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The
idea that with the decline
Roman Empire
of the
Europe entered into some immense “dark age” has long been viewed
Elow could
Rome
a
misleading by
as
world
still
many
historians.
so profoundly shaped
by
and which encompassed such remarkable
societies as the Byzantine,
Carolmgian and Ottoman
empires be anything other than central to the devel-
opment of Europe?
In The Inheritance of Rome, prizewinning historian
Chris W^ickham defies the conventional view of
European history between A.D. 400 and 1000 with
work of remarkable scope and scholarship.
Drawing on
and featuring
a
rigorous yet accessible
wealth of
a thoughtful synthesis
archaeological
approaches,
a
new
material
of historical and
W^ickham
argues
that
these centuries were critical in the formulation of
European
identity. Ear
between more to
tell
ture
us in
Its
from being
a
“middle” period
significant epochs, this age has
own
right
much
about the progress of cul-
and the development of political thought.
Sweeping focuses
on
in its breadth, a
world
still
Wickham’s
incisive history
profoundly shaped by
which included peoples ranging
fro
m
Rome,
the Goths,
Eranks and Vandals to Arabs, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. Digging deep into each culture,
\Vickham
constructs a vivid portrait of a vast and varied world stretching
from Ireland to Constantinople, the Baltic
to the Mediterranean. The Inheritance liantly presents a fresh in
which Europe
vvs
ofRome
bril-
understanding of the crucible
uld ijl'imaK
iv
he created.
The Inheritance of Rome
i
THE PENGUIN HISTORY OF EUROPE General Editor: David Cannadine
I:
CHRIS
II:
III:
IV:
V: VI:
SIMON PRICE
Classical
WICKHAM
Europe
The Inheritance of Rome: of Europe from 400 to 1000
WILLIAM JORDAN
Europe
in the
A
History
High Middle Ages^
ANTHONY GRAETON Renaissance Europe, i^yo-iyiy MARK GREENGRASS Reformation Europe, iyiy-1648 TIM PLANNING VII: VIII:
The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1 81
RICHARD
J.
EVANS
IAN KERSHAW
Europe 1813-1914
Twentieth-Century Europe
already published
rt.
CHRIS WICKHAM The Inheritance of Rome A
History of Europe from 400 to 1000
VIKING
VIKING Group
Published by the Penguin
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American edition
Published in 2009 by Viking Penguin, a
member
of Penguin
13579 Copyright
Group (USA)
Inc.
8642
10
© Chris Wickham, 2009
All rights reserved
Illustration credits
appear on pages x-xi.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA Wickham, The
inheritance of
Rome
:
Chris,
illuminating the p.
1950-
Dark Ages, 400-1000
/
Chris
Wickham.
cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-670-02098-0 1. Civilization,
Medieval.
2.
Middle Ages.
3.
Rome
—Civilization—Influence.
I.
Title.
CB351.W49 2009 940.1’2—dc22 2009015169 Printed in the United States of America
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For the students of AMH, the Ancient and Medieval History degree of the University of Birmingham, i^yS-iooy,
heard and discussed much of this before
who have
Digitized by the Internet Archive in
2017 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.Org/details/isbn_9780670020980
Contents
List of Maps
of Illustrations
x
Acknowledgements
xii
List
1
ix
Introduction
3
PART The Roman Empire and
I
its
Break-up,
2
The Weight of Empire
3
Culture and Belief in the Christian
4
Crisis
400-550 21
Roman World
and Continuity, 400-550
50
76
10
PART
II
The Post-Roman West, 550-750
in
5
Merovingian Gaul and Germany, 500-751
6
The West Mediterranean Kingdoms: Spain and
Italy,
550-750
130
7
Kings without
8
Post-Roman Etiquette,
9
States: Britain
and
Ireland,
Attitudes: Culture, Belief
and
400-800 Political
550-750
170
Wealth, Exchange and Peasant Society
The Power of
150
203
the Visual: Material Culture and
Display from Imperial
Rome
to the Carolingians
vii
232
CONTENTS
PART The Empires of
III
the East,
550-1000
Byzantine Survival, 550-850
11
255
12 The Crystallization of Arab Political Power, 630-750 13
Byzantine Revival, 850-1000
14
From Abbasid Baghdad 750-1000 The
1 5
State
to
279 298
Umayyad Cordoba, 318
and the Economy: Eastern Mediterranean
Exchange Networks, 600-1000
PART
348
IV
The Carolingian and Post-Carolingian West, 750-1000 16 The Carolingian Century, 751-887
375
17 Intellectuals and Politics
405
18
The Tenth-century Successor
19
‘Carolingian’ England,
427
States
800-1000
453
20 Outer Europe 21
472
Aristocrats between the Carolingian
and the ‘Feudal’
Worlds
508
22 The Caging of the Peasantry, 800-1000 23
Conclusion: Trends in European History,
529
400-1000
552
Notes and Bibliographic Guides
565
Index of Names and Places
623
Vlll
List of Maps
I.
The Roman Empire
2.
Western Europe
in
500
3-
Western Europe
in
1000
4-
The ‘Abbasid Caliphate
5-
Northern and Eastern Europe
6.
Britain
7-
Italy in the early
8.
Erancia in 843
9-
Spain in the early Middle Ages
lO.
and Ireland
in
400
xiv xvi xviii
XX c.
in the early
Middle Ages
1000
Middle Ages
xxii
xxiv
XXV xxvi
The Byzantine Empire
xxviii
XXX
IX
List of Illustrations
1.
Exterior of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (photo: Leslie Brubaker)
2.
Interior of
3.
Aerial photo of the Great
Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (photo:
Leslie Brubaker)
Mosque, Damascus (photo: Charles and
Patricia Aithie/ffotograff) 4.
Courtyard mosaic from the Great Mosque, Damascus (photo: Leslie Brubaker)
5.
Plan of the Anglo-Saxon
6.
Sixth-century ivory depicting the empress Ariadne, Bargello
7.
Museum, Florence (photo: Alinari Archives) Nave of S. Prassede, Rome (photo: Caroline Goodson)
8.
Mosaic from
9.
Mosaic from St-Germigny-des-Pres, near Orleans, France (photo:
S.
site
Prassede,
of Yeavering (courtesy John Blair)
Rome
(photo: Caroline
Goodson)
Manfred Heyde) 10.
Drawing of (copyright
the remains of the palace of Ingelheim, near
Mainz
© Kaiserpfalz Ingelheim) Aachen (photo: Aleph)
11.
Exterior of the palace chapel,
12.
Bath-house and andron,
13.
Private house, Serjilla (photo: Leslie Brubaker)
14.
Reconstructed house at
15.
Reconstruction of Montarrenti (courtesy Area di Archeologia
Serjilla, Syria
site
(photo: Olga Kolos/Alamy)
of Trelleborg,
Denmark
Medievale, Universita degli Studi di Siena - Studio
INKLINK
Firenze) 16.
Interior of the crypt with sarcophagi.
Marne, France (photo: akg-images
/
Abbey
of Jouarre, Seine et
Erich Lessing)
17.
Offa’s Dyke, Shropshire (photo: Jim Saunders/Prints of Wales)
18.
Roman
19.
Excavated house, Foro
city walls,
Barcelona (photo: Fotobox/AISA) di
Nerva,
Fentress)
X
Rome
(photo: Elizabeth
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 20.
Column fragments
in the walls of the citadel,
Ankara, Turkey
(photo: Ben Claasz Coockson) 21.
Collapsed colonnade, Scythopolis (Bet Shean), Israel (photo: Leslie Brubaker)
22.
Basil
II,
illumination from an eleventh-century psalter, Biblioteca
Nazionale Marciana, Venice (photo: akg-images 23.
/
Erich Lessing)
Louis the Pious, illumination from a ninth-century manuscript, Bibliotheque nationale de France, Paris
24.
Church, Brixworth, Northamptonshire (photo:
All Saints
akg-images 25.
/
A. F. Kersting)
Large runestone
in the
churchyard at
Jelling,
Denmark
(photo:
Interfoto Pressebildagentur/Alamy) 26.
Exterior of St Sophia, Kiev (photo: Leslie Brubaker)
27.
View
of Canossa, Italy (photo: copyright
© Bildarchiv Foto
Marburg)
Ramiro
Oviedo, Spain (photo: AISA)
28.
Palace of
29.
Illumination of peasants working, from the Utrecht Psalter (copyright
I,
© University Library, Utrecht)
XI
Acknowledgements
Numerous friends read chapters of this book for me; their criticisms and comments saved me from a wide range of errors. In the order of the chapters they read, they were Leslie Brubaker, Conrad Leyser, Kate Cooper, Walter Pohl, Ian Wood, Julia Smith, Paul Magdalino, Hugh Kennedy, Jinty Nelson, Pat Geary, Pauline Stafford and Equally essential, for sharing ideas and unpublished
Wendy
Davies.
work with me, were
Teresa Bernheimer, Leslie Brubaker, Leslie Dossey, Caroline Goodson,
John Haldon, Guy Halsall, Sarah Halton, Anne-Marie Helvetius, Mayke de Jong, Christina Possel, Carine van Rhijn, Petra Sijpesteijn and
Whittow. Sue Bowen heroically typed the whole
drew the maps; the index all. I
after
is
by Alicia Correa.
I
text,
Mark
and Harry Buglass
am very grateful to them
have not been able to incorporate publications which came out
May
2007; not systematically, at
least.
Birmingham
May 2007
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A
peasant ploughing and a
ri^P(WWASUJWrOf.UM C|UlfAaSANaHOJIUO«py HMiMlSIAOnUO^-lCWfM man
early ninth-century Utrecht Psalter.
ABJWCWfAliOMflUA-fwJ twi- AUOaTOWlTCUlWi
fOAMtOAIUHI
(doubtless a lord) being served food at a table, in the
The
world
picture illustrates Psalm 103, in its right order.
which celebrates the
THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF ARAB POLITICAL POWER, 63O-750 caliph Hisham’s favourite country residence in the 730s; he built a
mosque
there right beside, indeed sharing a courtyard v^ith, one of the
major churches of the
(Hisham was see
Chapter
city,
and also a
set of
shops around the precinct
monumental shop complexes elsewhere, too: The caliph was clearly reacting to - indeed, respect-
a patron of 15).
ing - the religious importance of the place, even though that import-
ance was essentially and traditionally Christian. Rusafa was a Muslim political centre for only
Sergios, turned into a
Arab world
two decades
at the most, but Sarjis, that
Muslim holy man
in centuries to
in at least
come. In places
querors and conquered could meet
some
is,
parts of the
Rusafa, both con-
like
as, in religious
terms,
some kind
of equals.
‘Umar Ts
was marked by war, and, apart from the establishment
reign
of the dlwdn system,
When
it
was not
a period of wider-scale state formation.
wave of conquests stopped around 651, ‘Uthman found that one danger was that the new provinces risked drifting apart under their
the
first
new Arab
military elites.
It is
not clear whether under ‘Umar the
provinces sent any of their tax revenue back to Medina, but
some of them,
agree that ‘Uthman laid claim to at least
all
sources
particularly
from
the agriculturally rich provinces of Egypt and Iraq. ‘Uthman’s equally
controversial patronage of kinsmen and tribal leaders as governors,
instead of the early Muslims, often of
no
particular tribal status,
dominated the garrison towns, can be interpreted
as the caliph trying to
ensure chains of loyalty to him that would stabilize the political system. is
likely
enough that
656. But
it
Mu‘awiya Ziyad
Both of these
(d.
was
his
it
policies
aimed to
was indeed these
who
new Arab
centralize power,
and
it
policies that led to his death in
kinsman Mu‘awiya who won the
First Civil
War, and
certainly continued them; he appointed his adopted brother
673) to govern Iraq and Iran, for example, and inside Syria
linked himself closely to the tribal confederacy dominated by the Kalb,
which was the main Arab group far
in the province.
(It is less
certain
how
he managed to divert provincial revenues to Syria, however; his
centralizing
practices
were above
all
thought dynastically, and ensured that
Yazid
I
his
656-61, the Second
son al-Husayn was the
first
Civil
Mu‘awiya
clearly
son (by a Kalbi mother)
(680-83) would succeed him. This led
serious rerun of ‘All’s
personal.)
at his death to a far
War
more
of 680-92.
to revolt against Yazid, in 680; he
289
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO was
killed at Karbala’ in Iraq in a one-sided conflict that has resonated
ever since in Shi‘a martyrology. In Medina, ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr,
son of another First Civil
War
and he established himself
as caliph there
some
quite a wide authority for militarily active himself, but
leader, also rejected Yazid’s authority,
itself
Mukhtar, and was
Arab
the leading
in
Mecca (683-92), with
years. Ibn al-Zubayr
was not very
he had substantial support both in Iraq and Kufa, too, revolted under the Alid
in parts of Syria. After Yazid’s death,
leader
and
effectively
independent in 685-7.
in Syria
Kalb being opposed by the
tribes fell out, the
Qays, a coalition of newer
And
from northern Arabia, based
settlers
in
northern Syria and the Jazira, supporters of Ibn al-Zubayr. The Kalb
put in a
new branch
Marwan
al-Zubayr, the
first
of the I
Umayyad
(684-5) and
family as caliphs to confront Ibn
his
son ‘Abd al-Malik (685-705),
Marwanids, and Marwan defeated the Qays
Marj Rahit north of Damascus
in 684.
at the battle of
Even then, everything risked
breaking up, but ‘Abd al-Malik held on, carried on fighting, and established unity with the reconquest of
al-Zubayr in 692.
What was
clear,
Mecca and
stable political settlement, to avoid
the end of
Arab
and
reliable
new
renewed chaos leading to
rule.
With ‘Abd al-Malik our
more
the death of Ibn
however, was that he needed a
and more
re-
reconstructions.
historical information begins to be rather
diversified,
One
and we can be more confident
thing he did
was return
to conquest.
in
our
Westwards
from Egypt, Arab armies had rather desultorily moved into the southern parts of Byzantine Africa in the 640s
and then the 670s (founding the
garrison city of Kairouan in 670); in the late 690s, however, they
defeated the powerful Berber tribes of the Algerian plateau, and con-
quered Africa
Arab
definitively, taking
rule very fast. In 71 1,
Carthage
in 698.
The Berbers took
under ‘Abd al-Malik’s son al-Walid
to
I,
a
Berber and Arab army invaded Spain, and by the end of the 710s
it
controlled nearly
To
the east,
all
the Iberian peninsula
Bukhara and Samarkand
and was raiding into Francia.
fell
in
706-12, and the Arabs
occupied central Asia, and also parts of north-west India. The scene was set for the greatest
717-18
led
conquest of
all,
Constantinople, with the siege of
by Maslama, son of ‘Abd al-Malik, although
turned out that the caliphate had reached al-Walid, and border wars
would be
the
its
norm
this failed;
it
greatest extent under thereafter.
These new
conquests did not have the economic and political importance of those
290
THE CRYSTALLIZATION OL ARAB POLITICAL POWER, 630-75O main provincial armies busy and
of 636-51, but they kept the
which was
rich,
better than civil war.
‘Abd al-Malik also ruled the provinces as forcefully as he could. Egypt
was entrusted
to his brother
Abd
to the Qaysi governor Qurra,
and shortly
al-Aziz (d. 704),
whose surviving
letters
very effective in his exactions and his local control.
after that
show him
We
still
to be
cannot see
Egyptian wealth going to Syria, and these governors were probably as
were certainly
rich as the caliphs themselves, but they
most troublesome province to
Umayyads, was
loyal. Iraq, the
694 assigned the hyper-loyal al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, another Qaysi, who governed it
(and, after 697,
Khurasan
for the early
as well) until his death in 714; al-Hajjaj
who provoked
a very tough, not to say oppressive, ruler
the Kufans in 701
and established
Iraqi armies withered,
on. In Syria,
Abd
in
and
army
a Syrian
in the
war with
a civil
zone
was
after that;
went to Damascus from then
Iraqi taxes
al-Malik maintained a balance between Kalbi and
Qaysi patronage networks, as these Qaysi governors already imply. The
two opposing networks gained
in force, all the
same; the Kalb joined
Yemen who had settled in central Syria, and the from now on called Yamani in our sources; the two
with immigrants from alliance
is
generally
networks, which came to include virtually
from the
for patronage
all
Arabs, were fierce rivals
caliphs, particularly the highly lucrative position
A Yamani or a Qaysi governor could be relied on to appoint
of governor.
only members of his
own
faction to subordinate posts, but the caliphs
themselves were for a long time fairly neutral between the two major groupings.
Abd culture seen.
al-Malik established a
and
for Islam.
He
new
public prominence both for
Arabized the
civil
administration, as
That administration gained ever greater coherence, as
Arab
we have
is
visible,
for example, in the highly polished state letters of the senior chancery
Abd al-Hamid
administrator belles-lettrist
adab
(dating 725-50),
which prefigure the
style of the ninth to eleventh centuries, as also the
highly literary Byzantine practices of the same period, both discussed
Abd
later.
al-Malik furthermore, for the
first
time, instituted a coinage
that reflected caliphal political power. Previously,
tated Byzantine
coins
came
in,
and Persian models, but
the gold dinar in the
in
Arab coins had
imi-
691-2 new standard- weight
ex-Roman
lands and in ex-Persian
lands the silver dirham, which had Arabic and Islamic inscriptions, and
which
after
696 abandoned images
for purely verbal decoration.
291
The
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO caliph also, already during the Second Civil prestige buildings, beginning with the
Muhammad
which
War, inaugurated expensive
Dome
of the Rock, on the spot to
reputedly miraculously travelled for a night from
Mecca, on top of the old Jewish
Temple Mount
cult centre of the
in
Jerusalem, finished in 691-2; this was followed under al-Walid by the
neighbouring al-Aqsa mosque in
in
Mosque
Jerusalem (709-1 5 ), the Great
Medina (706-10), and the huge Great Mosque of Damascus (705-16),
which
largely survives in
we have
seen.
its
original form, decorated with mosaics, as
These and other projects were by
buildings in Eurasia west of China in this period,
celebrated a triumphal and rich Islam. that
some money
at least
The Umayyads were one sign
who
is
and
now
to Syria
it
all explicitly
must be added,
from the provinces.
Muslim education to their children; of ‘Umar II ibn ‘Abd al-Aziz (717-20),
also giving a
alone out of the
but by
and they
They show,
was by now getting
the religious austerity
later generations.
far the largest-scale
Umayyad
caliphs
was regarded
as a just ruler
by
This austerity was not continued by his successors,
the stability of the regime
relatively peaceful rule of
was more assured,
Hisham, the
last
as the long
son of ‘Abd al-Malik
(724-43), shows.
The Umayyads had
a terrible press after their fall in 750.
