. 1110), and small portions of various other sources.57 The Vita, then, does little in the way of offering new material, but puts the existing material and Charlemagne’s deeds into the context of canonization. This is one of the unique features of the source, especially when contrasted with other Latin texts considered in the present volume: it is not really an ‘original’ work, but rather a composite that draws upon other sources to create a ‘new’ Vita through a process of synthesis. As such, not only is the text itself important to consider, but also the editorial decisions involved in choosing material that up to this point existed only in disparate sources 54 MGH, Diplomatum regum et imperatorum Germania, ed. Appelt, no. 503, 434–5: ‘Quod in una parte erit imago sancti Karoli.’ 55 Becher, Charlemagne, p. 141. 56 Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, p. 17: ‘Karoli magni celebretur memoria’ and ‘sparsim per diversa terrarum spacia’. 57 Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, pp. 4–5.

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that circulated independently. This latter point is especially significant given that, as indicated above, there was quite a lot material to choose from. This meant that some material would be left out and the author would have a chance to present the life and deeds of Charlemagne in a new context. Book I begins with a brief genealogy, the vision of Pope Stephen,58 and quickly delves into an extensive description of ‘the life and merits of the blessed Charlemagne’.59 In chapter 5, Charlemagne receives the keys to the Holy Sepulchre from the patriarch of Jerusalem and in chapter 6 he is ‘consecrated’ as emperor and ‘protector of Christendom’.60 Issues of law, justice and the Church are themes in chapters 7, 8 and 9, followed by Charlemagne’s dealings with the papacy in chapter 12 and his condemnation of what are termed heretical movements. Charlemagne’s efforts in building churches are also highlighted in chapters 14 and 15. Amy Remensnyder points out that these two chapters, dedicated to the foundation of some twenty churches mostly in the southern region, are taken ‘almost verbatim’ from the Chronicle of Hugh of Fleury, whose work also makes important connections to Jerusalem.61 Book II follows the narrative of the Descriptio qualiter for the entirety of its twenty-four chapters. In this source, dating perhaps as

58 Here, the author presents a version of the ninth-century story (c. 835) by Hilduin, abbot of Saint-Denis, that tells of Pope Stephen II’s vision while visiting the abbey of Saint-Denis more than a century earlier. The pope reports his miraculous vision of SS Peter and Paul urging St Denis to heal the pope, which he does. Stephen then dedicates the altar, and Pippin and his sons are consecrated as the new kings of the Franks. See C. V. Franklin, ‘The Legendary of Saint Peter’s Basilica: Hagiographic Traditions and Innovations in the Late Eleventh Century’, in Old Saint Peter’s, Rome, ed. R. McKitterick, J. Osborne, C. M. Richardson and J. Story (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 287–305 (pp. 302–3); and Latowsky, Emperor of the World, pp. 193–5. 59 Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, pp. 20–4: ‘De vita et meritis beati Karoli magni.’ 60 Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, p. 26: ‘Christiani maxime protectori’. 61 Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past, p. 152 n. 13. See also Gabriele, Empire of Memory, pp. 73–93.

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early as 1080, the author tells of a trip to the East by Charlemagne.62 The story somewhat mirrors the crusading tenor of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Saracen invaders attacked the emperor of Constantinople and the patriarch of Jerusalem. Instructed by a dream, Charlemagne is charged with driving off the Muslim invaders, which of course he does. Here, Charlemagne is depicted simultaneously as a kind of pilgrim and the defender of Christendom.63 Successful in his campaign, Charlemagne refuses the worldly gifts offered to him, but requests that he be able to take some of the relics of the Passion back home to Aachen, which he receives. This section brings together critical themes for Barbarossa’s sponsorship of Charlemagne’s canonization. First is the pilgrimage to the Holy Land and second is the emperor’s explicit leadership role. In the Descriptio portion of the Vita, Charlemagne is the ‘defender of Christendom’ and in this role is specifically asked by his counterpart in Constantinople, along with the patriarch, to retake the fallen city of Jerusalem. In a slightly later source, the Historia Peregrinorum, Frederick Barbarossa is explicitly compared to Charlemagne as a crusade leader. The author writes that ‘It is especially proper to explain among other matters how both Frederick, the most Christian and most invincible emperor of the Romans, a man of great experience imitating Charles in his valour …’64 Frederick, along with his son, would be the ‘captains and 62 Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, pp. 95–125. See also M. du Pouget, ‘Recherches sur les chroniques latines de Saint-Denis: Édition critique et commentaire de la Descriptio qualiter domini et de deux séries de texts relatifs à la légende carolingienne’, in Positions des théses soutenues par les élèves de la promotion de 1978 pour obtenir le diplômé d’archiviste paléographe (1978). For dating also see R. Grosse, ‘Reliques du Christ et foires de Saint-Denis au XIe siècle: À propos de la Descriptio Clavi et Corone Domini’, Revue d’Histoire de l’Église de France 87 (2001), 357–75; and S. M. Crosby and P. Z. Blum, The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis from its beginnings to the Death of Suger, 475–1151 (New Haven, 1987), pp. 100–1. 63 A. Latowsky, ‘Charlemagne as Pilgrim? Requests for Relics in the Descriptio qualiter and the Voyage of Charlemagne’, in Legend of Charlemagne, pp. 153–67. 64 Quellen zur Geschichte des Kreuzzuges Kaiser Friedrichs I., ed. A. Chroust, MGH SRG 5, p. 116: ‘Quomodo christianissimus et invictissimus Romanorum imperator Fridericus, vir utique magne experiencie,

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leaders of the army of Christ’ (militantes duces et rectores fuerunt exercitus Christi), as Charlemagne himself had once been.65 In fact, crusading had spanned Frederick’s entire adult life since he had accompanied his uncle, Conrad III, on the Second Crusade in 1147; Frederick may be the only figure to have gained from that disastrously failed campaign, since he was able to set himself up to inherit the imperial throne shortly afterwards, in 1152.66 Meanwhile, campaigns of the so-called Northern Crusade begun in the late 1140s would take place on the fringes of the empire for much of his reign.67 Later, in 1188, shortly after the fall of Jerusalem, Frederick would once again take up the cross for the Third Crusade. According to Hans Mayer, if the crusade had been successful ‘it would unquestionably make the emperor  … the dominating figure on the European political scene’.68 Book III of the canonization Vita continues the emphasis on Charlemagne’s defence of Christendom and his conquests, making extensive use of the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle for the first seven chapters. This text deals with a series of wars, at the end of which Charlemagne had conquered the whole of Spain. Here, the connections to Barbarossa’s reign are less obvious, since he did not campaign in Spain himself. However, when Spain was included in the papal preaching for crusade, many from the empire heeded the call. Jonathan Phillips has pointed out that by the mid-twelfth century, ‘the empire was the only region to contribute substantially to all three arenas of the crusade namely the Levant, the Iberian peninsula, and the Baltic’.69 This would strennuitate Karolum representans’. Translation in The Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa: The History of the Expedition of the Emperor Frederick and Related Texts, trans. G. A. Loud (Farnham, 2010), p. 135. 65 Quellen zur Geschichte des Kreuzzuges Kaiser Friedrichs I., p. 116. 66 J. Phillips, The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom (New Haven, 2007). 67 See E. Christiansen, The Northern Crusades (London, 1997), pp. 50–65. 68 D. Kempf, ‘Towards a Textual Archeology of the First Crusade’, in Writing the Early Crusades: Text, Transmission and Memory, ed. M. Bull and D. Kempf (Woodbridge, 2014), pp. 116–27. See also H. E. Mayer, The Crusades, trans. J. Gillingham (Oxford, 1990), p. 140. 69 J. Phillips, ‘Papacy, Empire and the Second Crusade’, in The Second Crusade: Scope and Consequences, ed. J. Phillips and M. Hoch (New York, 2001), pp. 15–31 (p. 15).

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certainly connect to Barbarossa’s overall imperial programme and casting of himself, like Charlemagne, as the defender of ‘Christendom’. At a certain point, the author explicitly cites the use of the PseudoTurpin Chronicle, but when it comes to Charlemagne’s deeds, he writes that ‘more needs to be said’.70 There is also a certain logic in not using the entire Chronicle, since the second half is not focused on Charlemagne so much as it is on Roland and Roncesvalles, which does not serve the narrative of Charlemagne’s conquests and exploits. However, the use of this source is important in a number of respects. First, the Chronicle enjoyed wide circulation throughout the Latin West independent of its inclusion in the Liber sancti Jacobi or Charlemagne’s Vita. Indeed, it had a much wider circulation than Einhard’s work or perhaps any version of the Charlemagne legend. Second, the placement of the material taken from the Chronicle at the beginning of Book III in the canonization Vita puts it immediately after the section drawn from the Descriptio qualiter describing the ‘liberation’ of Jerusalem. Here, and with what follows, the canonization Vita mirrored the developments in crusading from the late-eleventh to the mid-twelfth century. The initial focus was on Jerusalem and the liberation of the Holy Land, but the crusading movement quickly expanded to Spain and eventually the North.71 Appropriately, some of Charlemagne’s wars in ‘the North’ are in the very next section of Book III, when the author proceeds with a narrative that again follows parts of Einhard’s Vita in describing Charlemagne’s wars outside of Spain. These, of course, included the vigorous defence of the papacy against the Lombard attacks under Desiderius, but also the extensive conflicts with the Slavs, Saxons and Danes. It is under Charlemagne’s reign that Christendom is defended and expanded. The book ends with the last years of Charlemagne’s life, his death, and a restatement of his sanctity and worthiness to be canonized, which also appears to follow Einhard closely.72 There is some reordering here. Whereas Einhard described the imperial coronation towards the end of his Vita, in the canonization Vita it appears near the beginning of Book I. 70 Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, p. 74. 71 W. J. Purkis, Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c. 1095–c. 1187 (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 120–78. 72 Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, p. 92.

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This source, then, is not important for its originality, but for the content chosen and the new context. It is essentially possible to give the broad outlines of the development of the Charlemagne legend up to this point (i.e. c. 1180s) through this single source. The legend begins with the work of Einhard as the base  –  deeds and stories that were certainly familiar to twelfth-century audiences since Einhard’s Vita had been in circulation since the ninth century.73 Various elements then become attached to Charlemagne over the course of the next few centuries  –  particularly references to, and increasing numbers of sources connecting him with, the Holy Land; the foundation myths of many monasteries also invoke Charlemagne in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. With the Descriptio qualiter, which had been in circulation for nearly a century when the canonization Vita was written, and was popular in German lands, we see a story of Charlemagne liberating Jerusalem which might be read in terms of crusading in the mid-twelfth century. Add to all this stories of monastic foundations, miracles, conquests, a role as a law-giver and in the defence of the Church, and the case for Charlemagne’s sanctity becomes all the more impressive.74 If that were not enough, Book III basically recounts a version of the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle highlighting Charlemagne’s liberation of Spain at the urging of St James.75 This source quickly became the most popular version of Charlemagne’s life and deeds in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, and several vernacular translations were commissioned c. 1200 to make the source more accessible.76 The canonization Vita as a single source goes a long way in creating 73 See Tischler, Einharts ‘Vita Karoli’ . 74 Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past, p. 152 n. 13. 75 L. Vones, ‘Heiligsprechung und Tradition: Die Kanonisation Karls des Grossen 1165, die Aachener Karlsvita und der Pseudo-Turpin’, in Jakobus und Karl der Grosse: Von Einhards Karlsvita zum Pseudo-Turpin, ed. K. Herbers (Tübingen, 2003), pp. 89–105. 76 G. Spiegel described this as ‘The earliest movements towards vernacular historiography’, in The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore, 1997), pp. 179–80. See also A. Mandach, Naissance et development de la chanson de geste en Europe, I: La geste de Charlemagne et de Roland (Geneva, 1961); C. M. Jones, ‘The Chronicle of Turpin in Saintonge’, Speculum 13 (1938), 160–79; and I. Short, ‘A Note on the Pseudo-Turpin Translations of Nicolas of Senlis and

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a primer for the Charlemagne legend in the Latin West. Much of the source material for the Vita other than Einhard and some of the issues concerning imperial laws all seems to originate in territories to the west of Aachen, but at a time  –  the second half of the twelfth century  –  when the legendary stories were increasingly being filtered into the empire. With respect to material for the Vita, Matthew Gabriele has placed the production of the Descriptio qualiter within the court of the Capetian king Philip I, while other scholars have focused on the manuscript tradition at the abbey of Saint-Denis.77 The material from the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle, probably originating from a French cleric, was possibly requested by a cleric in Aachen to make clear the events of Charlemagne’s Spanish expedition.78 Additionally, like the Descriptio qualiter, the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle has strong ties to the abbey of Saint-Denis. Beyond the Vita itself, there is the adaptation (and translation) of the Song of Roland by Priest Konrad c. 1170 into German (Das Rolandslied), which is a clear example of the Old French vernacular ‘tradition’ being appropriated in imperial territories and occurs within just a few years of Charlemagne’s canonization.79 This was incredibly influential as it was the first literary work in Germany to deal with exploits of Charlemagne and is dominated from beginning to

William of Briane’, Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie 86 (1970), 525–32. 77 M. Gabriele, ‘The Provenance of the Descriptio qualiter Karolus Magnus: Remembering the Carolingians at the Court of King Philip I (1060– 1108) before the First Crusade’, Viator 39 (2008), 93–117. Latowsky, Emperor of the World, pp. 183–214, has recently challenged the notion of Frederick’s clerics appropriating French sources. 78 The Pseudo-Turpin, ed. Smyser, pp. 3–12. See also I. Möller, ‘Die deutsche Geschichte in der Kaiserchronik’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Munich, 1957). See discussion in H. Myers, The Book of Emperors: A Translation of the Middle High German Kaiserchronik (Morgantown, WV, 2013), p. 320 n. 4. 79 See J. W. Thomas, ‘Introduction’, in Priest Konrad’s Song of Roland (Columbia, SC, 1994) and W. Haug, Vernacular Literary Theory in the Middle Ages: The German Tradition, 800–1300, in its European Context, trans. J. M. Catling (Cambridge, 1997).

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end by crusade ideology.80 The author names Duke Heinrich (Henry the Lion, the duke of Bavaria and cousin to Frederick I Barbarossa) as his sponsor, whose wife Mathilda (daughter of Henry II of England) requested the source be brought from France. Duke Henry participated in the Wendish Crusade and significant conflicts in the Baltic region, and was closely involved with Frederick’s reign until 1174.81 Other works of the Charlemagne legend within the chansons de geste would soon follow and be popularized throughout German-speaking lands. In fact, the author of the Kaiserchronik, which predates the canonization Vita, indicated at the end of the chapter on Charlemagne’s reign that ‘If we were to tell all the wonders connected with Charles we would have to have many hours  –  there is not enough now, and Charles also has other songs.’ 82 This is telling since the Charlemagne who emerges from the new Vita bears little resemblance to the Charlemagne who appears in the Kaiserchronik written a few decades earlier in Regensburg. Even before the famed chansons de geste genre became popular throughout the Latin West, writers in French and Anglo-Norman territories had been appropriating the Charlemagne legend with respect to crusading at least since the first and most successful campaign (1096– 9). Several figures, such as Robert the Monk, depicted Charlemagne as a praedecessorum for the first crusaders. Indeed, Robert’s version of Urban II’s speech at Clermont has the pope cite Charlemagne as a ‘victorious ancestor’.83 Looking to Charlemagne’s past deeds, the 80 Thomas, ‘Introduction’, in Priest Konrad’s Song of Roland, pp. 2–5. See also H. Richter, ‘Das Hoflager Kaiser Karls: Zur Karls Darstellung im deutschen Rolandslied’, Zeitschrift für Deutsches Altertum und Deutsche Literatur 102 (1973), 81–101. 81 In 1174 Henry the Lion refused to support Frederick’s invasion of Italy, eventually leading to Henry’s loss of power and three-year exile in 1181. 82 Myers, Book of Emperors, p. 333. 83 C. Sweetenham, Introduction to Robert the Monk’s History of the First Crusade (Aldershot, 2005), p. 80. In fact, Jay Rubenstein has suggested that Godfrey of Bouillon’s perceived relationship with Charlemagne and Carolingian kingship may have been a deciding factor in making him the leader of kingdom of Jerusalem after the city was taken in 1099. See J. Rubenstein, ‘Godfrey of Bouillon versus Raymond of Saint-Gilles: How Carolingian Kingship Trumped Millenarianism at the End of the First Crusade’, in Legend of Charlemagne, pp. 59–75.

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writers created an early chronology of crusading campaigns, which then helped to contextualize the recent and ongoing experience of crusading. Subsequently, this became a significant part of the representation of Charlemagne west of the Rhine, one that became embedded in the sources eventually used collectively for the new Vita.84 Although the authors used ‘old’ established sources for the Vita, this should not detract from the fact that the end product was the result of an incredibly creative process. The ability to ‘update’ the story of the legend of Charlemagne by interweaving the basic work of Einhard’s original biography with the legendary material that had emerged in the centuries since Charlemagne’s death in order to create the image of a royal saint was important for the development of the legend, the history of the empire, and the reign of Barbarossa. And it indicates that the image and legend of Charlemagne could and would continue to be moulded to fit the political, religious and historical purposes of every new age.

Conclusion

M

 uch of what we see beginning with Frederick Barbarossa (and  several others that followed) was a conscious effort to  –  as Stephen Nichols has put it  –  ‘recycle’ Charlemagne, which in turn emphasized various critical themes concerning identity, imperial authority and legitimacy, holy war and sacral kingship.85 Overall, when looking at the enigmatic Vita, there are a few conclusions to be drawn. The lack of scholarly attention is probably attributable to the limited information we have on how long it took to write, the writer (or writers) themselves, the dating of the work, and the overall process of how it was produced. We also have to remember the sheer variety of purposes for which the legend could be employed in the twelfth century. As Remensnyder has put it: 84 See also E. Pastan, ‘Charlemagne as Saint? Relics and the Choice of Window Subjects at Chartres Cathedral’, in Legend of Charlemagne, pp. 97–135, for discussion on the representation of Charlemagne in stained-glass windows after the new Vita was written. 85 S. Nichols, Romanesque Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and Iconography (Ithaca, NY, 1983).

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[Charlemagne’s] stature grew continuously. He became a source of authority and legitimation invoked by groups and individuals  … By the eleventh and twelfth centuries, popes and kings might claim Charlemagne as the foundation for their opposing positions in their contest with one another  … and noble families created genealogies for themselves tracing their origins back to members of his family.86 As a king and emperor and now a saint, the Charlemagne of legend was much larger than any one issue. Anne Latowsky is quite right in reading the Vita within the context of an act or statement of imperial ideology and Barbarossa’s view of his own power and role, especially against the background of the dispute between the emperor and papacy.87 However, the description of Charlemagne’s deeds is also well within the context of depicting Charlemagne as a proto-crusader, or at the very least an idealized archetype for crusading. Certainly there is difficulty in specifically defining the ‘crusade’, since the concept continued to develop and evolve over the course of the twelfth century. Beginning in the late eleventh century and throughout the twelfth century the ideological underpinnings of the campaigns intentionally blurred the lines between pilgrimage and deeds of war. This was especially true with respect to the specific locations of Jerusalem, Spain and the ‘North’ as they gained papal endorsements, and these critical locations represent the very sites where the writer chose to highlight Charlemagne’s deeds. Although it does not dominate the narrative, the portion of the Vita based on the Descriptio indicates Charlemagne’s role in ‘the restoration of the throne of Jerusalem’. This designation is vital in understanding Frederick I Barbarossa’s own imperial goal of seeing himself set upon the throne of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Frederick’s broader vision for imperial authority can also be detected in the near contemporary source the Gesta Friderici I Imperatoris (c. 1160), where he is said to have ‘bound himself through friendship’ to kings from Spain, England, France, Denmark, Bohemia and Hungary, whereby those very kings ‘accorded

86 A. Remensnyder, ‘The Legendary Treasure at Conques: Reliquaries and Imaginative Memory’, Speculum 71 (1996), 884–906 (p. 891). 87 Latowsky, Emperor of the World.

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him [Frederick] the right to command’. 88 Looking to the East, he also ‘prevailed upon Manuel, the emperor of Constantinople, who voluntarily sought friendship and alliance with him, to term himself emperor not of Rome, but of New Rome, whereas he had been  –  like his predecessors  –  calling himself the emperor of the Romans’.89 Both of these sections are taken from Einhard and further the connections between Frederick and Charlemagne’s reigns in a bid to elevate Frederick’s position above all others within Christendom.90 The Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle was first produced when crusading was being expanded to Spain and the North and when emperors and kings began to take on more prominent leadership roles. Its description of Charlemagne’s deeds has him engaging in multiple campaigns against Saracens in Spain. By the time that the Vita was completed, crusading had expanded to three fronts (the Holy Land, Spain and the North) and in legend Charlemagne was involved in all three areas. Indeed, the writer(s) emphasized his role in those campaigns as much as, if not more than, any other issue. The propagation of Frederick’s imperial vision need not be mutually exclusive from the crusading programme that dominated the world of the Latin West in the twelfth century, a programme in which he himself would participate. The depiction of Charlemagne’s deeds can be seen as reflecting the evolution of the complex ideas that came to be connected to crusading throughout the period.91 A part of this process often included adapting earlier events and history into a crusading paradigm that was becoming increasingly 88 The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, trans. Mierow, pp. 333–4. See also discussion in Latowsky, Emperor of the World, pp. 147–8. 89 The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, trans. Mierow, p. 334. 90 In the Chronicle of Magnus of Reichersberg, Frederick was said to have referred to Charlemagne as his predecessor when it came to rulership over Rome; a statement recorded in relation to the Greeks and the Empire indicates that Frederick considered his sovereignty to extend over ‘the whole of Macedonia right up to the walls of Constantinople’, and that he counted among others ‘Vlachs as allies’ and ‘Armenians as loyal subjects.’ See Magni Presbiteri Chronicon, ed. W. Wattenbach, in MGH SS 17, p. 510. Translation in The Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa, trans. Loud, p. 152. 91 See J. Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (London, 1986) and C. Tyerman, The Invention of the Crusades (Basingstoke, 1998).

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familiar to twelfth-century audiences. After all, the Anglo-Norman historian and chronicler William of Malmesbury explicitly cites the campaigns of Charlemagne as part of early crusading history, whereas Arnold of Lübeck found an early appropriate model in the Byzantine emperor Heraclius (r. 610–41).92 The Charlemagne of the new Vita is the symbol of Barbarossa’s imperial ideology, and one whose deeds justify the additional title of defender of Christendom. Moreover, it is in part these deeds of war and crusade that justify his elevation to sainthood under the royal model, a model perhaps best exemplified by the later French crusader King Louis IX (St Louis).93 But as Jacques Le Goff in his massive study of the life and deeds of St Louis asks at one point, ‘isn’t Saint Louis a new Charlemagne?’94

92 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, II: General Introduction and Commentary (Oxford, 1999). Arnold of Lübeck, Chronica Slavorum, ed. J. Lappenberg, MGH SS 21, pp. 121–2. See also N. L. Paul, To Follow in their Footsteps: The Crusades and Family Memory in the High Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 2012), pp. 3–5. 93 M. C. Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis: Kingship, Sanctity, and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 2010). 94 J. Le Goff, Saint Louis, trans. G. E. Gollrad (Notre Dame, IN, 2009), p. 274.

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3 Performing Sacrality: The Liturgical Portrait of Frederick Barbarossa’s Charlemagne Sebastián Salvadó

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harlemagne’s English adviser, Alcuin of York (d. 804), is a   figure instrumental in shaping Carolingian perceptions of kingship, warfare and sanctity.1 In his poem The Bishops, Kings and Saints of York Alcuin devotes more than 250 lines of verse to describing the deeds of the king and martyr Oswald of Northumbria (d. 642)  –  the most poetic space of any one figure in the narrative.2 Alcuin’s account of the king’s early military victories communicates an important facet of Oswald’s persona: So Oswald’s army overpowered and annihilated its enemy, leaving the battlefield behind it in rivers of blood until the wicked Cadwallon himself fell, paying the price for his treachery, dying I would like to thank the editors, Matthew Gabriele and William Purkis, for their valuable comments on this paper. 1 E. A. Matter, ‘Alcuin’s Theology’, in Alkuin von York und die geistige Grundlegung Europas, ed. E. Tremp and K. Schmuki (St Gall, 2010), pp. 91–105; B. Judic, ‘Grégoire le Grand, Alcuin et l’idéologie carolingienne’, in Le monde carolingien: bilan, perspectives, champs de recherches; actes du colloque international de Poitiers, Centre d’Études supérieures de Civilisation médiévale, 18–20 novembre 2004, ed. W. Falkowski and Y. Sassier (Turnhout, 2009), pp. 105–20; J. E. Damon, Soldier Saints and Holy Warriors: Warfare and Sanctity in the Literature of Early England (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 148–91; C. E. Stancliffe, ‘Oswald, “Holy and Most Victorious King of the Northumbrians” ’, in Oswald: Northumbrian King to European Saint, ed. C. E. Stancliffe and E. Cambridge (Stamford, 1995), pp. 33–83. 2 Alcuin, The Bishops, Kings, and Saints of York, trans. J. Goodman (Oxford, 1982); N. J. Higham, (Re-)Reading Bede: The Ecclesiastical History in Context (New York, 2006), pp. 147–86; Stancliffe, ‘Oswald’, pp. 33–83; Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969).

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amid the massacre of his men, and yielding a brilliant victory to that splendid king.3 Not merely a victorious king in battle, Oswald is also a fiercely brutal and emphatic conqueror of his enemy. Alcuin relishes describing Oswald’s unrestrained violence, in spite of the king’s sanctity. However, wholesale promotion of secular force represents a moral problem to the Church. Alcuin immediately qualifies the above description with the following: His enemies slain, the holy Oswald entered his realm, a worthy heir of its ancient line: a man of mighty virtue, guardian and lover of the fatherland, following Christ’s commands with outstanding character; generous to the poor, self-denying, but unstinting to all, true in his judgments, kindly and pious of spirit, of signal distinction but humbly tempered, terrible to his enemies but genial to each of his friends, as invincible in war as he was scrupulous to maintain peace treaties.4 These qualifications rein in and circumscribe Oswald’s cold-blooded brutality. Describing Oswald’s movement from the battlefield back into his fatherland underscores the king’s return to performing a different set of virtues. When not on the battlefield, Oswald dedicates his prowess to embodying Christian values. The attributes Alcuin assigns Oswald, themselves dependent upon and elaborated from Bede’s original account, represent core values Christian kings were expected to demonstrate in their comportment. This emphasis on the virtues of the militant king is significant given Alcuin’s close relationship to Charlemagne. The liturgies written for the canonization of King Louis IX of France (1297) testify to the permanence of these values in continental thought. The yearly commemoration of St Louis casts him as enjoying many of the same moral qualities found in Alcuin’s description of Oswald.5 The use of Oswald, a saint king, as an exemplum for Charlemagne’s 3 Alcuin, Bishops, pp. 26–7. 4 Alcuin, Bishops, pp. 26–7. 5 M. C. Gaposchkin, ‘Political Ideas in Liturgical Offices of Saint Louis’, in Political Plainchant? Music, Text and Historical Context of Medieval Saints’ Offices, ed. R. Hankeln (Ottawa, 2009), pp. 59–80.

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rule finds an analogue during the reign of Frederick I Barbarossa (r. 1155–90).6 However, here Charlemagne himself becomes the object of emulation. By the twelfth century the figure of Charlemagne had come to represent the archetypal embodiment of a sacred king. In spite of Alcuin’s laudatory characterization, clergy continued to treat the duality of Oswald’s persona (warrior-king and saint) with circumspection.7 The existence of three different liturgies used throughout the Continent for Oswald shows clergy disagreeing on how best to represent this saintly portrait. The point of contention rested with the various duties kings need to perform to fulfil their role, i.e., the relationship between rulers’ sanctity and their need to practise violence. The eleventhcentury liturgical offices for the ecclesiastical commemoration of St Oswald evidence vastly different attitudes towards this nexus of conflicting values.8 In Charlemagne’s case, and disregarding any official 6 Latowsky, Emperor of the World, pp. 183–214; K. Görich, Friedrich Barbarossa: Eine Biographie (Munich, 2011); P. Munz, Frederick Barbarossa: A Study in Medieval Politics (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1969). 7 S. A. Stofferahn, ‘Staying the Royal Sword: Alcuin and the Conversion Dilemma in Early Medieval Europe’, The Historian: A Journal of History 71 (2009), 461–80; V. Gunn, ‘Bede and the Martyrdom of St Oswald’, in Martyrs and Martyrologies, ed. D. Wood (Oxford, 1993), pp. 57–66; R. Folz, ‘Saint Oswald, roi de Northumbrie: Étude d’hagiographie royale’, Analecta Bollandiana: Revue critique d’hagiographie / A Journal of Critical Hagiography 98 (1980), 49–74; R. Foreville, ‘La typologie du roi dans la littérature historiographique anglo-normande aux XIe et XIIe siécles’, in Études de civilisation médiévale (IXe–XIIe siècles): Mélanges offerts à Edmond-René Labande, ed. Y. Congar (Poitiers, 1974), pp. 275–92. 8 Compare the Flemish liturgy and that of Peterborough: for the Flemish liturgy, see Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi, XIII: Historiae Rhythmicae, Liturgische Reimofficien, ed. Guido Maria Dreves (Lepizig, 1982), no. 81, pp. 209–12 (hereafter AH); the Peterborough liturgy (Cambridge, Magdalen College MS F. 4. 10) is accessible through the CANTUS and LMLO project website at http://hlub.dyndns.org/projekten/webplek/ cantus/cgi-bin/lmlo/lmlo.cgi?X=OS93 (accessed 30 September 2013). See also D. Hiley, ‘The Office Chants for St Oswald, King of Northumbria and Martyr’, in A Due: Musical Essays in Honour of John D. Bergsagel & Heinrich W. Schwab, ed. O. Kongsted et al. (Copenhagen, 2008), pp. 244–59. I am currently writing a monograph on the liturgies of saints Oswald of Northumbria and Edmund of East Anglia.

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theological stance, the issue was forcefully resolved on 29 December 1165: the elevation of Charlemagne in the court of Frederick Barbarossa transformed the Carolingian ruler from the status of a widely lauded but historical figure, to that of an incomparable emperor-saint.9 A series of royal edicts and forged charters from January 1166 help us to recover the political motivations underlying these actions.10 Sources reveal the elevation to participate in a comprehensive reformulation of Charlemagne’s persona. Frederick Barbarossa’s political ambitions involve positioning Charlemagne, in the guise of a saint-king, as the foundational patron of the Staufen Holy Roman Empire.11 This planting of Charlemagne at the root of a sacred stock of kings represents a 9 MGH, Diplomata regum et imperatorum Germaniae, X: Friderici I Diplomata, ed. H. Appelt (Hanover, 1979), pt. II, pp. 430–4 (no. 502, 8 January 1166), hereafter MGH DFI; L. Vones, ‘Heiligsprechung und Tradition: Die Kanonisation Karls des Großen 1165, die Aachener Karlsvita und der Pseudo-Turpin’, in Jakobus und Karl der Große: Von Einhards Karlsvita zum Pseudo-Turpin, ed. K. Herbers (Tübingen, 2003), pp. 89–105; L. Vones, ‘La canonización de Carlomagno en 1165, la Vita S. Karoli de Aquisgrán y el Pseudo-Turpin’, in El PseudoTurpín: Lazo entre el culto jacobeo y el Culto de Carlomagno: Actas del VI Congreso Internacional de Estudios Jacobeos, ed. K. Herbers (Santiago de Compostela, 2003), pp. 271–83; R. Folz, ‘La chancellerie de Frédréric Ier et la canonisation de Charlemagne’, Le Moyen Âge: Revue d’histoire et de philologie 70 (1964), 13–31; G. Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge, 2002), p. 171. See also the study by Stuckey in this volume (Ch. 2). 10 P. A. Becker, Die Heiligsprechung Karls des Grossen und die damit zusammenhängenden Fälschungen (Leipzig, 1947); H. Loersch, ‘Das falsche Diplom Karls des Großen und Friedrichs I: Privileg für Aachen vom 8. Januar 1166’, in Die Legende Karls des Grossen im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert, ed. G. Rauschen (Leipzig, 1890), pp. 149–215. 11 K. Görich, ‘Karl der Große  –  ein “politischer Heiliger” im 12. Jahrhundert?’, in Religion und Politik im Mittelalter / Religion and Politics in the Middle Ages, ed. L. Körntgen and D. Waßenhoven (Gottingen, 2013), pp. 117–56; K. Görich, ‘Die Kanonisation Karls des Großen 1165: Ein politischer Heiliger für Friedrich Barbarossa?’, Zeitschrift des Aachener Geschichtsvereins 113/114 (2011/12), 97–112; J. P.Huffman, The Social Politics of Medieval Diplomacy: Anglo-German Relations (1066–1307) (Michigan, 2000), pp. 57–91.

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direct engagement with, and a blunt solution to, the clerical problem of divinely sanctioned warfare. While there is no direct relationship between Oswald’s liturgy and the corpus written for Charlemagne, differences between the representations of the two rulers underscore Staufen ideals. It is not insignificant that the Staufen antipope, Paschal III (1164– 8), and Frederick’s imperial chancellor and archbishop of Cologne, Rainald of Dassel (d. 1167), had a hand in elevating Charlemagne,12 especially because at this time, as Vauchez demonstrates, the papacy began to assert itself as the sole entity authorized to oversee the canonization process.13 The papacy’s actions stemmed, in large part, from attempting to gain greater control over two issues. First was the perceived opportunity to utilize the elevation of saints as a negotiating space to fortify and maximize political alliances. The exchanges involved in addressing requests for the canonization of Edward the Confessor (d. 1066), made by King Henry II of England (r. 1154–89) in 1161, provide an example, as noted by Jace Stuckey in the preceding chapter.14 Second, centralizing the canonization process also permitted better control over the theological, and thereby legal, implications of elevating a king to sainthood  –  a crucial aspect in light of the increasing number of royal families bidding to introduce their ancestors into the saintly community.15 The twelfth century witnessed the official recognition of, among others, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry II (d. 1024) in 1146, the Norwegian king Olaf II Haraldsson (d. 1030) in 1164, and Knud Lavard of Denmark (d. 1131) in 1169.16 The liturgies written for these saint-kings reflect the papacy’s involvement in their canonization. The chant cycles celebrating them 12 See J. Laudage, Alexander III. und Friedrich Barbarossa (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 1997); Folz, ‘La chancellerie’ . 13 A. Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. J. Birrell (Cambridge, 1997). 14 E. Bozóky, ‘The Sanctity and Canonisation of Edward the Confessor’, in Edward the Confessor: The Man and the Legend, ed. R. Mortimer (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 173–86. 15 Vauchez, Sainthood, pp. 22–33. 16 R. Folz, Les saints rois du Moyen Âge en Occident (VIe–XIIIe siècles) (Brussels, 1984); Vauchez, Sainthood, pp. 22–58. See also the study by Stuckey in this volume (Ch. 2).

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in the Divine Office emphasize traditional devotional topoi. The moral virtues lavished by Alcuin on Oswald tend to prevail over the monarch’s secular activities.17 Symptomatic of the papal influence over the portrayal of sainted kings, their earliest liturgical commemorations utilize standard liturgies from the commune cycles of martyrs and confessors. Thus, the events recounted in the vitae of kings are intentionally interpreted through the prism of early Christian martyrs and confessors.18 Only in the second half of the twelfth century and after do these saints start to receive proper offices, i.e. liturgies reflecting upon their individual hagiographies. Notwithstanding, in these latter instances, proper liturgies represent more the casting of kings into the mould of traditional saintly archetypes, rather than formulations of new forms of sainthood. In this respect, owing to the unique persona of Charlemagne and his elevation by a renegade faction of the Church, the twelfth-century Aachen liturgy written to commemorate him differs radically from those of other sainted kings. Given the historical significance of this corpus of sung texts, the present study examines how themes of divinely sanctioned warfare, royal patronage and sacred kingship are developed in the liturgy

17 Though no comparative study of the liturgy of sainted kings has been carried out, a perspective on this aspect is developed in my forthcoming article, S. Salvadó, ‘Defining Regions and Christian Militancy in the Liturgy for Sainted Kings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance’, in Symbolic Identity and the Cultural Memory of Saints, ed. N. H. Petersen, S. Salvadó and T. Sands (Cambridge, forthcoming). However, the work of Robert Folz on the topic is in general fundamental, see R. Folz, Les saintes reines du Moyen Âge en Occident (VIe–XIIIe siècles), Subsidia hagiographica 76 (Brussels, 1992); Folz, Les saints rois; cf. A. Hughes, ‘The Monarch as the Object of Liturgical Veneration’, in Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe, ed. A. J. Duggan (London, 1993), pp. 375–424 (pp. 399–401). This latter study does not discuss the content of the liturgies. 18 R. Folz, Études sur le culte liturgique de Charlemagne dans les églises de l’Empire (Strasbourg, 1951), pp. 1–53. See also, for example, R. Hankeln, ‘“Properization” and Formal Changes in High Medieval Saints’ Offices: The Offices for Saints Henry and Kunigunde of Bamberg’, Plainsong and Medieval Music 10 (2001), 3–22.

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commemorating Charlemagne.19 The discussion approaches the liturgy of the Divine Office (historia) as a narrative body forwarding its own, particularly ecclesiastical and devotional, definition of Charlemagne’s sanctity. Through this approach, the liturgy ceases to be an apparently haphazard amalgamation of quotations or allusions to Charlemagne’s legends. Instead, the Staufen office for Charlemagne reveals a carefully tailored group of affirmations and interpretations of the narratives emanating from the new saint’s vita. This understanding provides different perspectives on the sophisticated programme coordinated under Frederick’s command. While the chapter intends to confirm past studies of the liturgy’s essential role in substantiating Staufen claims, it also emphasizes hitherto unexamined facets of this ecclesiastical source. A close reading of Charlemagne’s office reveals its exceptional content: the chants offer one of medieval liturgy’s most starkly defined justifications of sacred warfare, secular patronage, and sacred kingship. In spite of its distinct content, this newly written corpus of chanted liturgical text has received scant scholarly attention.20 The musicologist Ewald Jammers analysed the entire music of Regali natus in 1934.21 But, however thorough his discussion of chants, he examines music for aspects of tonality and rhythm, and his findings have since been emended by the musicological community.22 Robert Folz carried out

19 Sacred kingship is here employed when discussing a divinely sanctioned right to the throne. The concept has been explored at length in previous scholarship: see Damon, Soldier Saints, pp. 26–30; Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, pp. 1–61. 20 E. Rice, Music and Ritual at Charlemagne’s Marienkirche in Aachen (Kassel, 2009), pp. 38–66; K.-E. Geith, Carolus Magnus: Studien zur Darstellung Karls des Groβen in der deutschen Literatur des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts (Bern and Munich, 1977), pp. 256–8; G. Koch, Auf dem Wege zum Sacrum Imperium: Studien zur ideologischen Herrschaftsbegründung der Deutschen Zentralgewalt im 11. und 12. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1972). 21 E. Jammers, Das Karlsoffizium ‘Regali natus’ . Einführung, Text und Übertragung in moderne Notenschrift (Heitz, Leipzig, Strasbourg and Zürich, 1934). 22 While Ewald’s analysis provides insights on the use of melodic formulae, compare, however his discussion of tone and rhythm to the following research: D. Hiley, Western Plainchant: A Handbook (Oxford, 1993).

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the most exhaustive discussion of the liturgical cult of Charlemagne.23 However, his extensive commentary on the liturgy of Charlemagne did not go beyond tracing the textual sources of the liturgical texts;24 the musical setting is also entirely ignored. Most recently, Michael McGrade’s doctoral thesis on the liturgy of Aachen dedicated a chapter to Charlemagne’s office.25 McGrade followed the work of Folz closely by pointing out the liturgy’s relationship with the coetaneous Vita Karoli Magni (hereafter VKM), a work written for the occasion of Charlemagne’s elevation.26 In addition, McGrade explored the art-historical discussions of the early thirteenth-century Karlsschrein to show how some panels reflect themes from the liturgy.27 While McGrade offered an important analysis of certain saintly attributes ascribed to Charlemagne that reflect Staufen political interests, the role of music is again ignored, and there is no analysis of the office in general, either.28 This latter aspect was also absent from Folz’s work. Other musicologists equally discuss the liturgy of Charlemagne but, again, only to focus on the extraordinary nature of the chants, thereby detaching this facet from the texts they communicate.29 23 Folz, Études; Folz, Souvenir. 24 Folz, Études, pp. 63–77. 25 M. McGrade, ‘Affirmations of Royalty: Liturgical Music in the Collegiate Church of St Mary in Aachen, 1050–1350’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Chicago 1988). 26 McGrade, ‘Affirmations’, pp. 168–236; Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, pp. 149–215. For further discussion, see also the study by Stuckey in this volume (Ch. 2). 27 The Karlsschrein was inaugurated in 1215 during the second translation of Charlemagne under Frederick II; see McGrade, ‘Affirmations’, pp. 191–230. 28 McGrade explores the chant of the Mass sequence, but not the Divine Office repertoire; see M. McGrade, ‘ “O rex mundi triumphator”: Hohenstaufen Politics in a Sequence for Saint Charlemagne’, Early Music History 17 (1998), 183–219. 29 See R. Hankeln, ‘Zur Musikstilistichen einordnun Mittelalterlicher Heiligenoffizien’, in Lingua mea calamus scribae: Mélanges offerts à madame Marie-Noël Colette, par ses collègues, étudiants et amis, ed. D. Saulnier, K. Livjanic and C. Cazaux-Kowalski (Solesmes, 2009), pp. 147–57. Exceptions to this are: R. Hankeln, ‘Schwerter und

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The corpus of Divine Office liturgy for the commemoration of Charlemagne in Aachen consists of approximately forty chants from the offices of Vespers (evening), Compline (before sleep), Matins (before dawn on the feast day), Lauds (dawn, immediately after Matins), and Second Vespers.30 The earliest source of this office survives in a late twelfth-century manuscript and represents the liturgy as performed in Aachen.31 When composed as a purposeful whole, as in the current liturgy, these offices are called historiae and take their proper name from the incipit of the first antiphon of Vespers, which in this instance is Regali natus.32 The appellation historia stems from the narrative function they perform; by the high Middle Ages they constituted a distinct poetic liturgical genre. These historiae, often written in rhymed verse, commence by narrating a saint’s life from childhood, move to the saint’s maturity, and finish by highlighting the saint’s miracles and efficacious intercession for the devout.33 Regali natus differentiates itself from this tradition by organizing its liturgy around thematic facets of Charlemagne’s persona: First Vespers concentrates on establishing a Pflugscharen: Zum Reflex des Geschichtlichen in der liturgischen Einstimmigkeit des Mittelalters’, in Music des Mittelalters und der Renaissance: Festschrift Klaus-Jürgen Sachs zum 80.Geburtstag (Hildesheim, 2010), pp. 98–105; and Political Plainchant, ed. Hankeln. 30 For an overview of the structure and content of the Divine Office, see J. Harper, The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy from the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century: A Historical Introduction and Guide for Students and Musicians (Oxford, 1991); a transcription of the liturgy is found in Folz, Études, pp. 63–77; AH, XXV, no. 66; also at: http://hlub.dyndns.org/ projekten/webplek/cantus/cgi-bin/lmlo/lmlo.cgi?x=ca51 (accessed 30 September 2013). 31 Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), Domarchiv, G 20; hereafter D-AAm G 20. 32 See J. Knape, ‘Zur Benennung der Offizien im Mittelalter’, Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft 26 (1984), 305–20; R. M. Jonsson, Historia: Études sur la genèse des offices versifiés (Stockholm, 1968), pp. 9–17; Harper, Forms and Orders, pp. 73–109; J. Black, ‘The Daily Cursus, the Week, and the Psalter in the Divine Office and in Carolingian Devotion’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 1988). 33 R. Boyer, ‘An Attempt to Define the Typology of Medieval Hagiography’, in Hagiography and Medieval Literature: A Symposium, ed. H. BekkerNielsen et al. (Odense, 1981), pp. 27–36; H. Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints, trans. D. Attwater (Dublin, 1998).

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moral portrait of Charlemagne; the three nocturns of Matins establish, in turn, Charlemagne’s sanctity, his divinely sanctioned warfare and his special patronage of Aachen; Lauds revisits the ruler’s divinely sanctioned warring, while second Vespers emphasizes his intercessory power.34 Increasing awareness of these new meta-narratives active in historiae is changing their use by scholarship. A previous understanding of historia as mere groupings of centoized texts from a saint’s more authoritative vita, is giving way to engaging historiae as musicaltextual compositions meriting analysis in their own right.35 As this chapter demonstrates, the adaptation of VKM’s narratives in the format of liturgy creates an independent, specifically liturgical, gloss on the vita.36 An aggregate reading of Regali natus’s chants introduces parallel assertions forwarding related, but unique, interpretations of Charlemagne.37

34 Compline consists of a plea for Charlemagne’s intercession; see Folz, Études, pp. 63–77. The present chapter does not discuss the Hymn of Regali natus, but a discussion of its content is found in Rice, Music and Ritual, pp. 57–9. 35 See discussion in Political Plainchant, ed. Hankeln; on hagiographical works, see F. Lifshitz, ‘Beyond Positivism and Genre: Hagiographical Texts as Historical Narrative’, Viator 25 (1994), 95–114. 36 The secular (as opposed to monastic) office of Matins consists of three nocturns which, among other pieces of liturgy, involve the recitation of three psalms with three corresponding antiphons, followed by three readings from the vita each followed by a responsory: see Harper, Forms and Orders, pp. 73–109. The proper readings of the lessons have not survived for the Aachen liturgy, but Folz demonstrates that the entire VKM was read at Matins during Charlemagne’s octave celebrations: see Folz, Études, pp. 79–108. 37 See, for example: R. Hankeln, ‘Texting Techniques in St Olav’s Augustine-Responsories’, in Studies in Medieval Chant and Liturgy in Honour of David Hiley, ed. T. Bailey and L. Dobszay (Ottowa, 2007), pp. 275–93; R. L. Crocker, ‘Thoughts on Responsories’, in Essays on Medieval Music in Honor of David G. Hughes, ed. G. Boone (Cambridge, MA, 1995), pp. 77–85; R. Steiner, ‘Gregorian Responsories based on Texts from the Book of Judith’, in Music in Medieval Europe: Studies in Honour of Bryan Gillingham, ed. T. Bailey and A. Santosuosso (Burlington, 2007), pp. 23–34.

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Warfare

A

preoccupation of Charlemagne’s liturgical portrait is the   recalibration of his military deeds. The historia casts Charlemagne’s battles as an expression of God’s direct will. At the expense of many other military campaigns, the liturgy only incorporates narratives of war associated with Charlemagne’s proselytizing. A major portion of Regali natus engages with the same theological conflicts as surround the saintly persona of the martyr-king Oswald. The liturgy proclaims Charlemagne as a ruler who exercised his office through the sword and the word equally. Had Charlemagne fallen in battle against the heathens, the model of martyrdom applied to the Northumbrian ruler would have easily applied. The liturgy defines Charlemagne in this manner from the very onset of the commemoration. Thus, first Vespers quells any possible ambivalence regarding the nature of Charlemagne’s sainthood by establishing his saintly and moral character. The responsory provides its most succinct expression of his saintly persona. In performance, the choir sings the first two lines, then the cantor alone sings the third (i.e. the verse); the choir then repeats the second line of text (the repetendum, here marked with an asterisk): This soldier followed you, and is accepted by you Christ: *Likened to Elijah, he did work fitting for God. Verse: When he speaks weariness departs, death is chased away, life returns.38

The passage views Christ as embracing Charlemagne’s piousness, which manifests itself in deeds comparable to those of Elijah. This latter reference exemplifies the portrait of Charlemagne developed in Regali natus. The comparison with Elijah, while not recorded in the VKM, vividly illustrates facets mapped onto Charlemagne in the historia: Elijah’s zealous devotion to God, his ability to perform miracles, and his defending orthodoxy through forceful action against heathens, 38 D-AAm G 20, fol. 238v, First Vespers Responsory: ‘Te secutus miles iste et acceptus tibi Christi: *Comparatus Helyseo, opus egit dignum Deo. Verse: Qui dum orat languor cedit, mors fugat, vita redit.’ All translations of the liturgy are based on those of McGrade; however, I have emended where necessary: see McGrade, ‘Affirmations’, pp. 182–9.

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are all topics elaborated in Charlemagne’s liturgy.39 Significantly, Elijah’s staunch vindication of the true God provides a biblical model validating Regali natus’s portrayal. As becomes apparent in the office of Matins, Charlemagne participates in a divinely willed, particularly violent, defence of the faith. Positioning the Elijah comparison in the repetendum underscores the significance of Charlemagne’s converting the infidel: given its repetition in performance, coupled with the traditional melismatic emphasis of its words, the repetendum communicates the responsory’s central message. Furthermore, in this instance, the repetendum substantiates the verse’s proclamation of Charlemagne’s intercessory efficacy. The saintly king is equal with the Old Testament prophet, who also had a privileged and preferential relationship with God. This latter facet introduces the more practically oriented aspect of the Regali natus: Charlemagne as the material and spiritual patron of Aachen. On 8 January 1166 Frederick published an edict recording the events of 29 December 1165, and establishing 28 January as the feast day of St Charlemagne. This edict echoes the liturgy’s comparison between Charlemagne and Elijah, specifically building on the prophet’s defence of the true God. In the edict’s rationalization of the elevation, Charlemagne’s proselytizing activities are cast as follows: He was a strong saint and true apostle in enlarging the Christian faith and converting the Barbarian races, as the Saxons, Frisians, Westphalians, Wends and Spanish give witness, whom he converted to the orthodox faith by word and sword.40 Charlemagne’s pious devotion manifests itself, like Elijah’s, in converting those who do not follow Christ. Through these actions the Carolingian king acts as a true apostle. However, the closing word of the sentence contains the most significant theological repercussions: like Frederick’s own engagement in guaranteeing his political endeavours, Charlemagne uses not only the word, and by extension Law, but also the sword. 39 See the episode of Elijah killing the prophets: 1 Kings 18. 36–40. 40 MGH DFI, doc. 502, p. 432: ‘In fide quoque Christi dilatanda et in conversion gentis barbarice fortis athlete fuit et verus apostolus, sicut Saxonia et Fresonia atque Westphalia, Hispani quoque testantur et Wandali, quos ad fidem catholicam verbo convertit et gladio.’ This translation is from McGrade, ‘Affirmations’, p. 223.

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Cognizant of the risks of this assertion, the second nocturn of Matins devotes its six chants (three antiphons and three responsories) to establishing Charlemagne’s warfare as divinely sanctioned. Antiphons four through six retell the story from book III, chapter 7 of VKM.41 This chapter recounts the battle against Aigolandus: a broadly attested narrative concerning Charlemagne’s confrontation with the African pagan king who overran Spain.42 On the evening before the battle with Aigolandus some of Charlemagne’s soldiers stab their spears into the ground. In the morning the weapons are overgrown with vines. Subsequently, all those whose spears were marked by the vines are slain during combat. The VKM interprets the miracle as God foretelling the soldier’s deaths, using them as his instruments of war, and as foretelling their assured attainment of martyrdom.43 This scene thus epitomizes the idea of martyrdom gained in sacred warfare.44 The sixth antiphon of Matins expresses this in a manner not formulated in the VKM: Because of their merit Christ awards those whom he crowns  [ with suffering, [They] attribute the graves found through the holy likeness  [ [of the Cross].45 This antiphon clarifies the conception of sacred warfare proposed in 41 Cf. Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, II:7, p. 72: ‘De hastis nocte in terra fixis et mane facto corticibus et frondibus vestitis.’ 42 This episode occurs in books 4 and 5 of the Liber sancti Jacobi: see W. J. Purkis, Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c. 1095–c. 1187 (Woodbridge, 2008) pp. 156–8. 43 Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, II:7, p. 73: ‘Tunc astiterunt quidam ex christianis, qui sero ante diem belli arma sua bellica studiose preparantes hastas suas in terra infixerunt erectas ante castra scilicet in pratis iuxta prefatum flumen, quas summo mane corticibus et frondibus invenerunt vestitas, hi scilicet, qui in acie proxima palma martirii pro fide Christi errant accepturi  … Die igitur sequenti commissa est contra hostes pugna, in qua occisa sunt christianorum quadraginta milia, et dux Milo Rotlandi genitor ibidem palmam martirii adeptus est cum his, quorum haste ut dictum est fornduerant.’ 44 Purkis, Crusading Spirituality, pp. 156–8. 45 D-AAm G 20, fol. 239v, Matins Antiphon 6: ‘Quos Christus donat merito, quos pena coronat, effigie sacra perhibent inventa sepulchra.’