They were
seen as dynastic rather than ruling by consensus (though the ‘Abbasids
would be just as dynastic as they); and as luxurious degenerates, enjoying themselves in their palaces and ignoring the needs of government. They
some of them
certainly built luxurious palaces;
valley
and on the Syrian/Jordanian desert
own way
as al-Walid’s
mosques, and
in
survive, in the
fringe, as
two
Jordan
ambitious in their
cases (the stuccoes of
Khirbat al-Mafjar outside Jericho, the frescoes of the Qusayr ‘Amra
bath-house east of ‘Amman) they show a profusion of (often
naked and female) that do not look very
a private decorative tradition that societies, all the
would have
‘Islamic’.
human forms
This represents
a long future in
same, rather than indicating that
its
Umayyad
Muslim
sponsors
had not read the Qur’an properly. (Actually, the Qur’an only opposes idol-worship, not
all
figurative representations of
about public representational
art
Umayyad
in
caliphs, as
we saw
was
Umayyads
just as the
a caution
certainly already accepted by the
Chapter 10, for the outsides of these
were
entirely geometric
mosque of Damascus
was.) Several of the
palaces, often heavily carved in high relief,
and non-figurative,
humans; but
did indeed have imaginative personal
292
lives, too;
but so have
THE CRYSTALLIZATION OL ARAB POLITICAL POWER, 63O-750 rulers
throughout history - including, once again, the ‘Abbasids - without
impacting very greatly on their conceptions of rule. These accusations
this
are simply a
damnatio memoriae^
like the later
Byzantine attacks on
Constantine V, rather than an accurate critique of Umayyad government.
The
critique of the
Umayyads which had
that they were Arab, not
Muslim,
even Julius Wellhausen, the great
Umayyads,
the
rulers. It
For a
nineteenth-century historian of
late
Umayyad
start, the
more shadowy
a rather
a particu-
caliphs took their religious
figure).
‘Umar
II
issued highly
and was by no means the only caliph to do so. We have one
religious edicts,
from al-Walid
It is
from ‘Abd al-Malik onwards
responsibilities very seriously, at least is
was
has lasted ever since, too:
called their realm the ‘Arab kingdom’.
larly false claim.
(Mu‘awiya
the strongest resonance
II
playboy, which
(743-4), later considered the dynasty’s most notorious
is
adamant about the
religious duties entrusted to
him by
God. These include the enforcement of religious obedience, the pursuance of ‘that which
is
most righteous
in general’, and, overall, ‘the
changed,
this
his cousin
first
in particular
Muslim
III
for the
Muslims
(744) justified his uprising against
terms. These caliphs indeed
more strongly than did
‘Abbasid generation at
felt their
the ‘Abbasids, after the fervour of
least, for
by the end of the eighth century
the task of interpreting religious authority
had mostly
social group, the ‘ulamd’ of scholars (see below. It
and
completion of Islam’; with a few phrases
and supplanter Yazid
religious role
him
could be Charlemagne at his most moralizing. Similarly,
al-Walid in exclusively
the
for
fallen to a
Chapter
new
14).
Umayyad Islam was more ‘Arabic’ than would be. Was Muhammad a prophet only for
has also been proposed that
later, universalist,
Islam
the Arabs, or for everyone?
It
has been argued that the early Arab
caution about conversion implied the former, and that only the ‘Abbasids really
opened
their religion to all comers. This, too,
stated reading. superiority,
The Arabs undoubtedly
and were
at best edgy, at
is
largely
believed in their
worst
hostile, to
an over-
own
ethnic
non-Arabs,
in-
cluding converts. Qusayr ‘Amra also includes a famous fresco of six kings, of the
Spain, and
two
Roman
unidentified countries, apparently gesturing to an adjoin-
ing fresco of ethnic as normal,
empire, Sassanian Persia, Ethiopia, Visigothic
Arab
victory.
But conversion was nonetheless seen
and plenty of mawdli reached high positions under the
Umayyads, notably Musa ibn Nusayr
(d.
716), one of the conquerors
of Spain, and several later governors of Africa. Al-Hajjaj, the emblematic
293
THE EMPIRES OE THE EAST, 55O-IOOO
Umayyad (d.
devotee, himself appointed a black African, Sa‘id ibn Jubayr
713), to the post of qadi (judge) of Kufa, even
if
he had to rescind
the appointment because the Kufans protested against a maivld holding
the role. There was, of course, a contradiction between
and Muslim
ness
inclusiveness, but
it
caliph to foot soldier, until conversion
reasons, in the ninth century;
non-Arab, but
settled
little
of the desert about
Arabs by 700 lived
and
and
al-Farazdaq
became widespread,
most of his long
and
in
vs.
it, it
can be added; the huge majority of
and were
just
competing for military
allies,
rather than their rivals, led to tribal-
rhetoric, but this
is
true of any society,
750.
jz^); he
life
Arab
Arab tribalism had by
of this mixture of positions in a single person
(d. c.
from
for different
also not just a matter of
tribe vs. tribe.
and ethnic-exclusivist actions and
An example
-by every Arab,
Their desire to secure such positions for them-
their families
and would not cease
felt
exclusive-
bedouin Arab (each claimed to be the
settled lives
civilian positions.
selves
vs.
and of course
better Muslims),
now
Arab
was
it
was
Arab
may have had bedouin
in Basra.
is
the poet
origins, but he lived
His poetic palette of camels, gazelles, tents
and cavalry warfare was more the standard rhetoric of any Arab poet than nostalgia for the desert. So were his attacks on the honour and sexual morality of people (usually poets) from rival tribes, and his
complex love poetry. Al-Farazdaq was Arab through and through; he loathed having to go to ‘an odious land, the country of the blond-haired
Greeks of ‘Amman’. But when he wrote eulogies to the caliphs (some fifteen survive, for every caliph
from ‘Abd al-Malik
imagery turns Muslim: ‘Run to Islam, scourge which desolated Iraq earth,
Sulayman
not in the least
is
justice
to
Hisham)
his
has returned to us, the
dead, there are no
more poor on
the
715-17] is the treasure of the universe.’ This is surprising, and indeed precisely recalls the mixed values [caliph
that any early medieval Christian writer had, western or eastern, as with
the glorification of Frankish ethnic
and military superiority
in
Gregory
of Tours or Einhard, Christian inclusivism notwithstanding, or indeed the ferocious hostility to Goths of their fellow-Christian Synesios at the start of the fifth century. It
made
is
not religious and moral inconsistency that
the Arabs different in our period.
Hisham was the first caliph to face the problems frontier. Instead,
of a
no longer expanding
Khazars and Turks themselves invaded from the north.
294
THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF ARAB POLITICAL POWER, 630-75O and were beaten back with some
difficulty in the
730s
(in
the case of
Marwan ibn Muhammad, an able general from the Umayyad family, who became governor of the Jazira). In the far west, too, there was a major Berber revolt in 740-43 which cut off Umayyad the Khazars, by
and even
access to Spain
Africa. But these only look like signs of
Umayyad collapse in retrospect; they were all dealt with before Hisham’s death. More serious was his famous tight-fistedness with money, for this is a sign that the caliphs had not solved the problem of tax money staying in the provinces it had been collected from. Not only Iraqis but also Egyptian
Arabs had
lost their military role
Umayyad army was overwhelmingly
by now, and the
late
Syrian except in the Berber lands
of the far west and in Khurasan in the far east, but this did not lead to
any further organizational centralization. Yazid not to move tax
money
III,
indeed, promised
outside provinces in his 744 rebel manifesto. At
Hisham’s death, furthermore, serious problems did appear, for the Syrian
army broke up
Yamani and Qaysi
into
not necessarily pro-Qaysi, but Yazid
Yamani
support;
Marwan
Ill’s
factions.
Al-Walid
revolt certainly
in the Jazira,
who
had
II
was
essentially
sought to avenge the
murdered al-Walid, ruled the Qaysi province par excellence and recruited a Qaysi army. Yazid died suddenly after a few months,
Marwan
replaced
him
as
Marwan
(744-50), but the
II
spend two years reducing Yamani resistance
latter
and
had
to
in Syria, the first time the
core caliphal province had ever been under attack.
The
years
744-6
are seen as the Third Civil
War;
this time, unlike the
seventh-century fitnas, overall Arab rule was too established to be in danger. But
Umayyad
was another matter. There were Shihte and
rule
even Kharijite revolts, with Yamani support, in Iraq in 744-8 too; these
were easy enough to confront, as Iraq no longer had an army of its own, but their appearance
And
is
a sign of a loss of confidence in the ruling dynasty.
events in Khurasan, where the
were even more
serious.
It
main eastern army was
situated,
emerged that Shihte groups had been quietly
preaching revolution there for three decades in favour of the Hashi-
miyya, the branch of Quraysh that was
The Hashimiyya included
Muhammad’s immediate family.
the descendants of Ali, of course; but they
also included the descendants of ‘Abbas, the Prophet’s uncle. In
of the sectarians,
747 one
Abu Muslim, urged open revolt outside Merv in eastern
Khurasan, and very quickly
this revolt
snowballed to include almost the
whole of the Khurasani army. Abu Muslim and
2.95
his associates
chose
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO ‘Abbasids, not Alids, as their religious figureheads,
was proclaimed caliph
as al-Saffah in 749.
ward and defeated Marwan and Egypt
Syria
in the
same
Abbasid caliphate began brother
Abu
and took
The Khurasanis moved westIrac!!
full
power
where Marwan was
year,
and when al-Saffah died
here;
for himself.
Qays-Yaman
754, his
in
Abu Muslim
The new regime ended
feud, largely because
The
killed.
(or at least
mattered
it
less
Khurasani army which was substantially non-Arab; although the
Abbasids certainly made
the provinces
end the
Yamani support, they made peace they could. The fact that they conquered all
full
with the Qaysis as soon as
use of
and could thus begin from scratch also allowed them
fiscal exclusivity
of each provincial dlwdn.
themselves in Khurasan, however, even though support.
was
750, then took over
in
JaTar, al-Mansur (754-75), soon executed
marginalized) the in a
northern
in
and Abu al-Abbas
They chose
central;
waste by
it
was
Marwan
Iraq,
it
was
to
They did not base their
main
military
which became the new caliphal province.
It
also the archetypal non-Syrian province. Syria, laid
744-6 and again by Abu Muslim
in
in
750 -
as well
749 - became a province like well. Al-Mansur’s new capital of
as by a severe earthquake, probably in
any other, and
politically suspect as
Baghdad, founded
762, soon surpassed anything Damascus had ever
in
been, and the style of the caliphate decisively changed.
The Umayyads losing
them both
rule
was
had
fuelled
largely
fell
because the dominant Syrian army
military superiority
split,
and hegemony, the sense that
their
inevitable. This allowed the sort of millenarian Shifism that
Mukhtar
in
Kufa
in the 680s,
and
also lesser rebels in
subsequent decades, to gain more support than ever before, in the heartland of Islam’s second major army, that of Khurasan. (The third
army, that of the Berbers, went
its
own way.) Abu Muslim was
mawld, and he had considerable ethnic Persian support army. As a
result,
Hashimiyya
it
was
then,
and has been
were
entirely
rule
by a new
else.
was
But the other elements of the
Arab, and they drew their support from the opposite
source, the resentment of in the east
Arab
a rate of conversion to Islam that
higher in Khurasan than anywhere rising
Khurasani
since, possible to see the
rising as the rejection of particularist
Muslim community, based on
in the
himself a
who had
of Islamized Persian
Umayyad consensus
Yamani Arab
been subjected to the local elites. It is at least clear
in
Khurasan was the
296
and of Arab settlers rule - and taxation -
soldiers,
that the
result of
breakdown of
an interaction, much
THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF ARAB POLITICAL POWER, 63O-75O greater than elsewhere,
and highly tense
as well,
between Arab
settlers
and the indigenous majority. This might have broken down into local civil war; but the Shihtes managed to convert this tension into a salvation-
based unity that overturned the political system. The salvationism was
an
illusion,
and
caliphate, as
it
religious revolts
(all
by
now
Alid) dotted the Abbasid
had that of the Umayyads before them. But the
direction of a caliphate
now
political
rooted in Iraq would be quite different
the same.
297
all
Byzantine Revival, 850-1000
In the
Book of Ceremonies^
traditionally ascribed to the
emperor Con-
stantine VII Porphyrogennitos (913-20, 945-59), probably compiled
during his second reign and updated take part in a great
one on every day
number of
in the
week
later, the
emperor
is
expected to
religious processions in Constantinople:
(the date of the dedication of the
Nea church
in
880 by
Basil
I,
867-86),
feast-days for Elijah, St Demetrios, the Elevation of the Cross,
on,
all
across the year. So are a long
leaders, tens or often
times, it is
list
and so
of secular officials and religious
hundreds of people, the wives of
and also the leaders of the circus factions of the
officials
city,
some-
whose task
emperor proceeds through
to deliver formal acclamations, as the
the different halls, chapels
May
after Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, i
and chambers of the Great Palace, out of the
Bronze (Chalke) Gate of the Palace
(this is
where the faction leaders
meet him), across the road to Hagia Sophia, the Great Church of the Byzantine empire, and, after a church service, back again. The lays
down
rules for
which clothing goes with which
of the different acclamations (some are after that
still
feast-day, the text
in Latin, four
the locations of the tables for the post-ceremony dinners.
for
which
modern
is
particularly detailed -
edition - the officials
emperor
the Resurrection;
it is
in the
it
and
variability
goes on for twelve pages of the
do not prostrate themselves
twenty-one separate all this really
these people?
in proskynesis
Great Church, because the feast celebrates
the Pentecost service
which also
appearing in church with a particularly elaborate
all
The
city),
could be complex. At Pentecost, for example, the description
in front of the
Can
hundred years
language was dying out as a spoken tongue in the
in the ritual
Book
sees the
empress
set of official wives,
offices entering in seven separate groups.
have taken place, for every feast
Who
could even have kept
298
all its
in every year,
with
variations in their
BYZANTINE REVIVAL, 85O-IOOO head? Constantine certainly took
very seriously; he
it
tells
us in the
Book’s preface, which he probably wrote himself, that he wanted to
whose
re-establish imperial ceremonial,
neglect
left
the Byzantine empire
‘without finery and without beauty’, and whose celebration would be a ‘limpid
and
reins of
perfectly clean mirror’ of imperial splendour, allowing ‘the
power
to be held with order
that Constantine did think time,
and
dignity’. It
ceremony had been
less
is
clear
from
elaborate before his
and many of the descriptions commissioned by him were
reconstructions of long-lost activity,
some probably ceremonial. As
some of them
not. But Constantine
this
really
successfully revived,
was not unique
in his interest in
we have seen, the capital was used to frequent processions
of different types, triumphs for example, even in the difficult centuries
new elements invented all the time (as with Basil’s Nea church commemoration). Even military emperors might relish triumphal entries, and, when before 850. Ceremonial was a living and changing process, with
they were in the
city,
they too respected the regular church processions:
Phokas (963-9), 968 with the envoy of
one of the most military emperors of all, Nikephoros interrupted a formal ambassadorial hearing in the western
emperor Otto
I,
II
Bishop Liutprand of Cremona, to do the
Pentecost procession. Liutprand’s embassy went badly, so he sought to depict
wore old which
Otto as negatively as he could: the dignitaries
in his report to
it
clothes, only the
lined the
emperor wore gold and
way from
the palace to
rabble, the acclamations were
lies,
jewels, the city
crowd
Hagia Sophia was a barefoot
the food at dinner
was
horrible.
Unwillingly, however, Liutprand confirms the formality of the event,
and he adds something the latter
had
said
to the account in the
little
about a crowd;
and
for
ceremony was not
just
this
amazingly elaborate, but was important to ants of the city as a whole.
Book of Ceremonies, some of
at least
They respected
the inhabit-
the logic of imperial ‘order
dignity’, too.
The high point of Byzantine hundred years
after
850 or
elaborate court culture at
so. It
all levels.
tion of elite education; this
and prosperity was the two
success
was marked
in the capital
by a very
The ninth century saw the generaliza-
was already
visible for
some people under
the Second Iconoclasm (see above. Chapter ii), but by the end of the
century no secular
without
it.
The cusp
official in the capital
figure here
could easily deal politically
was Photios
the secular official hierarchy in the 840s
(d. c.
893),
who moved up
and 850s, reaching the post of
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO protasekretis, the senior chancery post, before being abruptly
promoted
sideways to the office of patriarch of Constantinople (858-67, 87786). Photios, himself
from an
patriarch, Tarasios),
was a and
large letter collection,
and
family (he was a relative of Eirene’s
real intellectual,
author of several books, a
sermons of a considerable conceptual
a set of
He can
be seen as the main creator of the cultural tem-
intellectual
assumptions of the post-Iconoclast Orthodox
sophistication. plate
elite
church. But he also
made
normal
it
for
major secular and
figures to be educated. Ecclesiastical rigorists
as spiritual pride,
and
criticized
him
for
it,
saw
work
is
Photios’ great learning
now on they would And there was much to
but from
be more politically marginal than under Eirene. be learned. Photios’ best-known
ecclesiastical
the Bibliotheke or Library,
drafted initially in (perhaps) 845, which discusses 279 separate books in
Greek, by both pagan and detail, often
late
Roman Christian authors, in considerable
quoting from them at length (some of these works only
and analysing them critically. This was not the whole of Photios’ reading - he left out poetry, for example - but, survive in Photios’ excerpts),
even with omissions, Constantinople to a
shows the range of books that were available
it
rich,
determined, and politically powerful reader.
The Bibliotheke was popular already as
an encyclopedia
Ceremonies
was one of
(it
in effect another);
is
modern Kayseri
(d. after
in
in the tenth century,
several in circulation
presumably
- the Book of
Arethas, archbishop of Caesarea,
932), in the next generation had a copy, and
may have helped to edit it. Arethas was, in a different way, as determined a bibliophile as Photios; we have two dozen of the manuscripts made under
his supervision,
Plato
up
Arethas’
to his
own
own work
which
collect a notable array of writings
from
day, and include annotations which are often
(indeed, they are often in his handwriting). This
manuscript collection
is
certainly very atypical. But the learning Arethas
had, and which he displayed in other works in a highly elaborate
style,
was by 900 or so much more normal. There are many different signs of the complexity of
One
is
that
it
this elite culture.
included several emperors as authors. Basil
I,
literate usurper,
made
Photios in
Leo wrote a military manual, the Taktika
fact;
sure his son
Leo VI (886-912) was educated, by
poems, a monastic advice manual, numerous laws (written able personal style),
and a
wrote much of a detailed
(if
a hardly
set of homilies.