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Regali natus: soldiers involved in defending or propagating Christianity embody an important Christian virtue and participate in a divinely sanctioned enterprise. Thus, Christ fittingly bestows martyrdom on the fallen. The original definition of this act, where succumbing to violence functions to demonstrate one’s true faith in the Christian afterlife, is now turned on its head. In Regali natus Christ actively acknowledges the soldiers’ selfless struggle, akin to enduring martyrdom, in their defending Christianity against Aigolandus.46 The miracle of vines growing over the spears of Charlemagne’s martyr-soldiers foretells their instrumental role in God’s divinely sanctioned war, especially since martyrdom forms part of eschatology. A passage from another portion of VKM, touching again on the Aigolandus battle, further reflects on the vines growing over the warrior’s spears as a metaphor for the True Cross.47 In this light, performing the liturgy of Regali natus proclaims a definition of sacred warfare immediately pertinent to the crusades.48 The three responsories of the second nocturn develop this theme in a more varied manner. They emphasize, in turn, Charlemagne’s divinely sanctioned warfare, God’s care for his proto-crusader warriors, and God’s direct and violent intercession in defence of Christians.49 The setting of the fourth responsory provides a theologically sensitive portrayal of Charlemagne’s warring activities. The text represents a condensed paraphrase of the episode in VKM narrating Charlemagne’s

46 For the context, see the study by Gómez in this volume (Ch. 4). 47 Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, III:10, p. 78. ‘Nota est pluribus et visu oculorum certificata illa dei clementia, que suis fidelibus meritis sui athlete sepulchra preparavit, que etiam certis indiciis dominice crucis suos intimavit.’ 48 For an overview of theological perceptions of violence, see P. Buc, ‘La Vengeance de Dieu: De l’exégesè patristique à la reforme ecclesiastique et à la premiere croisade’, in La Vengeance, 400–1200, ed. D. Barthélemy, F. Bougard and R. Le Jan (Rome, 2006), pp. 451–86; P. Buc, ‘Some Thoughts on the Christian Theology of Violence, Medieval and Modern, from the Middle Ages to the French Revolution’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo 5 (2008), 9–28; P. Buc, ‘Exégesè et violence dans la tradition occidentale’, Annali di Storia moderna e contemporanea 16 (2010), 131–44; S. A. Throop, Crusading as an Act of Vengeance, 1095–1216 (Farnham, 2011). 49 See Folz, Études, p. 70.

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legendary conquest of Pamplona.50 After fighting a three-month protracted battle over the indomitable walls of the heathen stronghold, Charlemagne prays to God and St James of Compostela for aid: After a prayer of good faith was offered, the walls of Pamplona  [ collapsed: *Having forsaken the unhappy faith, the conquered become the friends of the victor [Charlemagne]. Verse: Stronger than the lion but milder than the lamb, through baptism he brings forth again offerings to Christ.51 Charlemagne’s privileged relationship with God and St James results in his conquest of Pamplona, and its community’s converting to Christianity. The text of this fourth responsory is written in hexameters and is structured by three phrases each with internal assonance at the hemistich (Ex. 1).52 50 Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, III:3, pp. 69–70. This episode appears in the Liber sancti Jacobi (Codex Calixtinus): see discussion in Purkis, Crusading Spirituality, pp. 155–6. 51 D-AAm G 20, fol. 239v, Matins Responsory 4: ‘Fusa prece mentis bone, muri ruunt Pompilone: *Spreto cultu infelici, victor victi sunt amici. Verse: Leone fortior sed agno mitior, hostes Christo regenerat baptismo.’ 52 The musicological methodology employed in the present discussion of music–text interactions is based on the general correlation between the text’s semantic content and the melody’s trajectory through the mode. A melody’s movement through its modal goals, such as at cadences, and open caesuras, usually corresponds to grammatical points of sentence semantics, commas and periods. The chant thus clarifies the semantic content of the text. This text-centered approach to the melody’s elaboration is illustrated in S. Salvadó, ‘Staging Violence, Suffering, and Orthodoxy in the Chants of the Spanish March’, Plainsong and Medieval Music 23 (2014), 51–69. See also G. Björkvall and A. Haug, ‘Performing Latin Verse: Text and Music in Early Medieval Versified Offices’, in The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages: Methodology and Source Studies, Regional Developments, Hagiography; Written in Honour of Professor Ruth Steiner, ed. M. E. Fassler and R. A. Baltzer (Oxford, 2000), pp. 278–99; W. P. Mahrt, ‘Word Painting and Formulaic Chant’, in The Musical Shape of the Liturgy (Richmond, VA, 2012), pp. 185–216, originally in Cum Angelis Canere: Essays on Sacred Music and Pastoral Liturgy in Honour of

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Ex. 1  Matins Responsory 4: Fusa prece mentis; underlining indicates assonance on the last word of each hemistich

1-edg-fe--dc-de--g-hjklkjhg-hj-j-3-e-f--e-d---gf-dc-de-e-3   Fu- sa prece

mentis

bone muri ruunt Pompi- lo-ne

1-g--hj--kllh-kj--k-hgfd-g-fe-3-j-hjkl--hg-hj--j--lml-jh-jkjkhg-hgfe-dg-hj-kj-hg-ed-fe-4 * spreto cul-

tu infe-

li- ci

victor

vic- ti sunt a-

1-h-h-g--g-f-e-3-d---fe-d--c-e-e-3-j--k---h---g-3-g-f-g-h---d-g-fe-4  

V. Le-one fortior  

-mi-ci.

sed ag-no miti-or hostes Christo regenerat baptismo.

The first line is divisible into an antecedent and consequent semantic construction, articulated by the assonance on the final syllable, -ne (‘bone’, ‘Pompilone’). Thus, Charlemagne prays and, as a consequence, the walls of Pamplona are felled. The music foregrounds this relationship: the first hemistich of the first line presents an open melodic phrase necessitating musical closure (b-reciting tone), which the arrival at the E-finalis finally achieves at the closure of the subsequent hemistich with ‘Pompilone’. The passage creates a strong link of causality between the good-willed prayer of Charlemagne and the immediate effect, his conquest. St James is not explicitly mentioned, so the responsory focuses solely on Charlemagne’s agency.53 The second line (i.e., the repetendum) again organizes its message in two interdependent clauses: ‘Having forsaken the unhappy faith’, results with, ‘the conquered become the friends of the victor [Charlemagne]’. Here the assonance between the last word of each hemistich (‘infelici’ Richard J. Schuler, ed. R. A. Skeris (St. Paul, MN, 1990); L. Dobszay, ‘Zur Stilistik der Melodien des Emmeram-Offiziums’, in Die Offizien des Mittelalters: Dichtung und Musik, ed. W. Berschin and D. Hiley (Tutzing, 1999), pp. 87–108; R. Hankeln, ‘Old and New in Medieval Chant: Finding Methods of Investigating an Unknown Region’, in A Due, ed. Kongsted et al., pp. 161–80; E. Kohlhaas, Musik und Sprache im gregorianischen Gesang, Beihefte zum Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 49 (Stuttgart, 2001). 53 The omission of St James in this responsory is all the more noteworthy when compared with the episode as it appears in the VKM or the Liber sancti Jacobi. In both sources, the walls of Pamplona are overthrown through the intervention of St James: see Purkis, Crusading Spirituality, pp. 155–6.

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and ‘amici’), in combination with the contrasting nature of these adjectives, makes the heathens’ transformation   –  from idolatrous pagans to friends of the Christian faith  –  more emphatic. Musically, the melodic setting of these two hemistiches emphasizes the contrast. The chant juxtaposes a short, musically closed, clause for the first hemistich (ending on ‘infelici’, and resting on the E-finalis) with an overwhelming long melisma, underscoring the conquered becoming friends of Charlemagne and, by extension, of Christianity. Through the liturgist’s freedom to choose the words, their order in the phrase, and their relationship to the musical organization of the chant, the fourth responsory illustrates the conjunction of text and music in performing an interpretation of the content: the first line recounts the breaching of Pamplona’s walls, and is musically inferior to the repetendum, which highlights the conversion of the city’s inhabitants. The relationship of the long melisma on Charlemagne’s new ‘friends’ positions this as the central point of the text. The third line, consisting of the verse sung by the cantor, as expected in this liturgical genre, provides an additional moral interpretation to the communally sung responsorial text. The verse introduces concepts from separate chapters of VKM, which themselves are related to passages from Isaiah.54 The allusion associates Charlemagne with the qualities of both lion and lamb through his biblical magnanimity towards the vanquished and his service to Christ.55 Additionally, the verse refers back to the comparison established with Elijah in the above-mentioned Vespers responsory. This example elucidates how the historia provides a new interpretative gloss on the Vita by reformulating and sharply refocusing its content: Regali natus portrays Charlemagne as fierce yet pious, fully efficacious in his prayer, and magnanimous in his conduct. Physically enunciating Charlemagne’s acts through performance emphatically imprints this perspective onto the performers’ understanding of the Vita episode. The devout community experiences the Pamplona episode principally as an example of Charlemagne’s converting the infidel to Christianity. Noteworthy, moreover, is the omission of St James’s agency in the matter, and the lack of explicit violence accompanying this passage of conquest and conversion. 54 Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, II:9, III:3, 22; Folz, Études, p. 70. 55 See Isaiah 11. 6, 65. 25.

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In spite of the general theological audacity of Regali natus, it displays a cautious treatment of divinely sanctioned warfare throughout its liturgy. The historia contains no passages comparable to Alcuin’s depiction of Oswald’s graphic violence, nor explicit scenes of Charlemagne’s warfare as in the VKM. However, the liturgy foregoes this tendency when dealing with God’s direct and unmediated intervention in worldly affairs.56 The sixth responsory of Matins recounts two different episodes from the VKM where Saxons, taking advantage of Charlemagne’s absence, storm the towns of Heresburg and Fritzlar.57 While Charlemagne is not the central protagonist of these narratives, performing them liturgically further substantiates his divinely sanctioned rule and conquest over infidels. The liturgy asserts Charlemagne’s rule as being independently upheld, and defended, by God: Shining as the sun over the city, the divine shields frightened off  [ the enemies: *Raving in their flight they kill [themselves]. Verse: And the youths ward off the wild flames from the walls.58 The respond and verse each introduce accounts of God protecting Charlemagne’s territories during his absence; and while the repetendum notes that the besiegers kill themselves (as a result of their raving escape), it is still a consequence of God’s intervention. Situating this passage in the repetendum underscores the lethal punishment received by those who scheme against God. In foregrounding this assertion, the responsory clarifies the Regali natus’s broader presentation 56 Such explicit violence is common among saints’ post-mortem miracles, where their intercession often takes the form of violent protection of the faithful. Cf. the miracles associated with St Cuthbert, for example: Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, ed. T. J. South (Cambridge, 2002). 57 Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, III:9–10; Folz, Études, p. 70. See also its appearance in the Annales regni Francorum, years 772–3; and see discussion in R. McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge, 2008), p. 323. 58 D-AAm G 20, fol. 240r, Matins Responsory 6: ‘Divino clypei super urbem sole rubentes absterrent hostes: *Conversa cede furentes. Verse: Et totidem iuvenes arcent a moenibus ignes.’ This episode also appears in the Annales regni Francorum, year 776; see McKitterick, Charlemagne, p. 323.

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of Charlemagne’s involvement in battle: God so firmly endorses Christianity’s being defended by the sword that, when Charlemagne is physically unable to do so, God intervenes himself to brutally eradicate the infidel.

Patronage

A

second major facet elaborated in Regali natus involves a temporal   shift towards addressing the twelfth-century community of Aachen. The third antiphon of Matins foreshadows Charlemagne’s patronage of the church and city: Who coming to Constantine in the garb of a pilgrim, Restored both the peoples’ kingdom and his own.59

The antiphon paraphrases Charlemagne’s military expedition to the East, where he restores Jerusalem to Byzantine control.60 Casting this military mission as a pilgrimage reintroduces crusading references into Regali natus. Examining the chant’s articulation of its text provides a clue to its role in the historia (Ex. 2). Ex. 2  Matins Antiphon 3: Qui Constantino veniens; underlining indicates key verbs

A rising, arched melody leading to a caesura on the modal final (E-finalis) characterizes the antiphon’s two lines. Each line consists of a closed musical statement. In the first line the verb ‘coming’ (veniens) is the most distinct. Charlemagne’s expedition, conceived both as a 59 D-AAm G 20, fol. 239r, Matins Antiphon 3: ‘Qui Constantino veniens habitu peregrino, reddidit utrumque regnum gentisque suumque.’ 60 Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, II:8–9; Folz, Études, p. 68; Latowsky, Emperor of the World, pp. 59–98; A. Latowsky, ‘Charlemagne as Pilgrim? Requests for Relics in the Descriptio qualiter and the Voyage of Charlemagne’, in Legend of Charlemagne, pp. 153–67.

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pilgrimage and crusade, receives emphasis. The second line positions ‘restored’ (reddidit) as the entire antiphon’s semantic and musical reference point. This word takes the longest melismatic embellishment, encompasses the largest interval, and reaches the highest note of the melody. This gesture makes Charlemagne’s dual restoration of Jerusalem and his own kingdom the overall central focus of the chant. Recalling Charlemagne’s journey to Jerusalem exemplifies both his piety, illustrated through his comportment when gifted the relics of the Passion, and his divinely sanctioned warfare when defending Christians.61 However, the above-mentioned Matins antiphon does not underscore these aspects, but rather singles out Charlemagne’s restoring the kingdoms. The rationale behind this antiphon’s reading of the Jerusalem episode becomes clear if we revisit the edict of 8 January 1166: He however desired the prize of eternal life with the full intention of his heart, [and] to expand the glory of the Christian name and propagate the cult of the divine religion. How many episcopates he established, how many abbeys, how many churches from the fundament he erected, how many estates and benefits he endowed them, how much largesse of almsgiving shone brightly not only on this side of the sea, but in areas across the sea. These same works and voluminous deeds of his, which are greatly many, are entirely testified by faith of eyewitnesses.62 Charlemagne’s deeds not only involve expanding the Christian faith through converting the infidel, but also securing these conquests through institutional expansion. The complementarity between Regali natus’s glosses on the VKM and Staufen charters illustrates the role of liturgy. The sanctification and liturgical celebration of Charlemagne builds upon his many altruistic deeds to ultimately substantiate a 61 For further discussion, see the study by Stuckey in this volume (Ch. 2). 62 MGH DFI, doc. 502, p. 432: ‘Ipse enim tota cordis intentione ad eterne vite premia anhelans ad dilatandam gloriam christiani nominis et cultum divine religionis propagandum, quot episcopatus constituerit, quot abbatias, quot ecclesias a fundamento erexit, quantis prediis ac beneficiis illas ditaverit, quantarum largitate elemosinarum non solum in cismarinis, sed etiam in transmarinis partibus resplenduerit, ipsa eius opera et gestorum volumina, que plurima et maxima sunt, fide oculata plenius declarant.’ The translation is my own.

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purely political assertion. Staufen clergy supposedly found a charter inside the ruler’s coffin during the translation of Charlemagne into his new reliquary.63 This fabricated document, allegedly endorsed by Charlemagne, presented Aachen with wide-sweeping benefices, established it as the head of all Germanic kingdoms, and exempted it in perpetuity from any secular incursions on its fiscal autonomy.64 Asserting Charlemagne’s sanctity supported the Staufen intention of transforming the devotional and legal status of Aachen. The performance of liturgy bridged the temporal gap between Charlemagne’s death in 814 and the twelfth-century community of Aachen; celebrating Regali natus ratified the false charter and its claims. The second antiphon of Matins makes this point emphatic: A blessed vision of the king shown to the king [Frederick], The meritorious and sinless life agrees with Christ.65 This passage reformulates the miracle witnessed by Frederick and those present in the Aachen church three days after Charlemagne’s translation on 29 December 1165.66 The miraculous event provided a contemporary attestation of Charlemagne’s sanctity and further substantiated the sacred authority asserted by the fabricated charter. Beyond this, performing this antiphon reasserted Charlemagne’s continued care for Aachen, and dramatically manifested his presence and power of intercession for the devout. The second responsory of Matins furthered this aspect by recounting a scene where Charlemagne was lauded by both his people and God: With all Francia calling out, and with the curia applauding, Adorned with the royal sceptre and exalted before all others: *God considers him worthy of royal glory. Verse: Triumphant in the struggle of vices, The emperor is consecrated by Leo.67 63 Latowsky, Emperor of the World, pp. 183–214. 64 See MGH DFI, doc. 502, p. 433. See also Becker, Die Heiligsprechung Karls; Loersch, ‘Das falsche Diplom’. 65 D-AAm G 20, fol. 239r, Matins Antiphon 2: ‘Visio monstrata regi de rege beata, consonant emerite Christo sine crimine vite.’ 66 Cf. Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, III:19. 67 D-AAm G 20, fol. 239r, Matins Responsory 2: ‘Tota poscente Francia

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This responsory casts Charlemagne’s accepted historical attributes as proof of his sanctity. The first two lines function as a causal statement, resulting with the repetendum’s pronouncement of God’s approval. This offers an unorthodox definition of sanctity founded entirely on a ruler’s receiving adulation from his subjects and possessing the visual symbols of royalty. The verse moves to note Charlemagne’s moral virtue and his consecration. The juxtaposition of these two aspects creates a causal relation between them. While this formulation is of interest in its own right, the chant suggests a shifting of the liturgy’s temporal references. Folz aptly notes how this responsory relies on the VKM passages recounting Charlemagne’s coronation.68 These two texts in turn resonate with Frederick’s wording in the edict of 8 January 1166, which enjoins Aachen to celebrate its newly re-established Carolingian privileges.69 The acclamations Frederick wished to invoke when reinstituting Aachen’s privileges are performed, as it were, by the second responsory. The introduction of divine consent in Charlemagne’s consecration, found in the repetendum of the second responsory, parallels the miracle reported earlier in the liturgy, in the above-mentioned second antiphon: God’s presence at Charlemagne’s coronation is manifest again during his elevation. The second responsory’s mention of ‘Francia’, instead of the charter’s ‘Teutonicus’, continues to blur the temporal reference point in the liturgical text. In addition, the inclusion of ‘Francia’ introduces a reference to contemporary Staufen struggles over the Carolingian ruler’s royal heritage, which was particularly significant given that the community of Saint-Denis laid claim to a comparable document, equally

et applaudente curia, sceptro regni decorator et pre cunctis exaltatur: *Quem Deus regia dignatur gloria. Verse: Vitiorum triumphator in agone, consecrator imperator a leone.’ 68 Folz, Études, p. 69; Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, I:3–4. 69 See MGH DFI, doc. 502, p. 433: ‘Letetur igitur et exultet ineffabili gaudio Aquisgranum caput civitatum, venerabilis clerus cum devotissimo populo, quod in diademate regni aliis principibus et gloriosis locis speciosissimo ornamento distinctis in capite corone positum quasi prelucidarum gemmarum splendore coruscate et illo singulari et corporali gaudet patrono, qui Christiane fidei illustratione et legis, qua unusquisque vivere debeat, Romanum decorat imperium.’

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alleging to have been endorsed by Charlemagne.70 The antiphon– responsory pair illustrates the multiple narrative levels the historia exploits. Regali natus intersperses its liturgy with chants bridging the gap between the Carolingian past and the Staufen present. It physically performs the act of translatio imperii: this technique of employing liturgy in support of Staufen aims strengthened the relevance of Charlemagne for Aachen’s community, while equally upholding the validity of Frederick’s secular claims. The third nocturn of Matins engages with advancing Staufen political aims more openly than any other portion of the historia. Its liturgy participates directly in redefining Aachen’s sacred image. The third nocturn’s three antiphons present scenes illustrating Charlemagne’s intercessory efficacy. An elaboration of the narrative associated with the VKM’s Crown of Thorns miracles exemplifies Charlemagne’s capabilities in this regard.71 These miracles relate to the episode where, in a gesture of gratitude for restoring Jerusalem to Christian rule, the Byzantine emperor Constantine gives Charlemagne the relic of the Crown of Thorns. A series of miracles occur while Charlemagne remains praying in the presence of the Crown, such as the sprouting of flowers from the thorns or the levitation of Charlemagne’s gauntlet used to touch the thorns, which all serve to illustrate his piety and divine favour. The seventh Matins antiphon treats the episode of the Crown’s blossoming, a topic also referenced in the first antiphon of Matins.72 The eighth touches on the healing power of the flowers’ scent. The ninth antiphon recounts the miracle of Charlemagne’s floating gauntlet.73 These chants characterize Charlemagne’s intercessory power as concomitant with his earthly deeds and corroborate Aachen’s current exalted state. The three final responsories position Charlemagne in the direct service of Aachen. The seventh responsory nominally revisits the ruler’s journey

70 C. Van de Kieft, ‘Deux diplômes faux de Charlemagne pour Saint-Denis, du XIIe siècle’, Le Moyen Âge 64 (1958), 401–36; G. M. Spiegel, ‘The Reditus Regni ad Stirpem Karoli Magni: A New Look’, French Historical Studies 7 (1971), 145–74. 71 Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, II:14–16. 72 Folz, Études, p. 71; Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, II:15. 73 Folz, Études, p. 71; Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, II:15, 17–18.

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to Jerusalem.74 However, its text emphatically connects that event with twelfth-century Aachen, again performing Staufen assertions of translatio imperii (Ex. 3): O happy memory of the emperors, O man of virtue and full of grace, In solitude the omen relieved him with human words: *He who reviewed the holy city and restored the patriarch. Verse: Among the many shrines of Constantine, He chose the supplications of a divine death.75 Ex. 3  Matins Responsory 7: O quam felicis; underlining indicates melismas on   key   words

1-gl--lkj--kj-kl-l--l-k-n-mlkl-l--lkj-hg-fg-g-3---g--jkl-l---m-n-l--j--k-hg---hkg-fg-g-3   1. O quam fe-lic- is imperato- rem me- mo- ri- e 2. O vi- rum virtutis et plenum gra- ti- e

1--g---jkl-l--l--mno-nml-kj-kl-l-3-l-l-lnkl--l-kj-hg--hk-hg-g-3 3. quem a- les in so- li-

tu- di-ne sola-tur

humano fa- mi-ne

1-l---lk-nk-kl-l--jh-kl-lk-nmkl-onmk-mnlk-kl---l-kjhg-l-l-lk-nkl-3   4.*qui sanc-

tam ur-

-bem re-cen- su- it

1-l--mno-nml-nk-lk-l---lkjh-kl-nmkl-onml-kjhg-l-jklkhg-hkj-gf-hg-g-4 5. et pa- tri- ar-

cham re-

-sti- tu- it.

1-l-kjh--kl-l---l--mno-o-nml--n-kh-kl-l-3-gl-l-lk--ln-l--l-nkl-l--lkjh-kj-hg-g-4  

V. In- ter multa Constan- ti-ni

dona- ri- a

divi- ne mortis e-le- git sup- pli-ci- a.

 

The opening acclamation posits the memory of the Carolingian ruler as a cause of joy for Aachen’s present-day emperor, who is none other than Frederick Barbarossa. The rest of the chant shifts back in time to elaborate on Charlemagne’s deeds and qualities. The two opening 74 See Folz, Études, p. 71; cf. Die Legende, ed. Rauschen: the responsory’s opening lines paraphrase I:9, III:10; the second line II:8; the repetendum II:9–10; verse II:13. 75 D-AAm G 20, fol. 240r–240v, Matins Responsory 7: ‘O quam felicis imperatorem memorie. O virum virtutis et plenum gratie. Quem ales in solitudine solatur humano famine: *Qui sanctam urbem recensuit, et patriarcham restituit. Verse: Inter multa Constantini donaria, divine mortis elegit supplicia.’

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acclamations each receive a short, closed musical gesture, marked by a departure from, and arrival to the modal final (G-finalis). This reinforces the grammatically separate textual acclamations. The setting of the third phrase, narrating the miracle of the bird speaking to Charlemagne, is similarly structured as an arched, closed musical statement.76 The first three musical phrases are similar through their setting semantically independent clauses accompanied by closed musical gestures. In contrast to this apposition of short, contained utterances, the repetendum provides a different aural articulation. The fourth phrase begins and ends on the reciting tone, thereby forming the first, and longest ‘open’ phrase, which commands the strongest impulse for modal closure experienced in the entire chant. This causal expectation is achieved unequivocally by the fifth phrase. Only at the very end of the repetendum is the G-finalis reached. The two phrases it takes to reach the final lend the text of the repetendum a sense of an unequivocal finality. The two words receiving the most prolonged musical melismas and emphasis in this chant are ‘city’ (urbem) and ‘restores’ (restituit). Through this distinct musical articulation, the responsory chant reads the text to accentuate Charlemagne as an emperor who effectively restores Christians to the Holy City. While this responsory generally lauds Charlemagne’s deeds and morals, the opening acclamation commences by projecting the relevance of its message forward in time. In doing so, the emphasis on Charlemagne’s re-establishing the grandeur of the city reflects not only on the past, but also on the Staufen present.77 The eighth responsory of Regali natus openly addresses the twelfthcentury community at Aachen. Previous scholarship examining Charlemagne’s liturgy noted this chant’s relationship to the VKM and, most importantly, with the opening lines of Frederick’s reestablishment of Aachen’s Carolingian privileges.78 These discussions, however, fail to note the full ramifications of the responsory in the broader context of the historia’s assertions:

76 Folz, Études, p. 71; Die Legende, ed. Rauschen, II:8. 77 G. Brünske, ‘Intertwining of the Times in the Remembrance of the Saints’, in A Cloud of Witnesses: The Cult of Saints in Past and Present, ed. M. Barnard (Leuven, 2005), pp. 185–99. 78 See n. 69 above.

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Rejoice pious mother church of Aachen, Exult to have the patronage of such a pious leader: *Who by his munificence made you wealthy and blessed you in  [ glory. Verse: By whose labour, expense and work, You are worthy to excel all other churches.79 The seventh responsory’s emphasis on Charlemagne’s restoring the city of Jerusalem is aptly appropriated by the present chant. His patronage in restoring the Church in the East is transferred to his restoration of Aachen. The 1165 elevation explicitly aims to ‘restore’ the fabricated Carolingian charter, while the list of ecclesiastical institutions founded by Charlemagne given in the edict of 8 January 1166 (quoted above) further raises the prestige and efficacy of his patronage. The lamp Frederick donated to Aachen sometime between 1154 and 1184, known as the ‘corona’, shows the liturgy’s associations between Aachen and Jerusalem are not accidental.80 The opening lines of the lamp’s inscription read: The heavenly Jerusalem is represented by this image [i.e. lamp]  … descending from a starry sky, the city of the patriarchs, of the prophets, and finally of the virtue of apostolic light founded in life and teaching.81 The lamp’s dramatic lowering during the annual celebration of Charlemagne’s feast in Aachen is intended to prompt a spiritual vision of Jerusalem. Frederick goes beyond this to candidly assert that the shape of the lamp is itself a reflection of the Holy City: Frederick, the catholic emperor, pious king of the Romans, absolved himself and pledged to holy Mary this gift of a royal

79 D-AAm G 20, fol. 240v, Matins Responsory 8: ‘Letare pia mater Aquensis ecclesia, exulta tam sancti principis habere suffragia: *Qui sua regali munificentia, te ditavit et beavit in gloria. Verse: Cuius labore impensa et opera meruisti universas precellere.’ 80 McGrade, ‘O rex mundi’, pp. 183–219. 81 McGrade, ‘O rex mundi’, p. 219. McGrade also discusses the organization of the corona’s different inscriptions.

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octagonal crown. He calls the clergy to note not only its number but also its shape; his gift takes its form from the church.82 The shape of the ‘corona’ is likened to the octagonal shape of Aachen’s Carolingian chapel, itself modelled on the traditional archetype of Western church buildings: the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The lamp’s comparison to the ‘church’ thus extends its reference to the Holy City, while the long-established associations between Aachen’s architecture and those of Christ’s sepulchre in the East are exploited by the liturgy’s incessant emphasis on Jerusalem.83 The restoration highlighted by text, chant, and liturgical reiterations in Regali natus underwrite the assertions of Staufen policy. The responsory’s verse aptly consolidates Staufen aspirations to recast Aachen as the new spiritual fulcrum of the Holy Roman Empire. As the new Jerusalem, Aachen is endowed to excel all other churches.

Law

T

he casting of Charlemagne as a divinely sanctioned warrior in the service of the Church, as ultimately manifested in the site of Aachen, has further relevance to Frederick’s political program. The sanctification of Staufen imperial rule and the aims it hoped to achieve by this conceptualization had direct ramifications for the exercise of law. To this effect, the sacral portrait enacted in Regali natus claims divine support not only for Charlemagne’s wars but also for his rule. The third responsory of Matins unites these two facets succinctly: This Caesar relying on the sword of secular power, Thus ran the course of law and justice: *So that he might obtain the prize of prosperity and glory Verse: Competing bravely he faithfully led the rest.84 82 McGrade, ‘O rex mundi’, p. 219. 83 Gabriele, Empire of Memory, p. 77; B. Kühnel, From the Earthly to the Heavenly Jerusalem: Representations of the Holy City in Christian Art of the First Millennium (Rome, 1987), p. 117. 84 D-AAm G 20, fol. 239v, Matins Responsory 3: ‘Secularis potencie Cesar fretus gladio, sic legis iusticie cucurrit in statio: *Ut salutis et glorie potiretur bravio. Verse: Agonizans viriliter, cuncta gessit fideliter.’

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In the multivalent matrix in which the liturgy of Regali natus operates, the appellation of Charlemagne as the ‘Caesar’ equally evokes Frederick’s own projected imperial image. Both the sword of the battlefield and the agile use of law are key among Charlemagne’s saintly qualities. The verse of this responsory blurs the lines between law and warfare by asserting that through his wielding of both swords Charlemagne, and by extension Frederick, is able to achieve glory in the eyes of God. The significance of this image of the saintly king’s arbitration of justice is encapsulated by the ninth responsory: Glorious confessor of Christ, Charles, Governor of laws and protector of justice: *Listen to the prayers and votives of your people crying to you. Verse: So that after the loss of this life we may enjoy glory with you always.85 In this final, and traditionally culminating, point of Matins, the responsory defines Charlemagne in his intercessory role through the virtues of law and justice. The other attributes credited to this unique saint  –  his moral rectitude, his pious devotion to Christ, his marvellous spiritual and physical warfare for Christianity  –  are all secondary in relation to his crowning characteristic as the governor of law and justice. This last responsory finally reveals Regali natus as being yet another carefully crafted instrument of Staufen imperial aspirations.86 85 D-AAm G 20, fol. 240v, Matins Responsory 9: ‘Gloriose Christi confessor Karole, iuris rector et protector iusticie: *Ad te clamantium, exaudi preces et vota tuorum. Verse: Ut post huius vite dispendia, tecum perhenni fruamur gloria.’ 86 Another part of the Staufen programme of translatio imperii is evident in Frederick’s revival of Roman Law: see J. Petersohn, ‘Kaiser, Papst und römisches Recht im Hochmittelalter: Friedrich Barbarossa und Innocenz III. beim Umgang mit dem Rechtsinstitut der langfristigen Verjährung’, in Mediaevalia Augiensia: Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, ed. J. Petersohn (Stuttgart, 2001), pp. 307–48; R. L. Benson, ‘Political Renovatio: Two Models from Roman Antiquity’, in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. R. L. Benson (Oxford, 1982), pp. 339–86; H. Appelt, ‘Friedrich Barbarossa und das romische Recht’, in Friedrich Barbarossa, ed. G. Wolf, Wege und Forschung 390 (Darmstadt, 1962), pp. 52–82.

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It is well recognized that the extant edicts published by Frederick’s court illustrate how the elevation of Charlemagne functioned to further the sacred imperial identity of the Holy Roman Empire. In light of the preceding discussion, the performance of Regali natus reveals itself as an assertion of Aachen’s sacred preeminence in an audible and visible way. Yet the liturgy’s role in this discourse has further ramifications. The prominence accorded to Charlemagne as the key for legitimizing sacred rule also confers on the liturgical portrait the role of a speculum principis. The canonization edict pronounced on 8 January 1166 in Aachen gives credence to our conceiving Regali natus in this manner: [O]ur greatest desire and wish has been, as the divine kings and emperors who have preceded us, to follow and to have always before our eyes especially the form of life and way of governing of the greatest and most glorious emperor Charles.87 This passage underscores how the ideals propounded through the figure of Charlemagne are a model of sacred imperial identity, comportment and authority. Charlemagne’s defence of the empire and of Christian peoples, and his adjudication of law, expressed in the liturgy, thus project both what Frederick wanted to be perceived as embodying, and equally what he should ideally be. As such, Regali natus engages with the attempted Staufen reconceptualization of Aachen as the new Jerusalem, in its specific role as the royal seat of a sacred empire. Integrally related to these facets of the Staufen translatio imperii is the recalibration of Aachen’s role with its communities. Another edict, issued on 9 January 1166, notes: [A]s the example of the lord and saint Charles, and our other predecessors, and our clemency, we [Frederick] fortify the same imperial place by instituting privileges and liberties as a wall and tower of defence.88 87 MGH DFI, doc. 502, p. 432: ‘voluntatis nostre atque propositi summum desiderium fuit, ut divos reges et imperatores, qui nos precesserunt, precipue maximum et gloriosum imperatorem Karolum quasi formam vivendi atque subditos regendi sequeremur et sequendo pre oculis semper haberemus.’ 88 MGH DFI, doc. 503, p. 434: ‘[U]t exemplo domni et sancti Karoli aliorumque precessorum nostrorum eundem locum imperialis

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The privileges lavished on Aachen by the newly declared ‘saint’ Charlemagne serve as the pretext for Frederick’s own emendations of the law and rights governing this royal city. Essential to the elevation of Charlemagne is Frederick’s intention of further promoting Aachen as a pilgrimage site.89 Through the qualities strategically ascribed to Charlemagne in his liturgical representation, Regali natus engages with establishing a miraculous intercessor both effective and singular. The elevation triggered a series of clerical actions similar to those enacted in the shrine of St James in Compostela, albeit on a different scale.90 Being the custodians of a new and strikingly unconventional sacred king, the clergy of Aachen became the intermediaries and custodians of the Carolingian ruler’s intercession. The miracles and sanctity attributed to Charlemagne thus functioned polyvalently to define Frederick’s imperial sacred reign, and to define the spiritual potency of Aachen as a locus sanctus  –  an assertion, it is worth noting, that blatantly challenged the Parisian community of Saint-Denis and the Capetian dynasty.

Conclusion

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hough this discussion does not examine the historia’s entire corpus of texts, is does demonstrate that Regali natus comprises a carefully articulated body of narratives. By recasting the VKM it forms an additional interpretative source putting forward its own, specifically ecclesiastical, formulation of Charlemagne the saint. In this light, the liturgy reveals itself as a significant participant in the political programme set in motion by chancellor Rainald of Dassel, Paschal III and Frederick Barbarossa. Their act of elevating Charlemagne involved not merely crafting a textual justification, or a

defensionis et nostre clementie privilegiis et libertatis institutione quasi muro et turribus muniamus.’ 89 McGrade, ‘Affirmations’, p. 31. 90 S. Rankin, ‘Exultent gentes occidentales: The Compostelan Office of St James’, in El Códice Calixtino y la música de su tiempo: Actas del simposio organizado por la Fundación Pedro Barrié de la Maza en A Coruña y Santiago de Compostela, 20–23 de septiembre de 1999, ed. J. López-Calo and C. Villanueva (La Coruña, 2001), pp. 311–30; see R. A. Fletcher, Saint James’s Catapult: The Life and Times of Diego Gelmírez of Santiago de Compostela (Oxford, 1984).

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legal assertion of his newfound status, but relied on defining sanctity through its very performance. The commissioning of Regali natus stands as a performative attestation of Charlemagne’s status as a saint. The commemoration of St Charlemagne is a means of invoking and activating his actual, very tangible, intercession on behalf of the faithful.91 Both the VKM and Regali natus unequivocally imbued Charlemagne with the moral qualities characterizing Oswald’s sanctity. The hagiographies of sainted rulers never abandoned these aspects.92 Yet, where Alcuin made Oswald’s contentiously brutal defence of Christianity a reflection his foremost duty as king, Regali natus is unique in moving well beyond this formulation. What is exceptional in the case of Charlemagne, and fundamentally different from Alcuin’s Oswald, is the recalibration of Charlemagne’s inescapably bellicose past as a foundation and expression of his sanctity.93 This is especially significant 91 M. C. Gaposchkin, ‘Louis IX and Liturgical Memory’, in Memory and Commemoration in Medieval Culture, ed. E. Brenner, M. Cohen and M. Franklin-Brown (Aldershot, 2013), pp. 261–78; E. Østrem, ‘Music and the Ineffable’, in Voicing the Ineffable: Musical Representations of Religious Experience, ed. S. Bruhn (New York, 2002), pp. 287–312; E. Rose, ‘Hagiography as a Liturgical Act’, in A Cloud of Witnesses, ed. Barnard, pp. 161–83; N. H. Petersen, ‘Liturgy and Ritual in the Middle Ages’, in Cantus planus: Papers Read at the 12th Meeting of the IMS Study Group, Lillafüred, Hungary, 2004, Aug. 23–28, ed. L. Dobszay (Budapest, 2006), pp. 845–56; N. H. Petersen, ‘Carolingian Music, Ritual and Theology’, in The Appearances of Medieval Rituals: The Play of Construction and Modification, ed. N. H. Petersen (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 13–31; A. Ekenberg, Cur cantatur? Die Funktionen des liturgischen Gesanges nach den Autoren der Karolingerzeit (Stockholm, 1987). 92 The liturgical corpora commemorating St Louis, written by different religious orders, illustrate how political and devotional contexts also affect portrayals of Louis’ sanctity, rule, and proselytizing in unique ways: see M. C. Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis: Kingship, Sanctity and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 2008). 93 This facet appears in the late thirteenth-century liturgy for St Stephen of Hungary as well. See R. Hankeln, ‘Reflections of War and Violence in Early and High Medieval Saints’ Offices’, Plainsong and Medieval Music 23 (2014), 5–30. In my forthcoming article, ‘Defining Regions and Christian Militancy’ I discuss the liturgy of St Stephen of Hungary further.

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given that Oswald’s liturgy was celebrated in Barbarossa’s territories, and was a model available for comparison when writing Charlemagne’s rite.94 The first antiphon of Lauds exemplifies how the liturgy formulates the Carolingian emperor’s sanctity: Girded by fortitude and possessed of victory, In glory King Charles is presented with sanctity.95 Charlemagne’s reward for victory on the battlefield is sanctity. Nothing mediates the theological incongruence of this declaration. The use of appositions such as these are the principal means by which the liturgy articulates its reading of the VKM: the language of Regali natus constructs Charlemagne’s sacrality by a juxtaposition of assertions. Claims of Charlemagne’s sanctity, divinely sanctioned warfare, wielding of law, and intercessory power all stem from analogous rhetorical formulations. Similarly, performing the ritual of elevating Charlemagne is itself a substantiation of its claims to veracity. The sanctification of the Carolingian ruler is made not through theological smoke and mirrors, but simply through the performance of the outer symbol of sanctity. The second responsory of Matins asserts that Charlemagne was deemed worthy of God because of his public acclamation. In equal fashion, Staufen clergy manifested Charlemagne’s sanctity through the public celebration of a saint’s attributes, via their public veneration in the Divine Liturgy. The great number of churches taking up the celebration of Charlemagne reflects the success of Frederick’s plans. An enduring legacy of Folz’s research is his documenting how Barbarossa, and his heirs, managed to collectively embed the sanctity of the Carolingian ruler in their European realms.96 By installing this rite in multitudes of churches, Regali natus’s redefinition of divinely sanctioned warfare, crusading and the governing duties of sacred kingship essentially circumvented those theological formulations instituted as prerequisites 94 See Folz, ‘Saint Oswald, roi de Northumbrie’, pp. 65–70; Folz, Les saints rois, pp. 176–80. 95 D-AAm G 20, fol. 240v, Lauds Antiphon 1: ‘Precinctus fortitudine et potitus victoria, donator sanctitudine rex Karolus in gloria.’ 96 Folz, Études, pp. 11–53, 77–126; R. Lambrech, ‘Charlemagne and his Influence on the Late Medieval French Kings’, Journal of Medieval History 14 (1988), 283–91.

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by the twelfth-century papacy. As a consequence, the liturgy written for Aachen is of interest not only for elucidating the details of how Staufen political aspirations were put into effect, but also as a source for the broader intellectual history of sanctity in Germanic lands and beyond.97 The theological formulations associated with the Carolingian ruler remained unique among sacral images of kingship developed later in the Middle Ages.98 The singularity of Regali natus situates it as yet another essential participant in the shaping of the ‘discourse’ of Charlemagne in Latin.99

97 Folz, Souvenir; T. Foerster, ‘Political Myths and Political Culture in Twelfth-Century Europe’, in Erfahren, erzählen, erinnern: Narrative Konstruktionen von Gedächtnis und Generation in Antike und Mittelalter, ed. H. Brandt (Bamberg, 2012), pp. 83–116. 98 A. Boureau, ‘How Christian was the Sacralisation of Monarchy in Western Europe (Twelfth–Fifteenth Centuries)?’ in Mystifying the Monarch: Studies on Discourse, Power, and History, ed. J. Deploige and G. Deneckere (Amsterdam, 2006), pp. 25–34; Hankeln, ‘Reflections of War and Violence’, pp. 5–30; Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, pp. 161–73. See also J. I. Engels, ‘Das “Wesen” der Monarchie? Kritische Anmerkungen zum “Sakralkönigtum” in der Geschichtswissenschaft’, Majestas 7 (1999), 4–39; Salvadó, ‘Defining Regions and Christian Militancy’. 99 E. Vance, ‘Semiotics and Power: Relics, Icons, and the Voyage de Charlemagne à Jérusalem et à Constantinople’, Romanic Review 79 (1988), 164–83 (p. 170).

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4 Rex Parvus or Rex Nobilis? Charlemagne and the Politics of History (and Crusading) in Thirteenth-Century Iberia Miguel Dolan Gómez

I

n his lengthy and detailed description of the battle of Las Navas de   Tolosa, the Christian crusading victory over the Almohads fought in Andalucía in the year 1212, the French Cistercian chronicler Alberic of Trois-Fontaines consistently refers to Alfonso VIII of Castile, the principal sponsor and participant in the battle of Las Navas, as rex parvus, or the ‘little king’. After repeating this epithet several times, it apparently occurred to Alberic that some explanation might be in order: Alfonso, king of Castile and Toledo, was called ‘little king’ of Spain, although he was greater than some in age and excellence, and father-in-law of others. About this, when it was asked by a certain monk why he was called ‘little king’, he responded because, having inherited the throne when he was very small upon the death of his father King Sancho, from his infancy he was called ‘little king’, a nickname which stuck with him all through his life; but our people say because after the time of Charlemagne, who restored the Spains, his ancestors were called ‘little kings’ to differentiate them from the ‘great’ Charles.1

To a French historian writing in the first half of the thirteenth century, 1 Alberic de Trois-Fontaines, Chronicon, MGH SS 23, p. 895: ‘Rex Castelle et Toleti Alfonsus ipse dicebatur rex parvus de Hispania, cum tamen maior esset aliis et etate et dignitate et socer aliorum. De quo cum a quodam monacho quereretur, cur parvus rex diceretur, respondit quod a patre Sactio rege decedent relictus parvulus ab ipsa infantia rex parvus est appellatus, quod cognomen in omni vita sua semper retinuit; sed nostril dicunt, quod a tempore Karoli Magni, qui Hispanias recuperavit, antecessores istius dicebantur parvi ad differentiam magni regis Karoli.’

92

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such an explanation certainly rang true. It was generally understood among French audiences of the period that Charlemagne had conquered all of Spain from ‘the high land down to the sea’, as the Song of Roland tells us.2 The historical memory of Charlemagne’s actual, somewhat modest, campaigns in the northeast corner of the Iberian peninsula, which established Carolingian control over a marcher province centred on Barcelona, had grown into an elaborate legend which credited to the emperor the conquest of the whole of Spain.3 Along with this conquest, naturally from Alberic’s perspective, came the practical subjection of Spain’s Christian rulers to the status of sub-kings, or reges parvi. Alberic’s characterization of Alfonso VIII as a ‘little king’ stemmed from his wholesale acceptance of the legendary exploits of Charlemagne and their incorporation into his own chronicle.4 As the chapters in this volume demonstrate, Charlemagne and his accomplishments, both real and mythical, cast massive shadows across the Middle Ages, and could profoundly influence interpretations of history and events. That influence, and the debate about its meaning, among medieval historians

2 I. Short, ‘The Oxford Version’, in La Chanson de Roland / The Song of Roland: The French Corpus, ed. J. J. Duggan and K. Akiyama, 3 vols. (Turnhout, 2005), I, ll. 1–3: ‘Carles li reis, nostre emperere magnes, set anz tuz pleins ad estét en Espaigne: tresqu’en la mer cunquist la tere altaigne.’ Here, and henceforth, I am using the translation by J. J. Duggan and A. C. Rejhon, The Song of Roland: Translations of the Versions in Assonance and Rhyme of the Chanson de Roland (Turnhout, 2012), p. 29. 3 For further discussion, see Charlemagne and his Legend in Early Spanish Literature and Historiography, ed. M. Bailey and R. D. Giles (Cambridge, 2016), esp. R. D. Giles, ‘Converting the Saracen: The Historia del emperador Carlomagno and the Christianization of Granada’. 4 Alberic was not alone in assigning the ‘little king’ epithet to Castilian rulers. Ibn al-Athīr, a near contemporary of Alberic, referred to Alfonso VII, the grandfather of Alfonso VIII, as ‘little Sultan’. The context of the passage does not make the source of Ibn al-Athīr’s diminutive label clear; was this a commentary on the ultimately unsuccessful attempts by Alfonso VII to conquer al-Andalus, or an echo of a broader international perspective on the legitimacy of the Christian rulers of Spain? See Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athīr for the Crusading Period from al-Kāmil fī’l-ta’rīkh, trans. D. S. Richards, 3 vols. (Burlington, 2006), II, p. 36.

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recording events in the Iberian peninsula of the early thirteenth century are the subjects of this essay.

I

n his chronicle Alberic of Trois-Fontaines largely imported the most  elaborate legendary account of Charlemagne’s Spanish campaigns from the famous Historia Karoli Magni et Rotholandi, or as it is better known, the Pseudo-Turpin.5 The oldest surviving manuscript of the Pseudo-Turpin is part of the very famous Liber sancti Jacobi (or Codex Calixtinus), and can be dated to the second quarter of the twelfth century.6 While the authorship and origin of the Pseudo-Turpin are not certain, it was likely created, at least in its basic form, alongside the other materials of the Codex Calixtinus, and belongs to that collection of miracle stories, propaganda pieces, and forged papal bulls designed to lend an august heritage to the newly created archbishopric of Compostela (approved by Pope Calixtus II in 1120).7 For current 5 The Pseudo-Turpin survives in a vast number of manuscripts, as well as a number of modern editions and translations. In this study I have relied principally upon the Latin edition of H. M. Smyser, The Pseudo-Turpin (Cambridge, MA, 1937). I have also consulted Historia Karoli Magni et Rotholandi, ed. F. Castets (Paris, 1880); Codex quartus sancti Iacobi De expedimento et conversione Yspanie et Gallecie, ed. W. Thoron (Boston, 1934); and Liber sancti Jacobi: Codex Calixtinus, ed. K. Herbers and M. Santos Noia (Santiago de Compostela, 1998). 6 The dating of the Codex Calixtinus has been a matter of some debate but all potential dates fall between 1130 and 1170, with a weight of evidence favouring the earlier years, and specifically the years 1130–45 for the Pseudo-Turpin, which comprises Book IV of the Codex. See The Pilgrim’s Guide: A Critical Edition, ed. A. Stones and J. Krochalis, 2 vols. (London, 1998), I, p. 60; also W. Melzcer, The Pilgrim’s Guide (New York, 1993), pp. 28–9; H. M. Smyser, ‘An Early Redaction of the Pseudo-Turpin (Bib, Nat, fond slat. 17656, olim Notre Dame 133)’, Speculum 2 (1936), 277–93. 7 Scholarly debate about the origins of the Pseudo-Turpin has largely revolved around its connection to Santiago de Compostela: was it created alongside the other parts of the Liber sancti Jacobi, or was it rather created in France at some point which predates the Liber? The former position was originally articulated by J. Bédier, Les légendes épiques, 4 vols. (Paris, 1908–13), III, pp. 41–114, and convincingly restated by Smyser, ‘An Early Redaction of the Pseudo-Turpin’, pp. 277–80. The latter position is best expressed by A. de Mandach, Naisssance et développement de la

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purposes, it suffices to say that the Pseudo-Turpin was circulating both in Spain and France by the latter half of the twelfth century, and that by then it certainly ‘passed for authentic history’.8 The chronicle is attributed to Bishop Turpin of Rheims, an actual churchman of the eighth-century Carolingian kingdom, but in the legends one of the twelve peers of Charlemagne. In the chronicle Charlemagne is given credit not only for rescuing Compostela from the Muslims, but also for elevating it as the primatial church of all of Spain and endowing it with a number of complimentary prerogatives.9 This ambitious elevation of the church and see had certainly been the agenda of Compostela’s most powerful bishop, Diego Gelmírez, and so it is perhaps not surprising that the Pseudo-Turpin history was first committed to writing at Compostela during or shortly after his episcopate.10 In addition to the aggrandizement of Compostela, the PseudoTurpin recounts Charlemagne’s military exploits in the peninsula. The disaster of the actual 778 campaign is transformed into a heroic feat of arms.11 Chapter 5 of the chronicle gives an exhaustive list of cities that Charlemagne supposedly captured in the three years he remained in Spain after saving Santiago de Compostela.12 Having conquered the whole of the country the emperor returned to France. Some time later an African king called Aigolandus (a recurring character in the chanson de geste en Europe, I: La geste de Charlemagne et Roland (Geneva, 1961), as well as B. Sholod, Charlemagne in Spain (Geneva, 1966), pp. 111–15. See also M. C. Díaz y Díaz, El Códice Calixtino de la catedral de Santiago: Estudio codocológico y de contenido (Santiago de Compostela, 1988), and W. J. Purkis, Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c. 1095–c. 1187 (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 150–4. On the elevation of Santiago to archiepiscopal status, see R. A. Fletcher, Saint James’s Catapult: The Life and Times of Diego Gelmírez of Santiago de Compostela (Oxford, 1984), pp. 192–9. 8 R. Morrisey, Charlemagne and France: A Thousand Years of Mythology (Notre Dame, IN, 2003), p. 51. 9 Pseudo-Turpin, pp. 79–81. 10 Gelmírez was bishop from 1100 and archbishop from 1120 to 1140. For his biography, see Fletcher, Saint James’s Catapult. 11 R. Collins, Charlemagne (Toronto, 1998), pp. 65–8, gives a succinct account of the 778 campaign. 12 Pseudo-Turpin, pp. 58–9.

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Charlemagne gestes) retakes Spain, and advances into France.13 This sets off a protracted series of battles between the Franks and the Muslims, in which Roland becomes the chief Frankish hero and which leads Charlemagne to conquer Spain yet again. This time, upon his departure for the north, the rearguard is ambushed by Muslim princes in league with a Frankish traitor. In this fight, of course the famous battle of Roncesvalles, Roland and many of the leading warriors of Charlemagne’s court are killed. It has been argued that the extensive narration of the military exploits of Charlemagne and his armies against the forces of Islam, be they peninsular or African, was an intentional propaganda effort designed to promote French participation in Spanish crusading. William Purkis in fact labelled the Pseudo-Turpin the ‘foundation legend for crusading in Iberia’. 14 The ambush at Roncesvalles serves as the climax of the story in the Pseudo-Turpin, and in the broad strokes, if not the fine details, tells the same story as the better-known Song of Roland. These two works were the best known and most widely circulated of a vast array of material in which the legend of Charlemagne’s deeds in Spain grew to epic proportions during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.15 Moreover, as Matthew Gabriele has argued, these epic and heroic tales had become part of a very real memorialized golden age throughout the Frankish world, being both the stuff of dramatic stories and real history.16 It is therefore perfectly understandable why a thorough and judicious compiler of history, such as Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, might incorporate the Pseudo-Turpin into his chronicle. While the epic accounts of Charlemagne and Roland may have seamlessly blended into the historical memory of the Frankish world, 13 Pseudo-Turpin, p. 22 n. 4. 14 Purkis, Crusading Spirituality, p. 150. For an extensive discussion of the portrayal of Charlemagne as an idealized crusader both for Spain and beyond, see J. Stuckey, ‘Charlemagne as a Crusader? Memory, Propaganda, and the Many Uses of Charlemagne’s Legendary Expedition to Spain’, in Legend of Charlemagne, pp. 137–52. 15 Morrissey, Charlemagne and France, pp. 66–8. 16 Gabriele, Empire of Memory; L. Villegas Aristizábal, ‘Norman and Anglo-Norman Participation in the Spanish Reconquista, c. 1018–c. 1248’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Nottingham, 2007), pp. 63–7.

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the same was not necessarily true for everyone to the south of the Pyrenees. Though the legendary accounts of Charlemagne were as much a part of Iberian literary culture as they were French, their treatment and acceptance was not uniform.17 Alongside celebratory accounts like the Pseudo-Turpin, many Spanish chronicles express a rather more negative view of Carolingian activity in the peninsula. The earliest Iberian source to impart a negative spin on Charlemagne’s Spanish adventures is the Historia Silense.18 Though this Leonese chronicle has been dated to the second decade of the twelfth century and therefore probably pre-dates the earliest manuscript of the Pseudo-Turpin, it very clearly demonstrates that the broad outline of the legendary account of Roncesvalles and Charlemagne’s conquest of Spain was already well known.19 While lamenting the sorry state of the Iberian peninsula after the Arab conquest of 711, the author of the Historia observes that ‘it is known that no foreign person saved Spain from such ruin  … not even Charles, who the Franks falsely assert rescued certain cities to the south of the Pyrenees Mountains from the hands of the pagans.’20 The chronicle goes on to narrate the Carolingian campaign of 778, keeping very close to the account given by Einhard.21 The arrival of envoys from rebel factions in the north of the peninsula, intent on finding allies to counter the growing power of Umayyad 17 R. Menéndez Pidal, La Chanson de Roland y el Neotradicionalismo (Madrid, 1959), pp. 138–67. See also Charlemagne and his Legend, ed. Bailey and Giles (as above, n. 3). 18 For further discussion of Charlemagne and the Historia Silense, see M. Bailey, ‘Charlemagne as a Creative Force in the Spanish Epic’, in Charlemagne and his Legend, ed. Bailey and Giles. 19 Historia Silense, ed. J. Pérez de Urbel and A. González Ruiz-Zorrila (Madrid, 1959). For a full discussion of the provenance and dating of the Historia, see S. Barton and R. Fletcher, The World of El Cid: Chronicles of the Spanish Reconquest (Manchester, 2000), pp. 9–21; P. Linehan, History and the Historians of Medieval Spain (Oxford, 1993), pp. 128–9. 20 Historia Silense, p. 129: ‘Ceterum a tanta ruina, praeter Deum Patrem, qui peccata hominum in virga misericorditer visitat, nemo exterarum gentium Ispaniam sublevase cognoscitur. Sed neque Carolus, quem infra Pireneos montes quasdam civitates a manibus paganaorum eripuisse Franci falso asserunt.’ 21 Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH SRG 25.