{Tactics),
in a recogniz-
Leo’s son Constantine VII
often inaccurate) account of the neighbours
300
BYZANTINE REVIVAL, 850-IOOO
modern
of Byzantium, unhelpfully entitled by early
On
editors
Administration of the Empire^ as well as commissioning the
the
Book of
Ceremonies and several other works. Even Nikephoros Phokas wrote
on the military
least notes
were worked up under
tactics
he was particularly proud
of,
which
two books, including
his supervision as
Skirmishing Warfare^ one of the best of the tenth century’s
at
On
many military
manuals. These were not dilettante writers; for these men, writing
connected prose was an essential element of
statecraft.
Secondly, this learning soon became quite difficult in tine VII largely
wrote
however, wrote
in
in a fairly direct style;
more elaborate ways,
Leo Choirosphaktes
(d. after
showpiece poems for events
on
Constan-
most of his contemporaries,
rather
more
like Arethas.
Take
920) for example: he was author of several
Leo VLs
in
a palace bath-house rebuilt
poem
itself.
reign, including a lyric panegyric
by the emperor, and also of a long
which
called the Thousand-line Theology,
sets
philosophically complex theology in a verse form
out an erudite and
itself
structured by an
own name and titles. Arethas, who was a good hater, enough to know the philosophical allusions, accused Leo
acrostic with his
and educated
of paganism; this was obviously
false,
but Leo’s Neoplatonism led him
to argue that only the educated (particularly experts in astrology, as
Leo also was) could understand God
at
mystikos, or private secretary, to Basil
all. I,
Leo Choirosphaktes was
and under Leo VI was an
895-904; we have a set of his letters to and from the Bulgar khagan Symeon (893-927) which show the same ambassador to the Bulgarians
literariness.
in kind,
in
Symeon, who had been educated in the capital, could respond
which was
a
good
thing, for in the
910s and 920s other
figures acting for the emperors, the patriarch
Nicholas
I
(d.
and former mystikos
Theodore Daphnopates
925) and the pro
961), also sought to impress the Bulgarian ruler with Platonic or allusions.
Theodore much
complex symbolism
later
to the
Heliodoros and Herodotos bishop of Synnada
(d. c.
cite
Plutarch, Hesiod, Sophokles; this
and admitted
wore
his learning as
much on
Homeric
(959-63); Homer,
The
letters
of Leo,
even more classical authors, adding
Leo
at least
he read too
in his will that
II
find their place here.
1005),
(d. after
wrote a prose panegyric with notably
emperor Romanos all
literary
his sleeve as
had
much any of
a sense of
humour,
lay literature, but he his predecessors.
This attraction to a past literature recalls the culture of the Carolingian elite in
the ninth century, as
we
shall see, in the density of
301
its
allusiveness
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO and the joy
words
in
felt
by
authors. (Cf. also Chapter 14, for the
its
ninth-century Arabs.) But there
a difference.
is
The Carolingian kings
developed an educated theological culture around them as part of a
programme
of moral reform;
gian political crises were
all
become
for people to
important solely because of their intellectual
politically
tuals. In
was possible
it
ability;
Carolin-
mediated, and moralized about, by intellec-
Byzantium, the sense of religious mission was
less
constant,
and, of the figures just mentioned, only Photios could easily be said to
have had a
programme based on a worked-out theological or position. The others were members of an official elite,
political
philosophical
who saw
their education as part of their standing in that elite; they
an entry into and
literary culture as
as a guide to
how
tine VII; ‘order
justification of political
to conduct that power. This
and
dignity’
were
is
power, not
even true for Constan-
his touchstones,
moral reform and salvation. Nor were
used
not Carolingian-style
there, for a long time,
any import-
ant theological disagreements inside the Byzantine political world after the end of Iconoclasm. Indeed, after Nicholas mystikos, even patriarchs
were
relatively
The aim of it
was
marginal politically for a century or more.
the tenth-century Byzantine educated elite
Roman
to restore the
Romans.
past,
In the fourth century,
was
different:
which belonged to them, the true
membership of the
political elite
was
closely associated with a literary education, as with Libanios, Synesios
and
Basil of
Caesarea
Apollinaris). So should literary
language
did to late
it
West, Ausonius and,
forms.
We
fellow’).
Roman Basilika
Roman
it
empire,
remarks about the lack of literary culture of the military at
Romanos
the search for a
law; begun by Basil
I
I
own throne, as Roman renewal led
admittedly usurped his
And
Sidonius
sticking closely as
begin again, as in the late
emperors (Constantine VII sneered
who had
later,
be again, and indeed was. The tenth-century
moved away from spoken Greek,
Roman
to find snobbish
(or, in the
Lekapenos, 920-44, a
and Photios, and completed by Leo VI, the
Code and Novels. This was henceforth all
illiterate
early to the revival of
was the translation and rationalization of
actually was) the basis of
‘common,
Justinian’s Digest,
to be (and, as far as
we can
the legal practice of the empire, as
it
tell,
had
not been since the crises of the seventh century. Literary, ceremonial,
and
legal re-creation
went together; with the renewed confidence of the
period, the 3 50-year gap separating Leo
could be conceptually abolished.
302
and Constantine from Justinian
BYZANTINE REVIVAL, 85O-IOOO Middle Byzantine court culture has often been seen as
static
and
even modern commentators can be found arguing along these Tenth-century writers would be delighted;
But
not a true account,
it is
classical
all
this
was
was not
in
the same. For a start, beside
any of
all this
in all these
their secular fourth- to sixth-century
forebears. Biblical allusions are in fact
much commoner
works
in their
way that would have appalled Prokopios,
than are Plato and Homer, in a for example. But things
lines.
their aim, indeed.
vocabulary there was a dense theological culture
writers, as there
arid;
were also constantly changing. Ceremonies
were always being renewed and developed, even while claiming to be immemorial. They could also be sabotaged, with sometimes sharp ical effects. illegal in
After Leo
VPs
polit-
fourth marriage in 906, which was
flatly
canon law. Patriarch Nicholas banned him from Hagia Sophia.
momentous than excommunication, for it meant court ceremonial we began with in this chapter was thrown
This was almost more that
all
the
into confusion;
Leo had
to force Nicholas to resign a year later,
and he
The
win on
did not regain his office until Leo’s death.
patriarch did not
that occasion, but a
weaker emperor would have
to have
rather more. After the
murder of Nikephoros Phokas
in
instigated by his
nephew and
successor John
own wife
the cooperation of Nikephoros’
I
conceded
969, which was
Tzimiskes (969-76), with
(and John’s lover) Theophano,
John too was banned from Hagia Sophia by Patriarch Polyeuktos (d.
demanded
970); Polyeuktos
expel her from the
city,
that
and repent
into the church to be crowned,
and
John must give up Theophano and his crime, before this
time the emperor gave
denser a ceremonial system, the more easily points,
he could even get
it
can be used to make
major ones as here, more subtle ones elsewhere. Byzantine
cians played with their system,
hands, as a direct
The Byzantine
and
it
The
in.
politi-
changed, steadily, under their
result.
court, with
all its
processions, had in fact
become
a
hugely elaborate stage, on which an equally complex politics could be fought out between rival players. The network of offices and ever
more
crucial parts of a hierarchy
which was focused
titles
directly
were
on the
emperor, and which underpinned the system of imperial power. This could
itself
be subverted, in the sense that emperors could be removed or
marginalized, but the
was more
solid than
century, and indeed
power of the system was nonetheless maintained. any other
more
political
It
system in Europe after the sixth
solid even than the parallel structures of the
303
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO caliphate, except in the
first
century of ‘Abbasid power, as
next chapter. This was not, however, a ‘theatre
in the
we
shall see
state’, a political
system only consisting of ceremonial, as on Bali in the nineteenth century, as described
on
by Clifford Geertz. Ceremonial cost money
and so did
Bali, of course),
birds
full
of mechanical singing
which so impressed Liutprand of Cremona on
embassy to Constantine VII
in
his earlier, happier,
they were intended to - impressing
(as
949
it
-The other aspects of
official status.
imperial self-presentation, like the bronze tree
(so did
envoys was a major aim of Byzantine ceremonial), cost money too. The Byzantines could be very direct about
ceremony in
in the
with the salary-paying
this, as
week before Palm Sunday
also witnessed by Liutprand
949: the emperor distributed bags of gold coins which were put on
the shoulders of each senior court
and military
three-day period - for there were so officials
pound
of gold coins for his
motivation of the whole to wield
week by
paid the following
Constantine that he would
many
like
it
spirit.)
official in turn,
officials to
pay - with
lesser
the chamberlain. (Liutprand told
better
if
he could take part, and got a
This procedure unveils the underlying
official class:
they needed paid office, not only
power (which few of them would ever
but to sustain their prosperity and
across a
lifestyle.
As
really
manage
in the time of
to do),
Theodosius
or Justinian, the solidity of the state depended on an effective tax system. Since the early ninth century, this had again,
and only
become more and more organized
could permit the ceremonial world of Constan-
this
Liutprand in 949 certainly did not miss the point, and even in 968, however grudgingly, he had not forgotten it. Byzantine
tine VII to exist at
rulers,
all.
by now, were simply richer than anyone
else in Christian
Europe;
by 949, indeed, most Muslim rulers did not match them either. It was this that their extreme formality was designed above all else to emphasize,
and indeed did
The
stage
so.
we have been
looking at was
Theodora and her advisers the proclamation of thereafter
on the
first
III
format at
least,
a
day commemorated
Sunday of Lent by another formal procession,
Book of Ceremonies
tells us).
(842-67) was dominated by others,
herself,
chamberlain, Basil. Basil capped his rapid
rise
all
Theodora’s son then her brother
Bardas, then, after Bardas’ murder in 866, by the former groom,
304
by
with the end of Iconoclasm and
Orthodoxy (on ii March,
across the city, as the
Michael
in 843,
set, in this
- unusual even
in
now
Byzan-
BYZANTINE REVIVAL, 850-IOOO
we
tium, where ancestry was less crucial than in the West, as shortly - by murdering Michael in as Basil
I.
867 as
Michael had to be subjected
shall see
and becoming emperor
well,
campaign of
after his death to a
vilification as
an inept drunkard to
stable regime,
and
a family succession for his ‘Macedonian’ dynasty that
lasted nearly
two
centuries,
up
justify this,
but Basil established a
to 1056, longer than
any family had
managed before in the history of the empire. The politico-military situation facing Basil was in most respects a favourable one. Above all, the ‘Abbasid caliphate had dissolved into political crisis after 861, thus neutralizing the strongest power in Eurasia and Byzantium’s most immediate
threat;
Arab
if
reign. This freed
war had under Constantine V,
civil
military protagonists
never recovered, except for
Leo Vi’s
a generation roughly coinciding with
Byzantines, as
it
they could
manage
it.
Already
in
up the
to be real
863 the emir
main border warlords, was
of Melitene (modern Malatya), one of the
defeated and killed on a raid to the Ankara region; in the 870s Basil
went onto the Cilicia
offensive, leading raids over the
and the Euphrates
valley. This
Tauros mountains into
protagonism remained. Even
in
managed to concrete hegemony
the generation of ‘Abbasid revival, the Byzantines at least
hold the frontier, and they gained an increasingly
over the lawless borderlands; Basil destroyed the autonomous (appar-
Tauros
ently heretical) Christian Paulicians of the
and
his successors
Armenians and
had
steadily
more
in the 870s,
influence over the
He was no more
fell
in 878),
by Arab raids
in
Sicily (its capital
but he took advantage of the confusion produced
mainland southern
Italy,
and conquered most of
himself (not in person, this time) in 880-88, turning the principalities,
much
880s then
successful than his predecessors in
holding back the long-drawn-out Arab conquest of Syracuse
newly unified
their Bagratuni kings as well. Basil in the
looked westwards.
and he
of
whose
This meant that, even though
territory he Sicily
had taken,
it
Lombard
into client states.
had gone, Byzantium maintained
a
strong western presence for another two centuries.
The most obvious target for Byzantine aggression was the Bulgar khaganate, which had dominated the central and northern Balkans for fifty years, since the time of Krum; we need to focus on the latter, and its
relations with Constantinople, for a
the Bulgar political system
excavation in
its
worked
is
moment not at
successive capitals, Pliska
305
as a result. Exactly
all clear.
how
Archaeological
and (from the 890s)
Preslav,
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO
show considerable wealth and, in the latter, architectural ambition; so does the Great Fence which bounded Bulgar rule to the south. But what khagans had
sort of fiscal infrastructure the
tribute
from
did so.
They could be very
their subjects, but
semi-autonomous armies.
If
is
not certain
it is
hard to
how
see;
systematically they
(boilades
or bolyary) to supply their
they were to withstand the Byzantines, freed from eastern
borrow techniques of
defensive needs by the 8 60s, they needed to
government from them
The
fairly fast.
first
was
of these
and the Christian church. The Byzantines attacked Bulgaria
Khagan
on perhaps
effective militarily, but they relied
aristocrats
they took
Christianity in 864,
and
Boris 1(852-89) immediately agreed to be baptized in 865,
and
to allow missionaries in.
It
was such
a
prompt concession
have been on the cards for some time, although
- Boris faced rebellion almost
at once.
was
it
far
that
it
must
from popular
The Bulgar mission nonetheless
continued, and became a political football between the rival missionary projects of Constantinople
who
whom
two churches were already bad,
Relations between the ruler Rastislav,
and Rome, both of
Boris invited for the
in.
Moravian
ruled a powerful Sclavenian polity in the Frankish
borderlands (see below. Chapter 20), had in 863 invited Byzantine
and Methodios,
missionaries, Constantine-Cyril
than the Latin missions which Pope Nicholas
to proselytize, rather
(858-67) considered
I
proper. Nicholas protested about this missionary rivalry, but without effect.
More
successfully, he pressed the usurping
insecure Basil
I
to
that his election
with
Basil:
remove Photios
and
as patriarch in 867,
still
politically
on the grounds
was uncanonical, although Photios soon made peace
he was Leo
VPs
and became patriarch
tutor by the early 870s,
Rome and
again in 877. Competition between
conversion of two Christianizing
Constantinople for the
polities, the restored Photios’
under-
standable resentment at papal interference, and growing differences over Christological details, sent relations between the
worst
crisis since
two churches
Iconoclasm.
The Moravians and Bulgars eventually accepted and the former went Latin, the in the 8 80s the tension
Boris, in particular,
Greek choice:
into the
latter
Greek; once
geopolitical logic,
this finally
between the churches quietened
had got substantial concessions
in 870, the
down again. But in return for his
Bulgar church was recognized as autonomous
outside of Constantinople, with
welcomed Methodios’
happened
its
missionaries,
own archbishop. After 885, Boris now expelled from Moravia, into
306
BYZANTINE REVIVAL, 85O-IOOO his
kingdom, and adopted the Slavonic
had created
Slav Orthodoxy. late
Moravians
for the
The
as his
liturgy that Constantine-Cyril
own -
Cyrillic alphabet
it still
exists as the core of
was developed
in Preslav in the
ninth century, too, and a Slavic religious literature followed quickly.
Slavic also slowly
became the dominant language
ate, largely as a result of these
an increasingly Byzantinizing
in the
developments. The Bulgars were creating style of rule,
but were giving
separate from Constantinopolitan influence. This stood
when Bulgar-Byzantine
9 ^ 3 ~^ 4
it
emperor
in
920-24, from
in
an identity
in
good stead
both of which the Bulgars were
^
notably successful, raiding the suburbs of Constantinople
and again
it
became cool again under Symeon,
relations
with wars in 894-7
Bulgar khagan-
an echo of Krum. Symeon took the
itself in title
913,
basileus,
913 or shortly after, and was feared to be aiming for the throne of Byzantium too - he called himself (tsar,
‘Caesar’, in Slavic) in
‘emperor of the Bulgars and Romans’ by 9 24 (why don’t you call yourself caliph as well, Theodore Daphnopates retorted). But Constantinople’s walls held,
and Symeon
returned. This
died;
under
his successor Peter
was the apex of Bulgar power and
status;
(927-68) peace under Peter we
begin to find more and more lead seals, signs of a literate Byzantinizing administration, particularly in Preslav; the Bulgar archbishop had been
upgraded to a patriarch, too. The Bulgar
state
even developed
its
own
popular heresy, Bogomilism, during Peter’s reign. The Bogomils were
and believed that the world had been created by the
dualists,
devil; this
enabled them to generate a social critique of the growing differentiations inside Bulgar society, as
Cosmas
is
made
the Priest in the 960s.
Cathar heresy which was so
The Bogomils
influential in
and thirteenth
centuries; their beliefs
liturgy as the
most
The Bulgar
but
these legacies, at least.
left
Leo VI, hemmed reviving ‘Abbasids
had been, but he held military
handbooks
some
we have
in the
as
were second only to the Slavonic Symeon’s and
we
Peter’s
shall see,
by resurgent Bulgars on one side and more
on the other, was his
by
directly influenced the
state fell fairly rapidly in the end, as
in
in Slavic
western Europe in the twelfth
lasting cultural exports of
Bulgaria. it
an attack on them
clear in
less
briefly
of a military figure than Basil
ground, and his Taktika revived the genre of
to considerable effect; a dozen similar handbooks,
seen drafted by other emperors, follow in Byzantium
next century. Leo focused on law and on administrative reform.
He was
also concerned with the centrality
307
and survival of
his
and
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO and the church
Basil’s dynasty,
Karbonopsina, was caused by
crisis
over his fourth marriage, to
his iron
determination to safeguard the
legitimacy of his only son, Constantine VII,
when
she was
still
who was born
Leo’s mistress. Constantine was only eight
Zoe when he to
succeeded as sole emperor in 913, however, and -rivals fought over
was
a
who
to be regent, or perhaps emperor, for the next seven years: the
re-enthroned Patriarch Nicholas, the domestikos ton scholon tice,
Zoe
the head of the eastern army) Constantine Doukas,
coup
in
who
(in
prac-
attempted
913, Tsar Symeon, whose second war began in the same year,
Zoe Karbonopsina herself, who took over the regency council in 914 and ruled the empire until 919, and finally the head of the navy,
who
Lekapenos,
Romanos
staged a successful coup in 919, married his daughter
Helena to Constantine, and became senior emperor
in
920. The Mace-
donian dynasty had already achieved too much status to be
easily over-
thrown, and Romanos (through Theodore Daphnopates) indignantly
when
protested his loyalty to Constantine
But Constantine, though
still
at court,
writing to
Symeon
in 924.
was marginalized, and, when
he finally overthrew the Lekapenoi in 945 and ruled directly, saw himself as in his
second reign, with a quarter of a century’s break between
the two.
Romanos
I
had an exceptionally
scholon, John Kourkouas,
who
loyal
and able domestikos ton
held the post from
Romanos was overthrown by his sons, a month own coup. After the Bulgar peace in 927, John and boldly on the eastern
dominance
in the
922
to 944,
when
before Constantine’s
raided systematically
frontier for fifteen years, achieving military
borderlands as the ‘Abbasids folded into
crisis again.