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Cordoba, is accurately noted. The author suggests that Charlemagne’s interventions in Spain were motivated by greed for new conquests: ‘King Charles, persuaded by the aforementioned Moor, nurturing hope in his mind of capturing cities in Spain’ gathered his forces.22 When such conquests proved difficult, Charles ‘went home without any real effort to rescue the holy church from the power of the barbarians.’23 The retreat was ordered because Charlemagne ‘longed to soak in his bath, for which purpose he had carefully built Aquas Grani (Aachen)’.24 The battle of Roncesvalles is recounted as well, correctly attributing the victory over the Frankish army to the Navarrese. The brief account ends by reporting that Roncesvalles was never avenged. The Historia Silense is the first Spanish chronicle to express this decidedly negative view of the Carolingian involvement in Spain. Charlemagne’s intervention below the Pyrenees is portrayed as driven by greed and ultimately characterized as ineffectual. The French themselves, or at least the authors of the Roland legends, are (accurately) accused of fabricating Charlemagne’s successes. The reasons for the overt anti-French position are not clearly stated.25 However, the principal purpose of the Historia Silense was to record and celebrate the kingdom of León and the conquests of Alfonso VI. These accomplishments would of course be overshadowed by the competing narrative of a Carolingian reconquest of the peninsula being articulated in accounts like the Pseudo-Turpin. Refuting these French stories was a necessary step in creating a native Leonese epic, all the more heroic 22 Historia Silense, p. 130: ‘Tunc Carolus rex, persuasione predicti Mauri, spem capiendarum civitatum in Yspaniam mente concipiens, congregato Francorum exercitu’. 23 Historia Silense, p. 130: ‘absque ullo sudore pro eripienda a barbarorum dominatione sancta ecclesia, ad propria reveritur’. 24 Historia Silense, p. 130: ‘Anelabat etenim Carolus in termis illis citius lavari, quas Grani ad hoc opus delitiose construxerat.’ Note the strange ‘quas Grani’, which some manuscripts of the chronicle render as ‘Aquas Grani’, a common medieval appellation for Aachen. 25 Barton and Fletcher, World of El Cid, pp. 20–1, suggest that the failure of Alfonso VI’s French allies/mercenaries to fulfil their defensive service to the kingdom of León may have fuelled the tone of the chronicle. Linehan, History and the Historians, p. 169, offers less in the way of explanation, but notes that ‘Francophobia’ was ‘already rampant in the twelfth [century]’.

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for its veracity. Similarly, the author of the Historia Silense often refers to Alfonso VI by his imperial title; any competing imperial claim to Spain, like that of Charlemagne, had to be rejected.26 It is also worth noting the emergence of a particular dialogue about the motivation behind Charlemagne’s campaigns. The Pseudo-Turpin and (perhaps less explicitly) the Song of Roland both assigned to Charlemagne an essentially religious, pious motivation. The Pseudo-Turpin directly associates Charlemagne’s war against the Spanish Muslims with the defence, restoration and elevation of the church of Santiago de Compostela. The author of the Historia is quick to address this directly, implying that desire for conquest was the emperor’s primary motive, and pointing out that he did nothing to rescue the churches of Spain from Muslim domination.27 Rather, the author argued, it was the kings of León, not Charlemagne, who defended and restored the church.28 The propagandistic drive of the Historia Silense, and its account of Charlemagne’s campaign, would serve as the basis for the more elaborate accounts found in the Iberian histories of the early thirteenth century.

A

s the Charlemagne legends grew and matured, so did the degree   to which Iberian chroniclers were forced to address them. Writing about the same time as Alberic of Trois-Fontaines (the second or third decade of the thirteenth century), Lucas, the bishop of Túy in the northeast of the peninsula, discussed Charlemagne at length in book 4 of his Chronicon Mundi.29 His account of the Carolingian invasion of the peninsula differs substantially from both the Pseudo-Turpin and the 26 For a discussion of the context of the imperial claims expressed in the Historia Silense, see W. J. Purkis, ‘Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Perspectives on State Building in the Iberian Peninsula’, Reading Medieval Studies 26 (2010), 57–75 (pp. 62–3). 27 The idea of the restoration, rescue, or recuperation of churches held by Muslims was a powerful and recurrent theme in contemporary thought: see J. F. O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain (Philadelphia, PA, 2003), pp. 7–14; D. J. Smith, ‘Las Navas and the Restoration of Spain’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 4.1 (2012), 39–43. 28 Barton and Fletcher, World of El Cid, pp. 19–20. 29 Lucas of Túy, Chronicon Mundi, ed. E. Falque, CCCM 74 (Turnhout, 2003), pp. 235–7.

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Historia Silense, though it continues to reflect the theme that not all Iberians looked favourably on the emperor.30 Lucas reports that, after invading and conquering Catalonia and Navarra, Charlemagne tried to entice Alfonso II, king of Asturias, to become ‘subject and vassal to him’.31 These imperialistic overtures were met with hostility from King Alfonso’s nephew Bernardo del Carpio, a precocious young knight.32 In fact much of the Charlemagne material found in Lucas focuses on the legend of Bernardo, who has been described as an Asturian/Leonese answer to the hero Roland in the French epics.33 Bernardo responds to the Frankish pretensions by leading a combined force of fellow-Asturians, Basques, and Muslims from Zaragoza against Charlemagne’s army at Roncesvalles, defeating and killing Roland and the other Peers. Up to this point, the Chronicon Mundi displays at least the same sentiments as the earlier Historia Silense, if perhaps not the same narrative.34 Though Lucas clearly saw Bernardo as a heroic figure, describing him as ‘tall in stature, handsome, charming in speech, 30 For further discussion of Charlemagne and the Chronicon Mundi, see Bailey, ‘Charlemagne as a Creative Force’. 31 Lucas of Túy, Chronicon, p. 235: ‘Tunc Carolus scripsit regi Adefonso ut sibi esset subditus et vasallus.’ On the reign of Alfonso II (791–842), see R. Collins, Caliphs and Kings: Spain, 796–1031 (Malden, MA, 2012), pp. 67–70. It is worth noting that Alfonso began his reign in 791, some thirteen years after the battle of Roncesvalles, and the narrative presented in the Chronicon Mundi is a blend of history and legend. 32 Lucas’s account is the first known appearance of Bernardo del Carpio, a legendary figure and the subject of much epic material in his own right. On Lucas and the Bernardo story, see D. Catalán, La épica espańola: Nueva documentación y nueva evaluación (Madrid, 2001), pp. 67–75; B. F. Reilly, ‘Sources for the Fourth Book of Lucas of Túy’s Chronicon Mundi’, Classical Folia 30 (1976), 127–37. On the legend of Bernardo del Carpio more broadly, R. Menéndez Pidal, Romanceros del Rey Rodrigo y de Bernardo del Carpio (Madrid, 1957), pp. 143–270. 33 Spanish Ballads, ed. C. C. Smith (Oxford, 1964), p. 59. 34 Catalán, La épica espańola, p. 67, argues that Lucas uses the Historia Silense as his primary source for this section of the Chronicon Mundi. I would suggest, alternatively, that Lucas was using Einhard’s Vita Karoli Magni, which was also used by the author of the Historia. See below for further discussion of this argument.

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illustrious in character, vigorous in arms, and provident in council’, he did not view the attack at Roncesvalles as an unalloyed good.35 In fact, he says that Bernardo allied with the Saracens, ‘setting aside the fear of God’. 36 At this point, departing from the Bernardo legend and the Historia Silense, Lucas continues the story straight from the pages of the Pseudo-Turpin. He narrates that Charlemagne returned to Spain after his army recovered from the defeat at Roncesvalles, and slaughtered many Muslims. He then narrates Charlemagne’s pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, and the enrichment and elevation of that church to metropolitan status, here in consultation with Alfonso II of Asturias. Returning to the legendary material, the section ends with reconciliation between the emperor and Bernardo del Carpio, who returns with his former enemy to France.37 One might say that as a historian Lucas of Túy wanted to have his cake and eat it too. Following the Historia Silense, Lucas portrayed the battle of Roncesvalles as a defensive, Spanish conflict, rather than an epic conflict between Christians and Muslims as do the French accounts. Similarly, he was eager to recount the deeds of his native Leonese epic hero, Bernardo. But, having made the decision to incorporate these epics into his historical narrative, he attempted to reconcile the Charlemagne and Roland legends into the story as well. Lucas was apparently attached to the image of the ‘most Christian’ Charles, pseudo-founder of the church of Compostela. The result is the somewhat incoherent and historically disjointed account presented above. Though the exact reasoning behind these editorial choices is unknowable, it appears that ultimately Lucas is, like the author of the Historia Silense, intent on promoting the importance and dignity of the Leonese monarchy. The relationship between Alfonso II and Charlemagne was problematic for this purpose. The author of the Historia Silense, almost certainly using Einhard as a source, completely ignores the account in the Vita Karoli Magni of the diplomatic relations between Asturias and the Carolingian court: ‘In this way [Charlemagne] won over to himself Alfonso [II], the king 35 Lucas of Túy, Chronicon, p. 235: ‘Erat quidem statura magnus, vultu decorus, suavis eloquio, ingenio clarus, armis strenuus et consilio providus.’ 36 Lucas of Túy, Chronicon, p. 235: ‘postposito Dei timore’. 37 In fact the entire narrative of Bernardo del Carpio is somewhat disjointed: see Catalán, La épica espańola, pp. 71–3.

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of Galicia and Asturias, that when he sent letters or legates to Charles he ordered that in his presence he should only be referred as his [Charlemagne’s] man.’38 The historical accuracy of this subordination of the Asturian king (surely a rex parvus) to the Carolingian emperor is not clear, though it seems direct contact between Oviedo and Aachen was rather limited.39 Lucas, who clearly erred on the side of inclusion rather than excision in his composition, instead glossed this potentially difficult power relationship with the story of Bernardo and his Iberian resistance.40 But, as a Leonese cleric, and neighbour of Compostela, he also gave credence to the epic tradition of Charlemagne’s exploits in Spain. He may also have been concerned to avoid any overt anti-French sentiment for the sake of his patroness, Berenguela, the queen mother (of León and Castile). Her sister was, after all, Blanche, the queen mother of Louis IX of France. No such concerns restrained the second great historian of the period, the archbishop of Toledo, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada. An unashamed Castilian partisan, Rodrigo dedicated his De rebus Hispanie to King Fernando III, and pulled no punches for the French.41 Moreover, as a tireless promoter of the primatial rights of his church of Toledo, he was downright hostile towards his archiepiscopal rivals in Santiago de Compostela, which in part helps to explain his complete rejection of the stories presented in the Pseudo-Turpin. In many ways, Rodrigo’s account of Charlemagne in Iberia is quite similar to that of Lucas of Túy, and in fact the archbishop often drew 38 Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, MGH SRG 25, p. 19: ‘Adeo namque Hadefonsum Galleciae atque Asturiae regem sibi societate devinxit, ut is, cum ad eum vel litteras vel legatos mitteret, non aliter se apud illum quam proprium suum appellari iuberet.’ 39 Collins, Caliphs and Kings, pp. 68–9, argues for a limited relation and against any real subordinate status. Sholod, Charlemagne in Spain, pp. 53–61, and M. Defourneaux, ‘Charlemagne et la monarchie asturienne’, Mélanges d’histoire du Moyen Âge à la mémoire de Louis Halphen (Paris, 1951), pp. 177–84, both argue for a considerably more elaborate relationship. 40 Catalán, La épica espańola, p. 71, argues that Lucas invented the Bernardo story just for this purpose. 41 Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, De rebus Hispanie; sive, Historia Gothica, ed. J. Fernández Valverde, CCCM 72 (Turnhout, 1988).

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heavily from the slightly earlier Chronicon Mundi.42 That said, the narrative begins with a more reserved role for the French. In this version of the story, Charlemagne’s Spanish troubles begin when Alfonso II of Asturias sends messengers to France, offering to surrender his kingdom in exchange for aid against his Muslim enemies. As in Lucas, it is Bernardo del Carpio who indignantly rejects Carolingian domination and leads the fight against it, again in alliance with Arabs. The archbishop provides for rather more agency on the part of Alfonso II after his initial diplomatic contacts with the emperor. Realizing his mistake, the king of Asturias fights along with Bernardo at Roncesvalles, in this version destroying the van of Charlemagne’s advancing forces, not the rear of a retreating army. Like Lucas, Rodrigo does express some regret that the French Christians and Spanish Christians are not getting along as co-religionists should, but clearly implies that the unfortunate state of affairs is the fault of the invaders. In fact, he remarks that the Spanish ‘chose to die rather than to be slaves, and proceeded at once to gather together with the King Alfonso against Charles’.43 Following the Historia Silense, Rodrigo repeats the story of Charlemagne limping home to his warm bath in Aachen and dying a short time later, his defeat at Spanish hands unavenged. If Rodrigo had stopped there we might conclude that his account is simply a rather animated retelling of Lucas and the Historia Silense. But the archbishop was just getting started. Rodrigo continues, observing that ‘Not a few performers bear fables of Charles having conquered towns and castles in the kingdoms of Spain, and having vigorously fought many battles with the Arabs and having established the pilgrimage road on the best path from Germany and Gaul to

42 Bernard Reilly described Rodrigo’s work as ‘massively dependent upon’ Lucas’s Chronicon: see B. F. Reilly, ‘De rebus Hispanie and the Mature Latin Chronicle in Medieval Iberia’, Viator 43 (2012), 131–45. For further discussion of Charlemagne and the De rebus Hispanie, see Bailey, ‘Charlemagne as a Creative Force’. 43 Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, De rebus Hispanie, p. 127: ‘Cumque hoc verbum fuisset in Asturiis, Alava et Biscagia, Navarram Ruchonia, et Aragonia divulgatum, omnes eodem animo et pari studio elegerunt mori pocius quam servire, collectique insimul cum rege Aldefonso contra Carolum processerunt.’

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Santiago.’ 44 This is, of course, a very direct reference to the story related in the Pseudo-Turpin chronicle, as well as in some versions of the Song of Roland.45 While acknowledging the facts of the Carolingian conquests in Cataluña, he then goes on to narrate the history of the Christian conquests of a lengthy list of cities, mostly taken from their Muslim rulers during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In doing so he is very clearly refuting the catalogue of cities the Pseudo-Turpin claims were conquered by Charlemagne. He ends his rather accurate history lesson by forcing the logical conclusion: Since therefore the Christians could conquer all these places over the course of the last two hundred years, I do not see what Charles acquired in Spain, since nearly four hundred years have passed since his death. Therefore it is better to agree with evidence of deeds done than to pay attention to fantastic stories.46 He then goes on to point out that since Charlemagne was defeated at Roncesvalles, he could not be responsible for opening the pilgrimage route to Santiago, either. Rodrigo gives an essentially accurate countertheory that the road developed organically over the course of time as pilgrims sought out the miracles of the apostle while trying to avoid travelling through Muslim territory.47 44 Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, De rebus Hispanie, p. 128: ‘Non nulli histrionum fabulis inherentes ferunt Carolum civitates plurimas, castea et oppida in Hispaniis acquisisse multaque prelia cum Arabibus strenue perpetrasse et stratam publicam a Gallis et Germania ad Sanctum Jacobum recto itinere direxisse.’ 45 Pseudo-Turpin, pp. 58–61. Though the most famous Oxford Version of the Song of Roland does not mention Charlemagne establishing the road to Santiago, it does appear in the longer, late twelfth-century versions: see Duggan and Rejhon, The Song of Roland, pp. 8 and 424. Catalán, La épica espańola, pp. 84–7, demonstrates that Archbishop Rodrigo was almost certainly familiar with that version of the Song of Roland. 46 Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, De rebus Hispanie, p. 130: ‘Cum igitur hec omnia infra ducentorum annorum spacium potestati accreverint Christiane, non video quid in Hispaniis Carolus acquisivit, cum ab eius morte anni pene efluxerunt cccc. Facti igitur evidencie est pocius annuendum quam fabulosis narrationibus atendendum.’ 47 Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, De rebus Hispanie, p. 130.

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Rodrigo’s account, or rather refutation, of the Charlemagne legend may be the most complete and lengthy of the period, but it is perhaps not the most striking. Writing a few years earlier, the Spanish decretalist Vincentius Hispanus directly mentioned Charlemagne in a gloss concerning the relative merits of the French and Spanish churches.48 His principal piece of evidence for Spanish superiority was that ‘when Charles and all of the Franks wished to invade Spain, the Spanish blocked their passage, overcame them in battle, and killed twelve peers’!49 This brief statement is remarkable not for its detailed account, but for the startling breadth of its nationalistic claims. All of the aforementioned accounts specify the Iberian participants in the battle of Roncesvalles carefully: they were either Basques, or Leonese partisans in alliance with Muslims, or just Saracens. But for Vincentius Hispanus, the victors at Roncesvalles were simply Ispani. None of the discomfort with the Christian–Muslim cooperation expressed by Rodrigo and Lucas appears here. All that mattered was that the Spanish humbled the French.

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y the first half of the thirteenth century, Iberian historiography had   moved some way from that which originated north of the Pyrenees. In many ways, this process is perhaps exactly what we should expect. As discussed above, the aggrandizement of the Charlemagne and Roland legends was part of a process by which the northern French were creating a glorious history to reinforce political and cultural claims in the present. The same process was very much a part of contemporary Spanish culture. Archbishop Rodrigo himself was one of the greatest exponents of a historical tradition that tried to situate Iberian monarchy and political power in the context of a largely imagined past that harked back to the ancient Visigothic kingdom. Where these two great projects of cultural memory overlapped, in the Iberian career of Charlemagne, vigorous debate and conflicting versions of the past were inevitable. This dichotomy of opinion was of course not absolute. The Pseudo-Turpin itself was, after all, almost certainly produced on Spanish

48 G. Post, ‘“Blessed Lady Spain”: Vincentius Hispanus and Spanish National Imperialism in the Thirteenth Century’, Speculum 29 (1954), 198–209. 49 Post, ‘Blessed Lady Spain’, p. 203.

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soil.50 With the exception of the Historia Silense, the anti-French attitudes described above were not prevalent in the twelfth century. One need look no further than the Poem of Almería, written around 1150, in which the author favourably invokes Charlemagne to legitimize the deeds and imperial title of Alfonso VII.51 However, by the time Archbishop Rodrigo and Lucas of Túy were writing, the prevailing opinions concerning the Carolingian legacy in Spain had clearly shifted. Much of this shift in meaning should be situated in the events of the thirteenth century that some of these historians and chroniclers experienced first hand. The specific experience, and the context for Alberic of Trois-Fontaines’ rex parvus comment, was the military campaign that culminated in the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa.52 This battle, fought in the year 1212, was conceived and executed as a major international crusade. The papacy and the Castilian monarchy actively sought aid and assistance from all over the kingdom of France. These recruitment efforts yielded impressive results, and an army of several thousand French and Occitanian crusaders, led by three bishops and numerous lesser lords, travelled to Toledo in the spring of 1212 to take 50 There are, perhaps, some grounds to debate the Iberian origin of the Pseudo-Turpin. Some scholars have noted the strong associations between the chronicle and the abbey of Saint-Denis, though as Elizabeth Brown has noted, ‘Few scholars seriously suggest that the Turpin was composed at Saint-Denis’: E. A. R. Brown, ‘Saint-Denis and the Turpin Legend’, in The Codex Calixtinus and the Shrine of St James, ed. J. Williams and A. Stones (Tübingen, 1992), pp. 51–88 (p. 52). 51 The Poem is attached to the text of the Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris, in Chronica Hispana saeculi XII, ed. E. Falque Rey, J. Gil and A. Maya, CCCM 71 (Turnhout, 1990), pp. 147–248. For a discussion of the comparison between Charlemagne and Alfonso VII in the Poem, see Purkis, ‘Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Perspectives’, pp. 64–5. 52 The most recent, and most complete, studies of the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa are M. Alvira Cabrer, Las Navas de Tolosa 1212: Idea, liturgia y memoria de la batalla (Madrid, 2012); and F. García Fitz, Las Navas de Tolosa (Barcelona, 2005). See also the series of essays published as a special edition of the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 4.1 (March 2012). Most of the details of the campaign discussed below are considered more extensively in my PhD dissertation, M. Gómez, ‘The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa: The Culture and Practice of Crusading in Medieval Iberia’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Tennessee, 2011).

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part in the campaign. The relations between these ultramontanos, as the Spanish called them, and their Iberian hosts parallels in many ways the conflicting interpretations of Carolingian history highlighted above.53 The French crusaders, of course, had many preconceived notions about the campaign for which they were volunteering, shaped in no small part by the Charlemagne legends and stories. For the French, participation in warfare along the Christian–Muslim frontier in Spain was nothing new. The Song of Roland, the Pseudo-Turpin, and a wealth of other epic material were certainly part of the aristocratic culture of early thirteenth-century France; they celebrated the long history of French military expeditions in Spain, which were especially frequent during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.54 Sung by troubadours, or read in monasteries and cathedral schools, the French adventures to the south of the Pyrenees formed, alongside the stories and songs of the eastern crusades, the heroic literature on which the military elite of France was raised. In these epics, the Spain to which Charlemagne’s heroes ‘laid waste’ is of course a land of pagan-Muslim caricatures, an opportunity for glorious exploits and a ripe field for plunder. No mention is made of the Christian kingdoms of Iberia, just the lands of a treacherous enemy who ‘serves Mohammed and prays to Apollin’. 55 53 Linehan, History and the Historians, pp. 296–7, explicitly connected the anti-French attitudes of Vincentius Hispanus to the prevailing attitudes after the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. 54 The literature on the French expeditions to Spain is extensive. See especially Villegas Aristizábal, ‘Norman and Anglo-Norman Participation in the Spanish Reconquista’; M. Bull, Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade (Oxford, 1993); M. Defourneux, Les Français en Espagne (Paris, 1949). 55 The Song of Roland, 55.1 (‘Carles li magnes ad Espaigne guastede’); 1.8 (‘Mahumet sert e Apollin recleimet’). The image of Spain as entirely (or primarily) a Muslim country may not have been uncommon in twelfthcentury France. Raymond of Aguilers used the term Hispaniam to refer to the Muslim-controlled countryside around Antioch in his chronicle of the First Crusade: see Raymond d’Aguilers, Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Jerusalem, RHC Occ. 3, pp. 243–4. While there was, of course, a region of Armenia called Iberia, this reference to Spain is noteworthy. Derek Lomax, examining this and other similar instances in twelfthcentury crusade chronicles, concluded that it was probably customary for Provençal crusaders to refer to Muslim territory as ‘Spain’ on account of

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However, it was primarily through the Christian kingdoms that the ultramontanos had any contact with Spain. The long history of French and Provençal involvement in the Iberian peninsula need not be recounted here.56 Nor need we review the Gallic military adventures in Spain, so frequent in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and typically unfolding as missions of assistance to the campaigns of the Christian monarchs of the peninsula. To be sure, not all French expeditions were coordinated with the Christian kingdoms. Some eleventh- and early twelfth-century French expeditions appear to have operated without regard for or coordination with the Iberian Christians. As late as 1154, King Louis VII of France was apparently considering an uninvited expedition to Spain, but was discouraged by the pope.57 Through the middle of the twelfth century it was still possible for French adventurers to look on the Iberian peninsula as an undifferentiated field of conquest rather than as neighbouring Christian kingdoms. By the era of Las Navas de Tolosa, this tradition of crusading in Spain ensured that a large number of French and northern European soldiers would answer the call to arms and travel to Toledo in the spring of 1212. But the ultramontanos arrived in Spain with a very distinct set of expectations for the campaign, shaped by traditions of their ancestor’s martial exploits.58 The highly idealized mode of crusading which the French participants inherited, both from their own familial legacy and from their cultural surroundings, clashed severely with the realities of the Christian–Muslim frontier they found in Castile.

the long tradition of campaigning in the Iberian peninsula: see D. Lomax, ‘Un Nuevo significado del topónimo España’, Revista de Facultad de Geografía e Historia 4 (1989), 309–15. Similarly, José Antonio Maravall demonstrated that the term ‘Spain’ was used both to refer to the entire Iberian peninsula, and to al-Andalus (i.e. Muslim Spain) specifically: see J. A. Maravall, El concepto de España en la Edad Media (Madrid, 1964). 56 As Defourneaux, Les Français en Espagne, p. 127, described it, ‘From the Basque country to Roussillon, the Pyrenees formed not so much a barrier as a zone of permanent contacts.’ 57 O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade, p. 50. 58 For an excellent treatment on the impact of familial legacies on crusading, see N. L. Paul, To Follow in their Footsteps: The Crusades and Family Memory in the High Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 2012).

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From the beginning, many of the French crusaders were quite literally following in Charlemagne’s footsteps. Many of them almost certainly entered Spain through the valley of Roncesvalles itself.59 From there they made their way south to the rallying point for the crusaders at the very heart of the frontier, the city of Toledo. The ultramontanos, arriving in the city after a long journey, must have been bewildered and shocked at their surroundings. Toledo in the early thirteenth century was still culturally an Arabic city.60 The Mozarabic Christians, who made up the bulk of the population, used Arabic as their first language, on the streets, in the markets, on their street-signs, and in church.61 There was also of course a sizeable Jewish minority, also culturally and linguistically Arabic. Some Muslims still lived in the city as well, with even more to be found among the local peasant population. The city’s cathedral was still the old mosque, as were some of the smaller churches. Islamic décor and architecture dominated everywhere, sometimes with jarringly paradoxical results. For example, the Hospitaller chapel of Santa Cruz was housed in the former Bad-al-Mardum mosque.62 The tiny church had been recently renovated. Alongside the impressive image of Christ Pantokrator, the apse was decorated with apocalyptic biblical quotations (in Latin) and Arabic calligraphy. Even the crusaders’ most illustrious Christian hosts wore Muslim garb. The Castilian royal 59 The route followed by the French crusaders can be deduced from the account of the campaign provided by Arnald Amalric, archbishop of Narbonne and one of the leaders of the French contingent. He notes that on his way to Toledo he stopped to rally the king of Navarra, Sancho VII, to the crusade. Sancho’s kingdom and its capital Pamplona lay directly below the pass at Roncesvalles. See letter of Arnald Amalric to the Cistercian General Chapter in Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, 19:251. 60 The hybrid nature of the culture formed along the frontier between Islamic and Christian Spain, and in Toledo most especially, is exquisitely described and illustrated by J. Dodds, M. R. Menocal and A. Krasner Balbale, The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture (New Haven, 2008). 61 J. González, Repoblación de Castilla la Nueva, II (Madrid, 1975), pp. 70–3. 62 I discussed this and other similar churches at length in M. Gómez, ‘The Crusades and Church Art in the Era of Las Navas de Tolosa’, Annuario de la Historia de la Iglesia 20 (2011), 237–60.

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family all wore the latest Andalucian fashions, adorned with Arabic, even Quranic text. The crown prince of Castile, Fernando, who by all accounts had been the most eager advocate of crusade against the Almohads, had died suddenly the previous October. He was buried in a coif decorated with Arabic text, which reads, ‘The Lord is the Renewer of solace.’ Archbishop Rodrigo of Toledo himself was buried, many years later, in one of his finest chasubles decorated with Arabic calligraphy repeating the word ‘prosperity’. 63 Clearly what was good for the church was good for the churchman. Many of the French crusaders must have been surprised, even shocked, at the marvellous and exotic city at which they had arrived, and wondered if they had mistakenly crossed the Christian–Muslim frontier on their journey south. Others must have suspected that the real frontier was at the Pyrenees, and that, just as in Roland’s adventures, all of Spain was a foreign, dangerous land of adventure and war. To be sure, their crusade experience must have started off on uneasy footing. The conflicts between the French crusaders and their Iberian allies started early. Many of the crusaders arrived short of supplies, and provisions proved to be terribly expensive. The Castilians billeted the French in the pleasure gardens of the palace of the former Muslim lords of the city, and the delicate landscaping was devastated, much to the chagrin of the locals.64 Some of the French attacked the Jewish district on Good Friday and had to be restrained by the local authorities under the command of Archbishop Rodrigo.65 Once the campaign finally got under way conflicts between the ultramontanos and their hosts continued, and even intensified. While on the march the army spread out, presumably so as not to over-crowd the roads or over-tax water sources. The ultramontanos followed an easterly route that took them to the castle of Malagón, a northern Almohad outpost, on 24 June. The castle was captured in a brief and violent 63 Most of these articles of clothing are preserved in the Museo de Telas at the monastery of Las Huelgas in Burgos: see C. Herrero Carretero, Museo de Telas Medievales: Monasterio de Santa Maria la Real de Huelgas (Madrid, 1988). An image of the archbishop’s robe can be seen in J. Dodds, Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain (New York, 1992), p. 331. 64 Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, De rebus Hispanie, pp. 259–60; Annales Toledanos I, ed. E. Florez (Madrid, 1754–1918), p. 396. 65 Annales Toledanos I, p. 396.

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siege, and despite attempting to surrender the entire garrison was massacred.66 Some of the Iberian sources were critical of the episode. The Chronica Latina observed that the French crusaders captured the castle, ‘cutting down whoever they found there for no purpose’.67 Lucas of Túy, whose account of the campaign is considerably shorter, takes time to mention that the crusaders captured Malagón, ‘cutting down all of the people of the town by the sword’.68 It is clear that the event was deemed noteworthy, perhaps even unfortunate, by the Spanish observers. The slaughter of surrendered prisoners was outside the normal conventions of war.69 This was certainly the case in the Iberian peninsula, where less than a year before the massacre at Malagón the Almohads had allowed the knights of Calatrava to retreat after surrendering the castle of Salvatierra.70 In fact, such massacres were exceedingly rare in the history of Christian–Muslim warfare in Spain. However, they were not at all unusual in the tales of Charlemagne’s Spanish campaigns.71 The divergence of ideas about proper conduct continued in this same vein. A few days later, the army besieged the fortress of Calatrava. Wishing to preserve the fortifications for future use by the knights of Calatrava, Alfonso VIII apparently negotiated a peaceful surrender.72 For entirely practical reasons, the ultramontanos were likely kept out of the arrangement until the garrison had safely departed. This naturally 66 The episode was recounted by Arnald Amalric, Letter to the Cistercian General Chapter, p. 251. 67 Chronica Latina Regnum Castellae, ed. L. Charlo Brea (Turnhout, 1997), p. 58: ‘concidentes in frusta quotquot ibi reperti sunt’. 68 Lucas of Túy, Chronicon, p. 329: ‘cunctis illius opidi gladio trucidantes’. 69 For a discussion on crusading and the conventions of war, see J. France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000–1300 (Ithaca, NY, 1999), pp. 226–9; H. Nicholson, Medieval Warfare in Europe, 300–1500 (New York, 2004), p. 130. 70 Chronica Latina, ed. Brea, p. 54. 71 See, for example, The Song of Roland, 8.6–7, where the French celebrate the destruction of Cordoba, and the conversion or execution of all of the ‘paien’ within. 72 Details of the siege are noted by Arnald Amalric, Letter to the Cistercian General Chapter, p. 251; Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, De rebus Hispanie, pp. 264–5.

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led to some serious disagreements. Alberic of Trois-Fontaines reported the episode as follows: With nightfall interrupting the fighting, the chief counsellors of the Saracens came to the little king [Alfonso VIII] secretly proposing that if he would leave them their lives, they would depart that night in their shirt-sleeves, unknown to the French. And they surrendered the castle to him, with all its furnishings, supplies, weapons and treasures, which the king had granted them, and he set up his garrison in the castle. When the French learned of this the next day, the archbishop of Bordeaux and the bishop of Nantes went home in indignation.73 Similarly, one of the Muslim historians of the campaign, ‘Abd al-Wāh.id al-Marrākushī, gave voice to the indignant crusaders: ‘You brought us here solely that we could help you conquer your land, and now you prevent us from plundering and killing the Muslims. Because of this we will not accompany you further.’ 74 The majority of French crusaders immediately abandoned the campaign and turned north. On the way they split up: Alberic of Trois-Fontaines reports that some went towards Galicia, following in the legendary footsteps of Charlemagne, to visit Santiago de Compostela.75 Others returned to Toledo and tried unsuccessfully to break into the lightly defended city, presumably to plunder it. While the Iberian chroniclers of the campaign were shocked and disturbed by the conduct of the ultramontanos, their behaviour should perhaps not surprise us.76 This was the ethic and lesson of the 73 Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, Chronicon, p. 895: ‘Nocte bellum dirimente venerunt primi de consilio Sarracenorum ad regem parvum occulte rogantes, ut vita eis concessa in camisiis ea nocte nescientibus Francis sineret eos abire. Et ipsi tradebant ei castrum cum omni sua supellectile et victualibus et armis et thesauris, quod rex concessit; et in castro suos collocavit. Hoc cum die sequenti percepissent Franci, archiepiscopus Burdegalensis et episcopus Nannetensis indignati repatriaverunt.’ 74 ʻAbd al-Wāh.id al-Marrākushī, quoted in A. Huici Miranda, Estudio Sobre la Campaña de Las Navas de Tolosa (Valencia, 1916), p. 122. 75 Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, Chronicon, p. 894. 76 Linehan, History and the Historians, pp. 169, 269–98, describes the portrayal of the French withdrawal in these thirteenth-century chronicles

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Charlemagne legends. Saracens, even those who had been captured, were slaughtered by the thousands. All of Spain was an undifferentiated field for heroic exploits, fabulous plunder and epic combat. The French crusaders might as well have been acting out the Pseudo-Turpin, a story that, as noted above, has been called the foundation legend for crusading in Spain.77 It certainly was that for the French crusaders in 1212. If imitatio Christi had become by the early thirteenth century a major theme of crusade ideology, imitatio Caroli et Rothalandi was apparently a natural next step. Thus the legendary Charlemagne was central to the experience of the participants of Las Navas de Tolosa, and eventually to its historians as well. The northern crusaders arrived with a set of expectations and understandings drawn from their own epic literature and songs. They even travelled in Charlemagne’s footsteps, whether actual, through Roncesvalles, or legendary, to Santiago de Compostela. This fact was not lost on their Iberian hosts, who could and did draw direct connections between the behaviour of the French in Spain and their Carolingian legends. So when French chroniclers like Alberic de Trois-Fontaines recounted the events of 1212, Charlemagne quickly came to mind. The fact that the French crusaders abandoned the campaign might be glossed by the insertion of glorious titbits from the ancient past. Alfonso VIII of Castile was certainly the hero of the hour, but Alberic thought it critical to remind his readers that he was still just rex parvus. Whatever may have been achieved in 1212 paled in comparison to the exploits of Charlemagne, who had conquered Spain and defeated the Muslims four centuries earlier. But to Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, a committed partisan of the Castilian monarchy, such a characterization could not be left unchallenged. Alfonso VIII was, to his archbishop, the rex nobilis, who stood and fought against the Almohads rather than abandoning the crusade. The victory of Las Navas de Tolosa, which forms the apex of Rodrigo’s De rebus Hispanie, was a signal moment in a long history of heroic battles waged by Spanish Christians. Any myths about Charlemagne conquering Spain had to be confronted and dismissed. If that meant that Rodrigo, as a native of Navarra and arguably the greatest promoter of the crusade in Iberian history, had to reconcile himself to as ‘gleeful’. 77 Again, see Purkis, Crusading Spirituality, pp. 150–65, especially pp. 163–4.

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the notion that his Christian ancestors and their Muslim neighbours had combined forces at Roncesvalles, so be it  –  as long as Roland was still killed and Charlemagne sent home to die in a warm bath.

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5 Charlemagne in Girona: Liturgy, Legend and the Memory of Siege Jeffrey Doolittle

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or centuries, residents of the city of Girona in northeastern Spain have fostered a legend that Charlemagne personally conquered their city from the Muslims in 785. Even today, Charlemagne retains a significant presence in Girona: among several Carolingian-themed curiosities, the Catalan city boasts a ‘Torre de Carlemany’, an eleventhcentury Romanesque bell tower of the city’s cathedral; a ‘Cadira de Carlemany’, an episcopal throne carved out of marble that apparently looked so old the emperor himself could have used it; and a ‘Cartoral de Carlemany’, an early thirteenth-century cartulary.1 For tourists, there is also a Hotel Carlemany in a downtown plaza. The tradition of Charlemagne’s conquest of Girona has murky origins, but has enjoyed a long life in the city. In fact, it was so popular that from 1345 until at least 1484 Charlemagne was not just a conquering folk hero remembered in local legend, but also a liturgically celebrated saint in the diocese. For the centrepiece of this celebration, Arnau de Mont-rodon, canon of the cathedral (1313–35) and then bishop of Girona (1335–48), directed 1 See the website for the cathedral of Girona for a virtual tour: http:// www.catedraldegirona.org/. See also recent tourist guidebooks for the cathedral: J. Nadal i Farreras et al., La catedral de Girona (Girona, 2002), or M. Sureda i Jubany, Catedral de Girona (Girona, 2005). Images of these items are found at the end of J. Molina Figueras, ‘Arnau de Montrodon y la catedral de San Carlomagno: Sobre la imagen y el culto al Emperador Carolingio en Gerona’, Anuario de Estudios Medievales 34.1 (2004), 449–54. Also, see B. Sholod, ‘Charlemagne in Peninsular Religious and Folk Traditions’, in Charlemagne in Spain: The Cultural Legacy of Roncesvalles (Geneva, 1966), pp. 208–11, for these and other Charlemagne-related features in the area of Girona. For the Cartoral, see Cartoral, dit de Carlemany, del bisbe de Girona (s. IX–XIV), ed. J. M. Marquès, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1993), especially p. 11 for discussion of the interesting attribution of the cartulary to Charlemagne.

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the creation of a unique corpus of Latin liturgical texts, including the Officium in festo sancti Karoli magni imperatoris et confessoris, the Legenda sancti Karoli Magni and the Tractatus de captione Gerunde, that each lauded Charlemagne’s founding of local churches, including the cathedral, as well as his heroic, miraculous and entirely fabricated capture of the city.2 Scholars such as Gaston Paris, F. E. Schneegans and Jules Coulet have traced the liturgical narrative of the taking of Girona to a number of written sources, including the puzzling ‘Fragment de la Haye’, the twelfth-century Chronicon Rivipullensis and Historia Turpini (PseudoTurpin) and, most notably, the thirteenth-century Gesta Karoli Magni ad Carcassonam et Narbonam (Pseudo-Philomena) composed at Lagrasse.3 These connections, largely based on names and locations 2 Most scholars, including J. Coulet, Étude sur l’office de Gironne en l’honneur de Saint Charlemagne (Montpellier, 1907), pp. 102–4, and Sholod, ‘Charlemagne’, p. 204, have seen the Tractatus as a later fifteenth-century elaboration of the material in the Officium, written to defend the cult after the 1484 papal prohibition of the lectiones and based on the narrative format; Coulet even said that it was not liturgical. However, F. X. Altés i Aguiló, after a careful codicological study of the surviving manuscripts from the Girona archives, recently argued that the Vita, Tractatus and Legenda are related texts and were likely written around the same time for liturgical use in the cathedral: F. X. Altés i Aguiló, ‘La institució de la festa de Sant Carlemany a la seu de Girona i els textos hagiografics del seu ofici litúrgic’, Miscel·lània litúrgica catalana 17 (2009), 211–72 (pp. 247–8). Reversing the established order of composition, he felt that the lectiones from the Officium of 1345 were an abbreviated form of the Legenda, which was based on the longer Tractatus, and that the Tractatus and Vita were paired texts (p. 227) that often occurred together in Girona legendaries. Under this new interpretation, the entire corpus may have been produced by Montrodon himself or under his direction at around the same period. 3 G. B. P. Paris, Histoire poetíque de Charlemagne (Paris, 1865), and F. E. Schneegans, Die Quellen des Songennanten Pseudo-Philomena (Strassburg, 1891), both refer to the Girona office in their foundational works on the legends of Charlemagne. Paris saw a lost romance of the ‘prise de Girone’ behind the office and looked to the ‘Fragment de la Haye’ with its description of a siege by Charlemagne against an unnamed Saracen city for confirmation of his views. Schneegans instead saw the heavy

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shared between the texts, are convincing. Miquel Coll i Alentorn also found compelling hints that Arnau de Mont-rodon may have considered elements of the 1285 French campaign against Girona during the crusade against Aragon, noting similar references to ships and supply lines in the fourteenth-century liturgical texts and the slightly earlier Catalan chronicles of the crusade by Bernat Desclot and Ramon Muntaner.4 However, a deeper comparison between these texts reveals not only surprisingly similar accounts of two ‘Frankish’ armies that crossed the eastern Pyrenees in campaigns five hundred years apart, but also a shared emphasis on a specific narrative of siege. That Girona was the enemy in the liturgy, and the hero in the 1285 accounts, presented Mont-rodon with an interpretive problem that he addressed by allowing Muslim Girona to be taken only by divine intervention, perhaps partly as a way of accommodating civic pride. The first part of this chapter will survey the liturgical celebration of St Charlemagne in Girona; the second includes a translation of the Officium and analyses the liturgical narrative of Charlemagne’s legendary campaign against Girona; the third section will look at the echoes of the French invasion of 1285, and the memory of siege more broadly, in Mont-rodon’s formulation of the liturgical account of Charlemagne’s capture of the city. The memory of the 1285 siege of Girona, a traumatic event in the history of the city, had a considerable influence on the fourteenth-century liturgical reconfiguration of the local Charlemagne tradition, and may have informed Arnau de Mont-rodon as he composed his unique liturgy.

imprint of the twelfth-century Gesta Karoli Magni. The only monograph treating the Girona liturgy is Coulet, Étude sur l’office. For further discussion of the Gesta Karoli Magni ad Carcassonam et Narbonam, see the study in this volume by Williams (Ch. 6). 4 M. Coll i Alentorn, ‘La llegenda de Carlemany a Girona’, in Llegendari, ed. Coll i Alentorn (Barcelona, 1993), pp. 152–72.

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The Celebration of St Charlemagne in Girona

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esearch over the past few decades has considerably changed our   understanding of the cult of Charlemagne in Girona.5 Of course, Girona was not the first locale to celebrate Charlemagne as a saint. In several pioneering studies, Robert Folz traced the development of the cult of Charlemagne in the churches of the Holy Roman Empire and France following Frederick Barbarossa’s elevation of Charlemagne’s relics in a public ceremony on 29 December 1165 (recorded in a diploma dated 8 January 1166), and the institution of a liturgical feast for 28 January.6 Despite the odd circumstances of the cult’s institution, especially its initial confirmation by the anti-Pope Paschal III, the veneration of Charlemagne persisted, and succeeding orthodox popes gave the cult tacit approval.7 By the early thirteenth century the cult had spread from Aachen to many places across the old Carolingian heartland.8 Many of these locations, especially Aachen, enjoyed imperial patronage or otherwise held powerful political symbolism for Holy Roman emperors; as Folz stressed, this made Charlemagne a desirable saint in those places. The kings of France, who maintained their own memory of Charlemagne related to the banner of the Oriflamme

5 Sholod, ‘Charlemagne’, pp. 198–220, began to reconsider some of Coulet’s conclusions regarding the Officium; this trend has since continued in studies by Coll i Alentorn, ‘La llegenda de Carlemany’, pp. 152–72, and Altés i Aguiló, ‘La institució de la festa’, pp. 247–8. 6 R. Folz, ‘Aspects du culte liturgique de Saint Charlemagne en France’, in Karl der Grosse: Lebenswerk und Nachleben, ed. W. Braunfels and P. E. Schramm, IV (Düsseldorf, 1967), pp. 77–99; R. Folz, Études sur le culte liturgique de Charlemagne dans les églises de l’Empire (Paris, 1951), esp. pp. 159–234. See also L. Vones, ‘La canonización de Carlomagno en 1165, la Vita S. Karoli de Aquisgrán y el Pseudo-Turpin’, in El Pseudo-Turpín: Lazo entre el culto jacobeo y el culto de Carlomagno, ed. K. Herbers (Santiago de Compostela, 2003), pp. 271–83. The diploma by Frederick I is in Acta Sanctorum, Ianuarii II, pp. 888–90. See also the studies in this volume by Stuckey (Ch. 2) and Salvadó (Ch. 3). 7 Folz, Études sur le culte, pp. 18–19; G. Roura i Güibas, ‘L’ofici de Sant Carlemany al bisbat de Girona’, Miscel·lània litúrgica catalana 4 (1990), 37–56 (p. 40). 8 Roura i Güibas, ‘L’ofici de Sant Carlemany’, p. 38.

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and the royal shrine of Saint-Denis, did not encourage a liturgical cult until the fifteenth century.9 In France, as in the empire, promotion of the cult came mostly from rulers, who saw the benefit of linking their names with that of their illustrious forebear.10 More surprisingly though, as Amy Remensnyder has demonstrated, some locations outside the French and imperial ambits, such as the monastery of Lagrasse near Narbonne, developed their own independent cults to Charlemagne through the initiative of local monastic leaders and chroniclers.11 From an early date Lagrasse, which was closely tied to Girona, commemorated him annually as a revered founder, and by the fourteenth century such commemoration had become veneration. Despite the emphasis in several chronicles on Charlemagne as the liberator of Spain, the liturgical cult was not common in the

9 The feast of St Charlemagne on January 28 was first introduced to the royal chapel by Charles V (r. 1364–80). But it was Louis XI (r. 1461–83) who broadened the observance of the cult in 1475, and it continued to be celebrated until the Revolution. See Folz, ‘Aspects du culte,’ pp. 77–99; and R. Morrissey, Charlemagne and France: A Thousand Years of Mythology, trans. C. Tihanyi (Notre Dame, IN, 2003), pp. 96–7. 10 An interesting comparison can be made with the thirteenth-century canonization and subsequent veneration of Louis IX in France: see M. C. Gaposchkin, The Making of St Louis: Kingship, Sanctity and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 2008). Gaposchkin, who relied on liturgical materials, demonstrated the competing memories that shaped Louis’ identity as a royal saint. 11 Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past. See also A. G. Remensnyder, ‘Topographies of Memory: Center and Periphery in High Medieval France’, in Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography, ed. G. Althoff, J. Fried and P. J. Geary (Washington, DC, 2002), pp. 193–214. Remensnyder has argued (p. 211) that the Charlemagne celebrated in Girona was Lagrasse’s Charlemagne, not Aachen’s, and that the office of Girona had ‘no resemblance whatsoever’ to the Aachen liturgy. This seems accurate for the lections, but there are some common features in the Aachen and Girona services, especially the antiphons Regali natus and O spes afflictis and the collect, Deus qui superabundanti, all sung at Vespers. The responsory Te secutus miles also seems to be common. See also the studies in this volume by Salvadó (Ch. 3) and Williams (Ch. 6).

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Iberian peninsula outside of Girona.12 As at Lagrasse, the cult of St Charlemagne in Girona was the result of local (in this case episcopal) initiative, instituted almost two hundred years after Frederick Barbarossa originally established the feast.13 Jules Coulet argued that Girona, again like Lagrasse, probably remembered Charlemagne with an informal annual commemoration from an early date.14 However, the official liturgical celebration in the cathedral and all of the churches of the diocese began with Bishop Arnau de Mont-rodon’s decree of 14 April 1345.15 As the decree explains, the rites for 29 January, a day after the Aachen feast day, included an office of nine lectiones (the Officium in festo sancti Karoli), two processions and commemorative masses.16 The bishop’s decree also reserved space for the veneration of Charlemagne within the cathedral’s recently constructed chapel of the Four Martyrs of Girona and detailed sources of income to support the feast.17 The decree 12 There was, according to Sholod, ‘Charlemagne’, pp. 198–9, an annual commemoration of Charlemagne on 6 July at the cathedral of Compostela, and perhaps other similar rites at the monastery of Ripoll, near Girona. For more ambivalent Iberian attitudes towards Charlemagne see the study in this volume by Gómez (Ch. 4) and, more generally, Charlemagne and his Legend in Early Spanish Literature and Historiography, ed. M. Bailey and R. D. Giles (Cambridge, 2016). 13 Folz, ‘Aspects du culte’, pp. 77–99. 14 Coulet, Étude sur l’office, pp. 14–15. 15 See the Latin text, hereafter referred to as ‘Mont-rodon Decree, 14 April 1345’, edited by Altés i Aguiló, ‘La institució de la festa’, pp. 249–51. A partial Catalan translation is found in Roura i Güibas, ‘L’ofici de Sant Carlemany’, pp. 42–3. 16 Girona was unique in celebrating Charlemagne on 29 January. Altés i Aguiló, ‘La institució de la festa’, pp. 216–18, sees the bishop of Girona moving the date one day so it did not interfere with the octave of St Agnes on 28 January. Moving the feast to a free day also gave the opportunity to create a full office. See Roura i Güibas, ‘L’ofici de Sant Carlemany’, pp. 39–40. 17 Molina Figueras, ‘Arnau de Montrodon’, pp. 444–7, sees the development of the cult to St Charlemagne in connection to the bishop’s ambitious building projects, as well as the need to demonstrate the unity of the diocese and authority of the cathedral of Girona. For more about the building projects in Girona and the relationship to the institution of the Charlemagne cult, see A. Pladevall i Font, ‘Arnau

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furthermore mandated episcopal attendance at processions and masses, both to inspire interest among the clergy and to maintain the proper solemnity of the celebration.18 A statue of Charlemagne, believed to be the work of Catalan sculptor Jaume Cascalls, was also commissioned and set up in the chapel at this time.19 With the exception of a panegyric sermon added to the celebration in 1473, the commemoration of St Charlemagne in Girona apparently remained unchanged until 1484.20 At that time, according to capitulary records, Pope Sixtus IV ordered the diocese to cease reading the lections.21 Coulet hypothesized that the suspension may have been due to Charlemagne’s irregular canonization or the odd format of the Girona office, but this has been recently challenged. Noting that Charlemagne offices continued to be celebrated elsewhere, Barton Sholod and Gabriel Roura i Güibas have convincingly demonstrated that the papal suspension was a specific punishment for the Girona chapter’s bitter

i Bertran de Mont-rodon, dos grans bisbes gironins del segle XIV’, Annals de l’Institut d’Estudis Gironins 34 (1994), 395–425. 18 ‘Mont-rodon Decree, 14 April 1345’, ed. Altés i Aguiló, pp. 250–1. 19 An image of this statue, with the intriguing caption ‘Pere the Third “el Cerimoniós” (also called Saint Charlemagne)’ is viewable online at the cathedral of Girona’s website: http://www.catedraldegirona.org/visita/ eng/tresor/altres/index.html. The attribution of the statue to Cascalls has come under criticism recently: see R. Alcoy y Pedrós, ‘La fortuna de Cascalls en el context gironí’, Estudi General 10 (1990), 93–118; and C. Pérez Gimeno, ‘En torno a Jaume Cascalls: Su obra en Girona’, D’art 5 (1979), 65–77, for detailed treatments of the artist’s work. 20 Coulet, Étude sur l’office, p. 30. Roura i Güibas, ‘L’ofici de Sant Carlemany’, pp. 43–8, explored the popularity of the cult. He claimed that the repeated references to the feast over the centuries in capitular acts, as well as the institution and development of the confraternity of Santa Maria, strongly connected to the Charlemagne legend, demonstrated a significant degree of popular involvement. 21 Coulet, Étude sur l’office, pp. 30–3. A marginal note in the 1360 consueta says that Pope Sixtus issued a brief that ordered the cathedral chapter to cease reciting the Officium and Girona immediately complied. The brief unfortunately does not survive. Pope Sixtus IV died in 1484, and it is surmised that the office stopped in this year based on a chapter deliberation dated 9 April 1493.