He
turned this into conquest in 934 when he took Melitene; he had considerable influence in Armenia; and in 944 he forced the emir of
Edessa not only to Christian
relics,
make peace but
the
also to
Mandylion with
hand over one of the great
Christ’s miraculous image, to be
held henceforth in the palace in Constantinople. Constantine VII as
returning as
945 appointed Bardas Phokas as domestikos ton scholon, he did to a family which had held this position for most of
the reigns of
Leo VI and Zoe,
sole ruler in
as
we
shall see later.
Bardas and then his
who
succeeded him as domestikos in 955, followed John Kourkouas in pushing eastwards; Nikephoros in particular sought
son Nikephoros,
958 he took Samosata on the Euphrates, and by 962, under Constantine’s son Romanos II, he was in control of the whole
to conquer. In
308
BYZANTINE REVIVAL, 85O-IOOO upper Euphrates
valley; in
962-5 he took
Roman
Antioch, the old
965 Cyprus, in 969 As important was his
Cilicia, in
capital of the East.
conquest of Crete in 961, the strategic key to the southern Aegean,
which the Byzantines had unsuccessfully
back several times
tried to take
since 827.
Nikephoros Phokas, the most successful general
capital,
died with young heirs
II
the children Basil
co-emperors.
own
widow Theophano,
married Romanos’
He
II
was
Romanos Lekapenos’ coup when in 963. He moved swiftly to the
thus in a good position to repeat
Romanos
for centuries,
and Constantine VIII
then returned to war, the
and, as in 920, reduced
to the status of marginal first
emperor to command
969 did his nephew and murderer John Tzimiskes, who was John Kourkouas’ great-nephew as well; John attacked on the eastern frontier as far south as Beirut, and by the end his
troops since Basil
I.
So
after
976 all the Arab rulers of the rest of Syria paid him tribute. John was also, for the first time in this period, successful in the Balkans. Svyatoslav, prince of the Rus of Kiev (see below. Chapter 20), of his reign in
attacked Bulgaria in 967, probably at Nikephoros’ instigation, and took
969 and overran the Bulgar state, threatening well. John in 971 pushed the Rus out of Bulgaria
Preslav; he returned in
Byzantine territory as in a
quick campaign, the reverse of the long-drawn-out and inconclusive
Bulgar wars of the
last
two
centuries.
He drew
supremacy and deposed Tsar Boris
his military
the logical conclusion to II
(968-71) as well,
in a
formal ceremony in the forum of Constantine in Constantinople. Bulgar
power, fearsome for so long, thus suddenly collapsed, and John ruled
from the Danube
Romanos
I
to the Euphrates, over a third as
had ruled
much
again as
at his accession.
These conquests were not, on one
were more experienced
in defensive
and perhaps they were
right, for the
level,
enormous. The Byzantines
than in offensive war, and they were too cautious to go for the big sweep, down to Jerusalem or Baghdad -
one example of
it
in the
the conquest of Bulgaria, did not hold, at least initially.
concerned with
solidity,
the eastern lands back;
it
and
this
A
work
They were most
they obtained. The Arabs did not get
was only the Seljuk Turk conquest of the Arab
world and eastern Byzantium reverse the
960S-970S,
alike in the
1060S-1070S that would
of Nikephoros Phokas and John Tzimiskes.
recurrent historiography of eleventh-century Byzantium sees a civ-
ilian faction
and a military faction
at loggerheads,
309
each rising or falling
THE EMPIRES OE THE EAST, 55O-IOOO with each successive reign. This century, and
it is
even
less true
an over-simple view of the eleventh
is
of the tenth.
It
might seem that there was
Macedonian
a civilian, not to say bookish, legitimist
which
tradition,
was marginalized by soldier-emperors, Romanos I, Nikephoros II, John I.
We know
Nikephoros
that
himself constrained by ceremonial,
felt
even though he appears to have carried
and there were and
out
when he was
certainly cultural differences
Leo VI or Constantine
a
it
VII.
between
But Romanos,
who
in the capital;
all
these figures
started in the navy,
spent most of his reign in the capital, just as Leo and Constantine did. Military officials were as important in court ceremonies as civilian ones, unless they were
and
tary
on campaign.
civilian offices, as
who was
A
single career could include
with Nikephoros Ouranos
both mili-
(d. after
1007),
keeper of the imperial inkstand, with a responsibility for
producing documents,
but then became a notably successful
in the 980s,
997-9, and as ruler of Antioch after 999 too wrote a military manual, but also poetry and hagiography).
general, against Bulgaria in (he
A
civilian official
could have a military son or brother, too, as with
which produced Romanos
the Argyroi family, mostly a military one,
Argyros (he would become Emperor Romanos literary
III,
1028-34), a highly
eparch (governor) of Constantinople and economic manager of
Hagia Sophia, as well as in Italy
his brothers Basil
and on the eastern
frontier.
There was no structural
opposition between the two traditions. career of Basil Lekapenos
was made
eunuch by
a
(d. after
his father.
and Leo, who were generals
A
good indication of
985), bastard son of
He
and
after all his
this
Romanos
is
I,
the
who
rose in the civil administration, as
eunuchs generally did (though even he fought in 958),
political
in at least
one campaign,
945 supported the coup of Constantine VII, who was brother-in-law; he gained the title of parakoimomenos, in
guardian of the imperial bedchamber, and was effectively head of the
civ-
government for the whole period 945-85, except for Romanos IPs four-year reign. He actively supported the rule in turn of Constanilian
tine VII,
Nikephoros Phokas, John Tzimiskes, and then
1025)
in the difficult first
death.
He changed
John
(he too
sides
decade of the
when he had
was complicit
wealth from his
office;
in
II
(976-
latter’s sole reign after
John’s
to,
Basil
notably from Nikephoros to
Nikephoros’ murder), and gained great
he was not necessarily a lovable man. But he
represented a continuity which successive emperors could not easily reject.
The
civil
government of the
3
capital
10
and the heads of the armies
BYZANTINE REVIVAL, 850-IOOO needed each other, the second to defend the Basil
first
first,
was anyway the
II
Macedonian heir, he was
to
produce the funds to pay the second, the
and they both knew
heir of both political strands: the legitimate
also an ascetic military figure in the
Phokas mould (he never married or had learning.
it.
Michael Psellos
in the
children),
io6os stressed
Nikephoros
and uninterested
in
his dislike of ostentation,
within the framework of a ceremonial practice which Basil, too, respected: ‘Basil took part in his processions
and gave audience
to his
governors clad merely in a robe of purple, not the very bright purple, but simply purple of a dark hue, with a handful of gems as a distinction.’
He
spent most of his
example, he was not
mark
of
life
campaigning; in 991-5, for
in the capital at all,
with the result that there was
a four-year vacancy in the patriarchate, for any patriarchal election
needed imperial participation. But he was also highly attentive to taxation,
and rumour grew
financial surplus so
to hold
at the
end of
his extremely long reign of a
huge that tunnels had to be
built
under the palace
it.
Basil did not establish his position easily. In his early years he faced
revolts
from generals who aspired to repeat the careers of Nikephoros
and John
I.
First
was Bardas
frontier (976-9); in
978
Skleros,
Basil sent
doux of Mesopotamia on
II
the far
Nikephoros’ nephew Bardas Phokas
the younger, back in the family office of domestikos ton scholon, to
push the rebels over the Bulgaria,
where
frontier. Basil
on the western edge of the former Bulgarian
revolts
state (in the area of
was himself more concerned with
modern
Serbia and Macedonia) were beginning by
the late 970s to turn into an attempt to reverse the Byzantine conquest.
who defeated Basil himself in 986 in what is now western Bulgaria, and who already by then controlled
Their leader was by the mid-98os Samuel,
all
Symeon and
Peter’s
Preslav. After the
986
former realm except the old heartland around defeat, eastern revolts
Skleros returned in 987; Bardas Phokas
was
broke out again. Bardas
sent against
him once more,
but this time he declared himself emperor as well, allied himself with Skleros,
and then imprisoned him.
A rebel Phokas, given Nikephoros IPs
heroic reputation,
was much more dangerous
for Basil. Bardas
had controlled
the eastern armies anyway,
and they remained
all
to him. Basil to confront
him had
to seek help
Phokas
from the Rus, and
loyal
in
989
he defeated and killed Bardas Phokas at Abydos on the Dardanelles. Skleros surrendered a year later, and
was
quite well treated by Basil.
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO This was unusual; Basil normally treated opponents savagely (including
even prisoners of war). But Skleros’ revolt, at
was
much
that
Basil
II
second time around,
least
less threatening.
ruled without trouble after 989, and remained fully in control
both of the armies and the palace (he had removed Basil Lekapenos in 985).
He
did not continue the 960S-970S focus on the
partly because
Arab power
becoming stronger again,
as
in Syria, in the
we
Arab
frontier,
form of the Fatimids, was
shall see in the next chapter;
most of
his
wars were with Samuel. They took a long time. Samuel was by no means
on the base,
defensive,
and attacked
far into
where he declared himself
Greece from his Macedonian
tsar in 997.
and only
that Basil destroyed Samuel’s army,
\vas not until
It
in
1018 did he
1014
mop up
resistance. Basil did fight in the East as well, all the same; here, he
was
mostly interested in gaining hegemony over Armenian and Georgian princes. His successes here
pushed the frontier as
far as the
modern
Turkey-Iran border, further east than even the Romans had reached,
though independent Armenian kings Basil’s control here
was not
still
fully stable;
remained
Armenians were hard to
But the very quantity of his campaigns, over so a certain stability, even in the
war economy, across
fifty
easily
absorbed into
years (seventy,
if
one
a reputation for
themselves
if
heavy taxation, but
he died with
money
reserves.
his
rule.
decades, created
certainly in Bulgaria. his
starts
Phokas’ campaigns), became structural to the
had
many
Armenian lands - and
Armenians and Bulgars were
in the capital at Ani.
own
armies.
The
with Nikephoros
state. Basil
may have
wars must have paid for
And
this
was so even though
he relied almost entirely on a professional, and well-paid and equipped,
army, the tagmata^ the expanded heir of the eighth- and ninth-century specialist regiments, as well as
mercenaries from wherever he could get
them. In the early eleventh century Byzantium looked in good shape.
None
of Basil’s successors for
fifty
years had his (rather grim) charisma,
but the state did not falter until the Turkish onslaught in the 1070s.
By the mid-tenth century, most of the surnames. This was a
when nicknames were were not always male-line
new development; less
stable, as
who
it is
Byzantium had
far less true of the ninth,
often inherited. Even in the tenth, surnames
with John Tzimiskes
Kourkouas descendant, or
Lekapenoi,
political players in
else
(‘the Short’)
who was
a
not always used, as with the
are called that in eleventh-century, not tenth-century
312
BYZANTINE REVIVAL, 85O-IOOO Although we can track a few
texts.
back into the
aristocratic families
eighth century, most of the greatest families of the tenth were themselves
new: the Phokades began with Phokas, apparently an ordinary
fairly
soldier
promoted by
Basil
the 870s onwards; the
contemporaries of
If
in the past, there
Kourkouas and
first
Basil; the
first
Argyroi and Doukai are
had
these families
was no need
first
to
documented
Nikephoros
aristocratic ancestors further
in
I
back
to recall them; family identity could begin
Leo VI could happily use the (borrowed) opinion
here.
from
Lekapenos were also
went further back, but only
in the 840s; the Skleroi
the early ninth.
to several provincial governorships
I
in the
Taktika
that generals should not be of distinguished origin, for those of obscure origin
would have much more
to prove; this view
been shared by his Phokas contemporaries, and controversial to
many around
when complaining
in a
would
certainly have
may
not have been
900. But even Basil
II
a century later,
law of 996 about the misdeeds of
‘the
powerful’
{dynatoi), explicitly envisaged that a dynatos could be ‘originally a
man, [who] was afterwards granted glory and
good
fortune’; his idea of
poor
and raised to the height of
titles
an old family was a domestikos
ton scholon whose descendants were ‘likewise dynatoi with success
extending over seventy or a hundred years’. Although take the phrase too
The tenth century
literally, this
certainly
saw
we should
not
image, too, only takes us back to Leo.
a crystallizing aristocracy with a visible
family consciousness, and elements of that consciousness can be traced
back to the ninth century
concept of the special nature
at least, but the
of high-status ancestry was not dominant as yet. Official titles certainly did figure in aristocratic identity,
hand.
And
had lands that were above
so did land. All these families
on the Anatolian plateau and the eastern
army under
It is
all
Phokades and
frontier: the
Argyroi in Cappadocia, the Skleroi close to Melitene. ing that they rose in the
on the other
hardly surpris-
these circumstances, although the
quasi-chivalric values of the great nostalgic border epic of the twelfth
century. Digenes Akrites, cannot yet be seen in our sources.
were the most consistently ambitious of these families are also the best documented,
and they can serve
son Nikephoros Phokas the elder was the cally
prominent; he was,
first
like his father, a
and became domestikos ton scholon
of
as
in
The Phokades
our period, but
an example. Phokas’
them
to
become
politi-
personal favourite of Basil
at the start of
Leo Vi’s
I,
reign, a post
he held for nearly a decade. His son Leo held the same post under Zoe,
313
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO and was seriously defeated by the Bulgars sacked
in
I
had him
919, and he was blinded after a revolt. Leo’s brother Bardas
in
was excluded from power under Romanos, who ingly)
Romanos
917;
saw
the
Phokades
as rivals, but was, as
clearly (and unsurpris-
we have
seen, recalled
by
Constantine VII, and he and his son Nikephoros the younger ran the armies of the empire for twenty-five years,
as domestikoi, then as
first
emperor. Nikephoros’ brother Leo was a general too, though a
popular one, including
in the capital,
where he became a
less
civil official
during Nikephoros’ reign; that, plus a lack of speed in reaction, meant that he could not reverse
John Tzimiskes’ coup. After
however, he too was blinded. Bardas the younger, rebel,
was
his son;
much
the family a revolt
from
it is
hardly surprising that Basil
II
domestikos then did not promote
But Bardas’ son Nikephoros could
after 989.
Cappadocian base
his
first
a revolt in 971,
in
still
stage
1022, and his son or nephew
Bardas tried again in 1026. These two were respectively killed and blinded,
and the family
is
The Phokades ended remembered
their
family
history
as
rebels,
and were
fact, until
Nikephoros IPs Bardas the younger’s revolt in 987-9 - they
different: they
were one of the most established families of
for that thereafter, but until the outrage of
death - and, in
were quite
not heard of again.
military leaders in the empire, holding the
supreme
command
of the
East for forty-five out of the hundred years before that revolt, not to
speak of a string of provincial
Cappadocia, and the occasional
Romanos
I,
commands
in the
civil office as well.
Anatolikon and
Out
of
in
power under
they were by no means forgotten, and this must have been
true even under Basil
II if
the last Nikephoros
Phokas could reappear
in
1022 (apparently persuaded by the governor of the Anatolikon, Nike-
who needed him as the popular figurehead for a own behalf). The point is that, although they had a
phoros Xiphias,
bid for
power on
landed
his
base they could retire to - and plenty of land elsewhere, including in the capital
- they only
Without lions’.
it,
as an
really existed as
major players when they held
Armenian chronicler put
The Phokades had
it,
office.
they ‘ranted like caged
a family identity, to be sure, but
it
could only
really be expressed
through office-holding. Wealth, land, and three or
four generations by
now
of ancestry were by no means enough on their
own. This was even truer of the other the sources at Aristocratic
all
when out
families,
who
hardly appear in
of office.
landowning was nonetheless increasing. An early example.
314
BYZANTINE REVIVAL, 85O-IOOO the
first
really
wealthy private owner
since the sixth century, first
was Danelis
we have
(d. c.
clear
890),
documentation for
who was one
of Basil Fs
patrons before he came to imperial attention; she reputedly
over eighty estates in southern Greece. The figure ated, but the order of in the East,
may
magnitude might be a guide to
where most of the powerful
owned
well be exagger-
aristocratic wealth
were based. Certainly
families
emperors thought that dynatoi were gaining too much power localities.
Romanos
Every emperor from
I
in
928
to Basil
II
in the
in
996
(except John Tzimiskes) issued laws against the oppressions of ‘the
powerful’, laws which survive as a group, and which refer to each other.
The emperors sought
to
make
who were sometimes
peasants,
in the great
dynatoi to buy land from
difficult for
it
forced to
famine of 927-8), or
else
because of misfortune
sell
(as
simply because they were intimi-
dated by local aristocrats. Neighbours and village communities were to
have the right to buy such land back;
the peasants were soldiers (that
thematic armies, an element of the Byzantine military rather
in the
is,
if
marginalized by the tagmata in this period) they could not all,
unless to poorer soldiers.
Romanos
I
in
934
said this
sell
land at
was because
land accumulation by dynatoi threatened tax collection; Constantine VII in
947/8 was worried that peasant soldiers might enter the
996 provided anecdotes expropriating whole villages, and also envisaged that
private armies of ‘the powerful’; Basil
of state officials
dynatoi might force merchants to
onto their lands.
II
in
move markets (and
thus market
tolls)
Who the dynatoi actually were was rather vaguely and
inconsistently defined in this legislation, but certainly included state officials,
and there
part of them.
It
is
no doubt that the
Skleroi,
Phokades,
etc.
formed
has been easy to see ‘the powerful’ as threatening
everyone in the empire, free peasant owners, the organization of the
army, the the
whole
It is
fiscal
system, and, thanks to private armies and regular revolts,
state.
a mistake to try
and
talk this legislation away, as
some
historians
do, in an understandable reaction against the apocalyptic readings of
What we
were certainly more
some
earlier writers.
ically
prominent than before, and therefore presumably
the tenth century,
what
aristocrats
and indeed
later; this sort
demonstrably do
fore unreasonable to
we
call aristocrats
deny
it
in other times
polit-
richer, across
of local oppression
and
places;
it is
is
there-
for tenth-century Byzantium, given that
actually have an unusually explicit set of texts.
315
Nor would
it
be
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 550-IOOO surprising that emperors feared that
than from
from
‘the powerful’
have
political clout);
in the late
Roman
it
always
it
would be harder
‘the poor’ (that is,
is,
to collect taxes
who
everyone
and similar problems are well
did not attested
why we might too much when
period. But there are plenty of reasons
not want to rely on the intensity of imperial rhetoric looking at such texts.
First, the
tax system was not under threat, as
accumulation of reserves, despite constant war, shows. Sec-
Basil IPs
ondly, local oppression, precisely because ‘the powerful’ always do
was
less
threatening to the state than the emperors claimed. Village
communities were certainly well entrenched, including tax-paying, especially in Anatolia;
would be
it
Roman
said,
the soldiers
‘it is
emperors to
terms as well, II
and the poor from persons who have attained the same
was echoing the laws against
the fourth century.) But this does not
mean
social mobility of
that peasants were univer-
under threat.
It is
also not at
all
obvious that great landowners really did dominate
the countryside by the late tenth century.
They did
Greece, as Danelis already implies, and as
Thebes Cadaster, a
brief local tax survey
in parts of
large
later eleventh century,
owners
central
and eastern Anatolia. But
earliest, tenth-century,
show monasteries Basil
II
in
some core
aristocrats
in
an area north
We could hardly
of Athens (although a few peasant proprietors as well).
doubt that the situation was the same
southern
further confirmed by the
is
from the
which shows a preponderance of relatively
and
in
our wish that dynatoi purchase from dynatoi only,
status as they have’, he
sally
law and
when Nikephoros
as befits a century as Roman-revivalist as the tenth;
966/7
in
logical for
seek to support them. (They did so in quite late
in
it,
aristocratic areas in
do not dominate
in the
Athos documents from northern Greece, which
(themselves expanding landowners, as Nikephoros
II
complained) opposing, but also being opposed by, local
communities such as Hierissos, the closest large settlement to Mount Athos. Although large landowning steadily gained ground after looo in
northern Greece,
landowning So did
it
in
still
this
was not the case everywhere even then; and peasant
continued on the Aegean coast of Turkey for centuries.
Byzantine southern
area for aristocratic interest.
Italy,
although
Anyway, even
if
this
was
some of
a
more marginal
the great families
were as rich as Danelis, they were not so very numerous. clear that the Byzantine aristocracy
the landscape that
was normal
in the
It is
far
from
had achieved the dominance over
West
316
(see
below. Chapter 21), even
BYZANTINE REVIVAL, 85O-IOOO in the eleventh century,
never mind the tenth, whatever emperors claimed
in their laws.
The
less locally
reliant in the
in the
me
great families of Byzantium thus seem to
preponderant than they were
on office-holding
for real political
most part
for the
West; and also more
in the
protagonism than they were
West. There were also, probably, more areas of Byzantium than
West by the tenth century
that were not dominated by ‘the
powerful’; this seems a reasonable conclusion to draw, even though
Byzantine evidence
West, as
we
us so
tells
about peasant
little
society.
Even
in the
were closely connected
shall see in Part IV, aristocratic elites
to the state in Carolingian Francia, Ottonian East Francia (the future
Germany),
Anglo-Saxon England; they owed
late
status to royal patronage, local
and they did not seek to
establish
power, or to undermine royal power, unless the
forced them to go
their identity
crisis
and
autonomous of a
kingdom
West Francia (the future France). In tenth-century Byzantium, where the state - based on taxation as
it
was - was
salaries,
it
alone, as in tenth-century
where office-holding commanded huge
far stronger,
where public position was
regular presence in the capital, a chance.
tied
up with army commands and
autonomous
local
The fragmentary evidence we have
power did not stand
for provincial judicial
procedures, too - mostly court cases from Athos, where the monasteries
amount
spent a strikingly large
shows
effective
larly sent
and systematic
from the
officials as well; this
capital
of time squabbling with each other -
official interventions,
with judges regu-
and interacting with a network of
network of public power, again without
the early medieval West,
omies. In any case, Basil
would not II,
who
is
way
easily give
make any
parallel in
to private auton-
often held to have been particularly
hostile to the dangers of the great families, did not fear
as to
local
provision for the survival of his
own
them so much
dynasty.
Not only
did he never marry, but he never even tried to persuade his colourless
brother Constantine VIII (who succeeded him, 1025-8) to marry off his
two daughters while they could
the line that way. Basil the imperial office,
and
knew
still
bear children, and perpetuate
that other families
this clearly did
would soon take over
not bother him. Nor, given the
continuing power and stability of the Byzantine empire for another half century, can he be said to have been wrong.
317
14 From ‘Abbasid Baghdad to Umayyad Cordoba, 750-1000
The Arab geographer Ibn Hawqal Sicilians.
Palermo
itself,
conquered by the Arabs from the Byzantines
amenities: the large
mosque
in
Hawqal spends many pages on
831, was rich and impressive, and Ibn its
990) hated Palermo and the
(d. c.
(the ex-cathedral)
7,000 people; more than 300 other mosques,
in
which could contain
an unparalleled density,
sometimes actually adjoining each other; the very numerous and varied markets; the specialized papyrus production, the only one existing outside Egypt; the richly irrigated gardens surrounding.
wasted
this latter fertility
on
cultivating onions,
consequence was that ‘one does not find
But the Palermitans
which they
in this
ate raw; the
town any
intelligent
person, or skilful, or really competent in any scientific discipline, or
animated by noble or religious (judge) there; they were
numerous, but
all
feeling’.
No
too unreliable. Schoolmasters were very
they did the job in order to avoid military
all idiots:
service; nevertheless, the Sicilians as a brilliant.
logical
what
one was qualified to be qadi
whole considered them to be
They pronounced Arabic wrong; they could not hold down
a
argument (Ibn Hawqal provides examples); they had no idea of
Iraqi legal
and theological schools
their doctrinal position
is
really believed, ‘even
very well known’.
Nor
did the Sicilians
Islamic law properly, particularly in the countryside. Ibn
so incensed about
all this
that he actually wrote a
Sicilian idiocy, unfortunately lost;
but he
tells
though
know
Hawqal was
whole book about
us quite
enough
in his
huge geographical survey. The Book of the Depiction of the Earth.
He
ends amazed that the Sicilians could be so poor, at least these days
(in
the 970s), well
was
What
when
their land
was so
rich.
The only thing they made
really
linen.
the Sicilians
had done to make Ibn Hawqal so cross (geog-
raphers often criticized the inhabitants of regions, but this
318
is
extreme)
is
FROM ‘ABBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO not easy to about.
up
in
see.
But
say that he
fair to
knew what he was
talking
He was born in Nisibis in the upper Tigris valley and was brought
Baghdad; he
North
it is
left
the latter city in 943 for thirty years of travel, to
Africa, Spain, Armenia, Pars
back to Mesopotamia and
and Khurasan
Syria, Egypt,
and
in
what
now Iran, He may by
is
finally to Sicily.
now simply have been tired and grumpy, but he had traversed the whole Islamic world. He saw it as a whole, and constantly compared its parts; the great city of Fustat in Egypt, for example,
area of Baghdad, whereas
Cordoba
in
in central Asia; the
third of the surface
Spain had almost half; the nougat
of Manbij in northern Syria was the best he
Bukhara
had a
knew
except for that of
merchants of Sijilmasa
desert were so rich that people in Iraq or
in the
Moroccan
Khurasan hardly believed Ibn
Hawqal when he told them how much they were worth. Ibn Hawqal made these journeys, however, when the Islamic world was divided between ten and
into
This hardly poses him a
fifteen separate polities.
some good, most bad,
problem; rulers appear casually in
his account,
some
he had to leave quickly, but
sufficiently threatening that
them simply controlling
sections of a single
Hawqal’s geography transcended
all
of
Muslim community. Ibn
politics; he,
and other geographers
him, saw the Islamic world as essentially a whole.
like
This cultural and religious unity was
conquests of the Umayyads.
first
established by the military
was made permanent, however,
It
in the
century and a half of the ‘Abbasid caliphate, which was politically
hegemonic
as a centralized state
between 750 and 861, and
still
powerful
around 920; the disunity of Ibn Hawqal’s time (and ever after) was hardly a generation old when he set out from Baghdad. In this chapter, until
we
shall
look at the ‘Abbasid achievement, in the decades of their most
effective political centralization,
and
and
Baghdad, which was strong enough to
scientific written culture in
survive tenth-century fragmentation.
two of the successor
states,
in the creation of a
dense religious
We shall then follow the history of
those closest to the European focus of this
book, the Fatimids of North Africa and Egypt, and, in particular, the
Umayyads of Spain. The Spanish Umayyads were autonomous under ‘Abbasid power already in the 750s, but they too looked to Baghdad for a long time. Baghdad, although by no means part of a history of Europe, or even of the former
Roman
world, had an economic and
cultural importance in the last third of our period that outclassed any-
where
in the world,
and that
certainly impacted
319
on Europe: on Spain,
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO on Constantinople, and even on court paid attention to that of
far-off
Harun
Aachen, where Charlemagne’s
al-Rashid, even
if
the reverse
was
probably not the case.
In Chapter 12,
we
now
Pakistan. This control
‘revolution’ of
747-50; the
and al-Mansur, his
al-Mansur, the second ‘Abbasid caliph (754-75),
whole of the Muslim lands from North Africa to what
in control of the is
left
was not simply the
political
result of the
system was not yet stable in 754,
had
in order to feel secure,
to defeat rivals
immediate family and also a serious ‘Alid revolt
power between
establishing a balance of
‘Abbasid
in
from inside
762-3, as well
the Khurasani
as
army which had
brought the ‘Abbasids victory and the Iraqi and Syrian factions they displaced. This political settlement
was
a success, however, the product
of al-Mansur’s brilliance as an operator, buttressed by his famed religious austerity
new
tion of a
round
and financial caution.
capital at
Baghdad
city (no longer surviving),
centre of the caliphate:
army, the abnd’ or
was crystallized in the founda-
762, focused on a monumental
which was the
Baghdad was
political
to be the
home
and ceremonial
of the Khurasani
and also of the administrative
‘sons’,
came from everywhere
in
It
in the caliphate, but particularly
elite,
from
who
Iraq, the
‘Abbasid heartland.
Baghdad seems ants or
upwards seems
This was
through
to have
made
expanded enormously
to
me
500,000 inhabit-
a plausible guess for the ninth century.
possible by the water-supply of the Tigris,
(Damascus has much
it
fast;
like so large), as well as
less
which runs
water, and had never been anything
by the great agricultural resources of the Jazira
between Iraq and Syria and (above
all)
southern Iraq, the ‘black land’
or Sawad, which were further developed through irrigation projects by the early ‘Abbasids to outstrip the productive wealth even of Egypt. But it
was
also
made
possible by ‘Abbasid control, mostly by conquest, of
every part of the Islamic world except Spain: al-Mansur had a clean slate,
in
and, after his execution of his great Khurasani general
755,
owed nothing
reorganization of the aged.
The Arabs
city’s
and
to anyone. In particular, he could begin the
fiscal
system that the Umayyads had never man-
living in the provinces steadily lost their rights to live
off provincial taxation,
military
Abu Muslim
and
it
political focus that
began to flow more consistently to the
was Baghdad,
a secure resource for the
population, whether the soldiers and administrators
320
who were
FROM ‘ABBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO paid by
it,
or else the mass of shopkeepers, merchants and artisans, and
public and private servants,
That process of
who
fiscal centralization
could not be established overcaliphate.
As we
780S-790S and the 830s saw further developments
in that
night, of course, given the size shall see, the
supplied and depended on them.
direction. But
who already had more resources caliph, or than any Roman emperor
started with al-Mansur,
it
at his disposal
and complexity of the
than any previous
since, probably, the fourth century.
Al-Mansur can
as a result also be
seen developing an administrative network that might of organizing and distributing these resources.
had
secretaries (kuttdb)
ance, but
it is
who had
The Umayyads already
a considerable administrative import-
under the early ‘Abbasids that we begin to find them more
clearly responsible for separate branches of it is
become capable
government or diwans and
under al-Mansur that we see an executive head of the
in particular
whole central administrative system appear, the wazir or
Abu Ayyub
seems to have been
ment
around
for
fifteen years
who
vizir;
the
first
ran al-Mansur’s govern-
(d.
771),
(c.
755-70). The powers of the
vizir
continued to expand across the ‘Abbasid period, although they were never complete; vizirs did not normally control provincial governors, for that cial
was
tax
a caliphal responsibility (although they did control provin-
officials),
and there were always autonomous
offices inside
who ran the caliph’s large household and often had the caliph’s ear, and who could thus be a serious rival to any vizir. But for the first time we see a clear structure of government in the Arab world, one with its own complex internal politics, as we shall see, made all the more cut-throat by the huge amount Baghdad
of
not least the chamberlain (hdjib),
itself,
money
it
had
to direct.
Al-Mansur had no doubt
as to the dynastic nature of his rule, and,
thanks to his removal of rivals, a continuous
from him, held
office
up
line of caliphs, all
to 1517. His son
grandson al-Rashid (786-809) continued
descended
al-Mahdi (775-85) and
his political practices, in a
period of general peace and prosperity which aided the trend to centralization. ‘Peace’
is
perhaps too bland a term; there were always frontier
wars with the Byzantines, and provincial rebellion was
unknown,
particularly in Egypt
and
in eastern
a peasant revolt in the Jazira, west of
them threatened the Al-Rashid, also
Mosul,
structure of the state,
known by his
birth
name
321
from
Khurasan, and including in the 770s.
But none of
which continued
of
far
Harun
(all
to develop.
‘Abbasid caliphs
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 550-IOOO had both
name and
a birth
tend to use only the
name, though historians otherwise
a ruling
by
latter), is
best-known ‘Abbasid, and
far the
perhaps the best-known medieval Muslim ruler in absolute along with Saladin, thanks to his starring role in the in its present lifetime,
form a mostly
late
Thousand and One Nights,
medieval collection of
however, although an active general, he was a relatively retiring
figure in internal politics, devoted largely to ceremonial.
and 803 the
Barmak
stories. In his
his vizir
Yahya ibn Khalid ibn
805 ), son of one of al-Mansur’s leading
(d.
old tutor.
was dominated by
state
Yahya ran
Between 786
officials,
and Harun’s
the government together with his sons Ja‘far
(Harun’s closest friend and associate, both in
and One Nights) and
who
al-Fadl,
life
distributed
and
in the
Thousand
most of the
offices of
between them and also a succession of provincial governorships;
state
together they are
known
had a high reputation
as the Barmakids.
for being skilled
The Barmakids ever
after
and honest administrators, and
they seem indeed to have been so; they were the principal architects of the mature
(except
‘Abbasid
when
bypassing provincial governors
system,
fiscal
they themselves held such offices), and directing ever
higher proportions of tax revenue to Baghdad. Their
enhanced by
their
abrupt
when
fall,
in 803,
memory was
also
almost out of the blue,
al-Rashid had JaTar beheaded and his relatives imprisoned, for no obvi-
ous reason except, presumably, his growing resentment of the family’s
power. Arab writers pondered for centuries the tragedy of the ideal administrator, Yahya, brought down by an almost-as-ideal caliph especially as
it
was only
ushered in a serious It
civil
a
work
naming
death
first
practice for rulers to seek to control the
and then second
heirs; this frequently did
out, as political alignments changed, but
that the initial heir
own
war.
was standard ‘Abbasid
succession by
few years before al-Rashid’s
it
not
at least helped to ensure
would succeed without opposition from his presumed
successor. Al-Rashid
went one
further: he designated
one of
his sons,
al-Amin, as the next caliph (809-13), and another, al-Ma’mun, as his successor, but he also assigned
which he was to be
effectively
al-Ma’mun an apanage, Khurasan,
autonomous during
in
his brother’s reign.
This was probably because Khurasan had become a tense province again,
with local aristocracies unwilling to accept the right of Baghdad to take their tax (ironically, to
and on the Byzantine
pay the ex-Khurasani abna’ army,
frontier); that
would
322
in the capital
cease, at least temporarily.
FROM ‘aBBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO once al-Rashid died, and Khurasanis could caliph
who would
safeguard their interests. The tensions did not stop
with the division of 809, however, and at
its
they had a future
feel diat
now
each side had an ‘Abbasid
head. Al-Amin at once tried to undermine his brother’s rule, and
the Khurasanis persuaded
al-Ma’mun
to declare independence in 810.
Unexpectedly, his general Tahir ibn al-Husayn defeated invading abnd’ army in
8 1 1,
al- Amin’s large
and al-Ma’mun, now claiming the caliphate
(811-33), sent Tahir against Baghdad.
Tahir besieged the capital for a year, until he managed to break local resistance in 813;
however stayed
in
al-Amin was caught and
Khurasan, making Merv (now
killed.
in
down
Al-Ma’mun
Turkmenistan)
his
capital; furthermore,
he showed in this period a Shihte commitment,
above
unique decision to make an ‘Alid
‘Ali
all
ibn
through
his
Musa, whose
ruling
name was
his heir in 817,
to be al-Rida, ‘the chosen one’.
This secured the loyalty of parts of Khurasan and Iraq, but alienated the rest of the caliphate.
Baghdad revolted
again, choosing a brother of
al-Rashid, Ibrahim, as the caliph al-Mubarak; Egypt, too, which had
had fell
its
own
civil
war between supporters of the
into chaos in
rival brothers since
819 with the most serious tax revolt of the Christian
population since 750. Al-Ma’mun had to backtrack, and
Baghdad, and line straight
812,
away from
definitively
away and Ibrahim
moved
‘Alid imagery, in 819. Iraq
fled (he survived this debacle
fell
Only
army
into
and was
reconciled in 825; he died at court in 839). Egypt, however, took
longer to subdue; al-Ma’mun had to lead an
to
much
there himself in
832
then, just before the caliph’s death, did
to subjugate
it
he have
control over his father’s domains, with the exception of
North
full
Africa,
properly.
an always rather marginal province, which never returned
to ‘Abbasid rule.
The
civil
war of 811-13 thus unleashed
the provinces over taxation
trouble.
The resentment
of
was perennial; the more the ‘Abbasids
ensured taxes were sent to Iraq, the more acute local resistance would be. In the
Umayyad
period, this resistance could be posed in terms of
loyalty to the person of the caliph
(it
was
just that local
should have the right to keep provincial taxation); but,
no longer recognized, the
risk
was
that the province
if
Arab armies
that right
would throw
was off
first
with al-Ma’mun himself in Khur-
asan. This
would indeed eventually
lead to the break-up of caliphal
power. But
it is
caliphal authority altogether, as
necessary to stress that
323
it
did not do so yet.
Al-Ma’mun
THE EMPIRES OE THE EAST, 55O-IOOO kept the loyalty and cooperation - and the taxation - of Khurasan, largely thanks to the family of his general Tahir,
who
provided four
who were
generations of Tahirid governors there from 821 to 873, but
simultaneously rulers of the city of Baghdad, which depended on provinrevenue. Egypt, at the other end of the caliphate, was finally quiet
cial
after 832.
abnd\ was
Al-Ma’mun’s army, no longer based on the initially a rather
cratic levies,
who had and
uncertain collection of east Iranian aristo-
trouble taking
Baghdad against informal gangs of
even though the defending regular army disinte-
civilians (‘ayydrun)
grated; but he,
early ‘Abbasid
especially his military-minded brother
and successor
al-Mu‘tasim (833-42), built up an army of mercenaries, particularly
from Turkic central Asia, many of whom were former
slaves,
whom our
sources generically refer to as Turks. This was an effective fighting force,
not sufficiently Islamized to have
its
own
political
programme, not
associated with any particular province of the caliphate, and very loyal, at least to al-Mu‘tasim.
big ‘Abbasid attack
They provided
the muscle behind the last really
on the Byzantine empire, which took Amorion
in
838, and Turkish leaders were increasingly used as provincial governors.