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dispute over quitrents owed to Notre-Dame du Puy-en-Velay.22 Despite the suppression of the lections, and probably of the processions too, other features of Charlemagne’s cult persisted: the chapel was undisturbed, the statue remained within the cathedral and cathedral clergy continued to deliver the panegyric sermon praising Charlemagne annually on his feast day. There was also a significant but unsuccessful attempt to reinstate the full liturgical service in the diocese in 1493.23 Even after the universal adoption of the Roman Breviary following the Council of Trent in 1571, the Girona clergy continued to deliver the sermon. At some point after 1574 but before 1691, and for reasons unknown, the chapter moved the feast from January to the afternoon of the second Sunday in Lent.24 The sermon was finally abandoned sometime after 1807, and Bishop Tomás Sevilla y Gener ordered the statue of Charlemagne to be removed from the cathedral in 1883, thus ending over five hundred years of liturgical commemoration in the diocese.25 22 Roura i Güibas, ‘L’ofici de Sant Carlemany’, p. 45. 23 Coulet, Étude sur l’office, pp. 33–5. This involved Lopez de Haro, Ferdinand V’s ambassador to the Vatican, who brought the Girona chapter’s arguments for reinstatement before the pope. The capitular act is in Roura i Güibas, ‘L’ofici de Sant Carlemany’, pp. 46–7. 24 The witness to this is F. X. Dorca, who published his book on the martyrs of Girona in 1691, and at that date said that the sermon panegírico called De Carlo-Magno could still be heard: see Colección de noticias para la historia de los santos martires de Gerona; y de otras relativas á la santa iglesia de la misma ciudad (Barcelona, 1691), p. 284. 25 Coulet, Étude sur l’office, pp. 41–2; Sholod, ‘Charlemagne’, pp. 207–8. Bishop Sevilla y Gener’s decree explains that the statue should be removed due to the lack of evidence for Charlemagne’s saintliness and the fact that the papacy had abolished the recitation of the office long before. This final abandonment of the veneration of Charlemagne may have also been related to the people of Girona’s dislike of Napoleon. Napoleon cultivated a connection with the medieval emperor; he publicly visited the crypt of Aachen in 1804 and declared ‘je suis Charlemagne’ in a letter to the pope in 1806. His own destructive siege of the city of Girona in 1808 probably did not help. See M. Becher, Charlemagne, trans. D. S. Bachrach (New Haven, 2003), pp. 144–5, regarding Napoleon’s identification with Charlemagne. Roura i Güibas, ‘L’ofici de Sant Carlemany’, p. 49, provides an excerpt of Sevilla y Gener’s decree.

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The Liturgical Vision of Charlemagne

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rnau de Mont-rodon’s Officium in festo sancti Karoli magni   imperatoris et confessoris is related to other texts in the Girona archives, including the Vita sancti Caroli Magni, the Tractatus de captione Gerunde and the Legenda sancti Karoli Magni. Most of these texts only survive in much later copies, so establishing the dates of composition has been an arduous task for the editors of the corpus.26 While earlier scholars have proposed much later dates for the Vita, Tractatus and Legenda, Francesc Xavier Altés i Aguiló recently demonstrated that the entire corpus may have been written at the same time, around the mid-fourteenth century.27 The centre of the liturgical celebration, and also the focus of most modern scholarship, is the Officium of nine lections and corresponding responsories, mentioned in the decree of 1345 and likely the work of Mont-rodon himself. The nine lections and responsories are found in the Girona Breviary of Abbot Vidal de Blanes of 1339 (Girona, Arxiu Capitular, MS 98);28 they are divided into three nocturns to be sung by the cathedral chapter during the matins service.29 Eight of the lections contain hagiographical material covering the arrival 26 The manuscripts of the Officium are listed in Roura i Güibas, ‘L’ofici de Sant Carlemany’, pp. 50–1; cf. the list provided by Altés i Aguiló, ‘La institució de la festa’, pp. 238–40; the other texts are listed by Altés i Aguiló on pp. 228–9. 27 See n. 2 above. 28 Although Sholod, ‘Charlemagne’, p. 201, saw two different offices (one from 1339 and one from 1345) behind this apparent discrepancy in dates, J. Clara i Tibau, ‘L’ofici a Carlemany dins el Breviari de 1339’, Annals de l’Institut d’Estudis Gironins 34 (1994), 619–30, convincingly demonstrated, on palaeographic grounds, that the Charlemagne office was a later addition to the 1339 breviary and most likely dated to the time of the bishop’s proclamation of the cult in 1345. 29 Early editions of the lections appeared in J. Villanueva, Viage literario de las iglesias de España, XIV (Madrid, 1803–52), pp. 267–9; A. Merino and J. de la Canal, España sagrada, XLIII, 2nd edn (Guadarrama, 1819 [rpt. 2010]), pp. 573–6. Lacking access to the manuscript of the breviary of 1339, Coulet tried to combine these two editions in his own version in Étude sur l’office, pp. 57–9. A newer edition from the Breviarium Gerundense de Anno 1339 is by Clara i Tibau in ‘L’ofici a Carlemany’, pp. 624–8.

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of Charlemagne in Spain and the events leading up to the conquest of Girona, and one (lectio septima) is a homily based on the Gospel of Luke.30 The prayers, antiphons, responsories, versicles and hymns of the feast are found in the cathedral consueta of 1360 (Girona, Arxiu Capitular, MS 9).31 The Charlemagne depicted in the Officium is a martial hero, but also a pious king, devoted to the church and especially to the Virgin Mary.32 The first nocturn shows St James summoning Charlemagne to Spain and builds towards Mary’s prophecy of the emperor’s coming victory in Girona: 30 A disagreement over the proper number of readings in the Girona Officium seems to have been effectively settled by the work of recent Catalan scholars who have consulted the original documents. The belief, espoused by Gaston Paris, Jules Coulet (Étude sur l’office, pp. 52–4) and others that the Girona office only had eight lections stemmed largely from a transcription mistake in the first printed edition of the office by G. Roig i Jalpí (1677) and the subsequent misplacement of the manuscript of the 1339 Girona breviary. The breviary has since been found, and the ‘version’ of the office with eight lections, which so confounded Paris and Coulet, has been shown to be incorrect. The office has nine lections, which is standard for secular offices. The purportedly missing lection is a homily based on Luke but contains no Charlemagne material. See Roura i Güibas, ‘L’ofici de Sant Carlemany’, pp. 52–4. A cursory glance at other offices, especially other liturgical offices from Girona, such as those for the Conception of Mary and the feast of St Narcissus, reveals that this format was quite common. 31 The 1360 consueta text has been edited by Roura i Güibas, ‘L’ofici de Sant Carlemany’, pp. 55–6, and also appears in Altés i Aguiló, ‘La institució de la festa’, pp. 221–2. According to Altés i Aguiló, the office is based on the Common of the Confessors, enriched with components from a variety of other liturgical sources, including other offices of Charlemagne and saints Benedict, Nicholas and Paul of Narbonne, among others. 32 The following translation of the Officium is based on the 1990 Latin edition by Clara i Tibau in ‘L’ofici a Carlemany’, pp. 624–8. All Latin in the subsequent footnotes (including irregularities in capitalization) is from this edition. I have separated my translation into three nocturns just as the office would have been experienced liturgically. This serves to highlight the interesting narrative momentum of the nocturns, for each one ends with key developments in the third, sixth and ninth lections.

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Lectio prima.33 Wishing to obey the warning of the blessed Apostle James, St Charlemagne decided to go to Spain, and conquer her for the catholic faith. Having taken and fortified the city of Narbonne, where Spain begins, he arrived in the land of Roussillon, which is the beginning of Catalunya, and humbly invoked the aid of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary. R/ Euge, serve bone.34 Lectio secunda.35 With the prayer completed, St Charles turned his attention to the sky and saw the blessed Mary carrying Christ her son. He also saw the blessed James and Andrew, one standing to the right and the other to the left.36 When St Charles saw them, 33 ‘Cupiens Sanctus Karolus magnus Beati Jacobi Apostoli monitis obedire, disposuit ire versus Yspaniam, et eam catholicae fidei subjugare. Capta vero civitatem Narbona et munita, in qua Yspania inchoatur, perueniens ad terram rossilionis, quae est principium Cathalonie, Christi auxilium, et beate virginis marie humiliter imploravit.’ 34 This responsory is based on Matthew 25. 23: ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you have shown you can be faithful in small things, I will trust you with greater; come and join in your master’s happiness.’ This comes from the Common of the Confessors as shown on the helpful website ‘Cantus: A Database for Latin Ecclesiastical Chant’, edited by J. Koláček and D. Lacoste at the University of Waterloo, http://cantusdatabase.org. An email exchange with S. Salvadó, who has studied the Charlemagne liturgy extensively, also illuminated a great deal about the importance of the responsories in emphasizing aspects of the liturgical narrative. 35 ‘Oratione vero completa, intendens in celum, vidit beatam Mariam, Christum eius filium defferentem; vidit etiam beatos Jacobum et Andream manentes unum a dextris, et alium a sinistris. Quos cum inspiceret sanctus Karolus, stupens in splendoribus, percepit beatam Virginem sic loquentes. “Ne paveas, Christi miles, Karole, brachium, et deffensor ecclesie, quoniam nos tecum in bello erimus, et liberabimus te cum Victoria, et salute.” ’ 36 A clue to the significance of St Andrew to the cult of Charlemagne is found in the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, in which the emperor removed the relics of the saint from Constantinople to Saint-Denis, France. See A. Latowsky, ‘Charlemagne as Pilgrim?: Requests for Relics in the Descriptio qualiter and the Voyage of Charlemagne’, in Legend of Charlemagne, pp. 153–67.

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he was stunned by their splendour. He heard the blessed Mary speaking thus: ‘Charles, soldier of Christ, arm and defender of the church do not fear, because we will be with you in war, and we will free you with victory and health.’ R/ Qui me confessus.37 Lectio tertia.38 ‘You will cross the Pyrenees mountains and you will besiege the city of Girona (obsidebis civitatem Gerunde) and indeed you will obtain her after many labours. There you will build a cathedral church in my honour and reverence. May I commend you and guide you over all soldiers of this world. And you will have my nephew, St James, as director and protector of all Spain.’39 Once these things had been said, the foreseen vision disappeared. R/ Sancte Karole.40 Of course, St James’s command to Charlemagne to invade Spain in the first lectio echoes the beginning of the Pseudo-Turpin, though the location that Mary subsequently orders Charlemagne to liberate was not Santiago de Compostela, but Girona.41 Schneegans and Coulet have also observed that the starting point of Narbonne essentially picks up where the narrative of the Gesta Karoli Magni ends.42 37 From the Common of the Martyrs, based on Luke 12. 8–9: ‘If anyone openly declares himself for me in the presence of men, I will declare myself for him before my father.’ 38 ‘Sed cum montes transieris Pirineos obsidebis civitatem Gerundae, et eam licet cum laboribus obtinebis. In qua ad meum honorem, et reverentiam edificabis Ecclesiam Cathedralem Benedicam tibi, et diriguam te super omnes milites huius mundi et habebis Sanctum Jacobum nepotem meum directorem, et totius Yspanie protectorem. Quibus dictis disparuit visio premonstrata.’ 39 Mary’s reference to ‘my nephew’ James seems to reflect the tradition that reckoned James as son of Zebedee and Salome; Salome is sometimes regarded as the sister of Mary. See H. M. Smyser, The Pseudo-Turpin: Edited from Bibliothèque Nationale, Fonds Latin, MS. 17656 (Cambridge, MA, 1937), III, p. 57. 40 The instructions say to look to the liturgy of St Benedict for the responsories for lections 3, 4 and 5. 41 Smyser, Pseudo-Turpin, III, p. 57. 42 Gesta Karoli Magni ad Carcassonam et Narbonam, ed. F. E. Schneegans (Halle, 1898), pp. 100–4; Coulet, Étude sur l’office, pp. 7–8.

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The second nocturn details the beginning of Charlemagne’s military campaign in Catalunya and his rapid construction of churches after victories. The sixth lectio ends with guest appearances by Archbishop Turpin and Roland: Lectio quarta.43 Then St Charles, comforted in the Lord, roused his army and with impassioned spirit rushed at the army of the infidels. They took flight with all their forces, unable to resist the Christians. Finally, with victory earned in the field called milet, Charles built a church dedicated to the blessed apostle Andrew.44 Now, a monastery is constructed there. Having seized the castles and villages of Vallespir and Roussillon, St Charles next arrived at the place called sa clusa, where he knew that the king Marsile had been trapped.45 Thus, from that point, the place was known as sa clusa, where previously it was called mons acutus. R/ Sanctus Karolus. Lectio quinta.46 After the infidels had fled from there, St Charles 43 ‘Tunc Sanctus karolus in domino confortatus suum exercitum animavit. Et cum in fervore spiritus exercitum infidelium invasisset ceperunt terga vertere, et totis viribus fugere, non valentes resistere Christianis. Finaliter obtenta victoria in campo, qui dicitur milet edificavit Ecclesiam sub invocatione beati Andree Apostoli, in qua nunc religiosorum monasterium est constructum. Captis insuper castris et villis valispirii et Rossilionis et ad locum, qui dicitur sa clusa Sanctus Karolus devenisset, scivi regem Marcilium intus fuisse inclusum; ideo ex tunc sa clusa vocatur qui mons acutus antea vocabatur.’ 44 The reading in the manuscript could be either Milet or Nulet. Scholars are not sure about the identification, but the Tractatus reveals that ‘Milet’ is near Elna. Clara i Tibau, ‘L’ofici a Carlemany’, pp. 621–2, assumes the church refers to the monastery of Sant Andreu de Sureda. In the Gesta Karoli Magni, ed. Schneegans, pp. 46–8, Roland founds this church and Otger the Dane was buried there. 45 Sa clusa is rendered as ‘La Clusa’, Catalunya, by Clara i Tibau, ‘L’ofici a Carlemany’, p. 622. Of course, Marsile is the name of the Saracen king in Chanson de Roland and also appears in the Pseudo-Turpin and the Gesta Karoli Magni. 46 ‘Infidelibus tandem inde fugatis, pervenit ad montis verticem, qui vocatur Albarras, postea nominatus est, Malpartus ubi invenit resistentiam ne transiret. Tunc sanctus Karolus aciem diuisit per partes, unam per collum

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came to the summit of the mountain called Albarras. Afterward, it was named Malpartus, where he encountered opposition and could not cross.47 Then St Charles divided his forces into parts; one he sent through the collum de panissas (Coll de Panissars) where he constructed a church to the honour of St Martin.48 The other part he directed to the steep part of the mountains. Observing the division of his forces, the Saracens retreated toward the city of Girona, fearing that if they remained trapped in the middle, he would take them. R/ Sanctissime Confessor Christi Karole. Lectio sexta.49 Then St Charles, hearing this, destroyed all the fortresses that threatened the Christians who were crossing over. Following the heathens toward Girona, he assailed their path. And arriving in the locum de Ramis, he built a church in honour of St Julian.50 Roland also ordered a chapel to be built for the virgin St Thecla in that same place. The blessed Turpin, archbishop of Reims, raised an altar to St Vincent there as well.51

de panisas, ubi ad honorem Sancti Martini Ecclesiam fabricavit, aliam vero partem per abruta montium destinavit. Sarraceni vero diuisam aciem intuentes, ceperunt fugere versus ciuitatem Gerunde, timentes ne capti in medio remanerent inclusi.’ 47 Clara i Tibau, ‘L’ofici a Carlemany’, p. 622, has assumed ‘el Pertús’ for Malpartus. 48 Clara i Tibau, ‘L’ofici a Carlemany’, p. 622. Altés i Aguiló, ‘La institució de la festa’, p. 270, observes that a marginal note in the Legenda sancti Karoli Magni identifies this church as Sant Martí de Albera. 49 ‘Quid audiens Sanctus Karolus destruxit omnia fortalicia de quibus Christianis transeuntibus periculum imminebat. Qui persecuendo impios versus Gerundam arripuit viam suam. Et perveniens ad locum de ramis, in honorem Sancti Iuliani Ecclesiam edificavit. Rotulandus etiam capellam Sancte Tecle Virginis in eisdem terminis ordinavit. Beatus vero Turpinus remensis Archiepiscopus altare sancti Vincentii ibidem exaltavit.’ 50 Sant Julià de Ramis, Catalunya. Clara i Tibau, ‘L’ofici a Carlemany’, p. 622. 51 Sant Vincenç de la Roca, Catalunya. Clara i Tibau, ‘L’ofici a Carlemany’, p. 622.

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R/ Ecce homo.52 As Schneegans has demonstrated, the narrative of this section seems to have much in common with the Gesta Karoli Magni. In particular, the etymological explanations in lections four and five relating to Saclusa/ Mons Acutus and Malpartus/Albarras are found in the Gesta.53 The references to the church of St Andrew near Elna/Milet in lectio four are also common between the texts.54 Furthermore, as Remensnyder found with the patterns of foundations within Lagrasse’s Gesta, the three foundations of the sixth lection (St Julian by Charlemagne, St Thecla by Roland and St Vincent by Turpin) similarly demonstrate the power of Charlemagne and his retinue to sanctify space while on military campaign.55 The Officium from the 1339 breviary ends with a stunning miracle wrought in the skies over Girona, and Charlemagne’s ultimate victory in the final reading: Lectio septima.56 A homily based on the reading from Luke 11. 33, ‘No one lights a lamp.’ Ne cum sua honore in sancto benedicto. R/ O quam admirabilis vir.57 52 This could be from the Translatio Benedicti, based on Psalm 51, ‘Behold the man who made not God his helper’, but in this context, the responsory from the Common of the Confessors makes more sense: ‘Behold the man, without complaint, the true worshipper of God restraining himself from all evil deeds and continuing in innocence.’ 53 Gesta Karoli Magni, ed. Schneegans, p. 30, for Mons Acutus; pp. 224–6 for Mons Acutus/La Clusa and Malpartus/Albarras. 54 Gesta Karoli Magni, ed. Schneegans, pp. 19–43. 55 Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past, pp. 199–201; Molina Figueras develops Remensnyder’s findings for Girona and the office in ‘Arnau de Montrodon’, pp. 433–40. Sholod, ‘Charlemagne’, pp. 209–10, surveyed a number of folkloric beliefs about Charlemagne at Sant Julià and Sant Medir, both mentioned in the Officium, but did not give any indication that they pre-dated the liturgy. 56 The format of the seventh lection caused many to assume that the Girona office had only eight lections. Roura i Güibas, ‘L’ofici de Sant Carlemany’, pp. 52–4. See n. 30 above. 57 This comes from the Common of the Confessors or the Translatio Oswaldi, another royal cult: ‘O how admirable is that great man, not

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Lectio octava.58 Then St Charles rose up determinedly and went toward the vallem hostallesii. And going out from that place, called Sent Madir, he openly attacked the Saracens, from whom he obtained victory and honour, and on account of this, he established a monastery there, constructing the high altar under the invocation of the glorious Virgin.59 However, because the Saracens had embittered that place from that time on, the residents called it Sancta Maria de Amer.60 R/ Beatus Karolus.61 Lectio nona.62 Withdrawing from there, St Charles returned to the least among confessors, who provided a bright example in his own time and for the future, from whence the church of God happily rejoices.’ A note also directs attention to St Paul of Narbonne. These responsories are attached to the eighth lection in the 1360 consueta. 58 ‘Tunc Sanctus Karolus deuote consurgens ivit uersus vallem Hostalesii. Et egressus de loco, qui dicitur Sent Madir exivit obviam Sarracenis, de quibus obtinuit victoriam, et honorem. Et propter hoc ibidem constituit monasterium monachorum construendo altare maius sub invocatione Virginis gloriose. Sed quia locus ille sarracenis fuit amarus. Ideo Sancta Maria de Amer ex tunc fuit ab incolis nominatus.’ 59 For vallem hostalesii, Clara i Tibau, ‘L’ofici a Carlemany’, p. 622, offers ‘Vall d’Hostoles’ and for Sent Madir, he proposed ‘Sant Madir’, near Cartellà. He believes that Mont-rodon included this last location to give the noble lineage of the Castell de Cartellà a place in the legend. 60 Clara i Tibau, ‘L’ofici a Carlemany’, p. 623, says it should not surprise us that the last foundation in the lectiones is Santa Maria de Amer. The abbot there had been Ferrer de Mont-rodon, the brother of the bishop of Girona, Arnau. Ferrer died in 1343 according to Villanueva. Clara i Tibau believes it is reasonable that one of the lectiones would be dedicated to the exaltation of the monastery of Amer, ascribing it Carolingian roots. See Merino and La Canal, España sagrada, XLIII, pp. 365–7, for more on this foundation. 61 After the responsory Beatus Karolus, a responsory in Sancto Nicholao is added. 62 ‘Recedens inde Sanctus Karolus rediit ad montem de barufa, qui est iuxta vallem tenebrosam, et obsedit civitatem Gerunde. Quam nequivit tunc capere, licet eam multis vicibus debellasset. Contigit tamen quadam die veneris hora completorii, celi facie clarescente, crucem magnam, et rubeam lumine undique adornatam super Mesquitam

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mountain of Barufa, which was next to the vallem tenebrosam, and besieged the city of Girona (obsedit civitatem Gerunde).63 He was not able to seize the city at that time, even though he assailed it repeatedly. It happened however on a certain Friday at the hour of compline, a great red cross, blazing with light pouring out from everywhere, appeared clearly in the sky above the mosque of the city of Girona where the church of the cathedral is now built. For four hours, it remained in the sight of all, and it even rained down drops of blood. R/ Te secutus miles.64 This heavenly wrought miracle, which precipitates the final victory on the battlefield, evokes the Historia Turpini’s miraculous collapse of the walls at the siege of Pamplona. However, as Coulet demonstrated, the illuminated cross and rain of blood come from a tradition developed at the nearby monastery of Ripoll.65 civitatis Gerunde ubi nunc edificata est ecclesia cathedralis, per quatuor horas, cunctis videntibus permansisse, gutas etiam sanguinis cecidisse.’ 63 Clara i Tibau, ‘L’ofici a Carlemany’, p. 623, suggested ‘Montjuïc’ for Barufa and ‘Vall de Sant Daniel’ for vallem tenebrosam. 64 The responsory Te secutus miles comes from Aachen: ‘The soldier follows you and was accepted by you, Christ; like Elijah he performed deeds worthy to God’; the subsequent versicle runs: ‘While he prays, tiredness retreats, death flees and life returns.’ Another responsory, Comparatus gloria, followed by a Te deum and versicle Non est inventus finish the matins service, according to both the breviary and the consueta. The Te secutus miles responsory is also in the vespers service that begins the feast, and is sung during the two processions to the altar. 65 From the Chronicon Rivipullensis: ‘This Charles, called the Great, in the year of our Lord 786, captured the city of Girona, defeating in combat Machometus, the king of that city. And when he took that city, many saw it rain blood, and a great prodigy appeared in the sky, and the sign of the cross on the clothing of men; and a fiery cross appeared in the air above the place where the altar of the Blessed Virgin is now; and on account of this he moved the see, which was at the church of Sant Feliu, to the place where it is now.’ See Molina, ‘Arnau de Mont-rodon’, p. 426. Coulet, Étude sur l’office, pp. 123–4, found a parallel in the Chronicon Moissiacense, which details a similar miracle for the year 786, but does not relate it to Girona: ‘In that year (786) in the month of December, a terrible prodigy appeared in the sky, which never before had been

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While the Officium has been widely discussed, scholars have been more reluctant to treat the three other Latin texts in the Girona corpus: the Vita sancti Caroli Magni, the Legenda sancti Karoli Magni and the Tractatus de captione Gerunde.66 The Vita contains a record of the childhood of Charlemagne in nine numbered readings and two additional appendices, and seems to complement the Tractatus.67 The Legenda contains the same story as the Officium, but includes more on the siege of Girona and its immediate aftermath. The text is arranged into nine hagiographical readings, like the Officium, but each reading is considerably longer. The Legenda adds that a large number of Christian soldiers were buried at the church of St Andrew near Milet, and also that many Saracens were killed in the environs of Vallespir and Roussillon, except those who had been baptized (illis exceptis qui babtizati ad doctrinam evangelii sunt conversi).68 The Legenda also shows Charlemagne to be especially concerned about securing provisions by sea. The Tractatus de captione Gerunde is arranged differently from the office and Legenda, as it is divided into three sections with subheadings, and reads more like a chronicle of the siege. However, Altés i Aguiló has said this may in fact be the foundational document of the Girona seen in our times, also the sign of the cross appeared on the clothing of men and some said to see it rain blood, from which a great fear and panic arose among the people and a great mortality followed afterward.’ N. Jaspert explored the interesting role of the monastery of Ripoll in developing the Charlemagne legend in Spain in ‘Historiografía y legitimación carolingia: El monasterio de Ripoll, el Pseudo-Turpín y los condes de Barcelona’, in El Pseudo-Turpín, ed. Herbers, pp. 29–42. 66 Altés i Aguiló, ‘La institució de la festa’, pp. 228–9, 252, 262 and 268, has outlined the manuscript sources for these texts as well. 67 The Vita sancti Caroli Magni, which only survives in extenso in a seventeenth-century copy of a now-lost legendary, shows the most similarities with the Aachen tradition of St Charlemagne. It does not contain anything on the taking of Girona, so will not be discussed here, but does allude to Charlemagne’s entrance into Spain. See discussion in Altés i Aguiló, ‘La institució de la festa’, pp. 230–3, and his edition of the text at pp. 252–62. 68 Both of these stories relate to similar passages in the Gesta Karoli Magni, ed. Schneegans, p. 30.

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tradition, from which the other texts, including the office, were derived.69 Like the Legenda, the Tractatus includes Charlemagne’s concern for provisions and his naval arrangements.70 The Tractatus provides some further description of St Thecla, who is encountered in the sixth lection of the office, and draws an explicit connection between Charlemagne’s foundation and the metropolitan city of Tarragona.71 Expanding on the ninth lection, the Tractatus emphasizes the thoroughness of Charlemagne’s encircling of Girona (ut nullus posset faciliter ingredi aut exire), as well as his strategic position upon the mountain of Berufa (Barufa in the office).72 Like the Legenda, the Tractatus contains a good deal of information about the actual taking of the city. Upon seeing the miracle in the sky, which the Tractatus says lasted for three hours, Charlemagne and his entire army signed themselves with the cross, and moved to storm the city.73 Three days afterwards, the Saracens fled the city on account of their fear of the portents, and Charlemagne ‘entered the city with indescribable joy and wonderful devotion’. 74 Charlemagne reordered the city after his conquest and established the cathedral of St Mary, as prophesied, through arranging for the first two masses to be sung in the former mosque (one to Mary and the other to the Holy Cross) and assigning a canon from Le Puy-en-Velay to serve as the first bishop. Finally, Charlemagne endowed the new diocese with ‘precious ornaments and jewels and many gifts’ and also gave it four estates; thenceforth he always ‘had the greatest devotion towards that see’.75

69 Altés i Aguiló, ‘La institució de la festa’, pp. 247–8. See the manuscripts listed at pp. 228–9. 70 Tractatus de captione Gerunde, ed. Altés i Aguiló, ‘La institució de la festa’, p. 262. 71 Tractatus, ed. Altés i Aguiló, p. 264. 72 Tractatus, ed. Altés i Aguiló, p. 266. 73 Tractatus, ed. Altés i Aguiló, p. 266. 74 Tractatus, ed. Altés i Aguiló, p. 267. 75 Tractatus, ed. Altés i Aguiló, p. 267.

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Siege and Memory in Girona: Mont-Rodon’s Charlemagne Texts

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he emphasis on Charlemagne’s siege of Girona in the liturgical materials is quite clear: conjugations of the verb obsideo appear in the third and ninth lectiones of the Officium. The siege of the city is the centrepiece of the final lection. The Legenda and Tractatus both expand on the narrative of the siege and aftermath, and whenever the conquest of the city is described, it is never simply ‘taken’ but ‘besieged’. Without exception, the term obsideo is preferred throughout the Girona texts, often coupled with further explanations showing that Charlemagne had the city completely surrounded, such that it was difficult to get either in or out.76 But curiously, in the other assumed Latin sources for the liturgical narratives, including the Chronicon Rivipullensis, Historia Turpini and Gesta Sancti Karoli, descriptions of a siege of Girona are hard to find; instead, the idea of Charlemagne simply ‘acquiring’ or even ‘receiving’ the city is more common. The Chronicon Moissiacense says that the men of Girona handed over (tradiderunt) the city to Charles in 785.77 In the Chronicon Rivipullensis, Charles took (cepit) the city, 76 In the office, Mary says to Charlemagne ‘obsidebis civitatem Gerundae’ and later, fulfiling the prophecy, Charlemagne ‘obsedit civitatem Gerundae’. Similarly, in the Tractatus, Mary tells Charlemagne ‘et tandem obscidebis civitatem Gerundam’, and later he ‘obsedit [Gerundam] undique, ut nullus posset faciliter ingredi aut exire’. Finally, the Legenda follows the same format, with Mary saying ‘obsidebis civitatem Gerunde’ and Charlemagne later ‘obcedit civitatem Gerunde’. Bishop Mont-rodon’s foundation diploma does not use obsideo, but makes clear that a violent battle took place: ‘Gerundensem civitatem armorum potentia abstulit Sarracenis.’ 77 Chronicon Moissiacense (408–818, 840), MGH SS 1, p. 297, l. 17: ‘Eodem anno [785] Gerundenses homines Gerundam civitatem Carolo regi tradiderunt.’ See also the more recent synoptic edition of the Chronicon Moissiacense with the Chronicon Anianense in W. Kettemann’s comprehensive dissertation: ‘Subsidia Anianensia: Überlieferungs- und textgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur Geschichte Witiza-Benedikts, seines Klosters Aniane und zur sogenannten “anianischen Reform”: mit kommentierten Editionen der “Vita Benedicti Anianensis”, “Notitia e servitio monasteriorum” des “Chronicon Moissiacense, Anianense” sowie zweier Lokaltraditionen aus Aniane’ (unpublished dissertation, Universität Duisberg-Essen, 2000); an electronic edition is available

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which may imply a siege, but the rest of the passage suggests it was the result of single combat with the Saracen king of Girona, ‘Machomet’. The Pseudo-Turpin simply lists Girona as one of the many cities that Charlemagne acquired (adquisivit), with no reference as to how it was accomplished.78 Even in the Pseudo-Philomena, the verb obsideo does not appear in connection with any of the references to Girona. Here, as in the Pseudo-Turpin, Girona was ‘acquired’, and the acquisition seems to have been more the result of a raiding expedition than a siege.79 Obsideo does appear in these works, but only in the context of Pamplona in the Pseudo-Turpin and Narbonne in the Pseudo-Philomena. Recent research regarding the medieval fascination with the sieges of Jerusalem reminds us that Girona was not the only place where authors were trying to capture siege narratives in writing. In a study of medieval depictions of fallen cities, Susan Conklin Akbari shows that it is helpful to consider any medieval siege narrative in the context of accounts of the siege of Jerusalem.80 Mont-rodon’s juxtaposition of Charlemagne’s own legendary taking of Jerusalem and of Girona in his decree establishing the feast seems to demand this particularly.81 According to the decree, Charlemagne was worthy of widespread veneration for saving Pope Leo, seizing Jerusalem from the Muslims, conquering Spain and leading a pure life. Mont-rodon explained that the emperor was especially worthy to those with access to the Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations (EBSCOhost research database; accessed 20 October 2015). The edition appears on pp. 1–197 of Part 2 (pp. 861–1089 of the electronic edition). 78 Smyser, Pseudo-Turpin, V, pp. 58–9: ‘Urbes et maiores ville quas tunc adquisivit in Galicia ita a vulgo dicuntur: Visunia  … In Yspania: Auscala  … Urgellum, Elna, Gerunda, Barcinona.’ In contrast, the Chanson of Roland does not mention Girona at all. 79 Of the various vernacular chronicles that describe Charlemagne taking Girona, only the twelfth-century Kaiserchronik briefly discusses a protracted siege, with the city falling to Charlemagne after the population declined severely due to famine. See the edition by E. Schröder (Hanover, 1892), p. 351, especially verses 14908–14. 80 S. C. Akbari, ‘Erasing the Body: History and Memory in Medieval Siege Poetry’, in Remembering the Crusades: Myth, Image and Identity, ed. N. Paul and S. Yeager (Baltimore, 2012), pp. 146–73. 81 ‘Mont-rodon Decree, 14 April 1345’, ed. Altés i Aguiló, pp. 249–50.

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of commemoration in Girona because he captured the city from the Muslims, founded the cathedral and generously endowed it.82 Perhaps not surprisingly, the liturgy of St Charlemagne was written during a period of increased production of siege narratives across Western Europe following the 1291 Mamluk capture of Acre.83 Michael Wolfe points out that depictions of siege had the potential to demonstrate or criticize cultural values and archetypes.84 Akbari’s analysis of two Middle English siege poems about Jerusalem follows this reasoning, and she notes that medieval authors used the idea of siege and capture as a kind of ‘narrative shorthand’ through which very complicated historical transitions were rendered comprehensible; the taking of the city thus becomes symbolic of a watershed moment.85 This is what Mont-rodon seems to have been doing, within a liturgical setting.86 As with the 82 ‘Mont-rodon Decree, 14 April 1345’, ed. Altés i Aguiló, pp. 249–50. 83 M. Hebron, The Medieval Siege: Theme and Image in Middle English Romance (Oxford, 1997). See also M. Livingston, Siege of Jerusalem (Kalamazoo, MI, 2004) for translation of the Middle English poem of that name. There were also two Catalan versions of the poem, produced during roughly the same period: see J. Hernando i Delgado, ‘La destrucció de Jerusalem, La venjança que féu de la mort de Jhesuchrist Vespesià e Titus son fill’, Miscel·lània de textos medievales 5 (1989), 1–116, for these two texts. J. F. Powers, ‘Life on the Cutting Edge: The Besieged Town on the Luso-Hispanic Frontier in the Twelfth Century’, in The Medieval City under Siege, ed. I. A. Corfis and M. Wolfe (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 17–34, suggests several additional examples from Castile, including illustrations of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century versions of Jerome’s Commentary on the Book of Daniel, the late thirteenthcentury Gran conquista de Ultramar (relating to the sieges of Antioch and Jerusalem by the knights of the First Crusade), and Cantiga 28 of the Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso X, with its depiction of a mythical Islamic siege of Constantinople. M. Harney has also identified the early fourteenth-century work Book of the Knight Zifar and its depiction of the sieges of Galapia and the capital of the kingdom of Mentón. Passages from the popular Amadis of Gaul, written in the early fourteenth century, depict a siege of London. 84 M. Wolfe, ‘New Perspectives on Medieval Siege Warfare’, in Medieval City, ed. Corfis and Wolfe, pp. 3–14. 85 Akbari, ‘Erasing the Body’, p. 146. 86 Akbari, ‘Erasing the Body’, pp. 152–3.

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literary sieges of Jerusalem, in the Officium Charlemagne’s siege of Girona ends with the destruction of the infidel city.87 Coll i Alentorn’s observation of the similarity between the legendary journey of Charlemagne through the eastern Pyrenees and that of Philip III ‘the Bold’ of France (r. 1270–85) during the 1285 crusade against Aragon opens up a more direct connection between Girona and the memory of siege.88 Coll i Alentorn’s suggestion was based on shared references to naval positioning and supply lines by sea in the Tractatus and Desclot’s Crònica, the richest narrative source for the French crusade.89 However, if we develop his parallel, the accounts of the crusade not only provide a model for the route of Charlemagne through the Pyrenees, but also explain why the diocese may have been particularly receptive to a new liturgy centred on a siege of the city. The 1285 crusade, although once derided by Joseph Strayer as producing ‘no great battles, no innovations in strategy or tactics, and no significant alteration of frontiers’, nevertheless had a substantial impact on the city of Girona and the surrounding region.90 A narrative of the 1285 siege of Girona occupies the heart of the chronicles of the crusade by Desclot and Muntaner.91 87 The rebirth of the Christian city, however, is only seen in the Legenda and Tractatus. 88 Coll i Alentorn, ‘La llegenda’, pp. 152–72. Clara i Tibau, ‘L’ofici a Carlemany’, pp. 621–2, has also explored the route of Charlemagne in the liturgy, and observed that it coincides with the Roman Via Augusta connecting Narbonne and Girona. 89 Coll i Alentorn, ‘La llegenda’, pp. 161–2. The French navy in 1285 left Narbonne and used the ports of Roses and Sant Feliu de Guíxols to supply the crusade army. Their defeat came after the Catalan navy under Roger de Llúria destroyed the French fleet; see B. Desclot, Crònica, ed. M. Coll i Alentorn, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1949), 85–86, 94; trans. F. L. Critchlow, Chronicle of the Reign of King Pedro III of Aragon, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1928–34), pp. 304–15, 346–54. In the liturgy, Charlemagne, who had mastery of the sea, used the city of Les Medes (modern-day L’Estartit) as his main port, but showed concern for making sure his soldiers had enough food: Tractatus, ed. Altés i Aguiló, p. 265. 90 J. R. Strayer, ‘The Crusade Against Aragon’, Speculum 28 (1953), 102–13. 91 Desclot, Crònica. S. Cingolani completed a recent Catalan edition, Llibre del rei en Pere (Barcelona, 2010). The only English translation is

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The campaign of 1285 was a punitive expedition against Peter III ‘the Great’ of Aragon (Peter II of Barcelona) for his role in the 1282 rebellion of the Sicilian Vespers against Charles of Anjou. Apart from Norman Housley’s work, the crusade has not been extensively studied.92 In 1283 Pope Martin IV, incensed by Peter’s acceptance of the crown of Sicily in the name of his wife, deposed Peter and granted the crusade indulgence to any who would fight him.93 Philip III of France and his brother Charles of Valois organized and financed the military campaign with help from the Holy See; from its inception, the crusade, part of a wider Aragonese–Angevin conflict in the Mediterranean, was almost exclusively a French affair. For nearly three months in the summer of 1285, a French army of around 10,000 laid siege to the city of Girona.94 that of Critchlow, Chronicle of the Reign of King Pedro III. For Muntaner, M. Gustà edited the Catalan text in Ramón Muntaner: Crònica (Barcelona, 1979). The English translation is by Lady A. Goodenough, Chronicle of Muntaner, 2 vols. (London, 1920–21). The works of these two authors are also included in the Les quatre grans chroniques series by F. Soldevila, J. Bruguera and M. T. Ferrer i Mallol. A clear overview of the historiography of these Catalan chronicles can be found in J. Aurell i Cardona’s Authoring the Past: History, Autobiography and Politics in Medieval Catalonia (Chicago, 2012). 92 For an overview of the events of the 1285 crusade, see N. Housley, The Later Crusades, 1274–1580: From Lyons to Alcazar (Oxford, 1992), pp. 238–40; J. Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A History, 2nd edn (New Haven, 2005), pp. 203–4; J. L. Shneidman, The Rise of the Aragonese– Catalan Empire, 1200–1350, II (New York, 1970), pp. 323–6. Also, see N. Housley, The Italian Crusades: The Papal–Angevin Alliance and the Crusades against Christian Lay Powers, 1254–1343 (Oxford, 1982), for a consideration of the crusade against Aragon in the context of other similar crusades. 93 For Martin IV’s excommunication and deposition of Peter III and the call for crusade, see S. Domínguez Sánchez, Documentos de Martín IV (1281–1285) referentes a España (León, 2010), esp. docs. 52 (pp. 134–45), 68 (pp. 167–81), 129 (pp. 339–40) and 191 (pp. 492–500). Housley prepared an English translation of Martin IV’s crusade proclamation of 5 April 1284 in his Documents on the Later Crusades, 1274–1580 (New York, 1996), pp. 25–7. 94 A good summary of the military details of the siege can be found in P. Purton, A History of the Late Medieval Siege, 1200–1500 (Woodbridge,

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After running out of supplies, and facing disease, the Catalan defenders of the city surrendered. The French victory was short-lived, however, as the main French host withdrew shortly afterwards, leaving their garrison at Girona isolated and ultimately forced to abandon its position. While there are of course substantial differences between the liturgical narratives of Charlemagne’s legendary siege of Girona in 785 and Desclot and Muntaner’s accounts of Philip the Bold’s campaign of 1285, the similarities are startling. Most strikingly, the invading armies enter Catalunya with virtually the same overall strategy, and take nearly identical routes.95 The legendary Charlemagne and the historical Philip both began their respective campaigns in the southern French city of Narbonne. Charlemagne and Philip then moved to the region of Roussillon and made preparations to cross the Pyrenees at the strategic Coll de Panissars.96 Correspondingly, the defenders  –  Saracens in the liturgical texts, Catalans in the chronicles  –  seem to employ a similar strategy as well. As the Saracens did in the liturgy, Desclot and Muntaner say that the Catalans sent a host to occupy the pass of Panissars to prevent an easy crossing by the French crusaders. The Legenda and Tractatus state that Charlemagne was too frightened to continue with his campaign just before going to battle in Milet at the foot of the Pyrenees.97 Intriguingly, 2010), pp. 75–7. For the wider political events in Aragon and expansion in Mediterranean, see T. Bisson, The Medieval Crown of Aragon: A Short History (Oxford, 1986), pp. 86–103. 95 Neither Desclot nor Muntaner mention the similarity of Philip’s route with Charlemagne’s entry into Spain, which is perhaps another sign that the tradition post-dated the era of the crusade. Muntaner actually emphasizes how foolish the French route into Spain through the Coll de Panissars was, and that the crusaders would have been better served by entering Aragon–Catalunya through Gascony and Navarre. Muntaner, CXIX, pp. 296–8. For a comparison of the toponyms of Charlemagne’s journey in the office, Tractatus and the Vidimus see J. Clarà, ‘El “Camí de Carlemany” a la Catalunya vella’, Bulletí Interior de la Societat d’Onomàstica 60 (1995), 301–6. 96 Officium, Lectio quinta; Tractatus, ed. Altés i Aguiló, p. 264; cf. Desclot, Crònica, 67, trans. Critchlow, pp. 227–32. 97 See, for example, Lectio secunda of the Legenda, ed. Altés i Aguiló, p. 268: just before praying to Mary, Charles is worried about starting a war with

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Desclot and Muntaner show that Philip expressed his own fears of engaging the enemy in the same geographical locale.98 Facing the Saracen defences, Charlemagne divides his army in half and leads one part to the pass and the other through the ‘steep part of the mountains’, to encircle the enemy; Philip, upon encountering the Catalans in the same pass, attempted a comparable flanking manœuvre, taking the bulk of the French crusaders over a steeper pass nearby, identified as that of Massana.99 Correspondingly, the defenders in both narratives, realizing they have been outflanked, withdraw from the pass to take up a determined defence of Girona. After making it through the mountains, the paths of the two invading armies diverge somewhat, with Philip working to secure his supply lines and Charlemagne establishing churches, but both Charlemagne’s host and Philip’s crusaders make Girona their primary objective. Girona itself is described similarly in both the liturgy and the chronicles. It is a wellfortified city, easily defended and particularly difficult to capture.100 While certainly not the most famous example of medieval siege, the sources for the 1285 French campaign against Girona agree that it was devastating to the people of the city and had a profound local effect. Richard L. C. Jones observed of sieges generally that ‘few other events can have had such a profound effect on national and local psyche and

a more numerous enemy. See also the Tractatus, ed. Altés i Aguiló, p. 263, which gives a similar idea at the same juncture in the narrative. This fear is not seen in the Officium, however. 98 Desclot, Crònica, 68, trans. Critchlow, pp. 238–43. 99 Desclot, Crònica, 74, trans. Critchlow, pp. 259–64; Muntaner, Crònica, 122, trans. Goodenough, pp. 303–7. Muntaner points out that a monk from Angeles, a monastery associated with Lagrasse, showed the French the secret pass. 100 For example, Tractatus, ed. Altés i Aguiló, p. 264: Girona ‘was very strong and girded with walls. It was garrisoned by many people and for the purposes of resisting a multitude, it was ready and most able’. Desclot, Crònica, 81, trans. Critchlow, p. 293: Girona ‘is set upon a hill on the edge of a river  … and encompassed by a strong and ancient wall and by towers  … at the topmost part of the city is a tower of exceeding splendour and of great strength and it hath lofty and solid walls builded of stone and mortar’.

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morale’. 101 At Girona, according to Desclot and Muntaner, the approach of the French caused the wholesale displacement of the entire urban population over the course of several months, as Peter III ordered a complete evacuation.102 Peter also commanded all buildings outside of the wall, with the sole exception of Sant Feliu de Girona, to be torn down to prevent their becoming a staging ground for the French attackers; farmers from the surrounding countryside had to abandon their fields and villages. The deep impact that this war had on the diocese can be seen in two subsequent events. Almost immediately afterwards, Ramon Folch VI, viscount of Cardona and commander of the defending Catalan garrison at Girona, saw fit to commemorate his unsuccessful but dedicated efforts during the siege of 1285 in a surviving fresco in his family’s ancestral home (Fig. 5.1).103 This fresco depicts the battles outside the walls of the city and shows that there was some interest in epic remembrance of the siege. An elaboration of the local cult of St Narcissus of Girona also shows the effects of 1285. As Desclot observed, the army of Philip III suffered from a horrible plague of flies during the siege.104 A tradition subsequently developed that the flies had come out of the tomb of St Narcissus, martyr and co-patron of the church of Sant Feliu de Girona (the only building left standing by Peter 101 R. L. Jones, ‘Fortifications and Sieges in Western Europe, c. 800–1450’, in Medieval Warfare: A History, ed. M. Keen (Oxford, 1999), pp. 163–85 (pp. 183–4). 102 Desclot, Crònica, 81, trans. Critchlow, pp. 289–94; cf. Muntaner, 125, trans. Goodenough, pp. 312–15. 103 Critchlow points out that the Cardona family, like many noble families in Catalunya, traced its origins to the Carolingian period and claimed Charlemagne as an ancestor. Viscount Ramon Folch VI claimed to be a descendant of Ramon Folch, the son of Count Julian of Anjou and his wife Argencia, sister of Charlemagne. See Desclot, Crònica, 81, p. 291 n. 4. Ramon Folch VI also had a keen interest in demonstrating his loyalty, which may be what the fresco cycle is in fact broadcasting, since he had been involved in an uprising of the Aragonese nobility just before the crusade. Corroborating evidence is provided through a document from the royal chancery dated to 18 February 1284, which details Ramon Folch’s promise to aid Peter III in the upcoming war; see Diplomatari, ed. Cingolani, doc. 384, pp. 688–9. 104 Desclot, Crònica, 88, trans. Critchlow, pp. 331–2.

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Fig. 5.1  Fresco depicting the defence of Girona during the 1285 siege, from the chapel of Sant Vicenç de Cardona (Bages), completed soon after the crusade against Aragon (1284–5)

III outside the walls), when the French seized the shrine and attempted to violate his relics. According to the story, the avenging holy flies brought by this miracle devastated the French knights and their animals and forced their retreat, effectively writing the surrender of the city out of the narrative from the chronicles.105 This comparison of Charlemagne’s legendary siege of Girona in the liturgy with the siege by Philip III raised several major interpretive problems for Mont-rodon. Malcolm Hebron and Michael Harney have shown that audience identification with the besiegers or the besieged in siege narratives could be highly volatile, and again used examples of the 105 Merino and de la Canal, España sagrada, XLIII, pp. 318–31.

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sieges of Jerusalem.106 But with the narratives of the Girona sieges, the dichotomy is extreme: the audience’s pity completely switches between the chronicles and liturgy. In the crusade chronicles, the French invaders are clearly the aggressors and the authors’ sympathies rest with the valiant Catalan defenders within the city. Although a ‘scene of suffering’ is shown outside the city, with the French soldiers dying from disease and pestered by flies, Desclot and Muntaner both seem to view it as just punishment for Philip’s foolish invasion.107 In the liturgy, the ‘scene of suffering’ (where there is one) is also outside the city, but the lections foster identification with the invaders, Charlemagne and his army. Yet, these awkward parallels between the armies of Charlemagne and Philip could have been designed to instead place the differences between them in stark relief. Though the conquering armies both take similar paths to Girona, the pious king Charlemagne builds churches on the way, while Philip pillages them. Looking more closely at the invading commanders, Philip and the legendary Charlemagne, reveals additional tensions between the narratives. Desclot describes the invader Philip as a crusader, but a particularly misled one, as is apparent in his narrative of the French sack of Perpignan. In this instance, the papal legate goaded Philip into violently plundering the city with promises of absolution for the crusaders’ crimes.108 The Catalan chroniclers also show the French king as pompous and arrogant, which serves both to undermine the legitimacy of his invasion and to explain his poor choices. In the liturgy, Charlemagne, the saint, is explicitly labelled a miles Christi, as well as the ‘arm and defender of the church’, by Mary herself. Despite (or perhaps because of) his hesitation and fear at times, the liturgy shows Charlemagne to be good, just and humble, a stark contrast to the Catalan chroniclers’ view of Philip. The especially laudatory liturgical portrait, however, contrasts with most other Catalan depictions of Charlemagne, which are generally ambivalent.109 In a particularly 106 M. Harney, ‘Siege Warfare in Medieval Hispanic Epic and Romance’, in Medieval City, ed. Corfis and Wolfe, pp. 177–90 (p. 181). 107 Desclot, Crònica, 87–8, trans. Critchlow, pp. 319–32. 108 Desclot, Crònica, 58–9, trans. Critchlow, pp. 238–47. 109 The best study of the contested memory of Charlemagne in Catalunya is P. Freedman’s ‘Cowardice, Heroism and the Legendary Origins of

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salient example, Desclot’s only direct reference to Charlemagne is in the context of the French court where the papal legate urged Philip to take up the cross against Aragon.110 In Desclot’s words, the legate, who is repeatedly shown as the prime instigator of violence against Catalans, lists the deeds of the ‘saintly and devout’ Charlemagne and echoes Urban II’s rhetorical appeal to Charlemagne as a prototypical crusader and defender of the faith in his plea to Philip.111 While Desclot describes Charlemagne as a conqueror of Spain, he is also depicted as a French king, and his purported role in taking Girona is conspicuously absent.112 As for the defenders of Girona, the vernacular chroniclers laud Peter III and the bravery of the Catalans, who engaged in a strategy of withdrawal, harrying the enemy and holding fortifications. Furthermore, Desclot says that conscripted Muslims actually fought for Peter III during the siege, and prominently highlights a series of daring feats performed by Muslim crossbowmen in defence of the city.113 A Catalonia’, Past and Present 121 (1988), 3–28; and also his monograph The Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia (Cambridge, 1991). 110 Desclot, Crònica, 64, trans. Critchlow, pp. 213–20. 111 Desclot, Crònica, 64, trans. Critchlow, p. 217. As with Urban II in Robert the Monk’s history (see The ‘Historia Iherosolimitana’ of Robert the Monk, ed. D. Kempf and M. G. Bull [Woodbridge, 2013], Lib. I, p. 6), Desclot’s papal legate relies on the rhetorical power of references to the deeds of Charlemagne against pagans and enemies of the church to inspire would-be crusaders to action. The legate in Desclot interestingly splits the deeds of Charlemagne between two people: the first an unnamed king of France who defeated the Lombard Desiderius who revolted against the church, and the second Carles Manyes, who conquered Constantinople and Spain. See the discussion on the uses of the memory of Charlemagne and his imagined Frankish empire in crusading contexts in Gabriele, Empire of Memory, esp. pp. 140–55. 112 The late thirteenth-century Libre dels Reis, written in Barcelona, ed. S. Cingolani (Valencia, 2008), pp. 138–43, seems to reflect another Catalan tradition of associating Charlemagne strongly with France. In this chronicle, Charlemagne is the king of France and is buried at SaintDenis when he dies. 113 Desclot, Crònica, 81, 84, trans. Critchlow, pp. 289–94, 298–303. Recent research has shown that the Crown of Aragon commonly recruited Muslim soldiers during this period, because of both the impending

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document from the royal chancery, dated to 19 June 1285, near the commencement of the siege, confirms this, as it records Peter III’s grant of liberty to the Muslim crossbowmen defending Girona.114 The liturgical texts present the defenders of Girona quite differently. There the defenders, all identified as ‘Saracens’, are called ‘infidels’ and ‘enemies of the cross’. Apart from emphasizing their staunch defence of the city of Girona, which serves to demonstrate divine power in overcoming that defence, the liturgical texts do not leave much to admire in the Saracens. Although there are dissonances between the 1285 accounts and the liturgy regarding the ‘scene of suffering’, the reception of the figure of Charlemagne, and the awkward parallel between the Saracen and Catalan defenders of the city, there are also some telling hints that the bishop considered the chronicles as he crafted his liturgy. First, and most prominently, while deaths of both Christians and Saracens are mentioned in the Tractatus and Legenda during skirmishes in the Pyrenees, there is no slaughter at all in the Officium, and no deaths in the vicinity of Girona itself in any of the texts. The Officium ends just before the actual occupation takes place, and the Tractatus clearly says that the Saracens fled when Charlemagne entered the city, thus neatly averting the bloodshed that Akbari observed in literary depictions of the sieges of Jerusalem at the moment of capture.115 While the Saracen defenders were not slain, sacrificial blood was still spilled at the taking of Girona  –  that of Christ, which poured down out of the sky as rain during the

French crusade and the shortage of manpower faced by Peter III after the concurrent revolt of the Aragonese nobles; this recruitment continued for about a century. Two excellent studies that explore the nature of Muslim military service to the kings of Aragon in this period are B. A. Catlos, ‘Mahomet Abenadalill: A Muslim Mercenary in the Service of the Kings of Aragon, 1290–1291’, in Jews, Muslims and Christians in and around the Crown of Aragon: Essays in Honour of Professor Elena Lourie, ed. H. Hames (Leiden, 2004), pp. 257–302; and H. A. Fancy, ‘Theologies of Violence: The Recruitment of Muslim Soldiers by the Crown of Aragon’, Past and Present 221 (2013), 39–73. 114 Diplomatari de Pere el Gran 1. Cartes i Pergamins: 1258–1285, ed. S. Cingolani (Barcelona, 2011), doc. 445, pp. 787–8. 115 Akbari, ‘Erasing the Body’, p. 162.