With the provinces and extensive
ate
fiscal
under al-Mu‘tasim and resented a
new
model army, and an increasingly elabor-
quiescent, a
and administrative machine, the 830s and 840s his
more
colourless son al-Wathiq (842-7) rep-
high point for the centralized ‘Abbasid state, one that
could have real staying power: or so one might have thought.
Ninth-century Baghdad, huge, wealthy and politically central as
became
works
a real cultural focus.
in
The
startlingly large
number
it
was,
of surviving
Arabic from the ninth and tenth centuries, mostly (particularly
before the 930s or so) written in or near the capital, themselves attest to
it.
They
are only a portion of
shown by the Fihrist or Index 6,000 book titles, nearly all
of al-Nadim
the (d.
at least read
them
all),
actually written, too, as (d. c.
990), which
lists
is
over
written in the last 250 years (this far
outweighs the 279 Greek books
had
what was
in Photios’ Bibliotheke,
though Photios
or by an anecdote in the Fihrist
itself
about
600 cases of books allegedly possessed by the historian al-Waqidi 823) - an impossible figure for such an early date, but significant as a
tenth-century image. Theology, philosophy, law, poetry, administration, history, medicine, science
and geography
hyperactive cultural world.
324
all
had
their experts in this
FROM ‘aBBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO These branches of knowledge increasingly developed cultures, with lawyers
above
all
their
own micro-
reading other lawyers, historians reading
other historians, poets reading other poets. They were tied together, the same, by
The
two main networks, one
whole were seen
intellectual strata as a
one
cultural-religious,
as a
community of
literary.
scholars,
The community was
the ‘ulamd’ (from 7 /m, ‘religious knowledge’).
defined initially and principally in terms of religious expertise, but
soon to extend out to the more specialized
most
disciplines;
visible in biographical dictionaries of scholars,
being written in the early ninth century.
Qur’anic scholars and
jurists,
was
It
all
this
its
came
identity
is
which were already community,
which was increasingly
led
by
seen, in a religion
with no formal priesthood or ecclesiastical hierarchy, as the determinators of
what Islam was and how
in the twenty-first century,
The community did
it
should be understood, and indeed,
it still is.
not, of course, always agree.
We
have already
encountered the fault-line between Sunni and Shi‘a, which crystallized as alternative political-religious systems in the ninth century.
had
these systems, however, also
of thought about
how
their
own
Each of
sub-systems, rival schools
religion, political practice
and law ought
to be
conducted. Inside what would be called the Sunni tradition, for instance, there
was from
early in the eighth century considerable debate about
the degree to which Islamic legal practice (sharVa) should be based legislation
(presumably by caliphs), or
else
reasoning from basic ethical
from the Qur’an, or
else
on the increasingly elaborate
principles derived
sets of ‘tradition’ (hadtth), obiter dicta attributed to
Prophet on almost every
nouncements
in reality
although custom on law.)
The
its
legal or
moral
Muhammad
gave a religious legitimacy to local custom,
own was
never regarded as a legitimate fount of
‘traditionists’ essentially
767), Malik
influential
mitment
(d.
won
795), al-Shafi‘i
- and Ibn Hanbal
(d.
(d.
out, but the four
to hadtth, with Hanafis
all
and other
main law
Abu Hanifa
820) - the most intellectually
855), varied considerably in their
most receptive
Hanbalis most rigidly attached to schools,
the
issue imaginable. (These pro-
schools of medieval Sunni Islam, looking respectively to (d.
on
literal
less long-lasting ones,
com-
to legal reasoning
and
readings of hadtth. These
achieved a mutual toleration
the same, as each constitutive of Sunni ‘ulamd’ opinion, and by
900
or so they had developed what has been called the ‘closing of the gate of independent reasoning’: no
new law 32.5
or legal opinion, including by a
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO caliph or other political leader, would, in theory, any longer be acceptable. Islamic
law thus became increasingly fixed (even
if
legal practice
did not). This served further to define the ‘ulamd’ as a cultural grouping,
although other disciplines continued to develop for centuries, the doctrinal rules of eastern
much
as
and western Christendom bounded the
developing thought-worlds of Europe throughout the Middle Ages as well.
The other way
in
which the realms of written culture were linked was
through adab^ roughly translatable as etiquette’.
‘polite education’, or ‘literary
This became the foundation of Arab written culture by around
800, and remained so throughout our period and beyond. learning with stylistic elegance, and required of
knowledge of most of the
eral
its
It
linked
practitioners a gen-
intellectual disciplines of the period,
but particularly language, poetry, stories, administrative practice and hadtth.
The administrative
practice
is
the give-away:
a qualification for careers in government. the senatorial literary education of the
It
adab was above
was the exact equivalent of
Roman empire and of the classical Byzantium
and theological training necessary
for administrators in
900, except that the knowledge
required was mostly of a
recent vintage.
And
it
after
much more
indeed the scope of intellectual activity in Baghdad
and other centres showed the range of
skills
that were acceptable in
government; intellectuals from the geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih c.
all
(d.
885) to the seriously influential and original philosopher-physician
Ibn Sina (Avicenna, offices.
d.
1037) held governmental and administrative
This range marks one of the particularities of adab. So also,
however, does storytelling. Literary culture gave considerable space to narratives; ‘Abbasid histories are
composed of thousands of short
exemplary accounts, with plenty of direct quotations, supposedly taken
from the
lips
of caliphs and their advisers. Rhetorical
remarkably recondite knowledge as part of such
skill
required
storytelling;
hence
the existence of several encyclopedias of ‘curiosities’, such as that of al-Tha‘alibi (d. 1038),
the
first
vizir
the
Arab
to
which contains such information
wear dark
silks,
the
first
most generous female pilgrim, the two caliphs
whose names began with the same
(but untrue) fact that every sixth caliph
of
was
who were also vizirs, who each killed three
letter,
and the alarming
‘inevitably’ deposed. This
knowledge, these days restricted to adolescent boys, was
326
name
caliph to build a hospital, the
with the longest unbroken chain of ancestors
political rivals
as the
in this period
FROM ‘ABBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO a requirement for statecraft, along with
knowing how
to write a letter
properly and memorizing the Qur’an.
The
from
strata of professional administrators,
secretaries
down
and generated
vizirs
and other senior
to the clerks in provincial tax offices,
own
their
were complex,
cultural traditions. There are collections of
administrative exemplary stories, just as there are political ones in his-
accounts of how and
tories;
and of the
why individuals got promoted and demoted,
clever things they said to heads of
dfwans and
al-muhddara. Desultory Conversations, another adab judge al-Tanukhi
(d.
text,
Nishwdr
by the Basra
how dense this specifically administraand how it extended, even in the late
994), shows
memory
tive historical
vizirs.
could be,
tenth century, without a break back to the caliphates of the mid-ninth,
Among
and even of al-Rashid and al-Mahdi. by
how
officials
is
struck
accidental promotions could be in this world, as ordinary
came to the eye of the powerful. Al-Fadl ibn Marwan and then
a kitchen steward to an aristocrat time,
other things, one
made enough money
minor clerk
a
buy land and
to
live in
(d. c.
845),
in al-Rashid’s
the country during
the siege of Baghdad, where he reputedly gave hospitality unknowingly to the future caliph al-Mu‘tasim; thanks to this chance, he rose steadily
and became
in the administration,
vizir at his patron’s accession in
- though, conversely, he was soon dismissed huge sums
in fines, because
public money.
(in
836), and
The chance of
fate
considerable revenues to at least of these revenues stuck to his
Much paperwork was
was linked
to a
pay
good deal of adminis-
two
own
caliphs.
It is
show
who
brought
in
also clear that plenty
fingers, given his
wealth in the 830s.
indeed expended to try to cut
but al-Tanukhi’s stories
to
he tried to prevent the caliph from spending
competence; al-Fadl was an able administrator
trative
had
833
down
peculation,
that this could easily be subverted, with
misleading papers put in the records, until or unless rivals uncovered the fraud.
One
gains a picture of a tight but very jealous administrative
munity, in which a
common
profession counted as a
al-Fadl said, quoting a retired clerk
whom
tie
many
vizirs,
cut-throat
is
life
did not.
of kinship (as
he met as a youth), but in
which promotion often depended on the destruction of al-Fadl kept his
com-
others.
At
least
in 836; plenty of others, including in particular
To
say that administrative and court politics was
indeed an understatement; unlucky ‘Abbasid politicians
could die by tortures as inventive as those of the Merovingians, or indeed
327
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO more
‘Abbasid science was more developed - al-Fadl’s successor
so, as
as vizir, Ibn al-Zayyat (836-47), died in a torture
had
devising. But Ibn al-Zayyat vizir at the accession of
his
own
also supposedly kept his position as
al-Wathiq
loathed him and had sworn to
machine of
kill
new
even though the
in 842,
caliph
him, because he was the only senior
who could compose a formal letter to the satisfaction of the ruler.
official
This mixture of ambition, greed, violence and genuine professionalism
marked
the administrative class as a whole, or at least
its
upper echelons.
The complex and dangerous world of the administration was mirrored in the
other
two arenas of
household. The
civil
caliphal politics, the
administration and the
and probably
army are
the caliphal
often seen as rivals
much as in middle Byzantine historiography,
‘Abbasid historiography,
in
army and
as wrongly; as in Byzantium, the
same person could do
both, as with the Barmakid al-Fadl and the Tahirid ‘Abd Allah ibn Tahir (d.
845),
(d.
863),
and even the occasional Turkish general, such
who
reality crossed
as
Utamish
held the vizirate for a year before his death. Factions in
both areas of government without
and
the Turks, disliked
distinct,
came
to
difficulty,
even
when
dominate the army. The numer-
ous large palaces of the ‘Abbasids also had their
own
staff,
not least the
even more numerous slave mistresses of the caliphs, whose head was either a queen, or,
if
the caliph did not formally
marry - which was the
norm after the early ninth century - a queen-mother; the factions crossed into this arena too.
As with the Merovingians, equally dynastically minded and polygamous, political influence for restricted to the
al-Rashid, and
of al-Amin.
‘Abbasid period tended to be
in the
mothers of caliphs or designated future caliphs. The
most famous examples of
Harun
women this
were Khayzuran
Zubayda
(d.
(d.
789), the mother of
831), al-Rashid’s wife
Zubayda even kept some of her
influence after
and mother
al-Ma’mun
overthrew al-Amin - she brokered, for example, the reconciliation of the anti-caliph Ibrahim in 825. But political practice
gave
less
it
has to be said that ‘Abbasid
scope to female protagonism than either
the Frankish or the Byzantine tradition.
The complicated and
ever-
developing ceremonial of the ‘Abbasid caliphate, which must have
matched that of the tenth-century Byzantines, had rather
women
as public players; but
it is
above
all
less
space for
the case that succession rules
focused on choosing appropriate candidates for caliph meant that child caliphs, for
whom mothers could act as regents, were less common than 328
FROM ‘aBBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO The
royal minors were in Byzantium or Francia.
first
was not
until
al-Muqtadir (908-32), whose reign was indeed dominated by his for-
midable mother, a Byzantine ex-slave called Shaghab (‘troublesome’), or, simply, al-Sayyida (‘the lady’).
consistently hostile
way by
Shaghab
(d.
933)
is
not handled in a
the sources, despite their general suspicion
of female power, magnified by the disasters of her son’s reign; she
followed Zubayda in making public displays of charity on a large scale, a recognizable ‘Abbasid gendered female role, thanks to her vast wealth,
and
allowed at
this
least
Shaghab established a
some
chroniclers to depict her neutrally.
parallel bureaucratic hierarchy of
and female stewardesses which exercised It is
power
direct
male
secretaries
in these decades.
important, however, to recognize that such offices were already
normal
in the
female areas of the palaces. Queens, chief mistresses and
had long been wealthy, and needed administrators to
caliphal mothers
run their
affairs;
on rare occasions, such
if,
took over caliphal
politics too, they
had
all
under Shaghab, these
as
the qualifications to
do
so.
Caliphs are portrayed in the sources in conventional ways, al-Mansur as eloquent
Mu‘tasim sense of
and
ascetic,
as martial,
al-Mahdi as generous and poetry-loving,
al-
and so on. Al-Ma’mun (who conventionally had
humour and
a gift for poetry)
is
perhaps the one
a
who most
own identity through his actions. His attraction to Shi‘ism is one such, which did not end when he backed down over his ‘Alid heir in 8 1 8 - 1 9 So is his patronage of scientists, who engaged in a programme established his
.
of translations of Greek scientific works, Ptolemy, Galen, Euclid and so on, and the determination
(among other
things) of an accurate calcu-
lation of the circumference of the earth: this a library
and
scientific research centre
came
known
school of Islam
from
as the Bayt al-Hikma,
‘House of Wisdom’, founded by the caliph
Al-Ma’mun was
to be carried out
in
Baghdad
in
830.
also a doctrinal protagonist, sympathetic to a rationalist
known
religious authority,
as Mu‘tazilism.
which was seen
as
and which was urged on al-Mansur by
The
normal
role of the caliph as a in the
Umayyad
his Persian secretary
period,
and adviser
jsj) at the start of the ‘Abbasid caliphate, was being undermined by the growth of the authority of the ‘ulamd\ but
Ibn al-Muqaffa‘
(d. c.
al-Ma’mun had
a sufficient confidence in his mission to put doctrine
into the heart of politics. In 83 3 he decided that one element of Mu‘tazilist
thought, the doctrine of the createdness of the Qur’an (that
God had created the book within time; 329
it
is,
that
had not pre-existed the world).
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO was
important that
sufficiently
to subscribe to
opposed to
all
judges and ‘ulamd’ should be forced
who were
particularly the ‘traditionists’,
it,
bitterly
Almost alone, Ibn Hanbal defied him, and went to prison.
it.
The created Qur’an remained and was only abandoned
a tenet of the next
two
caliphs as well,
in 847, at the accession of al-Wathiq’s brother
al-Mutawakkil (847-61). This period, of the so-called mihna or ‘inquisition’, is the
only one in which a doctrinal issue mattered politically in
medieval Islam, as opposed to the permanent debates about the legitimacy of early caliphs. The apparent obscurity of the religious issue at stake later
is
one element that reminds us of the Christological schisms of the
Roman
empire.
The
sense one has of a political regime using such
an issue to kick religious extremists into
line
also a reminder of
is
the near-contemporary Second Iconoclasm in Byzantium,
al-Ma’mun
recalls his
younger contemporary Theophilos
in religious-philosophical
debate as well.
created Qur’an as the issue to
make
Why
a stand
on
and indeed
in his interest
al-Ma’mun chose
the
however, even
less
is,
clear than the reasons for the Iconoclast controversy.
It
may
be that
any issue would have done, to re-establish caliphal religious authority, especially in the face of the ‘traditionists’. But the
Hanbal returned;
after
and caliphs - and, Iran,
who
believers’
still
mihna
failed;
Ibn
849 doctrine was fully in the hands of the ‘ulamd\ more, their tenth-century supplanters in Iraq and
did not have their formal religious role as ‘commanders of the
- became
essentially secular powers.
intellectuals, jurists,
They would be patrons of
‘ulamd\ but not intellectuals themselves.
Al-Mu‘tasim’s Turkish army got on particularly badly with the Baghdadis,
who were
after all the heirs of the previous paid
so the caliph built a
new
capital at Samarra, further
army, the abnd\
up the
Tigris,
and
moved both himself and his army there in 836. The establishment of new capitals was a standard part of early ‘Abbasid political affirmation; Baghdad itself was the key exemplar, and al-Rashid’s period in Raqqa (796-808) and al-Ma’mun’s in Merv (811-18) were others. Samarra was the most serious foundation the ‘Abbasids, built
40 kilometres. rival
Baghdad
on
a
huge
after
Baghdad, and was, as usual with
scale: its ruins
All the same, like
Raqqa
as a population centre,
and administrative centre during
its
extend along the Tigris for
earlier,
and
it
it
was not intended
to
remained largely a military
period as the capital, 836-92. The
problem was that the caliph was thus isolated together with
330
his
army.
FROM ‘ABBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 750-IOOO Both the Umayyads and the early ‘Abbasids used armies paid out of general taxation, which were separated from their areas of origin, the early
Arab
amsdr, the Khurasani abnd’ in Baghdad. In
settlers in their
this respect, the
beyond the
Turks were not unusual, except that they came from
and they would have plenty of successors
frontiers,
more fragmented
tenth century too. There
was always
in the
between
a tension
the paid military and the rest of tax-paying society in the medieval
Arab
world as a
elites
result of this pattern.
converted to Islam, above
Arab
settler families
all in
Furthermore, because provincial
the ninth century,
and were matched by
acquiring land - in the early eighth century in
boom-town hinterland of Baghdad, the late ninth in Egypt - there therefore came to be Muslim provincial aristocracies who could be very resentful of the political power and the
Khurasan, the
late eighth in the
financial weight of the army. This
was
where the pre-Islamic Persian ruling
class largely
aristocratic
remained, with highly
and military values, however Islamized by now. Some of
this Persian ruling class did
army,
particularly so in Khurasan,
like al-Afshin of
indeed join al-Ma’mun’s and al-Mu‘tasim’s
Ushrusana
(d.
841), a hardly
Muslim
central Asia, although he, significantly, perished because he
prince from
was thought
to have plotted against the Turks.
The
caliphs could not, however, simply leave military affairs to local
aristocracies; they
caliphate
well pay sions
would have
instantly lost their tax revenues,
would have broken up very
fast.
Given
that, they
and the
might as
men from outside the caliphate, who had no aristocratic preten-
and were
at least
good
at their job.
But there were dangers too. In
an anecdote laden with hindsight, the historian al-Tabari has the Tahirid Ishaq ibn Ibrahim
tell
al-Mu‘tasim: ‘your brother considered the roots
and made use of them, and
their branches flourished exceedingly;
whereas the commander of the believers has
utilized only branches,
which have not flourished because they lacked
roots.’
al-Ma’mun used Tahirids
like myself,
Which
is
and other people rooted
to say: in the
community, and that worked; but you use the Turks, who do not have such roots, and
this
is
a real problem.
Al-Mu‘tasim
is
supposed to have
However this may be, the deracination be an advantage when al-Mutawakkil turned
sadly recognized the truth of this. of the Turks ceased to against
them
in the
850s and sought to bring
down
their leaders, for
they had nowhere to go. In the end, they responded by assassinating
him
in 861.