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climactic miracle.116 This makes sense liturgically, since the lections end with a reinforcement of Christ’s sacrifice, but this decision may also indicate Mont-rodon’s unease at depicting a violent takeover of his home city. Second, Charlemagne is surprisingly impotent throughout the liturgical texts. He has a circumscribed set of goals in entering Spain (namely, freeing Girona) but cannot take Girona through conventional warfare. The emperor who had conquered the rest of Europe needs heavenly help to seize Girona. Charlemagne, much like Philip in Desclot’s chronicle, is repeatedly stymied in his attempts to take the city.117 While the emperor’s effectiveness is limited in Mont-rodon’s liturgy, the city of Girona is elevated; no residents are killed in the struggle, the famous walls remain intact and the powerful Charlemagne ultimately owes his victory to the intercession of Mary, the patron of the city, who alone allows the city to be saved.

Conclusion

I

n 1345 Bishop Arnau de Mont-rodon enshrined a narrative of   Charlemagne’s legendary siege of the city of Girona as the centrepiece of his new liturgy devoted to the sainted emperor. The emphasis on siege set this liturgical office apart from other expressions of the cult of St Charlemagne in Europe. In many details, Mont-rodon’s liturgy favours the Charlemagne tradition found at Lagrasse or Ripoll, but there is also an unmistakable imprint of the more recent experiences of the 1285 French campaign as recorded by Catalan chroniclers. The relationships between a celebrated legendary siege and a traumatic recent siege of Girona raise interesting questions about the memory and meaning of sieges generally. Siege can be symbolic of watershed change, and certainly seems to be so in the liturgy, explaining a poorly understood transition from Muslim to Christian rule, but it is also at root a violent and destructive event that many in Girona likely knew all too well. The figure of Charlemagne, too, was not without local problems. The Frankish emperor was certainly internationally famous, but within Catalan historiography from the same period his legacy was ambiguous.

116 See Lectio Nona above, and the longer narrative in the Tractatus, ed. Altés i Aguiló, p. 266–7. 117 Philip tried to use siege engines, sappers and ladders, but all came to naught: Desclot, Crònica, 88–92, trans. Critchlow, pp. 331–8.

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As he crafted his liturgy, it seems that Mont-rodon was responsive to these concerns about the similarities to the French crusade and the problems with the figure of Charlemagne. In the Catalan chronicles, Philip III is depicted as a monster, as he seeks power for himself, pillages churches, kills Christians while on his crusade and cannot even adequately supply his own troops. Mont-rodon corrects these various abuses and recasts what a proper crusader should be with his carefully crafted liturgical vision of Charlemagne.118 In the liturgy, the emperor rescues Girona for altruistic purposes, not the enlargement of his personal domains; he builds ecclesiastical foundations instead of tearing them down; he fights only infidels and defends Christians from harm; and he even takes care to ensure that his troops are fed. But while Montrodon had to be careful with his liturgical depiction of an invading army from beyond the Pyrenees, he was also delicate with his presentation of the city itself. Girona, Mont-rodon’s home and diocese was, after all, the prize, the most important location throughout the liturgical texts. In addition, the capture in the liturgy was a nonviolent event  –  the only blood spilled was Christ’s, and the city itself remained completely intact. Charlemagne, while celebrated as a saintly hero, is ultimately just an instrument, not a miracle worker in his own right. Even in a liturgical celebration of St Charlemagne, Mont-rodon deftly shows that Girona’s patron, Mary, was always the real power behind the emperor’s throne. In a city that had so recently endured a real siege, the cathedral clergy were able to commemorate an imagined one with Mont-rodon’s liturgy, where the famous Charlemagne followed the commands of Mary and delivered their city into Christian hands. 118 Comparisons may be drawn with the twelfth-century memory of the earlier medieval past in Iberian historiography following the devastating Almoravid campaigns after 1086. After such destructive invasions, there seems to have been a therapeutic purpose to the reimagining of earlier epochs in histories and chronicles; Charlemagne often appears as a standard against which contemporary leaders can be measured. See R. McCluskey, ‘Malleable Accounts: Views of the Past in TwelfthCentury Iberia’, in The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. P. Magdalino (London, 1992), pp. 211–25; and W. J. Purkis, ‘The Past as a Precedent: Crusade, Reconquest and Twelfth-Century Memories of a Christian Iberia’, in The Making of Memory in the Middle Ages, ed. L. Doležalová (Leiden, 2010), pp. 441–61.

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6 ‘For the Honour of the Blessed Virgin’: The History and Legacy of Charles’s Devotion to Mary in the Gesta Karoli Magni ad Carcassonam et Narbonam James B. Williams

T

he outlook is beyond grim.1 The great Frankish emperor Charlemagne has just received horrible news. With his army divided and his trusted Roland elsewhere, a courier informs him that a massive force of Saracens is bearing down on him: sixteen different kings, 160,000 knights clothed in mail and 200,000 foot soldiers armed to the teeth. Their objective is the destruction of Charlemagne and all his assembled people. The courier reports that the Saracens are bold and bloodthirsty; their only fear is that Charlemagne will turn tail and run before their massive army can reach him. The mighty Charlemagne is undaunted though. He turns to the courier and says: Their fear is empty, for even if there are so many dozens, they will find me here in full measure, because I am building here the blessed Virgin Mary’s house, who is the mother of omnipotent God; and because she is His own mother, His protection provides the superior power to their weak assemblage full of faithlessness and foolishness.2 I would like to thank the editors, Matthew Gabriele and William Purkis, for their guidance on this chapter, as well as Emily Tucker, my undergraduate research assistant, for her help in tracing references to Charlemagne and the Virgin Mary. Any mistakes are wholly my own.

1 The following account comes from Guillelmus Paduanus, Gesta Karoli Magni ad Carcassonam et Narbonam, ed. C. Heitzmann, Millennio medievale 11 (Florence, 1999), pp. 20–2. 2 Guillelmus Paduanus, p. 21: ‘Inanis est eorum timor, nam si decem tanti essent, hic me modis omnibus invenirent, quoniam hedifico hic domum

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Then, with steely resolve Charlemagne turns to his troops. They had already heard the rumours and were pressing in on him to hear what they would do. He speaks to them with a commanding voice: Noble men, those kings, about whom you have heard, are coming against us and are nearly here. Although their number may be large, their power will be small, for God, who is the true power, is with us and abhors them. We are gathered here for the honour of the blessed Virgin Mary. We are resolved because we are safeguarded by His protection. Wherefore, let none of you doubt or be afraid, but stand tall with good cheer and a sword because we will decisively defeat them with our courage.3 At which point, the whole army erupt into cheers and declare themselves filled with the courage of lions. Legends are made of such bravado, or at the very least one particular legend of the mighty Charlemagne, king of the Franks, Roman emperor and father of Europe. This engrossing tale comes from Guillelmus Paduanus, who purportedly wrote the Gesta Karoli Magni ad Carcassonam et Narbonam in the middle of the thirteenth century.4 He recounts the story of Charlemagne’s expeditions to southern France to seize Narbonne and Carcassonne from Muslim control with a reorientation of key events towards the monastery dedicated to the Virgin Mary at Lagrasse. Nestled along the River Orbieu and in the foothills of the Pyrenees, Lagrasse stood as one of the more prominent monasteries of the Languedoc region for centuries after its foundation in the time of Charlemagne.5 One Bernhard, abbot of the monastery of Lagrasse, beate Virgini Marie, que mater est omnipotentis Dei, et ex quo mater est ipsius, eius patroncinium prevalet eorum fragili congeriei infidelitatis et stulticie plene.’ 3 Guillelmus Paduanus, p. 21: ‘Viri nobiles, isti reges, quos audivistis, veniunt contra nos et sunt hic prope et, licet sint multi, eorum potencia erit parva; nam Deus, qui est vera potencia, est nobiscum et eos odit, et nos sumus hic ad honorem beate Virginis congregati et sumus certi, quod eius tuemur patrocinio; quare nullus vestrum dubitet neque paveat, set ylares et cum gaudio stetis, quoniam eos viriliter devincemus.’ 4 For further discussion of this text, see also the study in this volume by Doolittle (Ch. 5). 5 Heitzmann, Gesta Karoli Magni, pp. xxvii–xl.

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commissioned this work of Guillelmus of Padua, ostensibly as a foundation legend.6 Though Guillelmus claims that his Gesta actually originated in an ancient, nearly destroyed, text discovered in the library at Lagrasse, this was merely a masquerade, all too common in works of the Middle Ages, to obscure its probable creation at the hands of Guillelmus himself.7 Indeed, Guillelmus populates his text with the characters found in other gesta, especially from Pseudo-Turpin’s twelfth-century Historia Karoli Magni et Rotholandi and the thirteenthcentury chanson de geste Aymeri de Narbonne. Despite these parallels, he borrows little from their actual storylines, instead using his text as a foundation legend for the monastery of Lagrasse.8 Still, like those other chansons de geste and later Latin legends of Charlemagne, the premise of Guillelmus’s Gesta distorts the historical record to an extraordinary degree. In doing so, it makes approaching the text much more complicated for the historian. One way to read the Gesta Karoli Magni ad Carcassonam et Narbonam is purely for its historical narrative, but doing so quickly proves futile. Septimania, the region of France that possesses both Narbonne and Carcassonne, traditionally belonged to the Visigoths as the northern extension of their empire, but it had fallen briefly and nominally 6 There were several Bernhards who served as abbot of Lagrasse, but most likely the Gesta refers to Bernhard III, abbot from 1237 to 1255, who energetically sought to increase the property of the monastery of Lagrasse through forgeries: see Heitzmann, Gesta Karoli Magni, pp. xxiv– xxix. On the purpose of the Gesta Karoli Magni as a foundation legend for Lagrasse’s monastery during a time of increased competition from new mendicant orders, see Heitzmann, Gesta Karoli Magni, pp. cv–cvix. Little is known about the author himself. According to Heitzmann, Guillelmus was a common name in circulation at Lagrasse, and although his moniker indicates origins from Padua (as does some of his vocabulary in the Gesta Karoli Magni), it is not possible to discern whether he was a resident brother of Lagrasse or only a temporary visitor. See Heitzmann, Gesta Karoli Magni, p. xxvii. 7 Heitzmann, Gesta Karoli Magni, pp. xxvii–xxviii. The Gesta Karoli Magni survives in eight manuscripts: one from the thirteenth century, three from the fourteenth century, three from the fifteenth century and one from the seventeenth century. See Heitzmann, Gesta Karoli Magni, pp. cx–cxv. 8 Heitzmann, Gesta Karoli Magni, p. xxxix.

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under Muslim control in the 720s. Charlemagne’s grandfather, Charles Martel, first pushed back against Muslim raiders and ventured into Septimania. The territory was a contested ground, though, until Charles Martel’s son, Pippin, firmly established a Frankish presence there. In 759 with the aid of the Visigoths, who still predominantly lived in the area, Pippin officially ousted the Muslims from Narbonne and controlled the city, and by 768 he controlled all of Septimania up to the Pyrenees. Although Charlemagne conducted raids across the Pyrenees and into the Spanish March, the credit for the conquest of Narbonne and Carcassonne should deservedly go to Pippin, but then again, the author of the Gesta Karoli Magni clearly preferred the powerful legend of Charlemagne over the forgotten figure of his father.9 Instead of these historical events, Guillelmus Paduanus crafts an extraordinary fiction whereby Charlemagne, Pope Leo, Roland and Archbishop Turpin liberate Narbonne and Carcassonne from fearsome Muslim kings like Mahomet and Tamarind in an epic display of prowess and piety. Half these figures are mythical, deriving from epic literature of the Frankish past, and the other half were certainly not present in Narbonne at this time doing the feats attributed to them. The irony in this thick fiction is that Charlemagne did actually provide the earliest royal charter for the monastery of Lagrasse, which was founded during his reign by Nibridius, archbishop of Narbonne, who is not even mentioned in the Gesta Karoli Magni.10 Another way to read the text is to follow the advice of Eugene Vance and approach Guillelmus’s Gesta as a cultural construction purely of its own time.11 This theoretical approach can illuminate much of Guillelmus’s work and the text’s themes. The vilification of Muslims and 9 For background on the Carolingian conquest of southern France, see C. J. Chandler, ‘Charlemagne’s Last March: The Political Culture of Carolingian Catalonia, 778–987’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Purdue University, 2003), pp. 15–28; Heitzmann, Gesta Karoli Magni, pp. xxix–xxxvii; P. Riché, The Carolingians: A Family who Forged Europe (Philadelphia, 1993), pp. 43–5, 73–5, 115–16. 10 Heitzmann, Gesta Karoli Magni, pp. xxx–xxxi. 11 E. Vance, ‘Semiotics and Power: Relics, Icons, and the Voyage de Charlemagne à Jérusalem et à Constantinople’, in The New Medievalism, ed. M. S. Brownlee, K. Brownlee and S. G. Nichols (Baltimore, 1991), pp. 226–49.

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their destruction at the hands of the triumphant Franks clearly plays into the animosity in Europe emergent from the crusades.12 The close bond between Charlemagne and Roland reflects the ideal vassalage between noble and king that the central Middle Ages thrived upon.13 The glorification of the church and relics at Lagrasse betrays, like so many other miracle stories, a motivation to bolster the importance of the church and advertise it to the text’s audience, who just might be attracted to undertake a pilgrimage there.14 It also conveniently fits Lagrasse within the emerging story of ‘France’ by connecting it to the Frankish royal past so popular in chansons of the day.15 Last, it should come as no surprise to see Charlemagne’s Christian piety connected to the Virgin Mary, as she herself had grown in status over the preceding centuries to the point that one author has referred to the period of 1000–1200 as ‘the emergence of Mary’s hegemony’ in Christian culture.16 By putting these two icons of the central Middle Ages together in combination with the struggle against Muslims and the romance of knighthood, Guillelmus provides his thirteenth-century audience with an irresistible spectacle. While viewing the Gesta Karoli Magni as a product of its own period yields many fruits, this chapter will explore a third means by which to approach it, one which is more difficult to pursue than analysing the legend as purely a product of its own time, but more rewarding in that it encapsulates a broader context. Looking back at the passages 12 J. Stuckey, ‘Charlemagne as Crusader? Memory, Propaganda, and the Many Uses of Charlemagne’s Legendary Expedition to Spain’, in Legend of Charlemagne, pp. 137–52. 13 M. Bloch, Feudal Society: The Growth of the Ties of Dependence, trans. L. A. Manyon, 2 vols. (London and New York, 1962), I, pp. 125 and 232; W. T. Cotton, ‘Par amur et par feid: Keeping Faith and the Varieties of Feudalism in Le Chanson de Roland’, in The Rusted Hauberk: Feudal Ideas of Order and their Decline, ed. L. O. Purdon and C. L. Vitto (Gainesville, FL, 1994), pp. 163–99. 14 Even Arab chroniclers note the occurrence of Christian pilgrimage to Lagrasse: see F. Clément, ‘Le Pélerinage a Lagrasse, d’après une source arabe du XIe siècle’, Annales du Midi 100 (1988), 489–95. 15 Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past, pp. 196–211. 16 M. Rubin, Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary (New Haven, 2009), pp. xxi–xxvi, 119.

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from the Gesta Karoli Magni that opened this chapter, it is clear that Charlemagne’s decision to stand and face his Muslim counterparts derived not from his confidence in his own military cunning and power but from his zealous belief that the Virgin Mary, and his active work in building an abbey church dedicated to her, would offer the only divine protection he needed to win the day. What if this great conjoining of Charlemagne and the Virgin Mary as defenders of Christianity found in Guillelmus’s Gesta provides us a glimpse of something that had been simmering in memory for much longer, only to boil over in this thirteenth-century setting? In other words, what if the Gesta Karoli Magni is both a product of its immediate context and a connection to a remembered past?17 The only way to explore this notion is to trace the literary connection between Charlemagne and the Virgin Mary from the thirteenth century back to the eighth century. What emerges from such an examination is an alternative perspective of Charles and the Virgin in the Gesta Karoli Magni, as a partnership that evolved through a process of selective memory from authentic historical origins, particularly in three main themes: Charlemagne as the builder of churches to Mary; Charlemagne as the defender of Christian orthodoxy and the converter of the unfaithful; and Charlemagne as devotee of the cult of the Virgin Mary.

Charlemagne as the Builder of Churches to Mary

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ne of the main reasons for the construction of the legend of  Charlemagne’s conquests in the areas around Narbonne and Carcassonne was their proximity to Lagrasse, the focal point of the Gesta Karoli Magni ad Carcassonam et Narbonam.18 Guillelmus Paduanus begins the story of Lagrasse with a small oratory boasting seven supremely spiritual hermits. After Charlemagne’s successful expedition to conquer Carcassonne, his army travelled towards Narbonne, where Archbishop Turpin was the first among Charlemagne’s entourage 17 This approach is similar to the appeal that Matthew Gabriele makes to historians to approach Charlemagne legends as part of a broader movement in geography and time, and not as just a product of local context: see Gabriele, Empire of Memory, pp. 1–9. 18 For background on the monastery of Lagrasse, see the excellent history by Heitzmann, Gesta Karoli Magni, pp. xxix–xxxiv.

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to stumble upon Lagrasse. There, he discovered the leader of this small group of hermits, Thomas, who greeted him by saying ‘May the omnipotent son of the Virgin bless you’, thus setting the stage for Marian devotion at the monastery of Lagrasse.19 When Charlemagne arrived, he heard Thomas the hermit celebrate the mass; then, at a meal afterwards, Charlemagne agreed with a recommendation put forth by the count of Flanders and Archbishop Turpin to construct a proper, new monastery and chapel for these holy hermits.20 Prudence would seem to dictate a strategy of defeating the enemy in the area first, the purported purpose of Charlemagne’s expedition, and then to begin work on the new monastery. But when it came to Charlemagne’s spiritual devotion no delay could be permitted; nothing was to prevent the construction of Lagrasse. Charlemagne immediately turned to his stonemason Robert (conveniently on the expedition) and ordered the construction to begin with his own army assisting. The holy wisdom of this seeming impetuosity was confirmed when four blind men suddenly arrived at Lagrasse because they had heard of its holiness. Consequently, the holy hermits prayed fervently to the Virgin Mary, bearer of God; God responded by speaking to them all and restoring sight to the blind men. Everyone, including Charlemagne and his army, immediately gave thanks to the Virgin Mary, clearly viewing her as the intercessor who made this miracle possible.21 Shortly thereafter, Charlemagne has every reason to abandon his foolish project to construct a new chapel and monastery at Lagrasse, as he receives word from a messenger about a massive force of Saracens bearing down on him. This event marks the episode that introduces this chapter. Despite the impossible odds, Charlemagne refuses to abandon construction of ‘the blessed Virgin Mary’s house’, and believes her protection will save them.22 Predictably, her protection does keep them  –  but only after a great deal of dramatic (and traumatic) fighting. The end result marks not just Charlemagne’s courageous victory, 19 Guillelmus Paduanus, p. 7: ‘Omnipotens filius Virginis vos benedicat.’ 20 Guillelmus Paduanus, pp. 14–15. 21 Guillelmus Paduanus, pp. 15–16: God said ‘the appeal by prayer of you and yours has been heard, Thomas’ (‘exaudita est, Thoma, tui deprecatio et tuorum’). 22 Guillelmus Paduanus, p. 21.

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with thanks given to the Virgin Mary for the triumph, but also the successful completion of the monastery at Lagrasse dedicated to that very same Virgin. The Gesta Karoli Magni concludes with Charlemagne, surrounded by his grand army, a host of nobles, Archbishop Turpin and Pope Leo, all genuflecting before the altar of Mary.23 Charlemagne then endows this new chapel with a plethora of precious objects, including a new chalice and paten, two new books inlaid with ivory-plated artwork, a psaltery constructed of cypress having posts encrusted with 135 precious stones, two cowls of gold and silk, and ten precious garments of spotless silk. He even left behind a pair of gloves in a symbolic promise of future spoils for the monastery should he go on to conquer Spain. With all of these objects amassed on the altar, Charlemagne prays to the Virgin Mary, beseeching her to ensure that the monastery at Lagrasse would always be cherished and protected.24 Charlemagne’s unswerving devotion to the construction of the chapel and monastery to the Virgin Mary at Lagrasse paid dividends for everyone. Charlemagne emerged with victory against impossible odds. His knights achieved great triumph in battle. Thomas the hermit received new recognition and honour as abbot. Most importantly, a new monastery emerged to praise God and the Virgin Mary, forever changing the cultural landscape of Lagrasse. There are several connections between this legendary story and the current thirteenth-century concerns of the monks of Lagrasse. Their roots were verified in an epic manner by the conquests of Charlemagne, and the monastery’s endowment revealed a blend of both royal patronage and heavenly patronage from the Virgin Mary. Amy Remensnyder has argued that Guillelmus’s Gesta fits within a larger framework of monastic foundation legends from the central Middle Ages that serve not only as a part of each community’s self-fashioned identity but also as an exploration of social networks, especially back to French kings and the emergent French state.25 Occupants of the Languedoc region of France had recently experienced the tightening grip of its French king and the process of centralizing the formerly

23 Guillelmus Paduanus, p. 87. 24 Guillelmus Paduanus, p. 88. 25 Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past, pp. 1–4 and 198–200.

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Frankish state through the Albigensian Crusade.26 Indeed, sceptics have argued that the ‘Albigensians’ or ‘Cathars’ emerged as an imagined heresy precisely because of the previously semi-autonomous nature of the region and the desire of individuals in powerful institutions to exercise more control there.27 In this context, Guillelmus’s Gesta may be seen as fitting into a programme to legitimize and glorify increased royal control over Languedoc, just as Charlemagne asserted his authority in the conquests of Carcassonne and Narbonne. A subtle allusion to this comparison between kings of past and present may come in Guillelmus’s reference to Charlemagne as the rex Francie rather than rex Franciae.28 Christian Heitzmann provides an additional context for the great endowments to the monastery at Lagrasse that are more economic than patriotic. Abbot Bernhard, who sponsored Guillelmus’s creation of the Gesta, engaged in a grander agenda of increasing the property of the monastery, even going so far as to craft forgeries to achieve his end.29 In this light, the Gesta can be seen as lending credence to the abbot’s property claims by evoking the legendary name of Charlemagne as founder, and that of the monastery’s patron saint, Mary, the greatest

26 For a concise history of Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade, see J. K. Deane, A History of Medieval Heresy and Inquisition (Lanham, MD, 2011), pp. 25–56; M. Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 3rd edn (Oxford, 2002), pp. 97–157. 27 On the Languedoc region in southern France as semi-autonomous, see T. N. Bisson, Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours: Studies in Early Institutional History, Studies Presented to the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions LXX (London, 1989), pp. 215–55. For the sceptics who deconstruct Catharism into an imagined heresy, see M. G. Pegg, A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom (Oxford, 2008), pp. ix–xiv and 188–91; R. I. Moore, The War on Heresy (Cambridge, MA, 2012), pp. 327–36. There is considerable disagreement concerning the question of the Cathars as real versus constructed heretics. For responses to the deconstructionists, see A. Friedlander’s review of Pegg’s A Most Holy War in Speculum 84 (2009), 763–5; and P. Biller’s review of R. I. Moore’s The War on Heresy in Reviews in History (review no. 1546) at http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1546 (accessed 27 May 2014). 28 Guillelmus Paduanus, p. 38. 29 Heitzmann, Gesta Karoli Magni, p. xxxvi.

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intercessor of the church. Presumably, no God-fearing or king-fearing man would want to betray these two. Regardless of these contemporary contexts, the memory of Charlemagne creating, defending, and endowing a church to the Virgin Mary was by no means novel to the thirteenth century or Guillelmus Paduanus. Instead, it has its own rich history preserved in both literature and historical accounts of Charlemagne’s lifetime. Guillelmus Paduanus was influenced by another popular legendary story of Charlemagne pitted against Saracens from the twelfth century, the Historia Karoli Magni et Rotholandi, or Pseudo-Turpin, whose characters play such prominent roles in the Gesta Karoli Magni ad Carcassonam et Narbonam.30 Pseudo-Turpin shamelessly promoted the cult of St James of Compostela, which would seem to be at odds with the Gesta Karoli Magni, but there is an important Marian connection that flows between the two. At the very beginning of the text, Pseudo-Turpin reveals his agenda when St James visits Charles in a dream instructing him to wage war against the Muslims in order to recover James’s body in Galicia and open up the site to visiting pilgrims. Throughout his journey, Charles dutifully stops and dedicates many churches to St James, but the author also notes the significance of Charles’ dedication of Aachen to the Virgin Mary, describing this church’s dedication before the one dedicated to St James in Aachen.31 Moreover, when Charles had completed his quest to open the pilgrimage route to Compostela, he went back to Aachen and donated the precious gold and silver spoils of his war to the basilica of the Blessed Virgin Mary, demonstrating the piety to Mary that every good king should display.32 A similar scene plays out in the conclusion to the Gesta Karoli Magni when Charlemagne dedicates his spoils and treasures to the church at Lagrasse.33 The chapel dedicated to Mary at Aachen also appears in the Historia Karoli Magni as the setting for the final judgement over Charles, who is saved from death only because of his construction and dedication 30 The Pseudo-Turpin: Edited from Bibliothèque Nationale, Fonds Latin, MS. 17656 with an Annotated Synopsis, ed. H. M. Smyser (Cambridge, MA, 1937), pp. 55–100. 31 Pseudo-Turpin, p. 61. 32 Pseudo-Turpin, p. 92. 33 Guillelmus Paduanus, p. 87.

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of churches. Even though St James of Compostela commands centre stage throughout Pseudo-Turpin’s legend, Charles’s dedication of his own church to the Virgin, which plays an integral role in his eternal salvation, and his continued donation to that church, reveal how strong the association of Charles and Mary was in the literature of the high Middle Ages. The Vita Karoli Magni offers another excellent example of Charlemagne’s spirituality, and his dedication to the Virgin Mary especially, through his actions in Francia. This Vita Karoli Magni is not the work of that title written by Einhard, Charlemagne’s contemporary, but rather the product of an anonymous author working in the second half of the twelfth century at the behest of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to bolster the canonization of Charlemagne in 1165.34 The most powerful characterization of the relationship between Charlemagne and the Virgin Mary in the Vita Karoli Magni emerges in the chapter the author dedicates solely to the church Charlemagne constructed at Aachen for Mary. It is the longest chapter in the entire Vita, perhaps appropriately so as the author tries to convey both the magnificence of the basilica and the piety of the emperor who built it. The author writes: Worthily and not undeservedly that basilica of surpassing beauty and admirable elegance, which is publicly called Aachen, having been founded under the title and honour of blessed Mary the God-bearer and ever-virgin, deserves to be reckoned among his many similar works of imperial sanctity  … To this foundation’s structure when he could not get columns and encrusted marble from elsewhere, he took pains to carry it off from Rome and Ravenna; so that he might found a church worthy of the worthiest Virgin, he spared no work or expense [then proceeds a list of numerous gifts Charlemagne gives to the Virgin Mary for the chapel]  … Indeed, how much celebration, how great a multitude of bishops and abbots, primates and nobles of the whole kingdom and empire celebrated the consecration of that basilica, also with having received the most blessed prelate Leo of the holy seat of 34 Vita Karoli Magni in Die Legende Karls des Grossen im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert, ed. G. Rauschen (Leipzig, 1890), pp. 1–94 (p. 3). For further discussion, see the study in this volume by Stuckey (Ch. 2).

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Rome; a succession of royal deeds was made evident. For the dedication of that most celebrated church was solemnized in the presence of metropolitans [bishops] and bishops 365 in number, excluding a countless number of dukes, marquises, counts and barons, and it was given a title in honour of the most blessed Virgin of virgins with a choir of angels applauding and singing harmoniously, ‘glory to God in the highest’. 35 This lengthy excerpt, from which much has been pared, places the chapel at Aachen in a new context within Charlemagne’s life, quite distinct from previous authors. While the Vita’s author fulfils one of his own agendas in exalting Charlemagne’s building programmes, he also establishes that Charlemagne does not construct this elaborate edifice and endow it with all manner of beautiful decorations for his own glory but out of deep, personal piety for the Virgin Mary.36 Charlemagne spared no expense precisely in order to make the chapel at Aachen ‘worthy of the worthiest Virgin’. He dedicated the individual items to 35 Vita Karoli Magni, pp. 39–40: ‘Digne autem nec immerito inter hec et similia imperatorie sanctitatis opera connumerari emeruit et illa egregie pulchritudinis et ammirandi decoris basilica, que Aquisgrani sub titulo et honore beate dei genitricis semperque virginis Marie predicatur fundata  … Ad cuius etiam fundationis structuram cum columpnas et marmora aliunde habere non posset, Roma atque Ravenna devehenda curavit; ut enim dignam dignissime virgini fundaret ecclesiam, nullum laborem et sumptum recusavit  … Consecrationem vero eiusdem basilice quanta sollempnitate, quanta episcoporum et abbatum, quanta totius regni et imperii primatum et principum numerositate celebraverit, ascito etiam beatissimo Leone sancte Romane sedis presule, series gestorum principalium manifeste declarat. Eadem namque illius ecclesie celeberrima dedicatio sub presentia metropolitanorum et episcoporum numero trecenteorum et sexaginta quinque excepta innumerabili infinitate ducum, marchionum et comitum et baronum gloriosissime est sollempnizata et sub honore beatissime virginis virginum choro angelorum applaudente et gloriam in excelsis deo concinente est titulata.’ 36 Some of the descriptions in the Vita Karoli Magni of the adornments of the church come from Einhard’s Vita Karoli Magni. For comparison, see Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH SRG 25, pp. 30–1; trans. T. F. X. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious: Lives by Einhard, Notker, Ermoldus, Thegan, and the Astronomer (University Park, PA, 2009), pp. 42–3.

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the Virgin Mary and before all the Christian world both on earth and in heaven. While Guillelmus Paduanus fails to include the singing choir of angels, he re-creates many of the exact same themes at the dedication of the monastery of Lagrasse in his Gesta: an obsessive devotion to fulfilling a construction project worthy of the Virgin Mary, the list of riches given by Charlemagne to enrich the interior spaces, and the dedication of the chapel before a substantial noble and ecclesiastical entourage, featuring Pope Leo III.37 Though the twelfth and thirteenth centuries provide exemplars for Charles’s Marian devotion in the context of church construction, such as at Aachen or Lagrasse, there is a dearth of such material in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Indeed, one would anticipate at least being able to find antecedents in the early Latin lives of Charlemagne from the ninth century, but they provide only cursory references, as they are largely concerned with their own prerogatives and do not pay much attention to Charlemagne’s piety.38 It is therefore necessary to look beyond the vitae of Charlemagne and study his actions in the eighth and ninth centuries in order to evaluate the legend of his devotion to Mary. The pattern that Guillelmus establishes in the Gesta Karoli Magni, whereby Charlemagne takes a special interest in important holy sites and dedicates chapels there to the Virgin Mary, reflects key aspects of the historical Charlemagne’s genuine construction projects. In the Gesta Karoli Magni, this pattern reveals a few key themes: Charles’s 37 Guillelmus Paduanus, p. 87. 38 The anonymous Saxon Poet’s Annalium de gestis Caroli magni imperatoris libri quinque mentioned the Virgin Mary in connection with Charles’s palace at Aachen, elaborating that Charles intended the chapel as a place ‘for perpetually praising you (Christ) and your holy bearer (Mary)’. The Saxon poet implies that the dedication of the chapel at Aachen had a loftier purpose than simply slapping a name on the exterior of the building, but he provides only a vague portrait of Charles’s piety. Poeta Saxo, Annalium de gestis Caroli magni imperatoris libri quinque, ed. P. von Winterfield, MGH Poetae 4, 1 (Berlin, 1899), p. 65. In a similar vein, Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne in 829 makes almost no mention of the Virgin Mary. She is discussed only in passing as Einhard describes Charlemagne’s construction of his great palace compound at Aachen with its chapel dedicated to ‘the Mother of God’. See Einhard, p. 20; trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, p. 36.

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fervent pursuit of the construction of the chapel dedicated to Mary at Lagrasse (even when he comes under assault from a massive army of Saracens); his sparing of no expense to enrich and endow the chapel to glorify God and his victory; and Pope Leo’s prominent role at each of the significant events surrounding Lagrasse (beginning with his discovery of the hermits there and ending with the chapel’s official consecration). Although none of these events ever occurred at Lagrasse as Guillelmus imagined, they did take place at other locations in the Carolingian empire in Charlemagne’s period. In fact, Charles’s most important, personal church constructions from the 790s onward all occurred in honour of the Virgin Mary, specifically at Aachen, Paderborn and Jerusalem. Charles’s Marian chapel at Aachen certainly inspired the later Vita Karoli Magni and Pseudo-Turpin discussed above, but the foundation of these legends is authentically historical. Charles commissioned the construction of the Aachen chapel in 792, though completion was not achieved until several years later. The chapel was situated between two of Charles’s palace centres, Ingelheim and Nijmegen, and Charles gave it every measure of grandeur available at the time. A sixteen-sided wall surrounded by vaults enclosed the chapel centre space, approximately 48 feet in diameter and reaching 110 feet high. Workmen and artists filled the interior with sumptuous mosaics, marble pillaged from Roman ruins and even an equestrian statue removed from Ravenna.39 More importantly, according to Rosamond McKitterick, Charlemagne envisioned his Marian chapel at Aachen as a model church for the entire empire. It was a sacred space which guests from within and without the kingdom could visit to learn and thus spread Charlemagne’s reformed liturgical programme.40 That Charles dedicated this very chapel to the Virgin Mary upon its completion in the late 790s added another layer of meaning to the site as a religious model, 39 For a description of the church and the complexity of its design, see L. Falkenstein, Karl der Grosse und die Enstehung des Aachener Marienstiftes, Quellen und Forschungen aus dem Gebiet des Geschichte (Paderborn, 1981), pp. 56–98; R. E. Sullivan, Aix-la-Chapelle in the Age of Charlemagne (Norman, OK, 1963), pp. 40–61. 40 R. McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 321–6. McKitterick also makes the argument that Charles’s travels as king constituted a planned ‘sacred itinerary’ from one site of religious significance to another.

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which was reinforced when Pope Leo III arrived in 805 to visit the chapel during its official consecration to the Virgin.41 In a sense, Pope Leo confirmed and sealed the orthodoxy of the sanctuary dedicated to the Virgin, perhaps in a manner not too dissimilar to the descriptions of Pope Leo at the consecration of Lagrasse. Charlemagne dedicated other significant churches to the Virgin Mary later in his rule, with the example of Paderborn offering a surprisingly similar sequence of events to Aachen. Charlemagne established Paderborn as his regional headquarters in the East for his campaign against the Saxons from 772 to 804, in what Pierre Riché dubbed the first Thirty Years War.42 This extensive and bloody conquest required a relentless and ruthless commitment on the part of Charles to subdue a resistant Saxon people, with Paderborn standing as a testament to his conquering achievements; annalists later took to calling Paderborn the urbs Karoli, or city of Charles, on account of Charles’s intimacy with the city and its construction.43 In the late 790s Charles commissioned a building programme to revitalize the original royal palace, created two decades earlier. During this reconstruction, Charles replaced the small chapel built in 777 and dedicated to the Saviour with a basilica nearly four times larger, now dedicated to the Virgin Mary and St Kilian. The choice of St Kilian was a logical one because of his local importance in the conversion of Saxons, but the Virgin Mary’s dedication, replacing that of the Saviour, suggests a plan on the part of Charlemagne and his court to elevate the status and cult of the Virgin throughout the empire. Charles invited Pope Leo to consecrate this grand new basilica in 799, thus gaining another stamp of approval for his brand of Christianity and his choice of chapel dedication. Not only was this basilica sumptuous, like the one described in Lagrasse, but Paderborn also served as a potent symbol of his military victory, just as Lagrasse served as a triumphant

41 Annales Laureshamenses, ed. G. H. Pertz, MGH SS 1, pp. 37–8. McKitterick notes the difficulty in discerning the actual occurrence and sequence of events during Pope Leo’s visit to Aachen. He may have consecrated the chapel himself, which would mimic a similar occurrence at Paderborn. See McKitterick, Charlemagne, p. 322. 42 Riché, The Carolingians, pp. 102–7. 43 On the importance of Paderborn among Charles’s system of royal residences, see McKitterick, Charlemagne, pp. 165–6.

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celebration of victory over the Saracens in Guillelmus’s fictitious construction of the event. Aachen and Paderborn are two of the greatest construction projects of Charles’s reign, in two of the cities most important to his rule, but he also extended his sponsorship over Jerusalem in a bid to establish himself as emperor of the entire Christian world. He had probably attracted the attention of the patriarch of Jerusalem, and indeed of all Christendom, through his largesse.44 Although Charlemagne did not exercise physical control over the Holy Land, he still exerted his influence to the benefit of European pilgrims by keeping the Holy Lands open for travel. A significant step in accomplishing this goal was to establish a hospice in Jerusalem where pilgrims could safely stay while visiting.45 A description of this hospice comes down to us from Bernard the Monk, who visited Jerusalem around 870, slightly over fifty years after the death of Charlemagne. Bernard reminisced about his stay there: From Ramla we hurried on to the village of Emmaus, and from Emmaus we reached the holy city of Jerusalem, where we stayed in the hospice of the Most Glorious Emperor Charles. All who come to Jerusalem for reasons of devotion and who speak the 44 Interaction between Charles and representatives from Jerusalem has been recorded on at least two separate occasions, with the first occurring at the consecration of Paderborn in 799. For this example, see Einhard, p. 19; trans. Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, p. 35. The second embassy came on the day that Charles was crowned emperor in 800; see Annales Laurissenses et Einhardi, ed. G. H. Pertz, MGH SS 1, p. 186. Aryeh Grabois has argued that Charlemagne’s reported surprise at the coronation by the pope likely occurred because Charlemagne had wanted both Jerusalem and Rome represented at this momentous occasion, but the pope had proceeded prematurely: see A. Grabois, ‘Charlemagne, Rome and Jerusalem’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire: Belgisch tijdschirft voor philologie en geschiedenis 59 (1981), 792–809. 45 On the location of the hospice and its possible connection to the later crusader shrine of St Mary of the Latins, see M. McCormick, Charlemagne’s Survey of the Holy Land: Wealth, Personnel, and Buildings of a Mediterranean Church between Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Washington, DC, 2011), pp. 81–91. McCormick also argues that it is unlikely Charlemagne’s hospice was linked to earlier Marian churches in Jerusalem, thus making it a fresh endeavour.

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Roman language are given hospitality there. Beside it there is a church in honour of Saint Mary, and thanks to this Emperor it has a splendid library, and twelve mansions, with fields, vineyards, and a garden, in the valley of Jehoshaphat. In front of this hospice is the forum and anyone who does his business there pays the person in charge an annual fee of two guineas.46 Following the pattern of Paderborn and Aachen, Charlemagne again sponsors a religious construction project and dedicates the primary church to the Virgin Mary, all with the blessing of the pope who had arranged his coronation as emperor. From Bernard’s description, it appears Charlemagne handsomely endowed this chapel of the Virgin Mary with riches sure to impress all who stayed and visited, much like Aachen and Paderborn. This hospice church, to my knowledge the only church Charlemagne sponsored outside his own territories, allowed Charlemagne to project his presence onto the global stage. The image he chose to represent him on that stage, in Christianity’s heartland, was that of the Virgin Mary, demonstrating the importance of her cult to the emperor and the Franks. The historic origins of Charlemagne’s determination to construct churches dedicated to the Virgin Mary are clearly authentic, and these origins come to be repeated in written form throughout the following centuries until eventually Guillelmus Paduanus retrieved them from the stored cultural memory and inserted them in the Gesta Karoli Magni to suit his own narrative of the monastery at Lagrasse. In doing so, he adopted many of the themes preserved in both history and memory  –  with Charlemagne as the central actor in Christian expansion of sacred space, Pope Leo as conferrer of blessings, an assemblage of nobles and ecclesiastical leaders as witnesses to the dedication, sumptuous gifts to enrich the holy interior and, of course, a dedication of the structure to the Virgin Mary as a sign of Charlemagne’s piety. Guillelmus Paduanus may have been meeting the needs of the monastery of Lagrasse in the thirteenth century to glorify its origins, but his method was to draw from a cultural construct that had endured for 500

46 Bernard, Itinerarium in Descriptiones terrae sanctae ex saeculo VIII, IX, XII, et XV, ed. T. Tobler (Leipzig, 1874), pp. 85–99 (p. 91); trans. J. Wilkinson, in Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades (Warminster, 1977), p. 142.

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years.47 Of course, this was not the only such memory that Guillelmus Paduanus exploited in this way.

Charlemagne and Mary: Converters of the ‘Faithless’

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n the Gesta Karoli Magni ad Carcassonam et Narbonam, Charlemagne   and Mary both have a significant role to play in the conversion of peoples to orthodox Christianity. Twice during the conflicts to subdue southern France, Charlemagne received Muslim royalty and nobility seeking to abandon their own faith, friends, and neighbours in order to be baptized into the Christian Church. On both occasions Charlemagne demonstrated his clemency and accepted them into the Christian fold, but it is also clear that the author intended the Virgin Mary to play a central role in these conversion scenarios. One of these kings, Iusteamendus, came forth to join the Christian faith saying, ‘I will hold the law of Christians to honour the blessed Virgin Mary.’ 48 Similarly, Charles received Merlerandus, his queen and fifty young noble lords and ladies, with the queen beseeching Charlemagne, ‘In praying for your clemency we want to be baptized to the honour and praise of God and the most blessed Mary, his mother.’49 These powerful examples of conversion could only take place with Mary holding a central role in the Christian faith, and with Charlemagne’s love of Christianity superseding his desire to extinguish his foes. Such a connection between Charlemagne and conversion is curious since he did little in the way of conversion of Muslims in his own time; none of the early Latin lives of Charlemagne even hint at it. In fact, he was surely more recognizable in the ninth century for his positive diplomatic relationship with the Muslim ruler Harun al-Rashid, from

47 According to Walter Pohl, ‘even invented pasts could not be created freely, they had to be likely enough to have come to pass’. Much like the medieval historiographers Pohl examined, who constructed Lombard identity, Guillelmus constructs the Lagrasse identity by drawing from a plausible past. See W. Pohl, ‘Memory, Identity, and Power in Lombard Italy’, in Uses of the Past in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Y. Hen and M. Innes (Cambridge, 2000), p. 27. 48 Guillelmus Paduanus, p. 60. 49 Guillelmus Paduanus, p. 68. The Saracen queen also seeks to arrange marriages for her virgin noble ladies.

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whom Charlemagne requested and received an elephant.50 Nevertheless, there is a historical thread that emerges to confirm Charlemagne as defender of the church and converter of the ‘faithless’. In the eighth and ninth centuries, it was Charlemagne’s struggles against the Felician heresy, also known as Adoptionism, that demanded his attention and efforts.51 In an effort to establish orthodoxy and convert the Felicians, Charlemagne orchestrated a preaching campaign in the very areas that are the setting for the Gesta Karoli Magni: Carcassonne, Narbonne, and Lagrasse. While it might be difficult to confuse a Felician heretic with a Muslim in terms of belief, the cultural memory of Charlemagne turning the ‘faithless’ to Christ resonates strongly in these two groups that are outsiders to orthodox Christianity. But, before exploring the Felicianism of Charlemagne’s day, it is necessary to contextualize the situation of Guillelmus’s own period, when the spectre of heresy had arisen anew with the so-called Cathar heresy and the Albigensian Crusade in the very region of Lagrasse. Undertaken in 1209–29, the subjugation of Languedoc and its dualist ‘heretics’ to crusader intervention was completed less than a decade before the abbacy of Bernhard III in 1237 (the terminus post quem for Guillelmus’s Gesta), though the persecution of heretics did not stop there. Authorities aggressively sustained the pursuit of Cathars in Languedoc long after the fighting had ceased, primarily by means of inquisitors.52 It is no small wonder, then, to find that Guillelmus carefully adheres to orthodox constructions of Mary in the writing of his Gesta. Mary, after all, was a contentious figure among heretics and orthodox thinkers, at least according to Catholic authorities, who frequently ascribed to the Cathars distorted Marian beliefs, such as the one that the Virgin Mary was an angel rather than a real person, or 50 P. E. Dutton, Charlemagne’s Mustache and Other Cultural Clusters of a Dark Age, ed. B. Wheeler (New York, 2004), pp. 59–61. 51 For the history of Felicianism or Adoptionism, see J. B. Russell, Dissent and Reform in the Early Middle Ages (Eugene, OR, 1965), pp. 10–13; J. C. Cavadini, The Last Christology of the West: Adoptionism in Spain and Gaul, 785–820 (Philadelphia, 1993), pp. 1–9; C. Chazelle, The Crucified God of the Carolingian Era: Theology and Art of Christ’s Passion (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 52–80. 52 J. B. Given, Inquisition and Medieval Society: Power Discipline, and Resistance in Languedoc (Ithaca, NY, 1997), pp. 1–22.

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that Jesus was born from Mary without a human soul (only the flesh). These characterizations of Mary supposedly derived from the Cathars’ dualist beliefs, which sought to deny Christ’s humanity so as to prevent his being tainted by the materiality of flesh. By extension they denied Mary’s contribution to salvation as she was responsible for imparting to Christ his humanity.53 One of the terms often utilized in defence of Mary in such contentious situations is theotokos, or God-bearer, which had emphasized Mary’s role as contributor to the nature and substance of Christ’s humanity ever since the Council of Chalcedon put a final end to Nestorianism in 451. Guillelmus labelled Mary as the God-bearer on more than one occasion in the Gesta. In the introduction to his work, he notified the reader that the chapel at the monastery of the church at Lagrasse was dedicated specifically to the Virgin Mary, God-bearer (or dei genetrix in the Latinized construction of the Greek theotokos).54 Thus, Lagrasse can be seen as a symbolic bastion of orthodoxy in its very name. More importantly, in one of the darker moments of the Gesta Karoli Magni when Charlemagne hears the horn cry that alerts him to a seemingly insurmountable onslaught of Saracen foes, he utters just a one-sentence prayer, ‘Virgin, God-bearer, may you be my helper today.’55 Thus in his moment of greatest need, Charlemagne turns to the Virgin Mary as intercessor, but he characterizes her in orthodox language that conveys its own subtle message to a heterodox audience in Languedoc about her crucial role in the Catholic Christian story of salvation. As compelling as Guillelmus’s use of dei genetrix might be to the Catholic Christian cause, it raises the problem of assessing Guillelmus’s own stance on Catharism and the Catholic Church. Guillelmus’s deft insertion of references to Mary in the conversion of Muslims, and his characterization of Mary as God-bearer, suggest he was an author conscious of the heterodox environment in which he lived. As a member of the Catholic Church writing for a prominent monastery in Languedoc, his emphasis on Mary as converter of the faithless can be seen as a way to subtly inoculate his audience against the 53 S. Hamilton, ‘The Virgin Mary in Cathar Thought’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 56 (2005), 24–49. 54 Guillelmus Paduanus, p. 4. 55 Guillelmus Paduanus, p. 22.

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Cathar thinking that had infiltrated lay and ecclesiastical populations surrounding him. From this perspective, the faithless Muslims who convert to Christianity because of Charlemagne and the Virgin Mary can even be interpreted as substitutes for the Cathars who chose to accept conversion to Christianity at the hand of their own king and pope, rather than resist by fighting against them. And yet, Guillelmus is arguably too subtle here. He did not use his Gesta as a moralizing or sermonizing vehicle to explore or condemn the Cathar dualist beliefs or their unorthodox thinking about Mary. He also did not flood his text with references to Mary as God-bearer, but employed them only in two places. Does this indicate that he was sympathetic to the Cathars or that he was even one himself? There is certainly nothing in Guillelmus’s Gesta that directly points to any association with the Cathars, but there is circumstantial evidence that offers some support for such an interpretation. First, there is the matter of Guillelmus’s origins. If he came from Padua, this likely exposed him to the network of Cathar heretics who migrated between northern Italy and southern France during the thirteenth century following the same system of roads.56 Indirectly, what Guillelmus does share in common with Cathars is a distrust of the flawed individuals who abuse their power in the institutional church. One of the prominent storylines within the Gesta is that of the first abbot of Lagrasse, Abbot Symfred, appointed by Charlemagne at the recommendation of Symfred’s cousin the count of Poitou. At his accession upon the completion of the monastery, Pope Leo tonsures Symfred at Lagrasse but warns him against vices such as lying and greed. Concurrently, Charlemagne also rewards the stonemason Robert, who had designed and constructed the monastery, by allotting him a small plot of land adjacent to the monastery’s endowment so that he could build a mill there for his family. Charlemagne then leaves Lagrasse to besiege Narbonne. Almost immediately, the joyful situation in Lagrasse dissolves under Symfred’s vice-laden leadership. The spiritually pure hermits led by Thomas, who originally occupied the site of Lagrasse, withdraw from the area to the solitude of the surrounding mountains, presumably because they object to the more ostentatious monasticism 56 For the frequency of migration and the nature of these migrating Cathars, see C. Bruschi, The Wandering Heretics of Languedoc (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 50–141.

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of the noble Abbot Symfred and his 100 new noble monks.57 Still worse, Symfred, at the recommendation of his prior, Gilbert, decides to seize the mill of the stonemason Robert, who had died while building siege engines for Charlemagne. In the process, Symfred dispossesses Robert’s widow and children not only of the mill but of all the grain inside as well. When Charlemagne hears of this affront, he sends envoys to right the wrong and even gives money to Robert’s family as compensation. Abbot Symfred feigns compliance in front of Charles’s envoys, only to keep his hold on the land upon their departure and, even more insultingly, to seize Charlemagne’s monetary gifts to Robert’s family. Eventually, Charlemagne himself has to personally leave the siege of Narbonne to mete out justice and remove Abbot Symfred from office.58 In this light, Abbot Symfred, an outsider to Lagrasse appointed by an intervening king, could serve as a substitute for any number of outside ecclesiastical officials whom papal legates implanted in the region after removing local officeholders.59 Given the conflicting evidence surrounding the Cathar question and the various ways in which it can be interpreted, it is perhaps safest to characterize Guillelmus as a conformist. He included enough orthodox thought to assuage newly entrenched ecclesiastical Cathar-fighters in the south, but only so much as was necessary. This was not a man on a zealous mission to stamp out heresy. Perhaps he went so far as to use his Gesta Karoli Magni to critique the new men coming to assume power in Languedoc, but even so, he did nothing to subvert the spiritual 57 Thomas’s response is similar to other ‘sowers of the word’ who abandoned their monastic communities in order to find spiritual purity in an age of corruption, like Robert of Arbrissel, Bernard of Tiron, Henry of Lausanne and Norbert of Xanten. According to R. I. Moore, these fleeing hermits helped to trigger the Second Lateran Council, which began paving the way for the construction of Cathar heretics: see Moore, The War on Heresy, pp. 104–61. 58 Guillelmus Paduanus, pp. 37–44. 59 Papal legates purged the ecclesiastical hierarchy of two archbishops and seven bishops in southern France between 1204 and 1213 because they were not pursuing heretics vigorously enough, or were seen as sympathetic to them. They then installed outsiders the church could trust, mostly Cistercians, in place of locals. See Moore, The War on Heresy, p. 242.

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power of the pope or the royal power of the king. Regardless of how one interprets the motivations of the author, the contents of his Gesta Karoli Magni convey very clear messages concerning conversion and Mary. Charlemagne and the Virgin both play essential roles in the process of conversion of the ‘faithless’ to Catholic Christianity, and Guillelmus still communicates an orthodox characterization of Mary as God-bearer in a time of heterodoxy. Precedent can be found for Guillelmus’s characterization of the conversion of the ‘faithless’ under Charlemagne, indicating that it was not just a manifestation of the present but drew also from the past, particularly from Charlemagne’s pursuit of Felician heretics. In the Vita Karoli Magni, which contains the lengthy and detailed description of the chapel at Aachen noted earlier, the anonymous twelfth-century author characterizes Charlemagne as ‘the true cultivator of the orthodox faith’ and the ‘the deliverer who wiped heresy out of the boundaries of his republic and the unity of God’s holy church’.60 The author’s details here emphasize both the nature of the conflict against the Felician heretics and Charlemagne’s ability to expunge the unfaithful from Francia. He recounts how both Felix and Elipandus (here spelled Elefantus) defied orthodoxy in believing Jesus was an ‘adoptive son of God’ in his humanity. Fortunately, Charlemagne defended orthodoxy through his church councils and his calling together of churchmen from throughout his realm to counter the threat of heresy, much as he called together the Christian world of bishops, archbishops and the pope in his crusading against Muslims in southern France in the Gesta Karoli Magni. This history of Charlemagne as defender of the church emerged from a well-documented and vibrant period during the Frankish king’s rule throughout the 790s. Charlemagne had begun to aggressively assert his role as a Christian ruler by specifically targeting the ‘heresy’ known as Felicianism. The story begins appropriately with Felix, bishop of Urgel, who was subsumed into the Carolingian ecclesiastical world in 785, when Urgel was conquered by Charlemagne’s son Louis. Defying the Carolingian church, Felix remained loyal to his former archbishop, Elipandus of Toledo, who had developed a particular Christological perspective contrary to the Carolingian interpretation. Since the creation of al-Andalus in Iberia in 711, Christians like Elipandus had depended on their new Muslim overlords continuing to tolerate their 60 Vita Karoli Magni, p. 32.