This unleashed a decade of
331
crisis in
Samarra, 861-70, in
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO which Turkish factions them; the
crisis
developed (d.
891),
own
who had
military
latter in
When
anddts Tahirid governor, with
870 when the ‘Abbasid family
strongman,
in fact led the siege of
the surviving Turkish leadership; he his brother
al-
and Baghdad was besieged and captured again
Stability only returned in its
turn and killed three of
five caliphs in
fled to the old capital
a section of the Turks,
865-6.
up
extended back to Baghdad when one of them,
Mustahn (862-6), in
set
al-Mu‘tamid,
who was
Abu Ahmad al-Muwaffaq
Baghdad and was very
was put
caliph by
in
now
close to
charge of the army by
(870-92), and
left
the
Samarra while he gradually transferred himself to Baghdad.
al-Muwaffaq’s son and heir al-Mu‘tadid became caliph (892-
902), he formally re-established
Baghdad
as the capital,
and the Samarra
interlude ended.
The years 861-70 were not so very
long, but, like the civil
war of
the
810S, they opened up fault-lines in the ‘Abbasid polity which were hard to close.
The revived ‘Abbasid protagonism of 870-908
to al-Mu‘tadid’s son al-Muktafi,
(it
902-8) faced widespread
extended
difficulties.
Iranian rebels, the Saffarids (they did not have aristocratic roots, and
they were close to fringe
Muslim
sects),
had defeated the Tahirids
Khurasan between 867 and 873, and marched on defeated there in 876, but they continued to control taxes only intermittently.
Tulun (868-84) was not did not pay
and
much
directly
opposed to the ‘Abbasids, but he too
Khumarawayh (884-96) succeeded him inces,
and not
much of Iran, paying
power
tax to Iraq, and he extended his
to re-establish a greater until
were
The Turkish governor of Egypt, Ahmad ibn
which thus did not pay much
Palestine,
Iraq; they
in
either;
into Syria
only after his son
did an ‘Abbasid
army manage
measure of tax-paying from the Tulunid prov-
905 did the ‘Abbasids regain direct rule
Only
in Iraq did the
8 80s,
and here, around Basra
‘Abbasids exercise
fiscal
in Egypt.
control in the 870s and
in the south, they faced a
huge slave
revolt,
of the Zanj, African slaves used to maintain the irrigation system: this
from 869 to 883, was the most successful slave uprising history before the Haitian revolt of 1791, resulting in an independent
revolt, lasting in
Shi‘ite state
al-Muwaffaq until the
which was only destroyed by four years of war under in
879-83. The ‘Abbasids were seriously short of money
mid-88os, and even after that had to fight without a break,
with their still-Turkish armies, to keep on top of events. They succeeded in their core lands,
with the exception of Iran, which increasingly
332
slid
FROM ‘ABBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO away under
local dynasties.
But they could not afford to relax their
was
pressure. After 908, al-Muqtadir
a very inattentive ruler,
and
his
mother Shaghab did not have control of the army. By the 920s, with infighting inside the bureaucracy, rival generals in Iraq,
from the Arabian
bedouin raids
and Syrian and Egyptian governors who had
desert,
begun to stop paying taxes again, the gains of recent decades were lost; in
the 930s caliphs began to be deposed once more, and after
the caliph lost
power to
all
Ahmad
of amirs’. In 945
(d.
967), from the most successful of
the rising dynasties of Iran, the Buyids, took Baghdad, and
al-umard’ with the ruling
nominally ‘Abbasid]
name
state’.
of Mu’izz al-Dawla,
Iraq
936
amir al-umard\ ‘amir
a military governor, the
ibn Buya
all
became amtr
‘fortifier
of the
[still
was controlled from western Iran from
then on for a century.
The break-up of
the ‘Abbasid caliphate, for a hundred years the
strongest state in the world (Tang China had run into trouble in and after the 750s),
would
ideally
of events in a couple of pages, history hardly extended
set of
Roman empire. If I dispose of the sequence
explanations as did that of the
its
need as detailed an account and
it is
only because by now, after the 8 60s,
beyond Iraq except
for brief periods,
and
is
too far from the history of Europe. The tenth century in the Islamic world was, as already observed, even more fragmented, with the Samanids and
then the Ghaznavids in eastern Iran, two or three Buyid polities in
western Iran and Iraq, two Elamdanid polities in Aleppo and (more briefly)
and
Mosul, a
east, the
set of
Kurdish dynasties in the mountains to their north
Qaramita
in the
Arabian
desert, the Ikhshidids
and then
the Eatimids in Egypt, and other smaller polities too - as well as those
of the Maghreb, which had not been under ‘Abbasid control since the early ninth century or even before, the Aghlabids in
what
is
now
Tunisia and
and the Umayyads But before
we
Sicily, the Idrisids in
in Spain.
We
cannot follow
look at two of them,
century of ‘Abbasid unity and of
its
and then the Eatimids
what all
we do need
is
now Morocco,
their histories here.
to take stock of the
failure.
One simple reason why the ‘Abbasid caliphate broke up was that it was too large. Local societies were too different; communications were always slow; the caliphate was larger than the sea,
with
its
relatively easy
reconquests, with reunifications: in
new
Roman empire, and did not have a
bulk transport, at
ruling armies
and
heart.
Conquests and
a clean slate, helped periodic
636-51, 747-50, 811-13,
333
its
as subsequently with the
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO Buyids, and the Seljuk Turks in the 1040s and later, but tensions
always
rise again.
This was particularly the case in Khurasan and in
whose
Iran as a whole,
would
pre-Islamic ruling class, with
some
military
protagonism, survived better than elsewhere (and whose pre-Islamic past
was
still
celebrated by
Muslims
in oral
and written
literature, unlike
anywhere further west except Spain); and which, being mountainous,
was much harder and long-lasting
to control in depth; significantly, the later Islamic empire, the
most successful
Ottomans, never held
Iran.
Trouble for the ‘Abbasids generally began in Iran; Iraq and Egypt were
much
easier to rule,
centuries after the
and Syria was not any
fall
of the Umayyads.
This straightforward geopolitical argument
is
largely
backed up by
one basic point about the tenth-century Muslim successor
were almost
all
two
sort of power-centre for
tax-raising states with a central paid
cracy, just as the caliphate
states:
they
army and bureau-
had been. Only some of the Kurdish
states
of southern Anatolia and the Iranian mountains, followed by bedouin
had a simpler
dynasties in Syria and the Jazira in the eleventh century, structure, based
on block
gifts
of tribute to
Unlike at the end of the western
breakdown
Roman
armed transhumant groups.
empire, there was no structural
inside the majority of these smaller polities. Unlike in the
Romano-Germanic kingdoms, the new ruling groups were not concerned to make themselves into a landowning aristocracy. Land indeed power
did not bring political
state position did that: or so
in
most medieval Muslim
it
seemed to medieval
societies,
political actors.
Wealth, too, was most reliably obtained through positions
and old
families,
whose longevity was ensured by
inevitably in land, in the especially privileged in political
Muslim
as in the Christian
any Islamic
model established by ‘Umar
and ‘Abbasid caliphs thus continued
I
world - were not
to hold. Indeed,
communities and no family background, Mu‘tasim’s Turks, became an increasingly
Independence from the caliphate
in Iran.
The
and two centuries of Umayyad
the idea of ex-slaves holding military power, with
turies.
in the state;
private wealth -
even
state structure,
only
first
it
intensified, as
no
links to local
experimented with
common model
just
al-
in later cen-
meant that taxation stayed
in the
province concerned and paid a local army: a basic aim of provincial
elites
from the Umayyad period onwards, and only
the strongest ‘Abbasid rulers, with reversions slipped, as in the 8ios
and 86os. From
334
fully
overridden by
whenever ‘Abbasid control
this standpoint, the
break-up of
FROM ‘ABBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO the caliphate could even be seen as unproblematic, as simply consisting
of the reversion of politics to
Broadly,
I
optimum
its
think this interpretation
attention too
much on
is
size,
the province.
a fair one. But
does concentrate
it
the state; provincial societies get
out of the
left
equation. Local social leaders were hugely diverse, extending from the
old families of parts of Iran to the rapidly changing Iraqi
who
elites,
tended simply to be the heirs of the most recent wave of administrators,
who had made money from
taxation and settled down;
all
the same,
they existed everywhere. They certainly did have land by now, and also
sometimes commercial wealth, which they turned into land as well. The great local political centres, almost all urban - major cities like Aleppo,
Mosul, Rayy (modern Teheran), Merv and Nishapur
were
of local
full
elite families,
Khurasan -
who sought the power, and who squabbled
of ‘ulamd' and others,
post of qadl^ an important focus of local
over local and provincial position, rather than seeking here, land, private wealth
in
and
it
from the
an ‘Alid was
birth did matter (being
increasingly chic, especially in Iran), just as
state;
did in the West. ‘Abbasid
it
governors always had to come to terms with local power-broking families, or else they
process
itself
would
fail:
they
would be unable
controlled by local figures), or face revolt, or both. So did
And
indeed this in
itself
and the
‘state
Even the most deracinated army family could put down
local
the smaller-scale rulers of the tenth century.
shows that there was a relationship between class’.
to collect tax (a
local societies
and
roots, at least as rulers, as the Tulunids did in Egypt;
bureaucrats and local military
men had
or at least the richest of them.
Some
larly the civil administration, least,
had
had
all rulers,
to negotiate with their subjects,
sections of the ‘state class’, particu-
origins in local societies, too; they, at
tight local obligations.
All the same, a separation
between the
provincial societies did exist, and a career in the local city
and
‘state class’
was a problem. By and
and making a career
in the state
local
large,
were
and
making
different,
not only in the geographically large-scale ‘Abbasid caliphate but in the provincial polities of the tenth century as well. This societies
meant that
local
could view the changing fates of their rulers with a certain
equanimity: the latter were largely external figures, whether benevolent or violent, generous or fiscally harsh, cultured or martial, without a structural connection to the strata of the governed.
became more
secular,
now
that the fate of Islam
335
As government
had devolved
to the
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO ‘ulamd\ the Salvationist imagery of right rule so effectively invoked by
Abu Muslim and political
we
was
the early ‘Abbasids
programmes. Only the Fatimids
shall see in a
moment. When
no longer part of most
also
tried
it
in the tenth century, as
a local ruler faced military failure, then,
made
because a blockage in the tax supply
hard to pay troops, or
it
simply because of defeat in battle, he could be replaced without local society really being involved, as long as the
new
ruler did not take
over too violently. There were certainly some examples of a loyalist
protagonism by local the Buyids
elites, as
when the citizens of Mosul in 989
and temporarily restored
but they were not so very many.
which the ‘Abbasids
their earlier rulers, the
On one level,
lost control in the
expelled
Hamdanids,
indeed, the very ease with
910s to 940s, to be replaced by
regimes which for the most part resembled them, was a real structural
however dismal the period was,
failure:
someone
for
to
make more
older legitimacy.
were
still
later.
ought to have been possible
of a stand, a heroic loser committed to an
The ‘Abbasids did not
nor did the Buyids
it
The
leave stories of that kind,
stories that
continued to hold attention
Sassanian - or else of the timeless fantasy Baghdad of
al-Rashid and the Thousand and
The Fatimids were tenth-century
the
Muslim
most
One
and most
They outlived
stable of the
major
their
Buyids, by over a century, and indeed ruled over
all, first
in
rivals,
the
Kairouan
in
modern Tunisia, and then (after 973 in newly conquered Egypt, more than two hundred and fifty years, 909-1 171. They also rep-
Ifriqiya,
for
Harun
Nights.
successful, richest
states.
and
)
resent, as just observed, the only serious attempt at a Salvationist revival after the early ‘Abbasids,
and are thus a
special case in the tenth-century
Islamic world. Their salvationism was, however, Shi‘ite, not Sunni. first
The
Fatimid, ‘Ubayd Allah al-Mahdi, was an Isma‘ili Shi‘a living in
who belonged to one of the hidden imam or supreme spiritual Syria,
sects of Shi‘ism
which held that
a
from the caliph ‘Ali, would return to redeem the world. In around 899 he declared controversially inside the Isma‘ili movement, which he split in two that he
the
leader, descended
was himself the imam. He had
Kutama
Berbers of
modern
to flee Syria,
Algeria, a sensible
and ended up among move, for the Berbers
often had ‘Alid sympathies - an earlier ‘Alid exile, Idris ibn ‘Abd Allah (d.
795), had founded the Idrisid
The Berbers were
also
good
kingdom
fighters,
336
in central
Morocco
in 789.
and were the core of the Fatimid
FROM ‘aBBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO army
our period ends. The Kutama adopted al-Mahdi
until well after
as a charismatic leader,
and keenly took
to the role he offered
them
as
the equivalent to the Khurasanis in the ‘Abbasid ‘revolution’. Their
named Abu ‘Abd
general, an Iraqi
Muslim, took
Ifriqiya
from the
Allah, the Fatimid version of
Aghlabid dynasty
faltering
in
Abu
909, and
al-Mahdi proclaimed himself caliph (910-34) outside Kairouan a year Like
later.
Abu Muslim, Abu ‘Abd
Allah was also killed by his patron-
protege inside a year, and al-Mahdi was not troubled by rivals thereafter. Like both the ‘Abbasids and the Aghlabids, al-Mahdi set up his
Mahdiyya on
capital in 920, at
the Tunisian coast.
governmental structures as the Aghlabids, although ism
set himself,
and
his
Kutama army,
He
own
used the same
his Isma‘ili messian-
apart from his Sunni subjects.
That messianism, however, meant that al-Mahdi would not be content with
from the
Ifriqiya;
start, the
on Egypt. This strategy was
Fatimids looked eastwards, with raids
deflected by another Salvationist Berber
was defeated, and by 960 al-Mahdi’s great-grandson al-Mu‘izz (953-75) ruled all North Africa,
revolt,
by Kharijites
unified for the
this time, in
Egypt with
general Jawhar
country with later.
and vision (d.
little
and
for
after the recent death of Abu’l
eunuch of fabled
ugliness,
who had ruled
twenty-two years (946-68). The Fatimid
976), another ex-slave, a Slav this time, took the
violence in 969, and al-Mu‘izz
Jawhar and
Palestine
was rudderless
a black ex-slave, a
skill
it
time since the 730s. This stability allowed a renewed
first
attack on Egypt, which
Misk Kafur,
944-7, but
later generals
Syria, but they ran
moved there four years
pursued Fatimid ambitions on into
aground around Damascus, and when
the frontier stabilized in the 990s
it
did so between
Damascus and
Aleppo. Fatimid expansionism stopped, and a modus vivendi emerged in Syria
between the main regional powers, the Fatimids, the Buyids,
and, since the 950s, the Byzantines, as
we saw
Perhaps surprisingly, by the 990s the caliphs,
wealthy Egypt, were prepared to of hereditary governors; from
let
in the last chapter.
now
situated stably in
control over Ifriqiya
slip,
to a family
now on the Eatimids would be an Egyptian
and Levantine power, which they remained
for nearly
two
centuries
more. It is
whose
749-50, and at one level one fervour had greater staying power, for the Fatimids
easy to see religious
909-10
as a rerun of
began a long way from the old power-centres of the Islamic world, which they would have to fight for longer to reach - indeed, they never
337
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO reached Baghdad. As
Shi‘ite
imams, too, the Fatimid caliphs did not
have to pay attention to the 'ulamd’
was by
any of
in
their
and anyway an imam drew
definition Sunni,
domains, for that
his authority direct
from God. But, even more than in Ifriqiya, Fatimid rule in Egypt was simply a continuation of the - already effective - rule of their predecessors.
The Kutama
from home,
like the
recentralized the
Egypt and Syria were another paid army,
in
abnd' and the Turks. Al-Mu‘izz and his successors administration of Egypt, as had the early
fiscal
‘Abbasids, but in Egypt state aided
far
it
A
had never been very decentralized.
commercial development, but
in
strong
any case Egypt had by
now
outstripped Iraq again as a productive region. In large part, the Eatimids
allowed
it
to develop simply by creating stability;
Egypt remained one
of the major Islamic powers until the very end of the Middle Ages as a result,
with a political protagonism unmatched since Cleopatra. Their
administrative capital, al-Qahira, that
is,
Cairo,
just outside the previous provincial capital Eustat,
was founded
in
969
which remained the
commercial focus of Egypt; Eustat-Cairo was for a long time the major
economic powerhouse of the whole eastern Mediterranean, surpassing even Baghdad, as
we
shall see in
more
detail in the next chapter.
So the Eatimids can be construed simply as normal rulers of the tenth century and onwards, just successful at they ruled. All the same, this did not
it,
make
and lucky with the region
the Eatimids exactly the
same
as their peers elsewhere in the Islamic world. Ismahlism, a secretive sect
with esoteric and abstract Neoplatonist elements, including a complex letter
and number symbolism, continued to mark out the court and the
army, isolated among an ocean of Sunnis, Coptic Christians and Jews,
and caliphs could continue to have messianic dreams: not (996-1021),
who
erected anti-Sunni slogans
was
still is,
al-Hakim
on Sunni mosques, who
demolished the church of the Holy Sepulchre was, and
least
in Jerusalem,
and
who
venerated as divine by the Druzes of Lebanon. Al-Hakim
also a capricious
and violent autocrat
in a rather
more
familiar
mould, but his religious imagery marks out the originality of the Eatimids nonetheless.
Tariq ibn Ziyad, the Berber leader of a largely Berber army, invaded Visigothic Spain for the
and all
killed
King Roderic
Umayyad
in 711.
caliphs of
Damascus and defeated
The Berbers and Arabs had taken nearly
the peninsula by around 718.
Muslim armies raided 338
into Francia for
FROM ‘ABBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, another decade and a
much commitment
but without
half,
75 O-IOOO to conquest;
Spain - al-Andalus in Arabic - was already on the very edge of their
world, and
it is
stopped at the the peninsula
made
likely that,
if it
had not
Straits of Gibraltar.
fallen so easily, they
Be that as
it
would have
may, the occupation of
was quick. With the Visigothic army defeated, the Muslims
separate treaties with several local lords, in particular Theodemir
in south-east
Spain in 713. They did not base themselves in the old
Visigothic capital of Toledo, but in Cordoba, in the rich south; Toledo
was rather more of
a frontier area, with an extensive uncontrolled land
further north in the
Duero
valley
between Muslim al-Andalus and the
Christian polities of the northern fringe of the peninsula. At Cordoba, a succession of governors ruled,
looked
like a
affected as
normal,
chosen by the caliphs. Al-Andalus
outlying, province of the caliphate.
if
was North Africa by the great Berber
Caliph Hisham sent Syrian armies into Spain in 742,
It
was
as
revolt of 740, but
who won back
the
peninsula in 742-3 and settled there, thus increasing the Arab element
Muslim
of the
settlement.