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community, and it was in this precarious position that Archbishop Elipandus articulated a vision of Christ as someone who was adoptive in his humanity. Elipandus derived this understanding of an ‘adoptive’ Jesus from the process of self-emptying described in Philippians 2. 6–7: ‘Who [ Jesus Christ], though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.’ 61 This Christological perspective sparked outrage from the Carolingian church leaders when they heard of it, because they felt that such ‘adoptive’ language recalled the many heresies of the past, particularly Nestorianism. Lacking access to Elipandus, the Carolingians turned for punishment to one of his supporters, Bishop Felix, in the Carolingianoccupied Spanish March. At the Council of Regensburg that Charlemagne personally convened in 793, Carolingian church leaders condemned Felix for beliefs deemed heretical.62 Those following the belief in Jesus’s adoptive humanity continued to resist. Elipandus responded from Toledo with a defence of his characterization of Christ, and Felix went about his business as usual. Charlemagne’s response was swift. At the Council of Frankfurt convened in 794, the measures to counter Felicianism increased substantially.63 Not only did the council condemn Felix and Elipandus, but Charlemagne also ensured that Felix was escorted to Pope Hadrian in Rome so that he could recant at the tomb of St Peter. To stunt any further growth of the heresy, Charlemagne ordered a preaching campaign to eradicate Felicianism from southern France and northern Spain, led by Benedict of Aniane, Nibridius of Narbonne (note the authentic founder of Lagrasse) and Liedrad of Lyons.64 In many ways this systematic campaign to purge his kingdom of faithless heretics

61 Cavadini, The Last Christology, pp. 24–44. 62 Annales Mettenses Priore, ed. B. de Simson, MGH SRG 10, year 792 (p. 79); Annales regni Francorum, ed. F. Kurze, MGH SRG 6, year 792 (pp. 90–1). 63 J. C. Cavadini, ‘Elipandus and his Critics at the Council of Frankfort’, in Das Frankfurter Konzil von 794: Kristallisationspunkt Karolingischer Kultur, ed. R. Berndt, 2 vols. (Mainz, 1997), II, pp. 787–807. 64 On the preaching campaign, see Alcuin, Epistola 200, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH Epistolae 4, 2 (Hannover, 1895), pp. 330–3; Alcuin, Epistola 201, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH Epistolae 4, 2, pp. 333–4.

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found remarkable parallels in the eradication or conversion of Muslims promoted by Charlemagne in the Gesta Karoli Magni. In the study of the documentary evidence it is easy to lose sight of Charlemagne’s role in the affair, but at least one author, Paulinus of Aquileia, leaves no doubt as to the leadership Charlemagne personally provided, and the tone he set, for the Council of Frankfurt. In the Libellus sacrosyllabus, Paulinus described the moment when Elipandus’s defence was read aloud. According to Paulinus, Charlemagne grew increasingly agitated as the letter progressed, steadily rising from his seat, until he was standing on the step to his throne. Before the reader could finish the letter, Charlemagne interjected: How does this seem to all of you? From the year just past, the madness of this pest started to boil over, spewing forth like a gurgling ulcer of treachery. It is no longer on the outer borders of our kingdom and the error has grown; it is no longer a small matter in these parts. We must again cut it off in all ways by the harsh judgment of the faithful!65 Paulinus of Aquileia explained that after this outburst from the king, his council of churchmen pleaded with him to give them several days to formulate an orthodox response to Elipandus, which Charlemagne granted. Paulinus thus serves to remind us that before all the textual creations of the Carolingian response to Felicianism, there was a decision-making process with Charlemagne at its centre. Moreover, Charlemagne’s characterization of the heresy as an ulcer needing 65 Paulinus of Aquileia, Libellus sacrosyllabus contra Elipandum, ed. A. Werminghoff, MGH Concilia 2, 1 (Hanover and Leipzig, 1906), pp. 130–42 at ll. 8–11: ‘Quid vobis videtur? Ab anno prorsus praeterito et ex quo coepit huius pestis insania tumescente perfidiae ulcu diffusius ebullisse, non parvus in his regionibus, licet in extremis finibus regni nostri, error inolevit, quem censura fidaei necesse est modis omnibus resecare.’ Donald Bullough suggested the possibility that Alcuin whispered this response to Charlemagne, but this is speculation: see D. A. Bullough, Alcuin: Achievement and Reputation (Leiden, 2004), pp. 420–1. Regardless of its origin, the reference to Felicianism as an ulcer fits within the tradition of marginalizing heretics by associating them with pollution: see A. Cuffel, Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic (Notre Dame, IN, 2007), pp. 66–73.

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removal has strong echoes in the twelfth-century Vita Karoli Magni, where Charlemagne wiped the heresy off his map. The cultural production that came from this persecution of Felicianism by Charlemagne’s court was prolific and intimately connected to the Virgin Mary. In the fight to suppress Felicianism and to assert Carolingian orthodoxy, the Virgin Mary emerged as a major figure of defence. She served to prove that Christ could in no way be ‘adoptive’ because she contributed directly to his creation. At times, Carolingian authors became fixated on this role of the Virgin Mary. Paulinus of Aquileia in his Contra Felicem libri tres, or Three Books against Felix, referred to Mary’s virginal uterus at least thirty-five times and on several other occasions found recourse to discuss her vulva.66 This fascination with the Virgin’s anatomy was an attempt to connect Mary to the humanity that she conferred on Jesus in her womb, serving in this capacity as a direct refutation of Felician Christology. Carolingian authors were not unique in this elevation of Mary; in fact, they deferred to precedent. The Byzantine ‘orthodox’ reaction to the emergence of Nestorianism was a heretical connection that anti-Felician writers eagerly turned to for inspiration in their own writings.67 In this earlier, sixth-century context Mary as theotokos, or God-bearer, grew to become the premier saint for defending orthodoxy against heresy, and the Carolingian court under Charlemagne was quick to renew this archetype. Guillelmus would seize upon that same archetype by having Charlemagne cry out to the Virgin Mary, God-bearer, in his time of need. Charlemagne’s role as the king who convoked church councils and supported all of this cultural production of the Virgin Mary as defender against heresy persisted beyond the Council of Frankfurt in 794. After Felix recanted in Rome at the tomb of St Peter, he returned 66 Paulinus of Aquileia, Contra Felicem libri tres, ed. D. Norberg, CCCM 105 (Turnhout, 1990), pp. 3–121. 67 The tendency to associate Felicians with Nestorians likely came from a recent Latin translation from the acta of the Council of Ephesus; the extant manuscript, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 1572, may have been Alcuin’s personal copy, notated and annotated with passages later included in his Liber contra haeresim Felicis. See B. Bischoff, ‘Aus Alkuins Erdentagen’, Medievalia et Humanistica 14 (1962), 31–7; also in B. Bischoff, Mittelalterliche Studien: Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Schriftkunde und Literaturgeschichte, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 1966–81), I, pp. 12–19.

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to Urgel as bishop and then boldly preached once again the adoptive doctrine. Charlemagne once again commanded Felix’s detention and dealt with the recurring ulcer more forcefully at the church council he convoked at Aachen in 799.68 There, Felix was forced to confess his belief in the Carolingian orthodox expressions, including the formulas in anti-Felician writings that focused on Mary as God-bearer, such as the belief that Jesus was formed in ‘the Virgin’s vulva’.69 After this final condemnation, Felix spent the rest of his life imprisoned in Lyons under the watchful eyes of the bishops there, but the cultural reactions that supported the cult of Mary remained and multiplied. This authentic history connecting Charlemagne and the Virgin Mary to the defence of the Christian church against the ‘faithless’ resonates in the Gesta Karoli Magni of Guillelmus Paduanus. Just as the historical Charlemagne had wiped out the Felician heresy in the southern areas of France, so Guillelmus’s legendary Charlemagne wipes out the faith of Islam from the same areas. He does so either by silencing Muslims through his military might, as happened in reality with the imprisonment of Felix, or by converting them to proper, Catholic Christianity with the help of the Virgin Mary, as happened with the Felicians within Charlemagne’s boundaries. In both cases, Charlemagne makes good on his promise to purge his southern kingdoms of these assaults to a homogenous, orthodox Christian world. Finally, there are the parallels in the characterization of Mary as God-bearer. After all, it was the efforts of Charlemagne in promoting orthodoxy and the cult of the Virgin Mary as God-bearer that helped to make this label so commonplace in the church by the time Guillelmus was writing in the thirteenth century.

Cultivator of the Virgin Mary’s Cult

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he Charlemagne of the Gesta Karoli Magni ad Carcassonam et Narbonam possesses a deep and faithful devotion to the Virgin Mary, with her role as intercessor at the very heart of his Christian faith. As already noted, Charlemagne stands firm against the Muslims because of his faith in the Virgin, and the audience of Guillelmus’s Gesta also

68 Concilium Aquisgranense, ed. A. Werminghoff, MGH Concilia 2, 1, pp. 220–5. 69 Concilium Aquisgranense, p. 223.

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witnesses Charles praying fervently to Mary the God-bearer when he is most vulnerable. He built the monastery chapel at Lagrasse and enriched it for her. He converted Muslims who claimed their change of hearts came out of a desire to adore her. Charlemagne can do no wrong by Mary, an idea that is reinforced by Guillelmus Paduanus when he tells a story of Charlemagne’s vengeance. As previously described, the corrupt first abbot of Lagrasse, Symfred, had acted vilely in seizing property from the widow and children of one of Charlemagne’s men. Repeatedly, the king had sent envoys or messages via the aggrieved family instructing Symfred to make amends and desist from his illegal seizure. Repeatedly, Symfred defied Charles. When the poor widow finally came to Charlemagne, who was besieging Narbonne, with all that remained of her possessions (one son, as the other had been imprisoned by Symfred, and a basket of chickens), Charlemagne flew into an epic rage. He immediately rode to Lagrasse with 300 of his knights and found the abbot singing the mass there. Charlemagne patiently waited on bended knee as the abbot stretched the mass out for as long as possible to avoid confrontation with Charles. At the end of the mass, the abbot lunged to hold onto the altar so that Charlemagne could not possibly harm him without polluting it. But the tactic did not work with Charles, who was blind with rage. Unsheathing his sword, he beheaded Symfred so that the abbot’s head went flying off in one direction and the body in another. Miraculously, the altar itself received not one drop of blood to soil it. Charles immediately prayed to the Virgin Mary to excuse this transgression (while also recognizing her miracle at work in preserving the sanctity of the altar), claiming in his defence that he was merely acting with a love of justice, and because the abbot had trespassed against him and the most vulnerable of his people.70 In Guillelmus’s Gesta, the link between Charlemagne and the Virgin Mary is profound. In almost any other context, the slaughter of an abbot at the altar would be a disturbingly profane act violating the sanctity of both the churchman and the sacred space. Yet Guillelmus transforms it into a miracle that further cements the bond between Mary and Charles. This goes beyond merely naming a church for her or calling for her intercession as God-bearer in a moment of despair. The connection between the two is so strong that the Virgin Mary intercedes here to protect Charles from betraying the very Christianity that he seeks 70 Guillelmus Paduanus, p. 44.

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to uphold, not by staying his hand from justice but by assuring his act does not pollute the altar that he worked so hard and fought so bravely to build for her. In fact, this is not the only time Mary intervenes in the Gesta. Guillelmus notes that Charles’s army survives their most difficult encounters in defence of the sacred church he built for her, ‘thanks to the action of the blessed Virgin Mary in their victory and triumph’.71 Her intercession comes presumably because of Charlemagne’s relentless devotion to her, and faith in her, throughout the building of Lagrasse and the conflicts against the ‘faithless’. It is possible to look back over the other writings between the ninth and thirteenth centuries and find indications of a bond between Charlemagne and the Virgin Mary that may help to explain how Guillelmus came to his characterization of the two. As with the other examples explored in this paper, hints of the bond can be found primarily in twelfth-century spatial connections, but the real roots go deeper into Charlemagne’s lifetime. As noted in the Vita Karoli Magni, Charlemagne devotes his chapel at Aachen specifically to the Virgin Mary, God-bearer, and spares no expense in doing so. But the construction itself stood not just as a monument to his efforts to glorify the Virgin, but also as the space in which he demonstrated his incredible piety to her and to God. The author of the Vita Karoli Magni tells us that Charlemagne ‘incessantly’ frequented the Marian basilica, in the morning, in the evening, and at night whenever possible ‘out of sacrifice of his repentant and humble heart’.72 In the Historia Karoli Magni et Rotholandi, Charlemagne returned to the chapel of Mary at Aachen and richly endowed it with gold and silver at the end of his conquests against the Saracens in Spain. More importantly PseudoTurpin records that the basilica dedicated to Mary at Aachen became the sacred site of Charlemagne’s burial upon his death, replacing SaintDenis in an important turning point for the history of Frankish kings. Pseudo-Turpin emphasizes not the grief of losing Charles but the glory of his joining the blessed martyrs of the past, and attributes that glory not to his triumphs in defeating the Saracens in Spain, but to his 71 Guillelmus Paduanus, pp. 29 and 49. 72 Vita Karoli Magni, p. 40: ‘Basilicam igitur eandem inclitus eius fundator mane et vespere, item nocturno et sacrificii tempore, quoad valetudo eum corporis et sarcina imperii permittebat, in spiritu dei et sacrificio cordis contriti et humilitate incessanter frequentabat.’

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building a church like the basilica of Mary at Aachen to the glory of God.73 These twelfth-century examples reinforce the image that appears in Guillelmus’s Gesta of the connection between Charlemagne’s piety to Mary and God and the sacred spaces he built for her. Charlemagne’s authentic historical regard for the cult of the Virgin Mary has already been addressed in the discussion of his church dedications to her at Aachen, Paderborn and Jerusalem, and of the cultural production relating to Mary that sprang from his court in reaction to the Felician heresy, but is this sufficient background to support the twelfth- and thirteenth-century characterizations of his personal devotion to the Virgin Mary? There remains one final clue to help answer this question that comes from an analysis of Marian feast days in the Carolingian period. At the Council of Mainz in 813, church leaders and Charlemagne turned their attention to the regulation of annual feast days held to commemorate the numerous saints of the church. In one capitulum Charlemagne decreed precisely which feasts his people needed to celebrate every year; these were thus the official Carolingian feast days. Mary was the only saint to garner more than one feast day. Charlemagne officially sanctioned two feast days for Mary, one day to celebrate her assumption and another for her purification.74 At this time in the West, there were four feasts celebrated for Mary: the Purification, the Annunciation, the Assumption and Mary’s Nativity.75 The selection of the Purification in particular may have been influenced by the prominence of the idea of Mary as orthodoxdefender, as discussed above. The feast of the Purification of Mary, although ostensibly concerned with rites of purification, represented her perpetual virginity in her post-partum days following the birth of Jesus, 73 Pseudo-Turpin, p. 95: ‘Nunc igitur illum participem in corona martirum credimus prefatorum, quorum labors illum cum eis pertulisse scimus. In hoc ergo exemplo datur intelligi quia qui ecclesiam edificat regnum sibi preparat, a demonibus ut Karolus eripitur, et in celesti regno subsidiis sanctorum quorum edificat basilicas collocatur.’ 74 Concilium Moguntinense, ed. A. Werminghoff, MGH Concilia 2, 1, pp. 269–70. 75 For a concise explanation of the origin and development of the different Marian feast days in the early medieval West, see M. Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England, Cambridge Studies in AngloSaxon England (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 25–51.

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a grave concern for those who felt the status of Mary’s virginity had been questioned by Felicians. In fact, in his Liber contra haeresim Felicis, Alcuin cited Augustine’s sermon (which was actually from Pope Leo I) for the day of Mary’s purification as one of his proofs that Nestorianism and Felicianism were heresy.76 Implicitly, Charlemagne’s decree also imposed the celebration of the other two feast days in honour of Mary, though without explicitly commanding it. The same capitulum authorized the festal celebration in each individual parish for the saint in whose honour the church was dedicated or whose relics were held in the church. This ensured that anyone visiting Aachen, the epicentre of Christian worship for the entire empire, or Paderborn, Charlemagne’s prized eastern palace, or the royal monastery at St Riquier designed by Angilbert, or Benedict of Aniane’s monastery at Aniane, or any one of the many churches in the Carolingian realm dedicated to Mary, would witness the celebration of all four of her feast days.77 There are also strong indications that these capitula coincided with a radical change in the practice of celebrating Marian feasts. Churches in Anglo-Saxon England, Rome and Byzantium had incorporated Marian feasts into the liturgical calendar before the reign of Charlemagne, but this was not the case for the Franks until the introduction of the Sacramentary of Hadrian.78 As late as 798 there were

76 Alcuin, Liber contra haeresim Felicis, ed. G. B. Blumenshine (Vatican City, 1980), pp. 81–2. 77 On Angilbert, see S. A. Rabe, Faith, Art, and Politics at Saint-Riquier: The Symbolic Vision of Angilbert (Philadelphia, 1995), pp. 138–47; on Benedict of Aniane, see Ardo, Vita Benedicti Anianensis, ed. G. Waitz, MGH SS 15, 1, p. 205. 78 On Anglo-Saxon England and Rome, see Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin Mary, pp. 25–51. On Carolingian calendar reform of celebrated Marian feast days, see A. Borst, Die karolingische Kalenderreform, MGH Schriften 46 (Hanover, 1998), pp. 416–30. On Carolingian sacramentaries, see J. Décréaux, Le sacramentaire de Marmoutier (Autun 19 bis) dans l’histoire des sacramentaires Carolingiens du IX siècle (Vatican City, 1985). On Charlemagne as the first Carolingian ruler to begin celebrating Marian feast days, see M. Sierck, Festtag und Politik: Studien zur Tagewahl karolingischer Herrscher, Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte (Cologne, 1995), pp. 235–9.

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no Marian feast days celebrated in Bavaria.79 Charlemagne regulated the feast days at the Council of Mainz to accelerate the adoption of Marian feasts in Carolingian lands, and if the list of feasts by PseudoSonnatius is any indication, the Council of Mainz successfully fostered this trend, bringing Aachen’s model to more localities.80 In this regard, Charlemagne played an active and integral role in bringing the cult of the Virgin Mary into a more prominent position within Christian practice in much of Europe. Just as importantly, he ensured that regular devotion to Mary, as celebrated by her feast days, occurred in the churches he most frequented at Paderborn and Aachen, thereby linking his piety to her. None of these historical connections to the cult of the Virgin Mary  –  the increase of her feast days, the building of churches dedicated to her, or the use of her symbolically in the fight against Felicianism  –  comes at all close to justifying the striking imagery found in the Gesta Karoli Magni, where Mary’s miracle ensures that the beheading of the repugnant abbot spills no blood on her sacred altar at Lagrasse. This is where one is required to make the same leap that Guillelmus Paduanus did. Although Charles’s devotion to Mary is testified in the history of the period, the memory several hundred years later, no doubt nourished and embellished in oral culture, allows for a Charlemagne whose singular devotion to Mary borders on idolatry. Guillelmus Paduanus probably had limited awareness of the historical origins of Charlemagne’s connection to Mary and did not recognize his own place in the process of memory’s interaction with history that led to the dynamic association between Charlemagne and Mary at Lagrasse. There is no means to prove Guillelmus Paduanus’s reading of the various antecedents that contributed to his legend. Guillelmus was an author writing for his own time and with his own agenda, but it would be foolish to assume that these characterizations of Charlemagne and the 79 A. G. F. von Finckenstein, ‘Fest- und Feiertage im Frankenreich der Karolinger’, in Beiträge zur Geschichte des Regnum Francorum, ed. E. Ewig (Sigmaringen, 1990), pp. 121–30 (pp. 122–3). 80 Pseudo-Sonnatius, Sancti Sonnatii Rhemensis episcopi statuta (Ex Flodardo Hist. Rhem. Eccles.), PL 80, 446. Sonnatius lists the Annunciation, the Assumption, and the Nativity of Mary as celebrations. On the dating of the statutes to the first third of the ninth century, see von Finckenstein, ‘Fest- und Feiertage im Frankenreich’, p. 123.

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Virgin Mary suddenly manifested themselves out of a vacuum in the thirteenth century. Rather, it is best to understand Charlemagne and his Virgin Mary in the Gesta Karoli Magni ad Carcassonam et Narbonam as the convergence of past and present, suited to its own audience but indicative of a much older tradition of Charlemagne fostering and magnifying the cult of the Virgin Mary.

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7 Charlemagne the Sinner: Charles the Great as Avatar of the Modern in Petrarch’s Familiares 1.4 Andrew J. Romig The appellation of great has been often bestowed, and sometimes deserved; but Charlemagne is the only prince in whose favour the title has been indissolubly blended with the name. That name, with the addition of saint, is inserted in the Roman calendar; and the saint, by a rare felicity, is crowned with the praises of the historians and philosophers of an enlightened age. His real merit is doubtless enhanced by the barbarism of the nation and the times from which he emerged: but the apparent magnitude of an object is likewise enlarged by an unequal comparison; and the ruins of Palmyra derive a casual splendour from the nakedness of the surrounding desert. Without injustice to his fame, I may discern some blemishes in the sanctity and greatness of the restorer of the Western empire. Of his moral virtues, chastity is not the most conspicuous: but the public happiness could not be materially injured by his nine wives or concubines, the various indulgence of meaner or more transient amours, the multitude of his bastards whom he bestowed on the church, and the long celibacy and licentious manners of his daughters, whom the father was suspected of loving with too fond a passion. Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 49.4 (1782)1 I am grateful to Jay Diehl, Arnold Franklin, Sara McDougall, Janine Peterson, Neslihan Şenocak and to the editors of this volume for their thoughtful readings of this piece, and to Frederic Clark and Jane Tylus for timely assistance along the way. 1 E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, III (London, 1996), p. 125.

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They recount that King Charles, whom they dare equate to Pompey and Alexander by giving him the surname of ‘the Great’, loved a certain ordinary woman desperately and immoderately. Francesco Petrarch, Letters on Familiar Matters 1.4 (written c. 1333, published 1364)2

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 hen the esteemed eighteenth-century English historian Edward Gibbon wrote condescendingly of Charlemagne’s legendary renown in his epic History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he must have known that he was echoing opinions penned by the famous Italian poet and scholar Francis Petrarch some four and half centuries earlier. Gibbon wrote that Charlemagne may indeed have been the greatest of his era, but this was only because his era had itself been something of a wasteland. Charlemagne was rather like the ruins of ancient Palmyra, which obtained their lustre only by standing out in stark relief against the surrounding bleakness of the Syrian desert.3 Petrarch had conveyed a very similar haughty contempt, casting aspersion on Charlemagne’s reputation for greatness by emphasizing his questionable sexual exploits, and intimating that he was no match for the true ‘greats’ of European history with whom he might unfavourably be compared. The Frankish emperor Charles held the same epithet  –  ‘the great’   –  that the ancient world had bestowed upon Pompey and Alexander, Petrarch wrote. Yet Charles of the Franks was hardly deserving of such honoured company. The juxtaposition of Petrarch and Gibbon provides a theatrical ‘backdrop’ for this essay’s analysis because the similarity of style and content between the two critical statements actually belies the very different intellectual contexts within which their authors wrote. Edward Gibbon composed his history of Charlemagne and the Carolingian era under the confident presumption that he himself inhabited a more 2 Francesco Petrarca, Rerum familiarium libri I–VIII, trans. A. S. Bernardo (Albany, NY, 1975), p. 26; Latin edition: Francesco Petrarca, Le familiari, ed. U. Dotti (Urbino, 1974), pp. 51 and 53, ll. 52–4: ‘Carolum regem, quem Magni cognomine equare Pompeio et Alexandro audent, mulierculum quandam perdite et efflictim ammasse memorant.’ 3 In spite of these comments, Gibbon would surely have been as distressed as are we by the recent Syrian violence, and the attempts to obliterate Palmyra’s priceless memorialization of our collective ancient past.

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evolved age. It was possible for him and his Enlightenment audiences to envision a glorious Roman past whose decline had ended with the creation of the modern world in which they all now lived. Charlemagne belonged safely to the era of this decline, a decadent ‘middle’ age that Europe had painfully, and thankfully, outgrown. Petrarch, on the other hand, lived within a very different conceptual world. He could never have shared in Gibbon’s vision of his times, for he and his audiences saw far more commonality between their age and the age of Charlemagne than difference. Throughout his career, Petrarch would develop a keen sensibility about the decadence of his own world, about how dramatically and completely it paled in comparison with the ancient Rome that he so admired. Yet he would never believe that his world was any other than the world that Charlemagne had helped to create. This essay investigates the role of Charlemagne as a representative of decadent modern time in Petrarch’s thought through analysis of Petrarch’s earliest known encounter with the legendary Carolingian emperor, a visit to Charlemagne’s shrine at Aachen during the summer of 1333. We know about this visit because Petrarch described it in an elegant Latin letter that he addressed to the cardinal Giovanni Colonna, an active member of the papal court at Avignon, avuncular family friend, and sometime confessor for the young scholar and poet. Decades later, Petrarch would edit and publish this letter as part of the compilation known as the epistolae familiares  –  a collection of private correspondence that he gathered and disseminated in emulation of the anthology of personal letters that Cicero had collected and made public more than a thousand years earlier.4 The Familiares as a whole would become something of a popular success, particularly in their epistolary framing of Petrarch as an Odyssean figure (he organized the nearly 350 letters into twenty-four Homeric ‘books’), which helped to cement Petrarch’s image as a heroic scholar in the centuries following his death.5 The particular letter in question here, however, Familiares 1.4, has received little direct scholarly attention from historians of Charlemagne’s legendary afterlife, and even less from scholars interested in treating the letter as a text worthy of formal analysis in 4 For the publication history of this collection, see G. F. Mazzotta, ‘Petrarch’s Epistolary Epic’, in Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, ed. V. Kirkham and A. Maggi (Chicago, 2009), pp. 309–19 (p. 310). 5 Mazzotta, ‘Petrarch’s Epistolary Epic’, pp. 310, 312ff.

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its own right. As a record of the figure of Charlemagne ‘in use’ during the fourteenth century, Familiares 1.4 is a key source for understanding not only Petrarch’s role in the history of Charlemagne’s memorial transmission during the late medieval period, but also the ways in which Charlemagne’s legendary reputation became intertwined with Petrarch’s own intellectual formation at a seminal moment of his early career. As this essay will argue, Familiares 1.4 demonstrates, first, the significant role that Petrarch played in the promulgation of Charlemagne’s negative reputation as a sinner during the post-Carolingian era, a history that involves interplay between Latin and vernacular texts of the emperor’s legendary afterlife. Second, the letter suggests the ways in which Charlemagne could function in the fourteenth century not only as a symbol of proto-nationalist identity, but also as a figure who represented an increasingly distinct period of post-ancient time  –  a period that would evolve in the minds of later historians into ‘the Middle Ages’.

F

reshly graduated from studying the law at Montpellier and Bologna, Petrarch decided to embark on a youthful site-seeing tour of northern Europe. It was still a few years before his famous ascent of Mount Ventoux, and almost a full decade before his being crowned poet laureate for his epic poem Africa; yet Petrarch would look back upon these carefree travels as a crucial part of his early formation.6 In recounting his journeys to Colonna, Petrarch claimed that they had made him all the more happy to have been born Italian. The more he saw of the North, he quipped, the better he realized his good fortune to call Italy his true home. He had been eager, of course, to take in the wonders of the outside world. He longed to discover its secrets. Yet his experiences ultimately demonstrated to him the superiority of the Mediterranean world that was dearest to his heart. Petrarch wrote that he went first to Paris, where he spent many days and nights seeing the sites and exploring the streets. After Paris he visited Ghent, Flanders and Brabant. He then spent some time in Liège before finally ending his journey at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), the historical seat of Charlemagne’s empire and location of Charlemagne’s tomb. While at Aachen, Petrarch visited this shrine of Charlemagne, where he would 6 When Petrarch edited and arranged the Familiares for publication years later, he placed this trip at the heart of its first Odyssean ‘book’, the opening chapter of his life’s epic.

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have paid reverence to the sarcophagus of gold and silver in which Charlemagne’s bones had lain in state since Frederick II ordered them to be translated there in 1215. This, he told Colonna, was where he came upon a story about the old emperor that he felt compelled to relate. At Charlemagne’s tomb, he heard from the ‘priests’ (sacerdotes) who tended the shrine there an amusing fable (fabella). They attributed the same epithet to Charles  –  ‘great’  –  that the ancients had given to Pompey and Alexander, he commented snidely. And the story that Petrarch heard from the shrine’s keepers illustrated just how misplaced this appellation truly was. The fable that Petrarch discovered at Aachen seems to have been an early version of what would later become a popular folktale throughout the Rhine region, the ‘Tale of Fastrada’s Ring’. 7 As Petrarch recounted in his letter to Colonna, the story begins with Charlemagne falling madly in love with a common woman (muliercula).8 The emperor falls in love with the woman so deeply that he neglects his imperial duties. In Petrarch’s retelling, this is no small transgression in and of itself. Yet when Charlemagne’s beloved dies suddenly, the situation goes from bad to worse. Instead of having the body buried, Charlemagne’s love for it only burns hotter. He has the corpse embalmed and transferred to his private chambers, where he begins to fawn over it ‘day and night in a wretched, lustful embrace’, Petrarch writes.9 The court tries 7 See, most recently, F. Fürbeth, ‘Carolus Magnus. Zur dunklen Seite des Karlsbildes im Mittelalter’, in Karl der Grosse und das Erbe der Kulturen, ed. F.-R. Erkens (Berlin, 2001), pp. 314–25. The first modern critical discussion of the ‘Tale of Fastrada’s Ring’ and its folkloric tradition (and perhaps still the most complete, despite its antiquarianism) was Gaston Paris’s critical analysis of a German doctoral thesis, published as a two-part article: ‘Der Ring der Fastrada. Eine Mythologische Studie, von Dr. jur. August Pauls, Aachen, 1896’, Journal des savants (1896), 637–43, 718–30. 8 In later versions of this folktale the muliercula becomes Fastrada herself, Charlemagne’s most controversial wife. 9 Petrarca, Le familiari, p. 53, ll. 61–8: ‘Cuius rei ingens primum in regia, sed latens, gaudium fuit; deinde dolor tantum priore gravior, quantum fediori morbo correptum regis animum videbant; cuius nec morte lenitus furor, sed in ipsum obscenum cadaver et exangue translatus est, quod balsamo et aromatibus conditum, honustum gemmis et velatum

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to continue with its business as usual  –  emissaries and petitioners continue to appear, and so forth. Yet Charlemagne remains holed up in his bedchamber with the windows and doors bolted shut, fondling the stinking remains of his beloved. This becomes the new state of affairs in the empire, the story goes, until one day a certain bishop of Cologne, distraught over his emperor’s unseemly necrophilia and neglect of his empire, begins an extended vigil of prayer for a solution to the problem.10 Just when the bishop has committed himself to pray in perpetuity for God’s assistance, he hears a voice from heaven. The voice says cryptically that the cause of the emperor’s madness lies under the dead woman’s tongue. Perplexed, but rejoicing in this heavenly guidance, the good bishop of Cologne uses his office to gain entry into the emperor’s private chamber. He manages to inspect the corpse and in probing its mouth with his finger finds a small ring tucked under the cold, stiff tongue. The bishop removes the ring and hastens away from the body, but the story does not end there. Charlemagne immediately becomes disgusted and horrified by the withered cadaver, but turns fawningly now to the bishop, who suddenly looks very good to him. ‘Charlemagne began to love him, to honour him, and to embrace him daily more and more’, Petrarch writes, ‘and finally to do nothing unless the bishop first approved it’.11 The ever-loyal bishop, wary and uncomfortable with the newfound power that the ring has afforded him, decides that he cannot possibly keep the magic token, and in an effort to ensure that it never again falls into the wrong hands, hurls the ring into the deepest part of a nearby swamp. The story closes with Charlemagne becoming so profoundly enamoured with the swamp that he builds a permanent palace and chapel there so that he would never have to leave the place again. This, Petrarch concludes, is the origin story for Aquisgrana  –  Aix-la-Chapelle  –  Aachen  –  the ancient seat of Carolingian power and the traditional location, still in his own time, for the coronation of the Holy Roman emperors. ‘The tradition [of purpura diebus ac noctibus tam miserabili quam cupido fovebat amplexu.’ 10 In later retellings this character becomes the legendary Bishop Turpin. 11 Petrarca, Le familiari, p. 55, ll. 100–3: ‘Inde totus in antistitem conversus, illum amare, illum colere, illum in dies arctius amplecti, denique nichil nisi ex sententia illius agere, ab illo nec diebus nec noctibus avelli.’ Trans. Bernardo, p. 28.

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coronation] still continues’, he wrote, ‘and will continue as long as the reins of the Roman empire are in Teutonic hands’. 12 The tale in its basic structure is no doubt a literary descendant of the anti-Charlemagne propaganda that we know existed quite early in the ninth century and that focused especially on Charlemagne’s alleged sexual indiscretions involving the concubines with whom he lived out of wedlock in the last years of his life, and the daughters whom he never allowed to marry and kept within his palace entourage. Most famously, Heito’s Vision of Wetti, which dates from the 830s, made reference to a certain unnamed princeps who was punished horribly after death for being a sexual sinner by having his genitals mangled by wild animals. An angel explains that this ruler performed many laudable acts in life, but his positive deeds were diminished ‘by the charms of sexual defilement’. 13 Walahfrid Strabo composed a versification of Heito’s tale just a few years after Heito wrote his prose narrative, and in the passage about this emperor he wove an acrostic that clearly spelled out, ‘carolus imperator’.14 There is a sense in recent Carolingian scholarship that this early negative propaganda, much of which dates from the era of Charlemagne’s immediate successor, Louis the Pious (r. 813–40), died out rather quickly, and that from the ninth century there emerged almost exclusively panegyric images.15 Contrary to this 12 Petrarca, Le familiari, p. 49, ll. 15–18: ‘Postremo ibi vite sue reliquum egit, ibique sepultus est, cauto prius ut successores sui primam inde coronam et prima imperii auspicia capesserent. Quod hodieque servatur servabiturque quandiu romani frena imperii theutonica manus aget.’ Trans. Bernardo, p. 28. 13 Heito, Heitonis visio Wettini XI, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH Poetae 2 (Berlin, 1884), p. 271: ‘Stupore igitur vehementi attonitus, ammirans quomodo tantus vir, qui in defensione catholicae fidei et regimine sanctae ecclesiae moderno seculo pene inter ceteros singularis apparuit, inuri tanta deformitate poenae potuisset. Cui ab angelo ductore suo protinus responsum est, quod, quamfvis multa miranda et laudibilia et deo accepta fecisset, quorum mercede privandus non est, tamen stupri inlecebris resolutus’. 14 Walahfrid Strabo, Visio Wettini Walahfridi, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH Poetae 2, pp. 318–19, ll. 446–61. 15 See, for example, T. F. X. Noble, ‘Greatness Contested and Confirmed: The Raw Materials of the Charlemagne Legend’, in Legend of

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prevailing modern notion, however, critical stories about Charlemagne the sinner most certainly continued to germinate and to evolve. The most prominent line in this evolution was the Latin vita of St Aegidius (St Gilles in the vernacular), which would achieve great popularity during the high Middle Ages, so much so that it would be anthologized as part of the Golden Legend.16 In the earliest versions of the vita, which seem to date from the tenth century, the saint pardons a certain emperor Charles, who privately confesses to having committed a sin too shameful to name.17 The historical Aegidius died too early for this Charles to be Charlemagne; the emperor in question for the original hagiographers was most likely Charles Martel, Charlemagne’s grandfather.18 Yet as the vita was passed along, reframed, and rewritten in later versions (at least one other Latin redaction and numerous vernacular revisions), the Charles of the saint’s story became firmly linked with Charlemagne. The trope of Charlemagne’s ‘unspeakable sin’, furthermore, would become a crucial part of the standard Charlemagne ‘matter’ from the twelfth century onward.19 Because the sin that Aegidius/Gilles pardons is too terrible to name, it practically begs readers and poets to let their imaginations run wild. And run wild they did, for threads of stories began to appear at least as early as the twelfth century in which authors took up the challenge with relish and quite explicitly named the emperor’s sin. In the French vernacular tales, the sin generally became incest: the sinful union that begets Roland and all of the tragedy involved with that figure.20 Charlemagne, pp. 4–21 (p. 15); P. E. Dutton, ‘karolvs magnvs or karolvs felix: The Making of Charlemagne’s Reputation and Legend’, in Legend of Charlemagne, pp. 23–37 (pp. 34–5). 16 Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea, V. 17 For the manuscript tradition, see ‘De sancto Aegidio abbate’, in Acta sanctorum semptembris 1, ed. J. Pinio et al. (Antwerp, 1746), pp. 284–304. 18 C. Vulliez, ‘Orléans, Saint Gilles et la légende du pardon du Charlemagne: Présentation d’un dossier’, in Haut Moyen-Âge: Culture, éducation et société, ed. M. Sot (La Garenne-Colombes, 1990), pp. 575–89 (p. 577). 19 See also Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past, pp. 185–8. 20 For the French tradition, see especially Vulliez, ‘Orléans, Saint Gilles et la légende’, pp. 578ff; and M. Griffin, ‘Writing Out the Sin: Arthur, Charlemagne and the Spectre of Incest’, Neophilologus 88 (2004), 499–520 (p. 500). It is important to point out that while incest was

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In the German vernacular, the sin became, as in Petrarch’s story, necrophilia and homosexuality.21 As for which precise version or versions of such tales Petrarch might have heard and read at Aachen, Familiares 1.4 is frustratingly vague on details. It seems clear, however, that he saw at least two written texts. In the key line of the letter, he says that he initially heard (audivi) the fable from the shrine’s priests; they then showed it to him written down (scriptam), and he later read it again in, apparently, a second textual version which presented the story more completely, or more meticulously (accuratius).22 Petrarch makes no indication at all concerning the language of these texts, though he does attribute the fuller version to ‘modern writers’ (modernos scriptores), a curious phrase which most likely refers to contemporaries or very near-contemporaries, but could equally refer to writers long dead. Thus while we cannot locate with precision what Petrarch encountered, it is nevertheless evident that he not only heard a story from the priests orally, but also saw it written down in two discrete versions: an earlier, simpler version, and then a more complete, later version that could date from anywhere between roughly the twelfth century and his own time. Did he perhaps see the Latin vita of Aegidius as the first, earlier text, and then later vernacular versions that spelled out the sin more completely or accurately? That seems a strong possibility, though we have no way of knowing for certain. The long, multi-lingual tradition of the story is perhaps most important because it is very likely the reason why the compact Latin certainly the focus of at least one prominent line of French vernacular tales, the most common ‘sin’ that Charlemagne commits in the French folkloric tradition is neglect and maltreatment of his nobles. Thus, for example, the English ‘matter of France’ romances translated and compiled by Caxton in the late fifteenth century. 21 For the German tradition, which included Karl Meinet, the Weltchronik of Jans Enikel, the so-called Weihenstephan Chronicle, and Das Buch vom Heiligen Karl, see especially S. Hafner, ‘Charlemagne’s Unspeakable Sin’, Modern Language Studies 32.2 (2002), 1–14 (p. 1). 22 Petrarca, Le familiari, p. 51, ll. 46–9: ‘Ubi fabellam audivi non inamenam cognitu a quibusdam templi sacerdotibus, quam scriptam michi ostenderunt et postea apud modernos scriptores accuratius etiam tractatam legi.’

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retelling of Familiares 1.4 has always been regarded as little more than a footnote in the tale’s literary history. Susanne Hafner, for example, has recently traced the evolution of the Fastrada’s Ring narrative from its early roots in the vita of Aegidius to its later vernacular German framings, seeing within this tradition an evolution of content that ran parallel to evolving high- and late-medieval anxieties about royal masculinity and sexual perversion.23 She views Petrarch more as a consumer of the tale than an innovator in its transmission, framing Familiares 1.4 as a ‘summary’ that ‘is as close to a contemporary reading of the episode as we can get’.24 Her interpretation of Petrarch as more a reader than a narrator of the tale obscures the unique contributions that his version made to the story’s development. Not only is Familiares 1.4 the earliest Latin text to name Charlemagne’s sin explicitly, but, as Hafner herself notes, it is also by far the earliest that we know to highlight the power of the ring itself. In Jans Enikel’s late thirteenthcentury Weltchronik, a very possible candidate for one of the ‘modern’ texts that Petrarch consulted at Aachen, the charm of the ring is simply an extension of the woman’s power.25 With a narrative emphasis significantly different from Petrarch’s version, Enikel makes clear that the female body is the truly evil influence upon Charlemagne and his kingdom. The bishop who discovers the ring underneath the corpse’s tongue is St Gilles himself in Enikel’s version, and when the saint removes the ring the corpse disintegrates and Charlemagne is finally able to recognize the woman’s (and not the ring’s) evil.26 Petrarch’s version, conversely, emphasizes the power of the ring itself through the migration of Charlemagne’s desires from necrophilia to homosexuality and, finally, to love of the swampy environs of Aachen. We cannot know, of course, whether this migration element sprang from Petrarch’s own imagination, but we do know that later vernacular versions all seem to have included it. Hafner shows that the fifteenth-century Weihenstephan Chronicle follows precisely the same progression as Petrarch’s version, clearly separating the power of the 23 Hafner, ‘Charlemagne’s Unspeakable Sin’, pp. 2–5. 24 Hafner, ‘Charlemagne’s Unspeakable Sin’, p. 10. 25 J. Enikel, Werke. Erste Abtheilung: Die Weltchronik, ed. P. Strauch (Hanover, 1891). 26 Cf. Hafner’s reading, ‘Charlemagne’s Unspeakable Sin’, pp. 5–6.

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ring from the power of the woman’s body as the object controlling Charlemagne’s unnatural array of sexual urges. The finder of the ring in the Weihenstephan Chronicle is a knight rather than a bishop, but Charlemagne’s lust follows the ring from corpse to man to swamp just as in Familiares 1.4.27 At the very least, the Weihenstephan Chronicle and later vernacular versions, such as an anonymous English play from early seventeenth-century London and a version of the Fastrada’s Ring story recounted by the Brothers Grimm, trace explicitly back to Petrarch’s version rather than any earlier vernacular redactions that are extant.28 This fact alone demonstrates clearly that the relationship between Latin and German adaptations of the tale was one of cross-pollination, rather than direct evolution from Latin to vernacular. If we regard Petrarch as an active participant in the tale’s transmission and evolution rather than just a passive reader, it becomes all the more important to recognize the unique artistry of the tale as it exists in Familiares 1.4. For even if the fanciful elements of its telling were quite likely not of Petrarch’s own creation, the framing and diction most certainly were. In other words, Petrarch did not conjure the story from his own imagination, but neither did he simply summarize or copy it verbatim. We should have no illusions, of course, that Petrarch or any of his audiences ever took the ‘Tale of Fastrada’s Ring’ seriously as historical fact. He could not have referred to the tale as a fabella without recalling the traditional classical distinctions between historia and fabula found not only in his beloved Cicero, but also in intermediaries such as Servius and Isidore of Seville.29 Petrarch even expressed to Colonna a certain shame, rhetorically exaggerated though it no doubt was, in passing along such a lascivious story as so much gossip.30 Yet while 27 Hafner, ‘Charlemagne’s Unspeakable Sin’, pp. 6–7, who notes as well that the Weihenstephan Chronicle is still in need of a modern edition. 28 Charlemagne (The Distracted Emperor), ed. F. L. Schoell (London, 1920); J. Grimm and W. Grimm, Deutsche Sagen. Zwei Bände in einem Band (Munich, 1965), pp. 426–8. 29 See F. Clark, ‘Authenticity, Antiquity, and Authority: Dares Phrygius in Early Modern Europe’, Journal of the History of Ideas 72 (2011), 183–207 (pp. 183–4); D. B. Dietz, ‘Historia in the Commentary of Servius’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 125 (1995), 61–97. 30 Petrarca, Le familiari, p. 51, ll. 49–51: ‘quam tibi quoque ut referam, incidit animus, ita tamen ut rei fides non apud me queratur, sed, ut aiunt, penes

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Petrarch clearly knew quite well that his story was no more than a yarn, he used it in his letter to make a serious point: Charles ‘the Great’ was hardly great at all, an example of bad kingship under whose watch the Roman empire had come to languish in a northern swamp. In Petrarch’s framing, Charlemagne is a vessel for expressing anxieties about masculine self-control. Because the emperor’s necrophilia and homosexual devotion are clearly not attributed to internal corruption, but rather to the external black magic of the ring, the story shows sexual deviance to be far more a symptom of Charlemagne’s moral weakness than a cause.31 The emperor’s primary sin is that he succumbs to the wiles of emotional love and allows himself to be manipulated, a narrative emphasis which Petrarch underlines with an aside on the dangers of mixing government and romantic entanglement: ‘It is unnecessary to explain’, Petrarch says, ‘how unbecoming and unpropitious it is for a king to be a lover, for opposites can never be joined without serious consequences’. 32 Petrarch’s narrative framing of Familiares 1.4 can thus offer us insight more broadly into the ways in which fourteenth-century Europeans were using the legendary reputation of Charlemagne for their own rhetorical purposes. Alison Cornish has recently suggested that Petrarch’s version of the story is ultimately a tale of proto-nationalistic ridicule. That is, its point is simply that the Holy Roman Empire is autores maneat’. 31 This conforms largely with modern understandings of how pre-nineteenth-century European cultures framed their notions of sexual deviancy as sin, but not necessarily a fundamental corruption of the self. See, with particular reference to necrophilia, L. Downing, ‘Eros and Thanatos in European and American Sexology’, in Bodies, Sex and Desire from the Renaissance to the Present, ed. K. Fisher and S. Toulalan (London, 2011), pp. 201–20 (p. 212): ‘One outcome of the readings undertaken here is to show how death-related sexuality has functioned rhetorically to mark the extreme limit of human sexual behaviour, but also, paradoxically, as a common and consistently used device to warn almost metonymically against the danger of all deviation’ (her emphasis). See also pp. 201, 203–4, 205–8 and 209–12. 32 Petrarca, Le Familiari, p. 53, ll. 68–70: ‘Dici nequit quam discors et quam male se compassura conditio est amantis ac regis; nunquam profecto contraria sine lite iunguntur.’ Trans. Bernardo, p. 27.

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inadequate to maintain what it has inherited from the ‘true’ Romans of the ancient Italian peninsula. ‘The little story’, she writes, ‘however dubious, distasteful, and incredible, also fits into Petrarch’s political agenda, which is emphatically nationalistic: Germans should not hold the reins of empire’.33 According to this reading of the tale, the narrative works directly against the ‘branding’ of Charlemagne as a patron figure of the current Holy Roman Empire, and in so-doing cultivates a sense of solidarity among the members of Petrarch’s own in-group, who are at first Petrarch and Colonna, but later, when the letter was published more widely, all of Petrarch’s Italian readers. In other words, Petrarch presents Charlemagne, and by extension the transalpine Holy Roman imperial polity that Charlemagne later came to represent, as laughable and utterly unsalvageable. This in turn renders the Italian Rome that he and Colonna held most dear desirable and normative.34 While this was no doubt part of what Petrarch’s story conveyed to its audiences, the difficulty with this interpretation of the text is that it largely ignores the complex role that Charlemagne, and indeed the Holy Roman Empire itself, played in both Petrarch’s writing and his public political career. Petrarch invoked Charlemagne only rarely throughout his life’s work, but when he did Charlemagne served him as a symbolic figure of Latin Christendom as a whole, never for local or regional concerns. In his Canzoniere, for example, Petrarch draws upon Charlemagne’s legendary reputation as a crusader, using his image metaphorically to represent Philip IV of France, who had attempted to organize a new crusade in the early decades of the fourteenth

33 A. Cornish, ‘Embracing the Corpse: Necrophilic Tendencies in Petrarch’, in Dead Lovers: Erotic Bonds and the Study of Premodern Europe, ed. B. Dufallo and P. McCracken (Ann Arbor, 2007), pp. 57–70 (p. 66). 34 Anne Latowsky has shown how competing images of Charlemagne could be used for disputes over local communal identity in precisely this manner. The comically outlandish twelfth-century Voyage of Charlemagne to Jerusalem and Constantinople, she argues, mimics and mocks the similarly-structured, but far more sober Descriptio qualiter, a translation narrative claimed by the abbey of Saint-Denis. See A. Latowsky, ‘Charlemagne as Pilgrim? Requests for Relics in the Descriptio qualiter and the Voyage of Charlemagne’, in Legend of Charlemagne, pp. 153–67 (p. 164).

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century.35 Charlemagne in these poems represents a monarch of France rather than of the Holy Roman Empire, and, moreover, Petrarch invokes him as an explicit figure of pan-European identity against the non-Christian other. Charlemagne has this same symbolic role in Petrarch’s Trionfi as well. Petrarch names Charlemagne elliptically as one of the final members of the procession of heroes who march in Fame’s honour. In doing so he explicitly references, again, Charlemagne’s legendary crusading persona as leader of the twelve peers and continental counterpart to King Arthur.36 Furthermore, Petrarch’s relationship with the Holy Roman Empire, though certainly complex, was predominantly friendly. Frank L. Borchardt has suggested that in Petrarch’s early work, ‘Barbaric is the most recurrent attribute attached to things German’, which seems to support a proto-nationalistic reading of Petrarch’s ridicule of the Frankish emperor in Familiares 1.4.37 Yet as Petrarch’s dealings with the Holy Roman Empire grew far more extensive in the decades after he was crowned poet laureate, so his later work reveals exceedingly close intellectual and emotional affiliation with Italy’s political neighbour to the north. Indeed, in the aftermath of Cola di Rienzo’s failed 1348 revolution, Petrarch petitioned the emperor Charles IV in an open letter to come to Italy’s aid. Cola di Rienzo himself escaped to the imperial court at Prague, where he lived as a guest, and at least twice during the 1350s Charles IV begged Petrarch to join his entourage as well. Petrarch refused the emperor’s offer, yet he agreed to visit Prague in 1356. He also remained sufficiently close to the imperial family for the emperor 35 Canzoniere 27 casts Philip as the ‘heir of Charlemagne’ (successor di Carlo); and in Canzoniere 28 Philip is the ‘new Charlemagne’ (novo Carlo). Francesco Petrarca, Petrarch: The Canzoniere; or, Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, ed. and trans. M. Musa (Bloomington, IN, 1996), p. 37, l. 1, and p. 39, l. 26. For Philip’s crusading ambitions, see N. Housley, The Later Crusades, 1274–1580: From Lyons to Alcazar (Oxford, 1992), pp. 25–7, 29–31, 34. 36 Francesco Petrarca, Triumphi, ed. M. Ariani (Milan, 1988), p. 321, 432. In the original version of the Triumph of Fame, he is referred to by name, directly in relation to Arthur: ‘poi alla fine vidi Arturo e Carlo’. 37 F. L. Borchardt, ‘Petrarch: The German Connection’, in Francis Petrarch Six Centuries Later: A Symposium, ed. A. Scaglione (Chapel Hill, NC, 1975), pp. 418–31 (p. 420).

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to bestow upon him the honorific title of Count Palatine in 1357, and for the empress to write to him personally the next year to announce the birth of her daughter. Petrarch would engage in a warm correspondence during this time and through the last decade of his life with Charles IV’s chancellor, from which no fewer than thirty-six letters survive.38 Yet another difficulty with a proto-nationalist reading of the tale is the simple fact that Petrarch encountered the tale at Aachen. If we can at all take Petrarch at his word, the letter shows clearly that the story was already flourishing in ‘German’ circulation when Petrarch first found it there in 1333. It is unlikely that the presence of the story at the seat of Charlemagne’s historic power  –  and, indeed, the site of his most famous and tangible memorial, his bodily remains  –  could indicate the sort of simplistic boundary drawing between in-group and out-group that a proto-nationalist reading of Petrarch’s story would suggest. Petrarch clearly describes the tale as having an active presence at the shrine: the priests openly tell the story to a passing foreigner and willingly provide him with texts to read. That they make no attempts to control its dissemination  –  in the letter they even seem to be archiving multiple redactions of it  –  suggests strongly that the story caused the priests no shame whatsoever, and thus that the story was openly part of the community of memory that the shrine represented. It might seem surprising, at first, that Petrarch discovered this story depicting Charlemagne as a necrophiliac within the community of priestly caretakers of the emperor’s own shrine, a group that was presumably deeply invested in the protection of Charlemagne’s legendary reputation rather than its ridicule. Yet the ‘priests’ to whom Petrarch refers were likely an early configuration of the canons regular who guard the shrine to this day  –  a highly prestigious honour guard composed of men from the finest families in the city. Ribald and humorous stories involving the saints would certainly not have been unknown within the storytelling tradition of this social caste. Caesarius of Heisterbach’s stories, for example, were not anti-saint narratives per se, but certainly contained stories that rivalled the Fastrada’s Ring narrative in their licentiousness.39 38 Borchardt, ‘Petrarch’, pp. 420–2. 39 See V. Smirnova, ‘ “And Nothing Will Be Wasted”: Actualization of the Past in Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus Miraculorum’, in The Making of Memory in the Middle Ages, ed. L. Doležalová (Leiden, 2009), pp. 253–66. For further discussion of the social functions of parodic

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This was a community, the evidence seems to show, that could accommodate both Charlemagne’s glorious reputation and some of the uglier, sinful parts of his legendary character, without seeing them as mutually exclusive. It seems likely, therefore, given the complex role that both Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire played in Petrarch’s life, and also the flourishing of the necrophilia legend at Charlemagne’s own shrine, that there is more at work in Familiares 1.4 than simple protonationalism. Here we need to consider a different kind of function that the narrative could have performed. Parodic ridicule can demarcate boundaries between in-groups and out-groups, but it can equally perform far more conservative functions within the in-group itself as a form of social conditioning and self-regulation. When Petrarch encountered the Ring of Fastrada narrative circulating within the walls of the Aachen shrine, the legendary emperor had been dead for more than 500 years. Most of Charlemagne’s memoria  –  his stories, his texts, his legacy, his relics  –  would have served the function of collapsing this expanse of time, of connecting present devotees with Charlemagne’s legendary past through commemoration of the emperor’s former glory. Yet because the shrine’s memoria involved all sides of Charlemagne’s legendary afterlife, both flattering and unflattering, it seems clear that at least some of this memoria may have performed an opposite function as well. Just as heroic stories of Charlemagne could inspire devotion by linking past and present, a ridiculing story such as the ‘Tale of Fastrada’s Ring’ would have inspired a sense of dissonance and temporal fissure among its audiences. Comically wrought though it no doubt was, it would have drawn uncomfortable attention to the collapsing of time effected by other memoria, destabilizing the claims to sameness that more heroic Charlemagne narratives within the shrine might have made.40 hagiographical literature, see also R. D. Giles, The Laughter of the Saints: Parodies of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Toronto, 2009), p. 4ff. 40 As an analogue one can turn to any number of examples of communities using ridiculing narrative for self-regulation as well as delineation of self against an undesirable other. John Sewell, analysing late medieval Jewish polemical literature, has identified precisely this dual function in ridiculing narratives from the thirteenth century. Jewish anti-Christian

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Of course, one can only offer reasoned speculations with regard to the precise ways in which audiences at Aachen would ultimately have understood the tale. Since the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries are generally regarded as a low point in the political history of the empire, it is entirely possible, for example, that the ‘Tale of Fastrada’s Ring’ circulated at the shrine as a relatively safe means of critiquing contemporary imperial governance. Any depiction of Charlemagne in this period would have been seen at least on some level as a reflection of present-day emperors, and the tale clearly prompted Petrarch himself to moralize about ideal leadership and government. However, regardless of how the story’s northern audiences may have understood it, the ridiculing story of Fastrada’s ring would necessarily have functioned at Aachen to embarrass, even if only lightly and in jest, any visitor, or patron, or member of the priestly core itself, who would emulate Charlemagne too closely. It may have been the equivalent of visiting the memorial site of a controversial historical figure, where the museum curators heavy-handedly moralize and pedantically encourage patrons to learn and to acknowledge and to revere, but perhaps not to follow. The reason to indulge in such speculation within the context of Familiares 1.4 is that it assists us in contemplating whether there was not something of this self-regulatory and self-critical function for Petrarch and his audiences as well. His concern to prove Italian greatness by knocking an imperial hero down a peg might speak of a concern to ensure that Italians maintained pride in themselves. Certainly, any complex of proto-nationalistic inferiority would have been exacerbated by the chaotic history of the northern Italian city states during Petrarch’s lifetime. Yet as strong as such concerns about regional identity may have been, it is important to recognize that Petrarch’s Charlemagne story literature certainly drew distinctions between Jewish and Christian social groups, using parodic ridicule to resist Christian hegemony and to delineate proper lines between communities. Yet this parodic ridicule also served, Sewell argues, to embarrass and thus to discourage Jews from becoming enamoured with Christian culture itself. See J. Sewell, ‘The Son Rebelled and So the Father Made Man Alone: Ridicule and Boundary Maintenance in the Nizzahon Vetus’, in Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Epistemology of a Fundamental Human Behavior, its Meaning, and Consequences, ed. A. Classen (New York, 2010), pp. 295–324.

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suggests an even deeper concern for a certain kind of pan-European decadence and, indeed, loss of self-control that he felt plagued his contemporaries regardless of geography. It links directly to themes that would pervade Petrarch’s writing throughout his career, themes so prevalent that scholars not long ago still recognized within them some of the earliest articulations of what was once called ‘renaissance’ thinking: the conception of a ‘dark’ age of spiritual and cultural decline that post-dated the glory of the Roman republic. Theodore Mommsen’s classic and still commonly cited argument on this subject focused on what Mommsen thought was a key decision by Petrarch to end his De viris illustribus with the first century of imperial Rome, rather than extending it to his own time as he had originally planned.41 More recent interpreters disagree with Mommsen’s conclusions, of course.42 Yet there can be no question that Petrarch consistently idealized ancient Roman culture as a model to which he hoped his own Roman world would aspire, and that he frequently saw his own world as frightfully pale in comparison. While the glory of the ancient Roman world and the relative backwardness of the ‘modern’ world of Petrarch and his contemporaries would be the central theme of the oration that won Petrarch the poet laureate’s crown in 1341, his most cogent discussion may have been in the De vita solitaria, another work that he wrote during the 1340s, in which he set out to define the ideal life of quiet contemplation.43 Meditating on the life of Peter the Hermit, whom Petrarch lauded as a humble figure who took on a leadership role in crusade only when more prominent leaders would not, Petrarch indulged in an extended digression in which he railed against the failures of ‘modern’ kings and princes of the Church. He lamented the loss of the Holy Land and blamed kings and popes for neglecting their duties in favour of lust for 41 T. E. Mommsen, ‘Petrarch’s Conception of the “Dark Ages”’, Speculum 17 (1942), 226–42. 42 See now R. G. Witt’s discussion of Carlo Calcaterra and Guido Martellotti’s work: ‘The Rebirth of the Romans as Models of Character’, in Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, pp. 103–11 (pp. 106ff). 43 E. H. Wilkins would draw on the centrality of this theme to label the oration ‘the first manifesto of the Renaissance’: see ‘Petrarch’s Coronation Oration’, in his Studies in the Life and Works of Petrarch (Cambridge, MA, 1955), pp. 300–13 (p. 300).

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riches and luxury. The leaders of ancient Rome, he wrote, would never have allowed their world to fall into such despair.44 Weighing the quality of the men that various historical moments produced was part of a long tradition in European intellectual circles of using biography as a mirror for ideal virtuous conduct. And indeed, Petrarch’s particular friendship with Giovanni Colonna might be of crucial importance on this point, because Colonna himself was a published authority on the biographical history of the West.45 Petrarch’s innovation within this tradition, however, was that he would use it largely to condemn the princes of his contemporary world, arguing that when compared to the famous men of ancient Rome, moderns were far from their equals. Most importantly, Petrarch saw himself living within a decadent time in which the light of ancient Rome had been allowed to fade. In De vita solitaria he referred to his own world, and to Avignon in particular, as the new Babylon, a theme that would recur in his Latin Secretum. And significantly, he wrote about his woes in the first person plural, squarely including himself among those he censured. This was precisely the message of Familiares 1.4. Charlemagne, whose legendary image Petrarch used in other texts only to invoke pan-European identity, was the ultimate form of modern avatar  –  the best that the era had yet produced, who nevertheless still paled in comparison to the greats of old. Petrarch’s self-implication in the decline of ancient Roman virtue thus suggests a final shade of meaning in his presentation of Charlemagne in Familiares 1.4. While Alison Cornish noted only the proto-nationalistic elements of Petrarch’s rendering of the Frankish emperor, she also emphasized how the text echoes a rhetorical trope that recurs in Petrarch’s literary corpus: his drawing upon the metaphor of the beloved and resuscitated dead body. Specifically, he invoked the metaphor to convey nostalgia for the passage of time and the differences that he saw between the glorious ancient past and his own 44 Francesco Petrarca, De vita solitaria 2.4.1–8, in Opere latine, ed. A. Bufano, II (Turin, 1975). 45 Colonna authored his De viris illustribus in 1338, an important precursor and interlocutor text for Petrarch’s own De viris illustribus that he would publish later in his career. Importantly, Colonna’s text was a universal history, but Petrarch would never be able to decide to his satisfaction whether his text should end after the Roman republic. See Witt, ‘The Rebirth of the Romans’, p. 104.

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decadent present. Juxtaposing Familiares 1.4 with Familiares 2.9, another letter written to a member of the Colonna family (Giovanni’s brother, Giacomo), Cornish reveals the ways in which Petrarch attributed to himself, too, a kind of fascination with decaying bodies. Giacomo has made a playful charge, Familiares 2.9 recounts, that the scholar is in fact a fraud  –  that the Laura of his love poems is nothing but a fictional personification of the laurels of fame that Petrarch truly desires, and that Petrarch’s promise to visit his friend Giacomo in Rome is equally fictional. Petrarch wittily reassures his friend that both Laura and Roma are quite real objects of his desire. Personifying and gendering the ancient Roman capital as the ‘queen of cities’, he notes that the Rome of their modern day is only a pale and shabby vestige of what she once was. Yet he still longs to look upon her walls and stones, the monuments of the old empire, the mausoleums of the Christian martyrs. She is a body whose former glory makes her beautiful, even if in reality she is tired and has succumbed to decay.46 Cornish also notes that Petrarch implicates himself similarly through another use of this corpse metaphor, in his Canzoniere 53. There the city is a dead body in need of resurrection  –  both political and spiritual in equal measure. She is an old lady in the mud, and the spirto gentil must infuse her once again with life and vigour (gently or not so gently  –  the poem also includes imagery of running a hand through her hair and pulling her out of the mud by force).47 If, for Petrarch, Laura and the ancient world are metaphorically congruent ruins which he hoped to revivify through his writing and imagination, it is important to recognize the ways in which Charlemagne in the story of Familiares 1.4 mirrors Petrarch’s own longing for dead bodies.48 Beyond proto-nationalism, the presentation of Charlemagne as a necrophiliac also resonates strongly with Petrarch’s agenda to separate his broader culture from the decadence of the post-Roman age. This only reiterates a preoccupation in Petrarch’s thinking about Charlemagne that ultimately had nothing to do with physical geography, or any boundaries of space. The dead body in Petrarch’s writing involved far less a concern for geographic regional 46 Cornish, ‘Embracing the Corpse’, pp. 58–9. Petrarca, Le familiari 2.9, pp. 209–15, ll. 134–228. 47 Cornish, ‘Embracing the Corpse’, pp. 59–65; Petrarca, Petrarch: The Canzoniere, p. 91. 48 Cf. Cornish, ‘Embracing the Corpse’, pp. 66–7.

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identities than it did an intense preoccupation with past time. Bodies represented civilizations for Petrarch. His disdain for Charlemagne’s ‘greatness’ was not simply that the emperor failed to compare with the greats of the ancient world. It was that Charlemagne’s moral failings revealed the impoverishment of his own age  –  an age in which Petrarch conceived that he himself lived. Petrarch’s concern is for the ravages of time on what was once splendid. As avatar of this modern decadence, Charlemagne very clearly represents a period that is neither as ‘great’ as the ancient world, nor as morally virtuous as Petrarch’s contemporary sensibilities dictated it should be.

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Fig. 8.1  The façade of SS Apostoli, Florence

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marble plaque dating from the fifteenth century on the façade   of SS Apostoli in Florence commemorates the foundation of the church by Charlemagne and its consecration by Archbishop Turpin, with Roland and Oliver as witnesses (Figs. 8.1 and 8.2).1 The Romanesque church was actually built in the eleventh century, but was later repackaged as a monument to events first recounted in the semi-official chronicle of Giovanni Villani (c. 1280–1348): how the city, founded by Caesar and then sacked and destroyed by Totila and the Goths, was rebuilt by Caesar’s successor Charlemagne, to whom and Many thanks to Graham Barrett and Brian Jeffrey Maxson for their thoughtful comments on drafts of this chapter. Research in Cambridge was made possible by the generosity of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies. Translations from Bruni are by James Hankins; all other translations are mine. 1 viii. v. die vi. aprilis in resvrrectione domini karolvs francorvm rex a roma revertens ingressvs florentiam cvm magno gavdio et tripvdio svsceptvs  … in pentecostem fvndavit ecclesiam sanctorvm apostolorvm  … consecratio facta per archiepiscopvm tvrpinvm testibus rolando et vliverio. The plaque was previously located beside the high altar, where it was seen by Vasari: ‘Preface to the Lives’, in Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. G. C. de Vere, 2 vols. (London, 1996), I, p. 43. In 1930 an early thirteenth-century incrusted design was found on the reverse of the plaque, which was replaced on the façade with a copy. See W. Paatz and E. Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz: Ein kunstgeschichtliches Handbuch, 6 vols. (Frankfurt, 1940–54), I, pp. 245–6, and A. Busignani and R. Bencini, Le chiese di Firenze: Quartiere di Santa Maria Novella (Florence, 1979), pp. 77–80.

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Fig. 8.2 Plaque on the façade of SS Apostoli, Florence, commemorating Charlemagne’s building of the church, fifteenth century (copy)

to whose French heirs the city was therefore perpetually indebted.2 Florentine humanists of the Quattrocento (fifteenth century) were not limited to affixing plaques: they also rewrote their city’s Carolingian myth in their works of Latin prose and poetry. These works were neither disinterested historical inquiries nor mere classicizing literary exercises; rather, they were products of distinct political moments, mirrors of and participants in the world around them. This chapter will explore three such humanist texts, from roughly the beginning, middle, and end of the century respectively. In so doing, it will show how, in each Florentine literary manifestation of Charlemagne, one must see an attempt to negotiate the relationship with France, or the orientation of the Florentine state or people towards it. The study also reveals how such negotiations were undertaken with an eye to both internal and external consumption, in a political environment where, for many, such a distinction was as yet irrelevant. Indeed, no study of later medieval Florentine politics, foreign or 2 G. Villani, Nuova Cronica, ed. G. Porta, 3 vols. (Parma, 1990–1), I, pp. 143–52 (iv.1–3).

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domestic, can avoid the question of France. For a period of over two hundred and fifty years  –  from 1265, when Charles of Anjou arrived in Italy to conquer the kingdom of Sicily at the pope’s behest, until 1530, when Emperor Charles V and Pope Clement VII subdued the republic and established Alessandro de’ Medici as Florence’s first hereditary duke  –  France and the French not only had a remarkably steady hold on Florentine loyalties, but were also key components of the city’s civic identity. It was an identification Florence owed to the Guelph party, which had first stood for the alliance with the papacy against the empire (and the Ghibellines), then with the Franco-Angevin dynasty of Naples, and, especially after the Ciompi revolt of 1378, for the worldview of a political and financial elite that jealously guarded its hold on offices and privileges.3 By the dawn of the Quattrocento, loyalty to France and the French had been written into the city’s approved myths, in which the refoundation of the city by Charlemagne enjoyed pride of place.4 The entire foundation myth had arisen, moreover, in the context of the political-religious prophecy of the ‘second Charles’, the French scourge and redeemer of a corrupt Church, unifier of Italy, and world emperor who, from Jerusalem, would bring about the kingdom of God on earth.5 Savonarola, at the end of the Quattrocento, is one of the most important and innovative proponents of this prophetic tradition, but his Florencecentric millenarian vision had roots much deeper than his popular preaching. Again and again throughout the century, in the public statements of Florentine officials, in the instructions for diplomats abroad, and in the words of enemies or outsiders, Florence’s French connection was accentuated, celebrated and feared. But while official rhetoric might 3 J. Najemy, A History of Florence, 1200–1575 (Chichester, 2008), passim, esp. pp. 20–7, 72–95, 144–55, 161–87; for the Quattrocento, see A. Brown, ‘The Guelf Party in Fifteenth-Century Florence’, Rinascimento 20 (1980), 41–86. 4 A. De Vincentiis, ‘Origini, memoria, identità a Firenze nel XIV secolo: La rifondazione di Carlomagno’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Moyen Âge 15 (2003), 385–443; P. Gilli, Au miroir de l’humanisme: Les représentations de la France dans la culture savante italienne à la fin du Moyen Âge (Rome, 1997), pp. 275–301. 5 D. Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence: Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance (Princeton, 1970).

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remain the same, it would be wrong to assume that Florence’s relations with France were equally unchanging. Instead, they were highly mutable  –  just like the Florentine government itself. Yet an attempt to redefine officially the relationship with France could be dangerous, because, cutting so close to issues of civic identity, it would threaten to upset the domestic peace upon which every successive regime depended. It is in this context that one must understand the humanist Latin writing that emanated from Quattrocento Florence about Charlemagne  –  the icon of that relationship, and thus a civic icon too. The three texts considered here are Historia florentini populi by Leonardo Bruni (c. 1370–1444), Vita Caroli Magni by Donato Acciaiuoli (1429–78), and Carlias, a fifteen-book epic poem by Ugolino Verino (1438–1516).6 None of these texts is unknown, though there is a sliding scale, from the first to the last, in just how well known they are: Bruni’s Historia is, after all, one of the essential humanist texts and has an important place in studies of Renaissance historiography.7 Moreover, as we shall see, the potency of Florence’s French connection has not been entirely ignored in studies of these texts. What has been less well understood, however, is the diplomatic context in which these texts lived. I say lived for two reasons: in the first instance, because they were not static  –  each went through different recensions or appeared in contexts that gave it new meanings; in the second, because, as we shall see, they were endowed with diplomatic agency themselves. 6 Unless otherwise specified, works are cited as they appear in the following editions: L. Bruni, History of the Florentine People, ed. J. Hankins, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA, 2001–7); La Vita Caroli di Donato Acciaiuoli: La leggenda di Carlo Magno in funzione di una Historia di gesta, ed. D. Gatti (Bologna, 1981), pp. 99–123; U. Verino, Carlias: Ein Epos des 15. Jahrhunderts, ed. N. Thurn (Munich, 1995). 7 For example, in studies such as E. Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago, 1981); R. Fubini, Storiografia dell’umanesimo in Italia da Leonardo Bruni ad Annio da Viterbo (Rome, 2003); N. Struever, The Language of History in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and Historical Consciousness in Florentine Humanism (Princeton, 1970); B. L. Ullman, ‘Leonardo Bruni and Humanistic Historiography’, Medievalia et Humanistica 4 (1946), 45–61; and D. J. Wilcox, The Development of Florentine Humanist Historiography in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, MA, 1969).

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The selection of three texts is obviously not exhaustive, but the circumstances of their production and reception are such that they help illustrate these points clearly. Thus, while this study will focus on writing about Charlemagne, through its attempt to marry literary and diplomatic history it should also offer a fuller understanding of humanist writing and the role it played in the political world.

L

eonardo Bruni’s fame as the father of critical methods rests upon   the first book of his twelve-book Historia, and especially on his demolition of the Charlemagne foundation legend found therein. This was perhaps the most egregious of the ‘common and incredible opinions’ touted by the unmentioned Villani’s vernacular chronicle that Bruni in his preface rejected out of hand.8 Bruni had nothing but praise for Charlemagne personally: ‘he deserved to be called “the Great” not only for the greatness of his deeds but also for the excellence of his many virtues’. 9 Yet in Bruni’s rendering, Charlemagne’s contribution to the city’s past was much more modest than the Guelph–Villani tradition had it: I think, therefore, that Totila had indeed done great harm to Florence, slaughtering many of her citizens and tearing down her walls, but I don’t believe that he destroyed the city altogether nor that it was entirely without inhabitants in the intervening period. I see standing yet the rich and extraordinary temple of Mars and other buildings from before the age of Totila, and when I consider these unharmed remains I cannot believe that the whole city was destroyed nor that it stood uninhabited for so long. More likely, I think, the walls were restored by Charlemagne and he recalled the nobility, which, lacking confidence in the city’s fortifications, would have defended the numerous castles on their estates. I think, therefore, that the city was put back together as a city after

8 Bruni, History, I, 4–6: ‘placuit exemplo quorundam rerum scriptorum de primordio atque origine urbis vulgaribus fabulosisque opinionibus reiectis quam verissimam puto notitiam tradere, ut omnia in sequentibus clariora redantur.’ See also G. Ianziti, Writing History in Renaissance Italy: Leonardo Bruni and the Uses of the Past (Cambridge, MA, 2012), p. 107. 9 Bruni, History, I, 90: ‘non solum rerum gestarum magnitudine, verum etiam plurimarum virtutum excellentia, Magnus meruerit appellari’.

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having been variously dismembered. Rather than refounded [rursus conditam], in my opinion, it was essentially restored [reparatam].10 By explicitly characterizing Charlemagne’s intervention not as bringing about an urbs rursus condita  –  with its obvious Livian allusion  –  but one simply reparata, Bruni downplayed its importance significantly.11 He undercut Charlemagne’s position further by denying that the city was originally founded by the imperial icon Julius Caesar (it was instead a colony founded by Sulla’s veterans). In a similar vein, Bruni credited the free Roman people of the republican period with the creation of Roman imperial power, and portrayed the rule of the emperors as a period of decline; he thus rejected the theory that the medieval empire in the West was in any way a continuation of the ancient one that came to an end in 476 with the deposition of Romulus Augustulus by Odoacer. He also expressed doubt over the legitimacy of an imperial title awarded by the pope.12 What might seem the triumph of critical methods, however, is undermined by what Bruni substitutes the Charlemagne legend with: the myth of Etruria. Not the Carolingian refoundation, but an Etruscan past of free, powerful and independent cities provides the animating principle for the city he celebrates.13 Though Etruria was subordinated 10 Bruni, History, I, 96: ‘Ego igitur magnas quidem inflictas a Totila clades, plurimam caedem factam civium et eversa moenia existimo, sed neque urbem funditus deletam neque per medium illud tempus sine habitatoribus omnino fuisse. Video namque dives illud ac praecipuum Martis templum et alia quaedam aedificia supra aetatem Totilae vetusta extare, quae cum incolumia relica conspiciam, totam urbem deletam credere non libet, neque haec ipsa absque habitatoribus tamdiu stetisse. Quare moenia potius a Carolo restituta et nobilitatem, quae diffisa munitionibus urbis frequentia in praediis suis castella munierat, intra urbem revocatam; urbem denique ipsam varie disiectam in formam urbis redactam, sed reparatam magis quam rursus conditam existimo.’ The ‘temple of Mars’ mentioned here is not an ancient building at all, but in fact the Baptistery, begun in the late eleventh century. 11 Livy’s history of Rome from its foundation was entitled Ab urbe condita libri. 12 Bruni, History, I, 8, 86–90. 13 See G. Cipriani, Il mito etrusco nel rinascimento fiorentino (Florence, 1980), pp. 7–11.

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in antiquity to Rome and then beset by the same disasters under the barbarians, the removal of the empire to Gaul and then Germany gave space, Bruni argued, for the revival of the Tuscan cities in more recent times, and the rise of an independent Florence to its rightful regional prominence.14 This refashioning of the foundation legend is a centrepiece of Gary Ianziti’s important book about Bruni’s practice of history-writing. According to Ianziti, Bruni was a historian who crafted his narrative from the available material  –  including the archives  –  but above all in accordance with the needs of contemporary audiences.15 In this case, that meant the needs of the oligarchic regime that was pursuing an imperial programme in Tuscany and, judging by its granting Bruni Florentine citizenship and tax exemptions in 1416 (the year the first book was completed), was directly or indirectly paying for the work that justified just such a mission for the city.16 Certainly the supremacy of the state of Florence in Tuscany was a preoccupation of the ruling oligarchy, which sought both legitimacy for, and to congratulate itself on, its recent successes. Among those successes were the strong position in which it emerged from its opposition to Giangaleazzo Visconti’s Milanese state that broke up in 1402, and, above all, its 1406 conquest of Pisa: these, indeed, are the exploits that, in the work’s preface, Bruni claims attracted him to writing the history of the Florentine people in the first place.17 In a regime that practised ‘consensus politics’ and was therefore keen to replace the not-always-laudatory chronicle accounts of the medieval commune’s contentious history with one that acknowledged the justness of current Florentine policy and thus the 14 Bruni, History, I, 92–8; Fubini, Storiografia dell’umanesimo, pp. 108–12; Ianziti, Writing History, pp. 105–8; G. Ianziti, ‘Challenging Chronicles: Leonardo Bruni’s History of the Florentine People’, in Chronicling History: Chroniclers and Historians in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. S. Dale, A. W. Lewin and D. J. Osheim (University Park, PA, 2007), pp. 249–72 (p. 259). 15 Ianziti, Writing History, esp. p. 4. 16 Ianziti, Writing History, pp. 100–1; Ianziti, ‘Challenging Chronicles’, pp. 251–2. Bruni was not born a Florentine citizen: he originally came from Arezzo. 17 Bruni, History, I, 2; J. Hankins, ‘The Chronology of Leonardo Bruni’s Later Works’, Studi medievali e umanistici 5–6 (2007–8): 11–50 (pp. 11–12).

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fitness of the rulers to rule, Bruni’s discovery of historical precedent was certainly welcome.18 Even in this context, however, the downgrading of Charlemagne is striking. Independence in early Quattrocento Florence had never meant sovereignty. For all of Florence’s own imperialism, the oligarchy had always conceived of itself as practising self-government within a Guelph and pro-French imperial context.19 Even Bruni’s Dialogi (1403–6), which claimed that Guelph party rule in Florence originated in antiquity in opposition to Julius Caesar, identified the Angevin-led war against Manfred (d. 1266) as its glorious moment of restoration; and, in verses of 1426 attributed to one of the oligarchy’s leaders, Niccolò da Uzzano, opponents were characterized as those ‘who appear to love the azure shield and golden lilies’  –  that is, the arms of France  –  but in reality act falsely: fanno falsa giostra.20 In the Historia, however, Bruni’s insistence on the absolute liberty of Florence from outside power led to much more critical treatment of French intervention in Florentine and Italian affairs than that found in the chronicle tradition.21 The Charlemagne foundation legend was a casualty of this radical standpoint. Yet the handling of the Charlemagne material was not even the only 18 Ianziti, Writing History, pp. 117–18. 19 S. Ferente, ‘Guelphs! Faction, Liberty and Sovereignty: Inquiries about the Quattrocento’, History of Political Thought 28 (2007), 571–98 (p. 591). 20 ‘Versi fatti da Niccolò da Uzzano, predicando la mutazione dello stato (1426)’, ed. G. Canestrini, Archivio Storico Italiano 4 (1843), 297–300 (p. 298): ‘… chi dimostra / D’amar lo scudo azzurro e gigli d’oro, / E nel secreto fanno falsa giostra’. On the wider importance of the Guelph party’s ancient origins posited (by the interlocutor Salutati) in the Dialogi in Bruni’s thought, see B. J. Maxson, ‘Kings and Tyrants: Leonardo Bruni’s Translation of Xenophon’s Hiero’, Renaissance Studies 24 (2010), 188–206 (pp. 200–2, 204–6). Bruni (History, I, 100–2) would later claim that the parties were born in the conflict between pope and emperor, but says of the Guelphs: ‘libertatem populorum magis complectebantur’; see also Fubini, Storiografia, p. 103. 21 Bruni’s critical attitude towards French behaviour leading to the Sicilian Vespers uprising can be seen as emblematic: Bruni, History, I, 296–300. See also T. Maissen, Von der Legende zum Modell: Das Interesse an Frankreichs Vergangenheit während der italienischen Renaissance (Basel and Frankfurt, 1994), pp. 46–8.

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part of Bruni’s first book that should have made troubling reading for those of a strongly pro-French political orientation. In a work where the French were described using the classical term Galli, it was no less than the invasion of Italy by the Gauls, claimed Bruni, that brought an end to Etruscan power beyond the confines of their home; and it was ‘against those barbarian and savage peoples’, rather than the Romans, that the Etruscans ‘waged implacable war’.22 Such harsh language was perhaps inspired by the anti-Visconti orientation of both Florentine policy and Bruni’s work, as Milan, the Visconti capital, had been the capital of the Insubres in Gallia Cisalpina  –  the name regularly used by Bruni to indicate Lombardy.23 But the words Gallia and Galli applied equally to the historic ally; when the Historia was translated into Italian sixty years later, they were assumed to.24 How, alongside Niccolò da Uzzano’s verses and in a consensus culture of politics, were such gratuitous attacks possible? Bruni’s recklessness in handling the ancient Galli  –  a matter only tangentially connected to the task of projecting Florentine sovereignty into the past  –  is so great that it forces one to ask whether any other outside conditions had impact upon the two ‘French’ components of the legendary past, beyond the domestic demand for a self-justifying history that Ianziti identified. Here one must look across the Alps for 22 Bruni, History, I, 22–4 (on the Etruscan nation): ‘Duravit autem incolumis domique et foris usque ad transitum Gallorum in Italiam  … Ab iis et aliis Gallis opes Etruscorum attritae et intra iugum Apennini post longa bella repressae  … Nam adversus barbaras illas et efferatas gentes implacabile bellum fuit Etruscis.’ 23 See, for example, Bruni, History, I, 24: ‘eam omnem Italiae partem, quae nunc Gallia Cisalpina dicitur, Tuscis ademerunt’; glossed in the official translation by Donato Acciaiuoli, Historia fiorentina (Venice: Jacobus Rubeus, 12 Feb. 1476) [Oxford, The Queen’s College Library, Sel.a.122], a6r: ‘tolseno a Thoscani quella parte d’Italia che e chiamata Gallia di qua dall’alpe, cioe Lombardia’. Bruni’s term for Lombardy is also noted by Cochrane, Historians and Historiography, p. 3. 24 Compare above, n. 22, with the gloss in Acciaiuoli, trans., Historia fiorentina, a6r: ‘da questi & altri simili nationi di Galli decti hoggi Franzesi’. See also Gilli, Au miroir de l’humanisme, pp. 303–5, who does not, however, acknowledge the Milanese implications of Bruni’s word choice  –  surely significant at the time of writing, if less so in 1476, a time of Milano–Florentine rapprochement.

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answers. Indeed, Bruni’s Historia  –  especially that first book  –  is a work that could only have existed at a coincidence of political moments: that in Florence, discussed above; but, equally important and hardly acknowledged in discussions of Bruni’s work, that in France. At the time Bruni was writing, French intervention in Italy and support either for or from Florence were simply not possible. There was no single French policy towards Italy; there was not even a single France, nor any guarantee that there would be one, at least one Italian Guelphs would recognize. France was in the midst of the Armagnac–Burgundian civil war when Bruni returned to Florence from Rome in March 1415 and likely began writing; Bruni announced the completion of his first book in a letter to Poggio Bracciolini on 2 January 1416, just over two months after the colossal French defeat to the English at Agincourt.25 The first six books were published around May 1428, when the house of Lancaster still ruled much of France.26 By the next year, however, Joan of Arc had raised the siege of Orléans and the French recovery was afoot. It is doubtful that, had Bruni waited a few years, the oligarchic regime would have endorsed such a vision of the past, particularly after 1435. That year witnessed not only the treaty of Arras, by which Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, shifted his allegiance  –  and thus the power balance in this last stage of the Hundred Years’ War  –  from the Lancastrian Henry VI to the Valois king Charles VII, but also the return of the French to the Italian peninsula: Queen Joanna II of Naples died, and René of Anjou (1409–80), the king of France’s brother-in-law and 25 For these dates, see Ianziti, Writing History, pp. 100 and 345n. Contemporary French weakness is acknowledged as a factor influencing Bruni’s work in Maissen, Von der Legende zum Modell, p. 48, though Maissen is keener to attribute the treatment of the French to Bruni’s own personal experience of brutality by a French army at his native Arezzo in 1384; Ianziti does not address it. For the political history of France in this period see, inter alia, M. G. A. Vale, Charles VII (London, 1974); R. Vaughan, John the Fearless: The Growth of Burgundian Power (London, 1966); and R. Vaughan, Philip the Good: The Apogee of Burgundy (London, 1970). 26 For the date of publication, see J. Hankins, ‘Rhetoric, History and Ideology: The Civic Panegyrics of Leonardo Bruni’, in Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections, ed. J. Hankins (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 143–78 (p. 159), and Ianziti, Writing History, pp. 91 and 342n.

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heir of the leading family in the royalist Armagnac party, sent his wife to that city to uphold his ancestral claims to the Regno, launching a campaign that would last until 1442.27 Any such speculation, however, lies firmly in the realm of counterfactual history. The reason is that, in 1434, the regime of the oligarchs was ousted and replaced by one led by Cosimo de’ Medici (1389–1464). Its power never more than unofficial, but no less real in spite of that, Cosimo’s regime sought its stability through Italian alliances, and only courted support from outside when this failed.28 Crucially, as part of its goal of monopolizing power, the regime hoped to suppress attempts by the old Guelph oligarchy to pursue and promote the peninsular politics of its traditional FrancoAngevin allies. Thus Bruni’s work, begun under the oligarchy at a very particular moment, came to maturity and was completed in a political context to which the earlier portions could be easily adapted.29 In two different ceremonies  –  1428 and 1439, respectively  –  under two different regimes, copies of the first two instalments of the Historia florentini populi had been officially presented to the city government and deposited in the Palazzo della Signoria; in 1442 the finished work was published as the Florentine republic’s official history.30 There yet remained a place in Medici Florence for Charlemagne, the consecration of Bruni’s Historia notwithstanding. On diplomatic missions to France, for instance, the foundation legend was regularly 27 For René of Anjou, his career and his involvement in Italian affairs, see D. Abulafia, The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms, 1200–1500: The Struggle for Dominion (London, 1997), pp. 195–222, and O. Margolis, The Politics of Culture in Quattrocento Europe: René of Anjou in Italy (Oxford, 2016). 28 The historiography on the Medici regime under Cosimo is vast: for reference, see Najemy, A History of Florence, pp. 250–77; for its internal functioning, see N. Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici (1434 to 1494) (Oxford, 1966), pp. 1–135. 29 For the changes in Bruni’s writing of the Historia during the Medici period, see Ianziti, Writing History, pp. 186–233. 30 On the ceremonies, see B. J. Maxson, ‘Establishing Independence: Leonardo Bruni’s History of the Florentine People and Ritual in FifteenthCentury Florence’, in Foundation, Dedication and Consecration in Early Modern Europe, ed. M. Delbeke and M. Schraven (Leiden, 2012), pp. 79–98 (pp. 88–94); also Ianziti, Writing History, pp. 188 and 206, and Hankins, ‘The Chronology’, pp. 48–9.

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invoked; and there continued to be histories written that acknowledged it.31 Moreover, in a very real way Charlemagne post-Bruni was even more significant than before: while constantly appropriated by the regime, particularly in diplomatic affairs, he could now also be invoked by the new opposition, the Guelph patriciate that had spent over a century nourishing relations with French allies in Naples and across the Alps. By allowing an ambiguous official stance towards Charlemagne to take root, the centralizing regime had given an opportunity to that class which required a similar ambiguity if it was to successfully navigate its relations with the Medici while pursuing as much as possible its traditional prerogatives. It is just this dynamic that must be understood when considering Donato Acciaiuoli’s Vita Caroli Magni. This work was first made public in January 1462, when the young patrician author himself offered an illuminated copy to the newly crowned King Louis XI of France in the course of a Florentine embassy.32 Riccardo Fubini has described the Vita as ‘a work written for the purpose of official propaganda’; while, according to Thomas Maissen, the embassy to the king represented the ‘high point’ of the entire Florentine Charlemagne cult, part of its ‘confirmation as official Staatsmythos’.33 Such claims, however, do not fully appreciate the complexity of the event, of Florentine political 31 For example, see the instructions of the Dieci di Balìa to Angelo Acciaiuoli, ambassador to France, 10 September 1451, in Dispatches with Related Documents of Milanese Ambassadors in France and Burgundy, 1450– 1483, ed. P. M. Kendall and V. Ilardi, 3 vols. (Athens, OH, 1970–80), I, p. 5, in which Acciaiuoli was told to invoke the Carolingian refoundation in his public oration. The legend was cited approvingly by Bruni’s contemporary Poggio Bracciolini (Historia florentina, ed. G. B. Recanati (Venice, 1715), p. 3 [i]), and even later by Machiavelli (Istorie fiorentine, in Opere, ed. C. Vivanti, 3 vols. (Turin, 2005), III, 364 [ii.2]). 32 This manuscript is Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 180; the text published by Gatti is of a later recension. The Acciaiuoli were an old oligarchic family, and, resident in the Borgo SS Apostoli, were strongly linked to the church of that same name, the supposed foundation of Charlemagne. 33 Fubini, Storiografia, p. 123; Maissen, Von der Legende zum Modell, pp. 49 and 52: ‘Mit der Gratulationsgesandtschaft für den frisch gekrönten Louis XI, der persönlich Karl den Grossen sehr verehren wird, erreicht dieser Kult seinen Höhepunkt’.

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society, or even of the Charlemagne cult and its now-contentious place in Florentine history.34 The circumstances of the manuscript presentation and some faulty claims about Acciaiuoli’s status on the mission have led nearly all modern scholars to treat Acciaiuoli as though he were an ambassador and the Vita Caroli as though it were an official diplomatic gift from the Medici-controlled state.35 In fact Acciaiuoli was not an ambassador, and was only on the mission as part of the retinue of his father-in-law, Piero de’ Pazzi (1416–64), who belonged to one of the greatest families of the Guelph oligarchy. The Pazzi would become famous for their role in the bloody 1478 conspiracy against Cosimo de’ Medici’s grandson Lorenzo; but already at this time Piero was the leader of the pro-Angevin faction in Florence, marshalling funds for a military campaign launched by King René’s son in the Regno against the Aragonese ruler Ferrante. King Louis strongly supported this campaign, whereas Ferrante was backed by Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, and the Italian League, an alliance of the major peninsular states to which 34 The circumstances of the work’s writing, the production and presentation of the manuscript, and the political and diplomatic orientations and agendas of all those involved are treated fully in O. Margolis, ‘The “Gallic Crowd” at the “Aragonese Doors”: Donato Acciaiuoli’s Vita Caroli Magni and the Workshop of Vespasiano da Bisticci’, I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 17 (2014), 241–82. 35 Examples of recent faulty or ambiguous claims about Donato’s diplomatic status include Gilli, Au miroir de l’humanisme, p. 322: ‘une ambassade florentine composée de Donato Acciaioli [etc.]’ (though otherwise sound); and W. Strobl, ‘Karl der Große im italienischen Renaissance-Humanismus: Beobeachten zur Rezeption der Vita Caroli Magni des Donato Acciaiuoli im 15. Jahrhundert’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 68 (2012), 91–126 (p. 94): ‘Dieser Gesandtschaft gehörte ein junger Mann an, der zwar einer alten Florentiner Adelsfamilie entstamme, in der Öffentlichkeit aber noch verhältnismäßig unbekannt war und dessen glänzende politische Karriere im Dienste der Medici erst in der Folgezeit beginnen sollte: Donato Acciaiuoli.’ The official status of the work is asserted in the recent catalogue: Illuminated Manuscripts in Cambridge: Catalogue of Western Book Illumination in the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Cambridge Colleges. Part Two: Italy and the Iberian Peninsula, ed. N. Morgan, S. Panayotova and S. Reynolds (London, 2012), p. 102; cf. Gilli, Au miroir de l’humanisme, p. 326.

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the Medici regime  –  Sforza’s closest ally  –  belonged. Acciaiuoli’s Vita Caroli thus formed part not of Medicean cultural diplomacy, but of Piero’s own, asserting his loyalty and that of his party to the French by means of celebrating the shared icon. In his survey of history-writing in the Italian Renaissance, Eric Cochrane dismissed Acciaiuoli as a writer who ‘was interested in history only as a literary exercise’, and his Vita Caroli as ‘essentially just a reworking of Einhard’.36 Both characterizations are gravely inadequate. Not only did Acciaiuoli draw on the Suetonian and Plutarchan biographical traditions in his portrayal of the Frankish emperor, he also borrowed heavily  –  often word for word  –  from Bruni’s Historia, especially the parts where the older humanist had discussed the process by which the Roman empire was created, divided and eventually transferred to Charlemagne. Gone, however, was the ambivalence, even hostility, towards these developments that Bruni had cultivated. Instead, where Acciaiuoli broke away from Bruni’s text, the Carolingian refoundation of Florence was confidently asserted: What I think ought to be assigned the place of highest glory for the city of Florence is that the Romans originally founded it; after its foundation it was destroyed by the fury of the barbarians, and the most renowned emperor of the Romans [Charlemagne] restored it, so that for the Florentines there was less sorrow at its destruction than joy at its restoration.37 Charlemagne was credited with restoring the nobility, rebuilding the walls, adorning the city with churches  –  in short, providing Florence with so many benefits that ‘how much our city owes to the name of Charles and to his successors can neither be explained in writing nor expressed in a speech’. For Charlemagne, the refoundation was undertaken in commemoration of the imperial title he had just received in Rome. For Florence, meanwhile, he was the font of its political 36 Cochrane, Historians and Historiography, p. 33. 37 Vita Caroli, p. 117: ‘Illud autem loco summae gloriae Florentiae urbi tribuendam puto, quam initio eam condidere Romani, conditam deinde ac barbarorum furore eversam, Romanorum quoque clarissimus Imperator restituit, ut non tantum doloris ex deiecta, quantum laetitiae ex restituita patria Florentinis accederet.’ See also Fubini, Storiografia, pp. 123–4.

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liberties: ‘Indeed, all we have received  –  that we are in our native land, that we live free, that we have magistrates, laws and a city  –  is attributable to Charles, and his memory is to be celebrated with grateful recollection forever.’ 38 Acciaiuoli’s handling of the Charlemagne material was clearly far from a mere literary exercise. Leonardo Bruni had tried to rid the Florentine legendary history of its Carolingian myth to make it conform to the needs of the ruling oligarchy: triumphant, expansionist, and in search of a historical precedent for the sovereignty in Tuscany it now hoped to exercise. He did so at a time when such an affront to the city’s longtime French patron and ally  –  an affront no less than rewriting the agreed-upon past to downplay the importance of a jointly held hero  –  carried unusually little diplomatic risk. Donato Acciaiuoli wrote his Vita Caroli on behalf of a scion of that same oligarchy, and was himself a member of it. But by this time it was an oligarchy under threat, its prerogative to rule slipping away. It is no wonder, then, that Acciaiuoli chose to ground that prerogative in the legend of Charlemagne, giving it historical legitimacy while putting it under the wing of a revived French monarchy. Yet offered to Louis XI in the context of Piero de’ Pazzi’s effort to undermine Medicean policy, Acciaiuoli’s emperor appeared in a new guise: a subversive Charlemagne, an icon of true Florentine governing traditions now at variance with the operation of the state. The last third of the Quattrocento was marked by two distinct shifts in Franco–Florentine relations. Louis XI gave up his support for the Angevin campaign for Naples once it became clear to him that it was doomed to fail. In 1464, with Genoa fallen into the hands of Francesco 38 Fitz., MS 180, fols. 20r–20v: ‘Carolus Francorum rex et Romanorum imperator, post amplissimam dignitatem susceptam, cum in Gallia rediturus iter per Etruriam faceret in memoriam dignitatis adepte Florentinam urbem, quam olim magna ex parte deleverant Gothi, in pristinum statum cum summa celebritate restituit, omnemque nobilitatem per oppida vicina dispersam in civitatem reduxit, novis menibus cinxit, templis ornavit; quibus meritis quantum Caroli nomini eiusque successoribus nostra civitas debeat, nec litteris explicari nec ulla oratione exprimi potest: quod enim in solo patrio sumus, quod liberi vivimus, quod magistratus, leges, civitatem habemus, ea omnia Carolo accepta sunt referenda, ac eius memoria cum grata recordatione perpetuo celebranda.’ The version in Vita Caroli, p. 117, differs slightly.

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Sforza of Milan, Louis recognized this former condottiere as his vassal.39 This new bilateral alliance with the Medici regime’s closest ally in Italy changed the diplomatic landscape. For the rest of his reign, which he dedicated to eliminating the threats he faced at home  –  particularly from the duke of Burgundy  –  Louis was an interested and important observer, but did not often intervene actively in Italian affairs. This represented a significant change in Franco–Florentine relations, and the relative roles of the old oligarchy and the Medici regime within them. Indeed, the most important stance taken by Louis from 1464 until his death in 1483 was the public support and advocacy he gave to Lorenzo de’ Medici (‘the Magnificent’, 1449–92) after the 1478 Pazzi conspiracy. Relations changed again during the reign of Louis’ son and successor, Charles VIII, who, goaded by Neapolitan exiles and above all Ludovico ‘il Moro’ Sforza of Milan, plotted an invasion of Italy to make good the territorial claims he had by this point inherited from René of Anjou. When Charles invaded Italy in 1494 he was welcomed into Florence, but only after Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici had first tried to stop his advance, and then capitulated so entirely and shamefully that he was chased from the city. Meanwhile, Fra Girolamo Savonarola’s millenarian prophecies, in which the advent of the king of France was intimately linked to the transformation of a sinful Florence into a New Jerusalem, reached fever pitch.40 Ugolino Verino’s Carlias was a participant in these developments. As the least known of the three works here explored, the discussion of its role will occupy the remainder of this study. An attempt to combine Virgilian epic with the Divina Commedia and the Matter of France, the Carlias was an ambitious project that consumed more than thirty years of Verino’s life, undergoing a number 39 For this paragraph, see The French Descent into Renaissance Italy, 1494–95: Antecedents and Effects, ed. D. Abulafia (Aldershot, 1995), passim; L. Martines, April Blood: Florence and the Plot Against the Medici (Oxford, 2003), esp. pp. 178–9, 206; Najemy, A History of Florence, pp. 352–400; A. Sorbelli, Francesco Sforza a Genova, 1458–1466: Saggio sulla politica italiana di Luigi XI (Bologna, 1901); and Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence. 40 E.g. in his ‘Renovation Sermon’ (Psalms, Sermon III) of 13 January 1495, in Selected Writings of Girolamo Savonarola: Religion and Politics, 1490– 1498, ed. and trans. A. Borelli and M. Pastore Passaro (New Haven, 2006), pp. 59–76.

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of different recensions over the reigns of two French kings as the author awaited the most opportune moments to make his work public.41 It was conceived, if Verino is to be believed, as an official commission, at least of sorts: he ‘first began on this great mass of battles’, he later wrote to Charles VIII, ‘with the urging of the unconquered king your parent [Louis XI] and of our city’. 42 Verino was open about the debt he owed to his poetic forebears  –  ‘I have described Charlemagne’s deeds in heroic verse, and I have imitated the princes of poets: Homer, Virgil and my compatriot Dante’  –  which was significant, as even the following brief plot summary reveals.43 The work opens to find Charlemagne and his paladins being tossed about at sea by Satan.44 They finally make landfall on the shores of Epirus, where a banquet is given by the king of Buthrotum (Butrint), and Charlemagne relates his adventures to that point, especially his victories over the Saracens in the Holy Land and his capture of Babylon. Later, during a hunt, he descends into the underworld, beginning a Dantean journey in which he rises from hell to purgatory and ultimately to heaven, encountering the heroes and villains of antiquity, the Virgin and the saints, and Clovis and Pippin, the first Christian and Carolingian kings of the Franks respectively. Returning to earth, Charlemagne leaves Buthrotum and crosses the sea to Italy, where he is met by his Italian allies (about whom more will be said below). In 41 M. Villoresi, ‘Tra Andrea da Barberino e Luigi Pulci: La letteratura cavalleresca a Firenze nel Quattrocento’, in Paladini di carta: Il modello cavalleresco fiorentino, ed. M. Villoresi (Rome, 2006), pp. 9–30 (p. 26). Thurn’s critical edition of Verino’s text is based on the manuscript dedicated to Charles VIII in 1489: Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS 838. See also A. Thomas, ‘Notice sur la “Carliade”, poème épique latin de Ugolino Verino’, Annales de la Faculté des lettres de Bordeaux 4 (1888), 27–37, and N. Thurn, Kommentar zur ‘Carlias’ des Ugolino Verino (Munich, 2002). 42 From his dedication to Charles VIII (see below), Verino, Carlias, p. 135: ‘Parentis primum tui regis invicti nostraeque civitatis hortatu tantam bellorum molem sum exorsus.’ 43 Verino, Carlias, p. 135: ‘Huius sum gesta heroico carmine prosecutus, poetarum principes Homerum, Virgilium compatriotamque meum Dantem immitatus.’ 44 A more detailed summary of the work is found in Verino, Carlias, pp. 38–41.

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short order, he defeats the Lombards and their king Desiderius, rebuilds Florence, and receives his imperial crown from the pope in Rome. Charlemagne finally departs, returning to Aachen in triumph. Having chosen such a theme, Verino was highly sensitive to his work’s potential political and diplomatic impact. The first copies circulated in 1480–1, when Turkish advances and the capture of Otranto would have made the time ripe for this work drenched in crusade sentiment.45 Verino’s Carlias, however, was also conditioned by circumstances more particular to Florence. The 1460s have been identified as that city’s ‘chivalric decade’, as this culture took root and thrived especially around the young Lorenzo the Magnificent: the first part of the Morgante, Luigi Pulci’s irreverent romance that recounts the adventures of the paladins Orlando and Rinaldo and the eponymous friendly giant, was almost completed by 1465–6, when Verino, who belonged to that same Laurentian literary milieu, began to write.46 Verino was also friendly with Donato Acciaiuoli.47 Yet whereas the latter’s Vita Caroli celebrated the emperor in accordance with the Guelph legend as patron and benefactor of the city’s oligarchy but still an outsider, Verino’s text appears as a subtle attempt to ‘Tuscanize’ Charlemagne and tie him more closely to the stability of the regime.48 45 The two earliest surviving manuscripts of the complete text are Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Magl. II, II, 94 (December 1480), and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 10324 (September 1481); Verino, Carlias, pp. 24–8; F. Bausi, ‘La “Carlias” di Ugolino Verino’, in Paladini di Carta, pp. 161–73 (p. 163). For the crusade in this period, see N. Housley, Crusading and the Ottoman Threat, 1453–1505 (Oxford, 2012); for Otranto in the context of Italian politics, see Housley, Crusading and the Ottoman Threat, pp. 93–6. 46 Villoresi, ‘Tra Andrea da Barberino e Luigi Pulci’, pp. 20–1; Bausi, ‘La “Carlias” di Ugolino Verino’, p. 162; F. Bausi, ‘L’epica tra latino e volgare’, in La Toscana al tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico: Politica, economia, cultura, arte, 3 vols. (Pisa, 1996), II, pp. 357–73 (pp. 357–9); and A. Lazzari, Ugolino e Michele Verino: Studii biografici e critici (Turin, 1897), p. 157. 47 Lazzari, Ugolino e Michele Verino, p. 155. On Verino as a reader of Acciaiuoli’s Vita Caroli, see Strobl, ‘Karl der Große im italienischen Renaissance-Humanismus’, pp. 117–18. 48 According to Villoresi, ‘Tra Andrea da Barberino e Luigi Pulci’, p. 27, the Carlias expresses a ‘forte desiderio di toscanizzare l’epopea carolingia’.

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A clue as to what Verino sought is found in an epigram he wrote around November 1481, in which he defends himself against those who criticized him as a poet on account of his deigning to serve as a notary for the Medicean balìa (emergency authority) tasked with restoring order after the Pazzi conspiracy: Silius Italicus sang of battles in lofty verse, Yet he also often pursued political and legal causes in the Forum: Likewise fifteen volumes on Charles the Great And the history of our beloved homeland have we written.49 Verino joined the Charlemagne poem and his historical writing about Florence  –  the work known as De illustratione urbis Florentinae  –  in the same elegiac couplet as illustrations of his literary exploits. With one in the first line of the couplet and the other (with the verb) in the second, they are presented as distinct works that nevertheless belong together. Verino thus implied that his epic about the Florentine hero might also be understood as an example of Florentine history, and a suitable subject for a Florentine citizen-poet active in public affairs. What he was positing, then, was an interpretation of the Carolingian myth that sought to integrate Charlemagne into a Florentine context, rather than Florence into an imperial one. Yet the comparison Verino made between himself and Silius Italicus, author of the first-century epic Punica, must also be explored. In his poem on the Second Punic War (218–201 bc), Silius had updated the figure of P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus, that war’s hero and an icon of republican Rome, and turned him into a monarchical icon for the Flavian imperial dynasty under which the poet and statesman then peacefully lived.50 The Punica, discovered in 1417 by Poggio, had in 1471 been edited by both Giovanni Andrea Bussi and Pomponius Laetus and printed twice in Rome; the key facts of Silius’s life were well known, recorded in a letter of Pliny the Younger and some epigrams of 49 ‘Contra calumniantes officium scribae, veluti Musarum contagium’, cit. in Lazzari, Ugolino e Michele Verino, pp. 81, 188, 82n: ‘Silius altiloque cantavit praelia versu, / saepe tamen causas egit et ipse foro: / nos quoque magnanimi ter quinque volumina Carli / et charae patriae scripsimus hystoriam.’ 50 As argued by R. Marks, From Republic to Empire: Scipio Africanus in the ‘Punica’ of Silius Italicus (Frankfurt, 2005).

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Martial, and recapitulated in Laetus’s biographical explicit.51 Famously, Silius had revered Virgil, his forebear as an epic poet, celebrating his birthday and maintaining his tomb as a shrine; he also owned lands once belonging to Cicero, leading aptly to Martial’s praise that he had succeeded in pursuing the careers of both Virgil and Cicero, to whom he was a mutually worthy heir.52 Identifying with Silius Italicus, Verino sought to draw a parallel between his own epic and career (and career choices) and those of his predecessor.53 Like Silius, Verino was evidently devoted to Virgil; the Punica was also often a model for the Carlias.54 But Verino may equally have seen himself doing to Charlemagne for the Medici specifically (as opposed to the city in general) something akin to what Silius did to Scipio for the Flavians: that is, claiming an icon of a previous order and its relationship with France for the present order and its own French connection. Scipio Africanus also had a long history as a Guelph–Florentine icon, which may have made the link even clearer to Verino’s audience.55 This act of appropriation, however, 51 Pliny the Younger, Ep., 3.7 (to Caninius Rufus), Martial, Epig., 6.64, 7.63, 8.66, 9.86, 11.48, 49, and Silius Italicus, Bellum Punicum Secundum, ed. Pomponius Laetus (Rome, Printer of Silius Italicus, 26 April 1471) [Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Ink. 4.F.44], t8v. Bussi’s edition was printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz (5 April 1471). For the contrasts in the depictions of Silius’s character offered by Pliny and Martial, see D. W. T. C. Vessey, ‘Pliny, Martial and Silius Italicus’, Hermes 102 (1974), 109–16. For the early transmission history of Silius, see E. L. Bassett, J. Delz and A. J. Dunston, ‘Silius Italicus’, in Catalogus translationum et commentariorum, ed. F. E. Cranz and P. O. Kristeller, III (Washington, DC, 1976), pp. 341–98, esp. pp. 349–51; and Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics, ed. L. D. Reynolds (Oxford, 1983), pp. 389–91. 52 Mentioned in Pliny’s letter, and Martial, Epig., 11.48, 49; see Epig., 7.63, ll. 5–6: ‘Sacra cothurnati non attigit ante Maronis / impleuit magni quam Ciceronis opus’; and 11.48, ll. 3–4: ‘Heredem dominumque sui tumulive larisve / non alium mallet nec Maro nec Cicero.’ 53 Verino’s identification with Silius may explain why this epigram was later included in a collection dedicated (c. 1485) to the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus, an avowed admirer of the Punica. 54 As demonstrated in Thurn, Kommentar. 55 See Margolis, Politics of Culture, and O. Margolis, ‘Cipriano de’ Mari’s Lucianic Speech for René of Anjou (St-Dié, MS 37): Humanism and

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necessarily involved changes; any account in which Medicean rule was entirely predicated on Carolingian-French favour would have undone what Bruni’s Historia had achieved. Thus, in this work, an ancestor of the Medici appears in the vanguard of the Italian allies who welcome Charlemagne to Italy: First before the other peoples, Mother Florence Sent three hundred knights in shining armour As an escort and two thousand infantrymen to the French, And offered three commanders and placed these masters of war Over the entire body of Tuscans. The great Medici, from whom the splendid offspring of the family  [ originate, Commanded the first cavalry unit.56 The Medici ancestor and other leaders go on to fight alongside Charlemagne, participating in his exploits. Verino’s chronology thereby contrasts with that given in Donato Acciaiuoli’s Vita Caroli, where Charlemagne is crowned emperor before he refounds Florence, oligarchic government is an outcome of the Carolingian refoundation, and the Florentines are the passive beneficiaries of Charlemagne’s agency.57 Here, instead, the regime’s origins predate Charlemagne’s victories and empire, in which its progenitors are active partners. It should be noted that Verino’s emphasis in Carlias on Medicean agency is not exactly replicated in the De illustratione, begun around the time that first recension of his epic was being completed: writing Diplomacy in Genoa and Beyond’, Renaissance Studies 27 (2013), 219–35. 56 Verino, Carlias, p. 311 (ix.272–8): ‘Princeps ante alios populos Florentia mater / Ter centum instructos equites fulgentibus armis / Presidium Gallis, peditum bis millia misit / Ductoresque dedit ternos rerumque magistros / Assuetos bello cunctis praefecit Etruscis. / Magnanimus Medices primum regit agmen equestre, / Unde genus sumpsit Medicum pulcherrima proles.’ The other leaders listed here are Capponi, whose descendant Neri di Gino Capponi had been the second most important person in Cosimo de’ Medici’s regime, and Adimari: see Thurn, Kommentar, pp. 503–4. 57 The altered order of Charlemagne’s coronation and the city’s refoundation is noted in Bausi, ‘L’epica’, pp. 369–70, but its significance is overlooked: ‘la disinvolta alterazione della realtà storica’.

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there about the origins of the Medici, he stated simply that ‘the Medici nobility came down from the Apennines and the towering stronghold in the Mugello to the Tuscan city after Charles gave back to the Roman colonists their restored city walls’.58 The tone here is Brunian, though Verino’s elevation of the ruling family to the level of nobility is perhaps less so, as the nobility in Bruni is that class later excluded by law from the exercise of communal government. By 1481, however, when the Turkish capture of Otranto and its subsequent negotiated return had created a cultural and religious climate so suitable for Verino’s Charlemagne epic, there were still newer political currents at play. The backlash following the Pazzi conspiracy had produced a Medici regime more autocratic and concentrated in Lorenzo’s hands than previously.59 Despite having written an epic in alignment with regime ideology, Verino was at odds with this new direction. Perhaps he was already expressing his ambivalence towards it in the epigram above, in the same self-identification with Silius Italicus: just as Verino’s public duties were undertaken in the service of Lorenzo’s power, so Silius Italicus had enjoyed the greatest achievement of his public life, his consulship, under Nero (ad 68). The implied parallel with Rome’s most art- and poetryloving but also most notorious emperor would not have flattered the Magnificent Lorenzo. Verino’s description in the same epigram of the Carlias as ter quinque volumina is a direct quotation from Ovid’s Tristia 3.14, where those exact words in the same position in a similar hexameter were used to indicate the Metamorphoses.60 In this poem, Ovid expressed the hope that his writing  –  including the completed but unpolished ‘fifteen books of mutated forms’  –  would be preserved and remembered in Rome, from where he had been exiled to Pontus by the order of Augustus. Verino, whose fifteen books on Charlemagne were likewise completed but unpolished, seems by this allusion to give voice to his own growing 58 U. Verino, De illustratione urbis Florentinae libri III (Paris, 1583), p. 19v: ‘Ex Appennino, celsaque ex arce Mugelli / Nobilitas Medicum Thuscam descendit in urbem / Romuleis postquam Carlus recidiva colonis / Moenia restituit’; also cit. in Cipriani, Il mito etrusco, p. 27. 59 For the regime under Lorenzo, see Rubinstein, The Government of Florence, pp. 174–228. 60 Cf. Ovid, Tristia, 3.14, l. 19: ‘Sunt quoque mutatae, ter quinque uolumina, formae.’

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uncertainty over his place in a state that, like Augustan Rome, was increasingly a constitutional fraud: the form of a republic mutated into a principate. Like Ovid, who fell from the favour of Augustus, Verino was at this time beginning to slip from Lorenzo’s circle.61 Yet unlike Ovid, who claimed he left his magnum opus ‘unrevised’, over the following decades Verino regularly returned to his Carlias.62 The volumes of magnanimi  … Carli had performed the same prosodic and substantial role in Verino’s epigram as those of mutatae  … formae had in Ovid’s elegy: Charlemagne had the capacity once again to change form. Verino continued to revise his text but, most importantly, also sought out new occasions on which to present it and have it circulated in milieux increasingly dedicated to one goal: the return of the French to the Italian peninsula. There was already in the Carlias material that, given a different outside political-ideological framework, could make such a pivot possible. Just as he had included a Medici ancestor among Charlemagne’s greatest supporters, thus emphasizing the legitimacy and naturalness of the regime’s alliance with Louis XI’s France, Verino had also provided a Carolingian precedent for the opposition between Anjou and Aragon in the kingdom of Naples. The Lombards whom Charlemagne and his allies fought, claimed Verino, were supported by Spanish reinforcements. These came from Cartagena (Carthago Nova), with twelve ships each carrying three hundred men under the command of a certain Himilco, a conscious allusion to the many Carthaginian generals and the famous navigator of that name: And Alfonso, the head and origin of the Aragonese kings, Led out an equal number of ships; his famous descendants Now hold sway over a great part of Latium.63 Alfonso was the name of the Aragonese conqueror of Naples (Alfonso V ‘the Magnanimous’, r. Naples 1442–58), and Verino’s implicit pairings 61 Bausi, ‘La “Carlias” di Ugolino Verino’, p. 170; Lazzari, Ugolino e Michele Verino, pp. 86–93. 62 Ovid, Tristia, 3.14, l. 21–3: ‘Illud opus  … nunc incorrectum populi peruenit in ora.’ 63 Verino, Carlias, pp. 327–8 (x.362–9, 367–9): ‘Et totidem eduxit naves Alfonsus, origo / Arragonum regumque caput; clarique nepotes / Nunc magnam Latii partem ditione gubernant.’ See Thurn, Kommentar, p. 539.

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and explicit opposition between Carthage/Aragon and Rome/France harked back to a Guelph tradition in Florence which, as we have seen, the Medici regime never entirely disavowed. Other allusions to this tradition include Charlemagne’s return in triumph to Gaul, where the celebrations that greet him are likened to those that greeted Scipio  –  the Guelph icon  –  in Italy after his victories in Africa.64 Most interesting, however, is a choice Verino makes when naming the Neapolitans who, like the Medici and other Tuscans, also fought at Charlemagne’s side: The flower of Parthenopean youth Led the cavalry forward, coming before Charles: The leader Cossa, with whom Pontano held the reins of Mars, Was the origin of that excellent lineage.65 Here Verino flatters the ancestry of the eminent humanist Giovanni Gioviano Pontano, to whom he had a copy of the work sent.66 But the other lineage mentioned, the Cossa, was perhaps the Neapolitan family most identified with the Angevin claim to Naples: Baldassare Cossa, alias Antipope John XXIII, had been the chief ally of Louis II of Anjou (1377–1417) in their joint attempt to secure the papacy for the former and the Regno for the latter; Giovanni Cossa (1400–76), Baldassare’s nephew, had until the end of his life been René of Anjou’s right-hand man, even following him into exile.67 Such pointedly political references would have been appreciated by that audience Verino increasingly pursued during the reign of Charles VIII. A special person in the work’s wider transmission was Nicodemo 64 Verino, Carlias, p. 412 (xv.341–6): ‘Quadriiugo ut vectum Romana per oppida curru / Scipiada Hannibale expulso captoque Siphace / Ausoniae populi loeto accepere favore, / Talis cuncta suo redeunti Gallia regi / Applausit festosque dies de nomine Carli / Indicit.’ 65 Verino, Carlias, p. 314 (ix.377–400): ‘Nec non Parthenopes iuvenum fortissima pubes / Ad Carlum veniens agmen coniunxit equestre: / Coxia ductor erat preclarae stirpis origo, / Cum quo Pontanus Martis tractabat habenas.’ 66 Lazzari, Ugolino e Michele Verino, p. 161; Thurn, Kommentar, p. 510. 67 For Giovanni Cossa, see Margolis, Politics of Culture, passim; M. L. King, The Death of the Child Valerio Marcello (Chicago, 1994), passim; and M. T. Reynolds, ‘René of Anjou, King of Sicily, and the Order of the Croissant’, Journal of Medieval History 19 (1993), 125–61 (pp. 153–4).

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Tranchedini, the Milanese diplomat who had served as resident ambassador in Florence at the time of Francesco Sforza and Cosimo de’ Medici.68 It was through Tranchedini, claimed Verino in a letter, that Carlias and its reputation circulated throughout Lombardy and across the Alps, even reaching the chancellor of France, Guillaume de Rochefort: ‘I heard last year from the learned old man Tranchedini, the duke of Milan’s ambassador with whom I have a long familiarity, that he has brought notice of me and my work to you.’69 Indeed France, for Verino, was a goal. He had expressed a desire to dedicate this work to King Charles, and in 1489 had a sumptuous illuminated manuscript prepared for him.70 Planning invasion, Charles VIII had constructed an elaborate justification for his desire to make good the Angevin claims: if he could realize his Italian aims  –  especially the conquest of Naples, which kingdom came with the title ‘king of Jerusalem’  –  a crusade would follow.71 Verino now portrayed his work as a contribution to this 68 For Nicodemo, see P. Sverzelatti, ‘Per la biografia di Nicodemo Tranchedini da Pontremoli, ambasciatore sforzesco’, Aevum 72 (1998), 485–557; also F. Senatore, ‘Uno mundo de carta’: Forme e struture della diplomazia sforzescha (Naples, 1998), passim; and, briefly but significantly, G. Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (London, 1955), pp. 85–6. 69 Lazzari, Ugolino e Michele Verino, pp. 161–2 (letter of Verino): ‘Ille [Tranchedini] nomen meum, ille Carleiada per omnes Cysalpinae civitates ultraque via Alpes cum laude propogavit’; p. 163: ‘Ex oratore mediolanensis ducis, Tranchedino, viro sene erudito, anno superiore accepi, cum quo pervetusta est consuetudo, nominis ac operis nostri famam ad vos deportasse’. 70 For the dating of the dedication manuscript, see Thurn, Kommentar, pp. 82–5; Verino, Carlias, p. 29. 71 N. Bisaha, Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks (Philadelphia, 2004), p. 39; N. Housley, The Later Crusades, 1274–1580: From Lyons to Alcazar (Oxford, 1992), pp. 114–15; R. W. Scheller, ‘Imperial Themes in Art and Literature of the Early French Renaissance: The Period of Charles VIII’, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 12 (1981–2), 5–69 (pp. 6, 20–1, 36–7). For the significance of the work’s Butrint setting in the context of crusade, see P. Gwynne, R. Hodges and J. Vroom, ‘Archaeology and Epic: Butrint and Ugolino Verino’s Carlias’, Papers of the British School at Rome 82 (2014), 199–235; with thanks to Paul Gwynne for providing this article in advance of publication.

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double justification for invasion. He called upon the king as namesake and heir of Charlemagne to lead the crusade to retake Jerusalem, but also to restore the imperial dignity to Gaul and Italy, ‘for the benefit of the Italians no less than for your people’: For neither has the Church remained more fortunate nor Italy more peaceful than during the approximately one hundred years under the protection of your emperors. Florence especially, which was not only rescued, but restored and enriched, owes its greatness to Your Majesty.72 In contrast to the ideology of the Medici regime under which the work had originally been conceived, and which he had previously upheld, Verino  –  increasingly a regime outsider  –  reasserted in his dedicatory letter the prime tenets of the Guelph tradition. With the theme of French invasion and crusade tied to the redemption of Florence, Italy and the Church, we are returned, in this letter, to the Charlemagne that Bruni had pushed aside, though dressed up now, like Bruni’s, in humanist language. This Charlemagne was presented as an icon of a privileged relationship with eschatological, imperial and republican implications. It was a vision of that relationship much more in keeping with the one soon to be propounded by Savonarola, under whose influence Verino was shortly to fall.73

D

iplomacy is constant negotiation; relations between states are never completely stable. Yet sometimes, for political reasons, they must appear to be. This is why cultural symbols matter: they serve as sureties, tokens of what one would not wish to define solely by the actions taken day-to-day. Given this reality, cultural icons are important

72 Verino, Carlias, p. 135: ‘ut te speremus auctore Hierosolimam rursus cum omni regione, depulso, immo sublato Maumetti foetore, indui sacrosanctam Christi veritatem augustalemque iterum dignitatem in Galliam tanquam in patriam postliminium redituram, quae non minus tuis quam italis sit profutura. Nam nec foelicior ecclesia nec quietior permansit Italia, quam centum circiter annos sub tutela Vestrorum imperatorum. Florentia in primis non solum servata, sed restituta et aucta, quicquid habet dignitatis, id omne debet Vestrae maiestati.’ 73 On Verino’s relationship with Savonarola, see Lazzari, Ugolino e Michele Verino, pp. 193–6.

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tools for states to establish their place in the world. In Quattrocento Florence, Charlemagne was an icon of a special relationship with France, but on this relationship was also founded a regime  –  two, in fact, though in different ways  –  and a class, and it was also loaded with religious implications. Charlemagne could be downgraded, but he could not be given up completely by any of them without undermining everything. Successive powers and interest groups did their best to hold on to their icon; yet they also relied on those writers closest to them who could guide Charlemagne through the many metamorphoses required. Leonardo Bruni, whose work naturally gave the smallest amount of space to Charlemagne compared to those of the others here discussed, was the most radical in his handling, but he was writing at a time when  –  from a peninsular perspective  –  the political map of Italy and Europe appeared unusually wide open, and he was also writing for a regime that was unusually confident. Neither Donato Acciaiuoli  –  a disenfranchised patrician  –  nor Ugolino Verino  –  a disenchanted insider  –  had those luxuries. But, as an unintended consequence of Bruni’s iconoclasm, they had in Charlemagne a figure whom they could subtly shape to suit their own agendas. Although the three works discussed here did not exist together in a vacuum  –  and certainly their interaction with vernacular texts or the works of non-Florentine writers who treated similar material could merit further exploration  –  they also exist in a continuum both literary and political, shining a light on three (or possibly four or five) distinct and successive stages in Quattrocento Florentine politics, and on the shifting nature of that city’s most important alliance entailed by these stages.74 For Bruni, Acciaiuoli, Verino, and those who supported 74 The most famous vernacular works of the Italian Renaissance about Charlemagne or the Matter of France come from Ferrara, where the ruling Este family also held to the Guelph faction: Orlando innamorato (1483, 1495) by Matteo Maria Boiardo and, above all, Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto (1516, 1532). Relevant Latin works treating Charlemagne and the French by Milan-based writers include Antonio Cornazzano’s so-called Oratio de laudibus Caroli Magni (1461), and Alberto Cattaneo’s De gestis Francorum regum (1498): these are the subject of my study ‘The Gaulish Past of Milan and the French Invasion of Italy’, in Local Antiquities, Local Identities: Art, Literature and Antiquarianism in Europe between the 14th and 17th Centuries, ed. K. Christian and B. De Divitiis (Manchester, forthcoming). Beyond

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their work, writing about Charlemagne was a form of negotiation, a way of positioning oneself or one’s interests while never completely letting go of civic tradition.

the works cited above, studies of the connections between Latin texts and Pulci’s Morgante include M. Davie, ‘Biography and Romance: The Vita Caroli magni of Donato Acciaiuoli and Luigi Pulci’s Morgante’, in The Spirit of the Court, ed. G. S. Burgess and R. A. Taylor (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 137–52. More broadly, the relationship between original Latin texts and their vernacular translations also deserves attention, not least that between Bruni’s Historia and Acciaiuoli’s translation: see M. Doni Garfagnini, ‘Donato Acciaiuoli traduttore degli Historiarum florentini populi libri XII di Leonardo Bruni’, in Il teatro della storia fra rappresentazione e realtà: Storiografia e trattatistica fra Quattrocento e Seicento (Rome, 2002), pp. 25–62, and J. Hankins, ‘Humanism in the Vernacular: The Case of Leonardo Bruni’, in Humanism and Creativity in the Renaissance: Essays in Honor of Ronald G. Witt, ed. C. S. Celenza and K. Gouwens (Leiden, 2006), pp. 11–29 (pp. 22–4).

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Index Aachen, 7, 13, 21–2, 33, 37, 47, 49, 53, 64, 66, 67, 68, 70, 77, 79, 80, 81–2, 83–5, 87–8, 91, 98, 102, 103, 114, 118, 119 n. 11, 120, 122 n. 25, 131 n. 64, 132 n. 67, 157, 158–9, 160, 161–3, 164, 170, 174, 176–7, 178, 179, 183, 184–5, 186–7, 189, 190, 192, 195–7, 220 Aachen, council of (799), 174 ‘Abd al-Wāhid al-Marrākushī, 112 Acciaiuoli, Angelo, 214 n. 31 Acciaiuoli, Donato, 7, 206, 211 n. 23, 211 n. 24, 214–17, 220, 223, 229–30 Acre, 136 Ademar, abbot of Saint-Martial of Limoges, 18 n. 29 Ademar, bishop of Le Puy, 18 n. 29 Adso of Montier-en-Der, 12 Aegidius, St, see Gilles, St Agano, bishop of Autun, 18 n. 29 Agincourt, battle of (1415), 212 Aigolandus, 71–2, 95–6 Aix-la-Chapelle, see Aachen Akbari, Susan Conklin, 135–6, 145 Al-Andalus, 92, 93 n. 4, 108 n. 55, 110, 170 Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, 92–3, 94, 96, 99, 106, 112, 113 Alcuin of York, 37, 38, 59–61, 64, 76, 89, 172 n. 65, 173 n. 67, 178 Alexander III, pope, 41–2 Alexander the Great, 182, 185 Alfonso II, king of Asturias, 100, 101–2, 103 Alfonso V ‘the Magnanimous’, king of Aragon, 225 Alfonso VI, king of León-Castile, 98–9

Alfonso VII, king of León-Castile, 93 n. 4, 106 Alfonso VIII, king of Castile, 92–4, 111, 112, 113 Alfonso X, king of Castile, 136 n. 83 Almohads, 92, 110, 111, 112, 113 Almoravids, 147 n. 118 Altés i Aguiló, Francesc Xavier, 116 n. 2, 120 n. 16, 123, 124 n. 31, 128 n. 48, 132–3 Amadis of Gaul, 136 n. 83 Andrew, St, 125, 127, 129, 132 Aniane, abbey of, 178 Anjou, county/duchy of, 10, 15, 16, 26, 31, 32 n. 71, 138, 141 n. 103, 205, 210, 212, 213, 225 Annales regni Francorum, 12, 76 n. 57, 76 n. 58 Annalium de gestis Caroli magni imperatoris, 160 n. 38 Antioch, 107 n. 55, 136 n. 83 Aquitaine, duchy of, 16, 17, 30, 32 n. 71 Aragon, 117, 137, 138, 139 n. 95, 141 n. 103, 144–5, 215, 225–6 Arezzo, 209 n. 16, 212 n. 25 Argencia, sister of Charlemagne, 141 n. 103 Ariosto, Ludovico, 229 n. 74 Armenia, Armenians, 57 n. 90, 107 n. 55 Arnald Amalric, archbishop of Narbonne, 109 n. 59, 111 n. 66, 111 n. 72 Arnau de Mont-Rodon, bishop of Girona, 115–17, 120, 123, 130 n. 59, 130 n. 60, 134 n. 76, 135–6, 142, 145–7 Arnold of Lübeck, 58

231

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Index

Arras, treaty of (1435), 212 Arthur, king, 194 Augustine, St, 28, 30, 178 Augustus Caesar, 224–5 Auvergne, county of, 18 n. 29 Avignon, 183, 199 Aymeri de Narbonne, 150 Baldwin of Hainaut, 41 n. 28 Barcelona, 93, 144 n. 112 Bardas Caesar, 22–3 Bavaria, 12 n. 11, 54, 179 Bede, the Venerable, 60 Benedict, St, 124 n. 31, 126 n. 40 Benedict of Aniane, St, 171, 178 Benzo of Alba, 12 Berenguela of Castile, 102 Bernardo del Carpio, 100–1, 102, 103 Bernard of Tiron, 169 n. 57 Bernard the Monk, Jerusalem pilgrim, 163–4 Bernhard, abbot of Lagrasse, 149–50, 156, 166 Bertha of Holland, 10, 11, 18, 20 n. 33, 25, 31 Bertrada of Montfort, 10, 20 n. 33, 25–6, 31 Blanche of Castile, 102 Blanes, Vidal de, abbot, 123 Blois, county of, 31 n. 70 Bohemond I, prince of Antioch, 10 Boiardo, Matteo Maria, 229 n. 74 Bologna, 184 Book of the Knight Zifar, 136 n. 83 Borchardt, Frank L., 194 Boris, St, 44 Brabant, 184 Bracciolini, Poggio, 212, 214 n. 31 Brothers Grimm, the, 191 Brown, Elizabeth, 10 n. 4, 106 n. 50 Bruni, Leonardo, 7, 206, 207–14, 216, 217, 223, 224, 228, 229–30

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Burgundy, duchy of, 16, 17, 18 n. 29, 32 n. 71, 36 n. 9, 212, 218 Bussi, Giovanni Andrea, 221, 222 n. 51 Butrint, 219, 227 n. 71 Byzantine empire, 13, 22, 49, 58, 77, 81, 173, 178 Caesarius of Heisterbach, 195 Calatrava, Order of, 111 Calcaterra, Carlo, 198 n. 42 Calixtus II, pope, 94 Cantigas de Santa Maria, 136 n. 83 Canute, king of England, 33 Capponi, Neri di Gino, 223 n. 56 Carcassonne, 149, 150, 151, 153, 156, 166 Carlias, 7, 206, 218–28 Carthage, 225–6 Catalonia, 100, 104, 115–47 Cathwulf, 37 Cattaneo, Alberto, 229 n. 74 Chalcedon, council of (451), 167 Champagne, county of, 17 Chanson de Roland, 5, 53, 93, 96, 98, 99, 104, 107, 111 n. 71, 127 n. 45, 135 n. 78 Charlemagne as custodian of relics, 1, 13, 46, 49, 78, 81, 125 n. 36 as defender of Christendom and Christian orthodoxy, 6, 48, 49, 50–1, 52, 58, 69–77, 90, 143, 144, 153, 165–76, 179 as emperor, 2, 40, 42, 43, 46, 48, 56, 83, 87, 99, 102, 106, 146, 149, 163–4, 182, 185, 201, 220, 223 as founder or patron of ecclesiastical institutions, 1, 6, 8, 12, 16, 27, 28, 30–1, 44, 46, 48, 52, 77–85, 101, 116, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 133, 136, 140, 143, 147, 148, 153–65, 176–7, 179, 203–4, 216

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Index Charlemagne, continued as king of the Franks, 4–5, 9–10, 11, 15, 17, 24, 26, 28, 30–2, 36–7, 40, 46, 48 n. 58, 59, 60, 61, 185–7 as the Last Emperor, 12 as law-giver, 45–7, 48, 52, 70, 85–8, 90 as Marian devotee, 6, 124, 148–80 as proto-crusader, 1, 4–6, 7, 8, 13, 46, 48–58, 69–78, 89–90, 92–114, 115–47, 170, 174, 193–4, 219 as saint, 1, 4–6, 7, 33–58, 59–91, 115–47, 158, 181, 184–5, 195, 196 as sexual deviant, 7, 8, 181–201 role in the restoration of Florence, 203–30 Charles, count of Valois, 138 Charles Martel, 151, 188 Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily, 138, 205 Charles II the Bald, emperor, 13, 15, 16, 23, 27 Charles III the Simple, king of Western Francia, 23 Charles IV, emperor, 194–5 Charles V, emperor, 205 Charles V, king of France, 119 n. 9 Charles VII, king of France, 212 Charles VIII, king of France, 218, 219, 226, 227 Charroux, abbey of, 16, 27–32 Chronica Latina Regnum Castellae, 111 Chronicon Moissacense, 131 n. 65, 134 Chronicon Rivipullensis, 116, 131 n. 65, 134–5 Cicero, 183, 191, 222 Ciompi, revolt of the, 205 Clara i Tibau, Josep, 123 n. 28, 127 n. 44, 127 n. 45, 128 n. 47, 130 n. 59, 130 n. 60, 131 n. 63, 137 n. 88

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Clement VII, pope, 205 Clermont, council of (1095), 54 Clovis, king of the Franks, 219 Cluny, abbey of, 19 Cochrane, Eric, 216 Codex Calixtinus, see Liber sancti Jacobi Coll de Panissars, 128, 139 Coll i Alentorn, Miquel, 117, 137 Cologne, 42, 63, 186 Colonna, Giacomo, 200 Colonna, Giovanni, cardinal, 7, 183, 184–5, 191, 193, 199, 200 Conrad III, king of Germany, 50 Constance, princess of Antioch, 10 Constantine, emperor, 41, 77, 81, 82 Constantinople, 49, 57, 125 n. 36, 136 n. 83, 144 n. 111 Corbie, abbey of, 15 Cordoba, 97–8, 111 n. 71 Cornazzano, Antonio, 229 n. 74 Cornish, Alison, 192–3, 199–200 Cossa, Baldassare, 226 Cossa, Giovanni, 226 Coulet, Jules, 116, 120, 121, 123 n. 29, 124 n. 30, 126, 131 Crépy, lordship of, 15 Critchlow, F. L., 141 n. 103 crusades, crusading Albigensian Crusade, 155–6, 166 First Crusade, 2, 10, 18 n. 29, 29 n. 66, 54–5, 107 n. 55, 136 n. 83, 198–9 Second Crusade, 50 Third Crusade, 49–50 in the Baltic, 50, 51, 54, 56, 57 in the Holy Land, 43, 51, 52, 54–5, 56, 57, 107 in the Iberian peninsula, 5–6, 43, 51, 56, 57, 92, 106–14, 117, 137–47, 152

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crusades, crusading, continued in the later Middle Ages, 220, 227–8 see also Charlemagne, as protocrusader; Las Navas de Tolosa, battle of (1212) Cuthbert, St, 76 n. 56

Eugenius III, pope, 40 Eustache II, count of Boulogne, 18

Faremoutiers, abbey of, 26 n. 55 Fastrada’s Ring, tale of, 185–7, 190, 191, 195, 196, 197 Felix, bishop of Urgel, 170–1, 173–4 Dante Alighieri, 218, 219 Ferdinand I, king of Naples, 215 Das Buch vom Heiligen Karl, 189 n. 21 Ferdinand III, king of Castile, 102 Das Rolandslied, 53–4 Ferdinand V, king of Castile, 122 n. 23 Defourneaux, Marcelin, 108 n. 56 Ferrara, 229 n. 74 Ferrer de Mont-rodon, abbot, De gestis Francorum regum, 229 n. 74 130 n. 60 De illustratione urbis Florentinae, 221, Flanders, county of, 10, 15, 16, 31, 154, 223–4 184 Denis, St, 48 n. 58; see also SaintFlavigny, abbey of, 16 Denis, abbey of Desclot, Bernat, 117, 137, 139–41, 143–4, Fleury, abbey of, 10, 14 n. 18, 19, 22 n. 41, 47, 48 146 flies, avenging holy, 141–2, 143 Descriptio qualiter Karolus Magnus, 10 n. 4, 13–14, 15, 16, 47, 48–9, 51, Florence, 7, 202–30 52, 53, 56, 193 n. 34 Folz, Robert, 1–2, 65–6, 68 n. 36, 80, Desiderius, king of the Lombards, 51, 90, 118 144 n. 111, 219 ‘Fragment de la Haye’, 116 Diego Gelmírez, (arch)bishop of Francis of Assisi, St, 4 Compostela, 95 Frankfurt, council of (794), 171, 172, Divina Commedia, 218–19 173 Downing, Lisa, 192 n. 31 Frederick I Barbarossa, emperor, 33–5, 38–46, 49–51, 54, 55, 56–7, 58, 61, Edward the Confessor, king of 62, 63, 65, 70, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, England, 33, 39–40, 42, 63 84–8, 90, 118, 120, 158 Einhard, 1, 7, 34, 38, 47, 51, 52, 53, 55, Frederick II, emperor, 45, 66 n. 27, 185 57, 97, 100 n. 34, 101, 158, 159 n. 36, Fubini, Riccardo, 214 160 n. 38, 163 n. 44, 216 Fuhrmann, Horst, 43 Elipandus, archbishop of Toledo, 170–1, 172 Gabriele, Matthew, 2, 8, 53, 96, Elizabeth of Hungary, St, 33 153 n. 17 Emmaus, 163 Galapia, siege of, 136 n. 83 Enikel, Jans, 189 n. 21, 190 Gâtinais, county of, 15 Ephesus, council of (431), 173 n. 67 Genoa, 217 Geoffrey, bishop of Paris, 18 Epirus, 219 Gervais, archbishop of Reims, 17 Etruscans, 208–9, 211

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Index Gesta Friderici I imperatoris, 41, 56 Gesta Karoli Magni ad Carcassonam et Narbonam, 6, 116, 117 n. 3, 126, 127 n. 44, 127 n. 45, 129, 132 n. 68, 134, 135, 148–57, 160–1, 164, 165, 166, 167–70, 172, 174–7, 179–80 Ghent, 184 Ghibellines, 205 Gibbon, Edward, 181–3 Gilbert, chancellor of Philip I, 18 Gilbert, prior of Lagrasse, 169 Gilles, St, 188, 189, 190 Girona, 5–6, 115–47 Gleb, St, 44 Godfrey of Bouillon, 54 n. 83 Golden Legend, 188 Grabois, Aryeh, 163 n. 44 Gran conquista de Ultramar, 136 n. 83 Guelphs, 205, 207, 210, 212, 213, 214, 215, 220, 222, 226, 228, 229 Guibert, abbot of Nogent, 38 n. 15 Guillelmus Paduanus, 148–53, 155–7, 160, 161, 163, 164–5, 166, 167–8, 169–70, 173, 174–7, 179–80 Guyotjeannin, Olivier, 18 n. 29, 19 Hadrian I, pope, 171 Hafner, Susanne, 190–1 Haimo of Auxerre, 23, 29, 32 Harney, Michael, 136 n. 83, 142–3 Haro, Lopez de, Castilian ambassador, 122 n. 23 Hartvic, bishop, 44 Harun al-Rashid, 165–6 Hebron, Malcolm, 142–3 Heito of Reichenau, 187 Heitzmann, Christian, 150 n. 6, 156 Henry I, king of Francia, 10, 17 Henry II, emperor, 21–2, 33, 39, 40, 63 Henry II, king of England, 39, 42, 54, 63

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Henry IV, emperor, 12, 22 Henry VI, king of England, 212 Henry of Lausanne, 169 n. 57 Henry the Lion, duke of Bavaria, 54 Heraclius, emperor, 58 heresy, heretics, 48, 156, 166–74, 177–8, 179 Hilduin, abbot of Saint-Denis, 48 n. 58 Hilgod, bishop of Soissons, 25–6 Himilco, 225 Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, 23, 31 Historia florentini populi, 7, 206, 207–13, 216, 223 Historia Karoli Magni et Rotholandi, see Historia Turpini Historia peregrinorum, 49 Historia Silense, 97–9, 100, 101, 103, 106 Historia Turpini, 1, 3, 5, 6, 41 n. 28, 47, 50–3, 57, 94–7, 98, 99, 101, 102, 104, 105–6, 107, 113, 116, 126, 127 n. 45, 131, 134–5, 150, 157–8, 161, 176–7 Holy Land, 2, 13, 43, 44, 46, 48–50, 51, 52, 57, 77, 84, 85, 107, 163–4, 198–9, 219; see also Holy Sepulchre, church of; Jerusalem Holy Sepulchre, church of, 48, 85 Homer, 183, 219 Housley, Norman, 138 Hrabanus Maurus, 22, 32 Hubert, bishop of Senlis, 18, 23, 30 Hugh, archbishop of Lyon, 18 n. 29 Hugh I, count of Vermandois, 10, 15, 25–6 Hugh of Fleury, 47, 48 Ianziti, Gary, 209–10, 211, 212 n. 25 Iberia, 5–6, 7, 43, 50–2, 56, 57, 71, 92–114, 115–47, 155, 170, 171, 176 Ibn al-Athīr , 93 n. 4 Ignatius, patriarch of Constantinople, 22–3

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Île-de-France, 10, 16, 17 Ingelheim, 161 Insubres, 211 investiture contest, 34–5, 41, 45, 56 Isidore of Seville, 191 Islam, see Muslims, Islam Italian League, 215–16 Iusteamendus, 165 James, St, 4, 52, 73, 74, 75, 88, 124, 125–6, 157–8 Jammers, Ewald, 65 Jaspert, Nikolas, 132 n. 65 Jaume Cascalls, sculptor, 121 Jehoshaphat, valley of, 164 Jerome, St, 29, 136 n. 83 Jerusalem, 1, 13, 18 n. 29, 44, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 56, 77–8, 81–5, 87, 135–7, 143, 145, 161, 163–4, 177, 205, 218, 228 Latin kingdom of, 54 n. 83, 56, 227 Jews, Judaism, 109, 110, 196 n. 40 Joan of Arc, 212 Joanna II, queen of Naples, 212 Jocundus of Maastricht, 12 John XXIII, anti-pope, 226 Jones, Richard L. C., 140–1 Jumièges, abbey of, 16 Julian, count of Anjou, 141 n. 103 Julian, St, 128, 129 Julius Caesar, 203, 208, 210 Kaiserchronik, 54, 135 n. 79 Karl Meinet, 189 n. 21 Kilian, St, 162 Klaniczay, Gábor, 35 Knud Lavard of Denmark, 63 Konrad, priest, 53 Koziol, Geoffrey, 19, 21 Ladislas I, king of Hungary, 44 Laetus, Pomponius, 221–2

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Lagrasse, 6, 116, 119, 120, 129, 140 n. 99, 146, 149, 150–1, 152, 153–6, 157, 160–1, 162–3, 164, 165 n. 47, 166, 167, 168–9, 171, 175–6, 179 Languedoc, 149, 155–6, 166, 167, 169 Las Navas de Tolosa, battle of (1212), 5, 92, 106–14 Last Emperor, legend of, 12 Lateran Council, second (1139), 169 n. 57 Latowsky, Anne, 2, 13–14, 41 n. 28, 53 n. 77, 56, 193 n. 34 Le Bec, abbey of, 16 Le Goff, Jacques, 58 Le Puy-en-Velay, church of Our Lady, 121–2, 133 Legenda sancti Karoli Magni, 116, 123, 128 n. 48, 132–3, 134, 137 n. 87, 139, 145 Leo I, pope, 178 Leo III, pope, 79, 135, 151, 155, 158, 160, 161, 162, 163 n. 44, 164, 168, 220 Les Medes, 137 n. 89 Leyser, Karl, 37–8 Liber sancti Jacobi, 51, 71 n. 42, 73 n. 50, 74 n. 53, 94 Libre dels Reis, 144 n. 112 Liedrad of Lyons, 171 Liège, 184 Linehan, Peter, 98 n. 25, 107 n. 53, 112 n. 76 Livy, 208 Lomax, Derek, 107 n. 55 London, 136 n. 83, 191 Lothar I, emperor, 22 Lothar II, king of Lotharingia, 23 Louis II, duke of Anjou, 226 Louis VI, king of Francia, 10–11, 15, 38 n. 15 Louis VII, king of Francia, 42, 108 Louis IX, king of Francia and saint, 58, 60, 89 n. 92, 102, 119 n. 10

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Index Louis XI, king of Francia, 119 n. 9, 214, 215, 217–18, 219, 225 Louis the German, king, 23 Louis the Pious, emperor, 22, 170, 187 Lucas, bishop of Túy, 99–105, 106, 111 Lyons, 171, 174 Machomet, Saracen king of Girona, 131 n. 65, 135 Magnus of Reichersberg, 57 n. 90 Maine, county of, 31 n. 70 Mainz, council of (813), 177–9 Maissen, Thomas, 212 n. 25, 214 Malagón, 110, 111 Manfred, king of Sicily, 210 Manuel I Komnenos, emperor, 57 Maravall, José Antonio, 108 n. 55 Margaret of Scotland, St, 33 Marmoutier, abbey of, 16 n. 21, 20–1, 23–4, 25–6, 30–1 Marsile, Saracen king, 127 Martellotti, Guido, 198 n. 42 Martial, 221–2 Martin IV, pope, 138 Martin, St, 128 Mary, Blessed Virgin, 6, 13, 84, 124–6, 130, 131 n. 65, 133, 134 n. 76, 139 n. 97, 143, 146–7, 148–9, 152–62, 164, 165, 166–8, 170, 173–80, 219 Mathilda, duchess of Bavaria, 54 Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, 222 n. 53 Mayer, Hans Eberhard, 50 McCormick, Michael, 163 n. 45 McGrade, Michael, 46, 66, 81 n. 84 McKitterick, Rosamond, 161, 162 n. 41 Medici, house of the, 213, 214, 215–16, 218, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 228 Medici, Alessandro de’, 205 Medici, Cosimo de’, 213, 215, 223 n. 56, 227

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Medici, Lorenzo de’, 215, 218, 220, 224–5 Mentón, kingdom of, 136 n. 83 Merlerandus, 165 Michael III, emperor of Byzantium, 22 Milan, 209, 211, 215, 218, 227, 229 n. 74 Milet, 127, 129, 132, 139 Molina Figueras, Joan, 120 n. 17, 129 n. 55 Mommsen, Theodore, 198 Monte Cassino, abbey of, 40 Monteleone, Federica, 13 Montfort, lordship of, 20 n. 33, 25, 26, 31 Montpellier, 184 Morgante, 220, 229 n. 74 Mount Ventoux, 184 Mozac, abbey of, 18 n. 29 Mozarabs, 109 Muntaner, Ramon, 117, 137, 139–41, 143 Muslims, Islam, 6, 13, 29 n. 66, 49, 57, 95, 96, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116 n. 3, 117, 127 n. 45, 128, 130, 132–3, 135–6, 139–40, 144–5, 146, 147, 148–9, 150–3, 154, 157, 161, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 170, 172, 174, 175, 176, 219; see also Almohads; Almoravids; Turks Naples, 205, 212, 214, 217, 225, 226, 227 Napoleon, as Charlemagne enthusiast, 122 n. 25 Narbonne, 6, 109 n. 59, 119, 124 n. 31, 125, 126, 130 n. 57, 135, 137 n. 88, 137 n. 89, 139, 149, 150, 151, 153, 156, 166, 168, 169, 171, 175 Narcissus, St, 124 n. 30, 141 necrophilia, see Charlemagne, as sexual deviant Nero, 224

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Nibridius, archbishop of Narbonne, 151, 171 Nicholas I, pope, 22–3 Nicholas, St, 124 n. 31 Nichols, Stephen, 55 Nijmegen, 161 Norbert of Xanten, 169 n. 57 Normandy, duchy of, 10, 13 n. 13, 15, 16, 17, 32 n. 71 Notker the Stammerer, 1, 38 Odoacer, king of Italy, 208 Odo, duke of Burgundy, 18 n. 29 Officium in festo sancti Karoli magni imperatoris et confessoris, 116, 117, 120, 121 n. 21, 123–4, 129, 132–3, 134, 137, 139 n. 95, 140 n. 97, 145 Olaf II Haraldsson, king of Norway, 63 Oliver, 203 Oratio de laudibus Caroli Magni, 229 n. 74 Orbieu, river, 149 Oriflamme, 118 Orlando, 220 Orlando furioso, 229 n. 74 Orlando innamorato, 229 n. 74 Orléans, 16, 212 Oswald of Northumbria, St, 36 n. 9, 59–61, 63, 64, 69, 76, 89–90, 129 n. 57 Otger the Dane, 127 n. 44 Otranto, 220, 224 Otto III, emperor, 37–8 Ovid, 224–5 Oviedo, 102 Paderborn, 161, 162–3, 164, 177, 178, 179 Padua, 150, 168 Palazzo della Signoria, Florence, 213 Palmyra, 181–2

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Pamplona, 73–5, 109 n. 59, 131, 135 papacy, see individual popes Paris, 17, 18, 20, 25, 26, 31, 88, 184 Paris, Gaston, 116, 124 n. 30, 185 n. 7 Paschal II, pope, 10 Paschal III, anti-pope, 42, 63, 88, 118 Paul, St, 21, 48 n. 58 Paul of Narbonne, St, 124 n. 31, 130 n. 57 Paulinus of Aquileia, 172, 173 Paxton, Frederick, 22 n. 41 Pazzi, house of the, 215, 218, 221, 224 Pazzi, Piero de’, 215–16, 217 Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, 125 n. 36 Perpignan, 143 Peter, St, 48 n. 58, 171, 173 Peter Damian, 22 Peter the Hermit, 198 Peter III, king of Aragon, 138, 141, 144–5 Petrarch, Francesco, 7, 181–201 Philip I, king of Francia, 4, 10–11, 13–32, 38 n. 15, 53 Philip III, king of Francia, 137–47 Philip IV, king of Francia, 193–4 Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, 212 Phillips, Jonathan, 50 Picardy, 17 Pippin the Short, 48 n. 58, 151, 219 Pisa, 209 Pliny the Younger, 221–2 Plutarch, 216 Poem of Almería, 106 Pohl, Walter, 165 n. 47 Poitiers, 16, 27 Pompey the Great, 182, 185 Pontano, Giovanni Gioviano, 226 Prague, 194 Prou, Maurice, 19, 20, 21 n. 38 Pseudo-Alcuin, 12, 13

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Index Pseudo-Philomena, see Gesta Karoli Magni ad Carcassonam et Narbonam Pseudo-Sonnatius, 179 Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle, see Historia Turpini Pulci, Luigi, 220, 229 n. 74 Punica, 221–2 Purkis, William, 96, 99 n. 26, 106 n. 51 Psyiak, Jerzy, 13 Rahewin of Freising, 41 Rainald of Dassel, archbishop of Cologne, 42, 63, 88 Ramla, 163 Ramon Folch VI, viscount of Cardona, 141 Rauschen, Gerhard, 47 Ravenna, 158, 161 Raymond of Aguilers, 107 n. 55 Regali natus, 65–91, 119 n. 11 Regensburg, 54 Regensburg, council of (793), 171 Reilly, Bernard, 103 n. 42 relics, 1, 13, 27 n. 59, 46, 49, 72, 78, 81, 118, 125 n. 36, 142, 152, 178, 184–5, 195, 196 Remensnyder, Amy, 48, 55–6, 119, 129, 155 Remigius of Auxerre, 29 n. 65 René of Anjou, 212–13, 215, 218, 226 Rhine, river, 14, 55, 185 Riché, Pierre, 162 Rienzo, Cola di, 194 Rinaldo, 220 Ripoll, monastery of, 120 n. 12, 131, 132 n. 65, 146 Robert I, duke of Normandy, 15 Robert II, count of Auvergne, 18 n. 29 Robert II the Pious, king of Francia, 10, 24

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Robert de Castello, seneschal, 25 n. 53 Robert of Arbrissel, 169 n. 57 Robert of Péronne, 27 Robert, stonemason of Charlemagne, 154, 168–9 Robert the Monk, 54, 144 n. 111 Robinson, Ian, 43 Rochefort, Guillaume de, 227 Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, archbishop of Toledo, 102–5, 106, 110, 113 Roger, bishop of Beauvais, 18 Roger, count of Limoges, 27, 28 Roger of Lauria, 137 n. 89 Roland, 51, 96, 100, 101, 105, 110, 114, 127, 128, 129, 148, 151, 152, 188, 203 Rome, 41, 57, 158–9, 161, 163 n. 44, 171, 173, 178, 183, 193, 198, 199, 200, 208–9, 212, 216, 220, 221, 224, 225, 226 Romulus Augustulus, emperor, 208 Roncesvalles, 51, 95–6, 97, 98, 100–1, 103, 104, 105, 109, 113, 114 Roses, port, 137 n. 89 Roura i Güibas, Gabriel, 121 Roussillon, 108 n. 56, 125, 127, 132, 139 Rubenstein, Jay, 54 n. 83 Rubin, Miri, 152 Rule of St Benedict, 21–2, 23 Sacramentary of Hadrian, 178 saints, sanctity, see individual saints and Charlemagne, as saint Saint-Bertin, abbey of, 14 n. 18, 16 Saint-Corneille of Compiègne, abbey of, 13, 27 Saint-Denis, abbey of, 11, 13, 14–15, 48 n. 58, 53, 80–1, 88, 106 n. 50, 119, 125 n. 36, 144 n. 112, 176, 193 n. 34 Saints Felix and Fortunatus, abbey of, 22

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Saint-Hilaire of Poitiers, abbey of, 16 Saint-Magloire of Paris, abbey of, 16 n. 21, 20–1, 23–4, 25–6, 30–1 St Mary of the Latins, church of, 163 n. 45 Saint-Maur des Fossés, abbey of, 19 Saint-Nicolas of Angers, abbey of, 16 Saint-Philibert of Tournus, abbey of, 16 Saint-Pierre of Bourgueil, abbey of, 16 St Riquier, abbey of, 178 Sancho III, king of Castile, 92 Sancho VII, king of Navarre, 109 n. 59 Sant Andreu de Sureda, abbey of, 127 n. 44 Sant Feliu de Girona, church of, 131 n. 65, 141 Sant Feliu de Guíxols, port, 137 n. 89 Santa Cruz, Hospitaller chapel of (Toledo), 109 Santa Maria, confraternity of (Girona), 121 n. 20 Santa Maria de Amer, abbey of, 130 Santiago de Compostela, 4, 94–5, 99, 101, 102, 104, 112, 113, 120 n. 12, 126, 157–8 Saracens, see Muslims, Islam Savonarola, Girolamo, 205, 218, 228 Schneegans, F. E., 116, 126, 129 Scipio Africanus, 221, 222, 226 Senlis, 17, 18, 19, 25 Servius, 191 Sevilla y Gener, Tomás, bishop of Girona, 122 Sewell, John, 196 n. 40 Sforza, Francesco, duke of Milan, 215–16, 217–18, 227 Sforza, Ludovico, of Milan, 218 Sholod, Barton, 115 n. 1, 116 n. 2, 118 n. 5, 120 n. 12, 121, 123 n. 28, 129 n. 55

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Sicilian Vespers, 138, 210 n. 21 Sigesmond, St, 36 n. 9 Silius Italicus, 221–2, 224 Silvester, pope, 41 Simon I, lord of Montfort, 25 Sixtus IV, pope, 121 Smyser, H. M., 41 n. 28 Song of Roland, see Chanson de Roland Spain, see Iberia Stephen I, king of Hungary, 44, 89 n. 93 Stephen II, pope, 48 Strayer, Joseph, 137 Suetonius, 216 Suger, abbot of Saint-Denis, 11, 14–15 Sulla, 208 Symfred, abbot of Lagrasse, 168–9, 175 Tarragona, 133 Thecla, St, 128, 129, 133 Thomas, hermit of Lagrasse, 154, 155, 168–9 Toledo, 92, 102, 106, 108, 109, 110, 112, 170–1 Totila, king of the Ostrogoths, 203, 207 Tours, 26 Tractatus de captione Gerunde, 116, 123, 127 n. 44, 132–3, 134, 137, 139, 140 n. 100, 145, 146 n. 116 Tranchedini, Nicodemo, 226–7 Translatio Benedicti, 129 n. 52 Trent, council of (1571), 122 Turks, 220, 224 Turpin of Rheims, archbishop, 95, 127, 128, 129, 151, 153–5, 186 n. 10, 203 Urban II, pope, 10, 54, 144 Urgel, 170, 174 Ursio, bishop of Senlis, 18, 25–6 Uzzano, Niccolò da, 210, 211

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Index Vance, Eugene, 151 Vauchez, André, 63 Vallespir, 127, 132 Verino, Ugolino, 7, 206, 218–28, 229–30 Vexin, county of, 15 Vicenza, 22 Victor IV, anti-pope, 41–2 Villani, Giovanni, 203–4, 207 Vincent, St, 128, 129 Vincentius Hispanus, 105, 107 n. 53 Virgil, 218, 219, 222 Visconti, Giangaleazzo, 209, 211 Visio Karoli Magni (9th c.), 38 Vita Caroli Magni (15th c., Florence), 7, 206, 214–17, 220, 223 Vita Karoli Magni (12th c., Aachen), 4, 6, 34–5, 41, 43, 45–58, 65, 66, 68, 69, 71, 72–3, 74 n. 53, 75, 76, 78, 80, 81, 83, 88, 89, 90, 158–60, 161, 170, 173, 176

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241

Vita sancti Caroli Magni (14th c., Girona), 116 n. 2, 123, 132 Walahfrid Strabo, 187 Weihenstephan Chronicle, 189 n. 21, 190–1 Weltchronik, 189 n. 21, 190 Wenceslas, St, 40 n. 26, 44 Wilkins, E. H., 198 n. 43 William I, king of England, 15, 30 William VI, count of Auvergne, 18 n. 29 William, bishop of Clermont, 18 n. 29 William of Malmesbury, 23 n. 48, 58 Wolfe, Michael, 136 Zaragoza, 100

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Bristol Studies in Medieval Cultures previously published The Madonna of Humility: Development, Dissemination and Reception, c. 1340–1400 Beth Williamson The Medieval Art, Architecture and History of Bristol Cathedral: An Enigma Explored Edited by Jon Cannon and Beth Williamson Chaucer and the Cultures of Love and Marriage Cathy Hume Translators and their Prologues in Medieval England Elizabeth Dearnley Cross and Culture in Anglo-Norman England: Theology, Image, Devotion John Munns

charlemagne: a european icon Charlemagne and his Legend in Early Spanish Literature and Historiography Edited by Matthew Bailey and Ryan D. Giles The Charlemagne Legend in Medieval Latin Texts Edited by William J. Purkis and Matthew Gabriele

Charlemagne in Latin.indb 242

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Purkis and Gabriele (eds)

T

his book explores the multiplicity of ways in which the Charlemagne legend was recorded in Latin texts of the central and later Middle Ages, moving beyond some of the earlier canonical ‘raw materials’, such as Einhard's Vita Karoli Magni, to focus on productions of the eleventh to fifteenth centuries. A distinctive feature of the volume's coverage is the diversity of Latin textual environments and genres that the contributors examine in their work, including chronicles, liturgy and pseudo-histories, as well as apologetical treatises and works of hagiography and literature. Perhaps most importantly, the book examines the ‘many lives’ that Charlemagne was believed to have lived by successive generations of medieval Latin writers, for whom he was not only a king and an emperor but also a saint, a crusader, and, indeed, a necrophiliac.

THE

CHARLEMAGNE LEGEND IN MEDIEVAL LATIN TEXTS

WILLIAM J. PURKIS is Reader in Medieval History at the University of Birmingham.

Jeffrey Doolittle, Matthew Gabriele, Miguel Dolan Gómez, Oren Margolis, William J. Purkis, Andrew J. Romig, Sebastián Salvadó, Jace Stuckey, James B. Williams. CONTRIBUTORS:

Cover image: The bishop of Cologne hunts for a magic ring to rescue Charlemagne from his necrophilia. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Cgm 5, fol. 212v, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12bsb00079954-3.

Bristol Studies in Medieval Cultures

THE CHARLEMAGNE LEGEND IN MEDIEVAL LATIN TEXTS

is an Associate Professor of Medieval Studies in the Department of Religion & Culture at Virginia Tech. MATTHEW GABRIELE

EDITED BY WILLIAM J. PURKIS AND MATTHEW GABRIELE

The Charlemagne Legend in Medieval Latin Texts 9781843844488 v5.indd 1

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