The Syrians
in Spain replicated the
Yaman faction-fighting of the fertile crescent,
Qays-
however, and for a decade
from 745 there was civil war between them. When the Umayyads were overthrown in Syria in 750 and largely wiped out as a family, one of Hisham’s grandsons, ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu‘awiya, kin of his mother,
first in
fled to the
Berber
Africa and then, in 755, in Spain. Here he
found support, both from Berber lineages and from the Yamani Arab opponents of the Qaysi governor, Yusuf
were thus pro-Umayyad, not East.)
al-Fihri.
they had
(The Yamanis in Spain
come
by 749 in the Inside a year he had defeated Yusuf and had taken Cordoba. ‘Abd
al-Rahman
I
anti, as
to be
then ruled as amir for more than thirty years, 756-88,
wholly independent of
his
‘Abbasid enemies in Baghdad. So did his
descendants, until 1031.
Spain was not like most of the other caliphal provinces, however.
was
far
simpler
more
decentralized,
and
also, for a century at least,
economy than many, more
like the
had
economies of the
It
a rather rest of
western Europe, with relatively unskilled and far more localized artisanal production, than like the economically complex and heavily urbanized provinces of the caliphate, Egypt or Syria or Iraq. Even
which under the Arabs
as
its
major
under the Visigoths were Cordoba,
cities,
Seville,
Merida, Toledo, Zaragoza and a few others, were for a long time relatively small
by comparison with those of the eastern Mediterranean.
339
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO Spain was also, crucially, one of the only provinces conquered by the
Arabs which did not have more than
a
fragmentary tax system. The
standard procedures for Arab occupation, based on a paid military in a (perhaps
new) garrison
city,
newly Islamized (when converted
wanted simply Syrians, settled
and
who were
were thus impractical. The Berbers, at all) in the 710s,
on conquered
to settle
elite
anyway doubtless
and did
land,
so.
But even the
normal paid army, soon tax-farmers, soon as landowners -
sent in in the 740s as a
on the land too -
initially as
which they were paid by the campaign);
just did military service (for
they intermarried with the Visigothic aristocracy, and into the tenth
we
century, as
Arab and
their
were families
shall see, there
their
by chroniclers for
century Christian source,
same, they had none of the
anywhere
it
still
from the
the start,
start (as
in Latin, the
fiscal
else in the caliphate,
and were heavily
witnessed by a mid-
Chronicle of jj 4). All the
control of governors elsewhere. Unlike
they had to face a
racy from (nearly) the start as well,
who
Muslim landed
might be able to
much
time.
The
aristoc-
resist tax-
paying more successfully than their still-Christian neighbours. there
of both
Gothic ancestry.
The amirs took what tax they could from criticized
who were proud
Nor was
of a paid ‘state class’, either civilian or military, for
some
existence of the frontier with the Christians in the north
also led to a military-political fragmentation, with half of al-Andalus
separated off into marches (thugur), based on central-northern centres like
Toledo and Zaragoza, or Tudela, power-base of the ex-Visigothic
Banu Qasi had
little
family, over
which the Umayyad amirs, based
control for a century and more. Spain
is
in the south,
very regionally diverse,
with bad communications, and the Muslim conquest had caused societies to
move
in
local
sharply in different directions; these contrasts were
also further exacerbated by the diversities of Arab
The
its
and Berber settlement.
Berbers, for example, seem to have settled in tight tribal groups
more marginal
landowners when
areas, but to
have become ordinary (and Arabized)
living in or near cities.
political fragmentation,
and the need
Given
for the
this local diversity, this
Umayyad
amirs from the
Muslim Spain was part of the Arab
start to recognize the relevance of the politics of land,
was indeed political
as
much
part of western Europe as
it
environment.
Faced with ful for a time,
this reality, the
but
it
was
Umayyads were
a long process
340
and
it
eventually rather success-
was
far
from
straightfor-
FROM ‘ABBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO ward. ‘Abd al-Rahman family,
which was
powerful family
in
I
own
essentially established the centrality of his
756 - the Banu Fihri, a both Africa and Spain, who had supplied four gov-
a task not yet completed in
ernors in al-Andalus alone, were
revolting into the 780s. Father-
still
son succession then followed into the 8 80s without a break, and, although there were certainly succession disputes between sons, and killings of potential rivals, there
was
about which Umayyad should rule
and one which both aided
was
state
still
actually
no protracted disagreement
until after
1000, a remarkable record,
stability
and was made possible by
fairly skeletal until the 820s,
did employ a small paid army, but far outside the
The
it.
however. ‘Abd al-Rahman
I
unlikely that his tax-base extended
it is
Cordoba-Seville region, linked by the lowlands of the
Guadalquivir valley, and attempts by his grandson al-Hakam
(796-
I
822) to stabilize that taxation led to revolt in 818, not only in marcher centres like Toledo,
where uprising was
urban population of Cordoba
itself. It
fairly frequent,
was not
until
among
but
the
‘Abd al-Rahman
II
(822-52), a subtler ruler, that an administrative system resembling that of the caliphs of the East took shape, with higher taxation, a bureaucratic class
(headed here by the hdjib, the chamberlain, not by the
latter
was
and
wider
a
a lesser office in Spain, political control.
and there were usually
‘Abd al-Rahman
II
in
825
- the
several of them) built a
Murcia, in the previously marginal south-east, and settled loyalists;
vizir
it
new city,
with Arab
he confronted the rebellious tendencies of Merida by building
a large internal fortress there in 835,
and another
he developed a formal court in Cordoba,
whose growth
in
now
in
fast
Toledo
in 837;
expanding as a
power, wealth and buying-power meant that
it
and city,
would
not henceforth be disadvantageous to the capital for the amir to be strong there.
Al-Andalus under ‘Abd al-Rahman 86), seen
from the standpoint of the
II
and
state,
his
thus
son
Muhammad
(852-
came more and more
to
match the ‘Abbasid heartland. The former patronized poets and scholars from the
East, not least the important Iraqi musician
(d.
who was rewarded
857),
for
coming west by
a
and poet Ziryab
huge
salary.
‘Abd
al-Rahman’s reign was also marked by the crystallization of an ‘ulamd’
on an
entirely eastern model,
soon present with
its
in every
Umayyad
major
dominated by the Maliki law school, and
city
and plenty of minor ones. Al-Andalus,
legitimist tradition,
was almost devoid of the disputes
about right rule that were so important elsewhere, and even
341
its
law was
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO not up for discussion. This in part marks
its
provinciality by compari-
son with the East, but the cultural continuum that linked them was
unbroken; that would remain true
we have
Ibn Hawqal’s time, as
in
already seen. Indeed, Spanish historians, once history-writing began in the peninsula (with ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Habib, d. 853, a wide-ranging intellectual),
were capable of writing
in detail
about eastern events on
what went on
occasion; Andalusis were consistently informed about the ‘Abbasid world.
The population was
to Islam; a majority of al-Andalus into the tenth century, influential in
movement known
was probably not Muslim
Muslim now.
until well
less
than
of the still-large
fifty
A sign
of this
is
the strange
as the ‘martyrs of Cordoba’, Christian
who
859) and Alvar,
(d.
their death in the capital
There were
slowly, converting
if
Andalusi culture, but political leaders and major political
extremists led by Eulogius
voked
even
and Christians and Jews never ceased to be
centres were in general mostly
minority
also,
in
by insulting Islam
deliberately pro-
in public in the 850s.
of them, and they were clearly unrepresentative
Cordoba Christian community,
despite the fascination
have had for recent scholars; but
their writings (conveniently in Latin)
the desperation of their stand implies that they
saw only extreme
measures as adequate against the steady advance of Muslim hegemony. This process of increasing amiral power on eastern political models
was
falling apart,
however, by
Muhammad’s
death, and the 880S-920S
were a long period of generalized disturbance or already had trouble with Toledo and Merida; he
former
in 873,
and sacked the
which became an alternative
latter in
fitna.
Muhammad
made peace with
the
868, but then nearby Badajoz,
political centre to
Merida
in the 870s,
turned to revolt too under the former Meridan leader ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn
Marwan
also revolted
al-Jilliqi (d.
from
892). In the 88os
his base at
‘Umar ibn Hafsun
(d.
917)
Bobastro in the far south, above Malaga.
Under Muhammad’s son ‘Abd Allah (888-912), more and more local lords established effective independence, both in the marches and in the Andalusian heartland of the Guadalquivir ineffective
and
Muslim landed
reclusive ruler, but the
aristocracy,
many
of
valley.
‘Abd Allah was an
problem was
whom
a
wider one. The
(including Ibn
al-Jilliqi
and
Ibn Hafsun) had at least partial Visigothic ancestry, had effective local bases and local loyalties.
from which they could
They could be happy with an expanding
benefit,
even though the growing
fiscal
of that state were opposed to their immediate interests, but
342
if
state,
demands the state
FROM ‘aBBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO would look
faltered they
to their localities, rather than to the person of
the amir. Beneath the ‘Abbasid-style political system in Cordoba, that to say, the
more
continued to
is
western-style local political practice, already discussed,
exist. Iran,
with
its
surviving Sassanian aristocratic families,
offers the closest parallel, including the survival of pre-Arabic political
imagery
found
in local social
the Zoroastrian legitimists that can be
in Iran as late as the tenth century
ibn Hafsun, also
memory;
who
have their parallel
actually converted to Christianity in 898. But Iran
had other regions with strong paid armies and
societies,
which tended to dominate
paid army was
still
depoliticized local
politically. In Spain, the
permanent
not substantial, and military service was largely
controlled, as in other parts of the West, by the very aristocrats loyalty
was now
autonomy under
‘Umar
in
in doubt.
a
When even Seville in 899
member
of one of
its
whose
established effective
local elite families,
Ibrahim ibn
al-Hajjaj (d. 91 1), called ‘king’ (malik) in the sources, the state risked
breaking up.
‘Abd Allah’s grandson and successor, ‘Abd al-Rahman
was the
ruler
who
III
(912-61),
reversed this trend, and by doing so he inaugurated
three generations of strong central power, the strongest
known
in
Spain
between the Romans and the thirteenth century. ‘Abd al-Rahman
III
understood that the only way to cope with
to
fight, systematically
and without
this decentralization
a break. In only
was
two years he
re-
established control over the Guadalquivir valley; thereafter he pushed
outwards, expanding his army as he did
so,
not just in the old amiral
heartland but in the marches as well. Bobastro
fell in
928, Badajoz in
930, Toledo in 932. ‘Abd al-Rahman for the most part incorporated the lords he uprooted into his
Cordoba, but they were,
army or
else into the civilian state class in
crucially, separated
from
their local
power-
bases and incorporated into a tax-based political system that was less superficial in
its
similarity with the East than in the previous century.
This was underlined further by a great increase in slave and ex-slave soldiers,
who were
mostly Saqdliba,
‘Slavs’
to include other northern Europeans).
(though the word extended
Erom as early as 916 this enlarged
army was also sent north against the Christians, which further allowed ‘Abd al-Rahman (who, unusually, often led his own troops) to impose himself in the marches. In the end, he came fully to control all of al-Andalus except the Upper March in the far north-east, whose lords gave him military service and tax but remained autonomous. Even there.
343
THE EMPIRES OE THE EAST, 550-IOOO the
main old ex-Visigothic
family, the
Banu Qasi, had
lost its
power by
907, and was replaced as a regional focus by the Tujibis, a family close
Umayyads, which had been given Zaragoza
to the
Amir ‘Abd
partially in the
890
in
one of
hegemony was not
Allah’s rare effective interventions. This
weakened, except
in
Upper March, by ‘Abd al-Rahman’s
only serious military defeat, against the Christians of Leon in 939 (see
Chapter 20). This overall success, plus the collapse of ‘Abbasid power in the
same period and the Fatimid establishment of ‘Abd al-Rahman
ate in 910, led
a rival Shi‘a caliph-
to proclaim himself caliph, as al-
III
Nasir, in 929.
The tenth century was developed most with
its
fully.
the period
when
Cordoba gained
monumental mosque
al-Rahman’s son al-Hakam
II
the ceremonial of the ruler
a series of
new
in the centre, greatly
(961-76),
moved
stantinople and Cairo as a metropolis. ‘Abd
suburbs, and,
enlarged by ‘Abd
into the league of
al-Rahman
also
Con-
founded
around 940 an impressive new court and administrative centre Madinat al-Zahra’, just north-west of the city. Here, caliphal ritual
at is
recorded in a number of texts, from the Life of John of Gorze, ambassa-
around 953-6, intransigent in its (and its subject’s) to Islam but unwillingly impressed by the complexity of the
dor for Otto hostility
court, to the
I
in
971-5
section of the history by ‘Isa al-Razi (d. 989),
preserved a century later in the Muqtabis of Ibn
Hayyan
(d.
1076),
which provides us with several detailed accounts of particular
cer-
emonial moments at the high points of the Muslim religious year. In the caliph’s
had
main reception
hall at
their allotted positions, in
Madinat al-Zahra’,
two
lines,
all
officials
with the caliph at the end; the
majesty of caliphal power was intended to be, and was,
The tenth century was
major
also a period of larger-scale
made
very clear.
economic
activity.
We shall see in the next chapter that al-Andalus participated in Mediterranean exchange, through the port of Almeria, founded walled and expanded) by ‘Abd al-Rahman
we can
see in recent archaeology the
III
in
(or, rather,
955. Internally, too,
development of centralized and
professional artisanal production of ceramics and glass, including glazed
pottery in east Mediterranean styles, not least a ‘green and manganese’
decorated ware, which appears extensively on Spanish
and which seems to have been made centres.
That
latter
ware has
largely in
sites
of the period,
Cordoba and other major
explicit caliphal associations, as
can be
seen in the frequent inscription al-mulk (‘power’) along the edges of
344
FROM ‘aBBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA, 75O-IOOO plates
and bowls,
especially but not only in
sort of artisanal activity
cannot be
Madinat al-Zahra’. But
in itself ascribed to
or his political success. Tenth-century artisanal
in
parts; but leather,
and
elite
most of the Muslim parts of the peninsula. (Not the Christian
Arab-made
artisanal goods, especially carpets, cloth
were nonetheless prized there as
economic complexity shows
ing
on that of
built
to the steady development of hierarchies of wealth
testifies
demand
‘Abd al-Rahman
which was notably more professional than that of the eighth;
the ninth, it
work
this
is
luxuries.)
One
and
thing this grow-
that the rich aristocracies of the ninth
century had by no means gone away; they had simply been absorbed into the caliphal political hierarchy, or else into the local ‘ulamd’ hier-
archies of the cities of al-Andalus large,
- or
and the deracinated Slav (and,
else both, for later,
Spain was not that
Berber) armies were only
part of the ‘state class’. Their identity and assumptions are well expressed
by the historian and grammarian Ibn al-Qutiya
who wrote
in Seville,
(al-Qutiya), granddaughter of
and
who supposedly included Sara
‘the
huge Goth’
King Wittiza; Ibn al-Qutiya was nonethe-
focused on the doings of the
clearly
977), son of a judge
a chatty history full of stories about the
landed wealth of his ancestors,
less as
(d.
Umayyads
as
any other historian,
bought into the values of the court. All that ‘Abd al-Rahman
did here - not a small thing, however - was to create the political
foundation for the linkage of the local economies and societies of the ninth century in a single network, covering the whole of the Spanish caliphate.
Al-Hakam continued his known as a literary patron,
father’s political practices; he
was well
too. His military expansion, especially in
972-5, was southwards, into Morocco, which had been largely left to its own devices after the Fatimid move into Egypt. At his death, however, his
son al-Hisham
II
(976-1009, 1010-13) was only
Morocco,
seized by one of al-Hakam’s military leaders in
ibn Abi ‘Amir, a
coup against
who had
a loyal
fifteen;
power was
Muhammad
detachment of Berbers to help him win
their Slav rivals. Ibn
Abi ‘Amir
steadily eliminated all
other powerful figures in the court, and in 981 assumed supreme
power
as ruling hdjib for a figurehead caliph, even giving himself the ruling title
of al-Mansur (in Spanish Almanzor, 981-1002).
Al-Mansur
greatly
developed the Berber component of his army to counterbalance the Slavs.
He
fought in Morocco, too; but he principally sent his armies to
the north, against the Christian
kingdoms and
345
principalities,
whom
he
THE EMPIRES OE THE EAST, 550-IOOO defeated time and again, notably but not only in the devastating sack of
Barcelona in 984 and of Santiago de Compostela in the far north-west 997; his son al-Muzaffar (1002-8) continued this as well. In this military dominance, coupled with a substantial internal stability, and in
a continuation of the central ceremonial role of
Mansur
al-
another suburban administrative centre, Madinat
built yet
al-Zahira - the
Cordoba - where
Umayyad
caliphate appeared to reach
its
height.
As with the ‘Abbasid high point under al-Mu‘tasim and al-Wathiq, however,
hegemony would not
this
last.
Indeed, almost as soon as
al-Muzaffar died, al-Andalus disintegrated into a twenty-year
(1009-31). The detailed reasons for essentially
lie
more
war
our period; they
this lie outside
with the political ineptness of al-Muzaffar’s successors,
and power-struggles between Berber and Slav far
civil
serious than
violent sack of
its
Cordoba
But
leaders.
predecessor a century earlier; itself in
this fitna it
was
included a
1013, and the abandonment of the
nomination of caliphs altogether, by
now
all
them figureheads,
of
in
1031. By that date al-Andalus was divided between thirty or so king-
doms, known as the Taifas (from
‘Abd al-Rahman’s
td’ifa, ‘faction’),
political unity or
and
never recovered
it
al-Mansur’s military protagonism.
This collapse was so fast and so complete - far faster than that of the ‘Abbasids, and resulting in independent polities that were in single city territories, far smaller
that
it
many cases
than the successor states in the East -
needs some comment.
Some of the Taifa kingdoms were ruled by regional army commanders, Slav or Berber, who simply turned their commands into autonomous, and then independent, as in the East.
units as central authority collapsed in the loios,
Some, especially
in the north-east,
were ruled by long-
standing families whose local power had been recognized even by ‘Abd
al-Rahman
III,
Santaver area,
haps the civic,
not
the Tujibis in Zaragoza or the Dhi’l-Nunids of the upland
who
in
1018 occupied Toledo. But some, including per-
richest, Seville, state, office:
were taken over by
local
landowners
not necessarily from the same families
who had who had
dominated around 900, but at least from the same social stratum. We have to conclude that ‘Abd al-Rahman III had not definitively ended the presumption,
which had always been stronger
in
al-Andalus than
elsewhere in the Muslim world, that landownership brought potential rights to political authority.
And, even more important: notwithstanding
the substantial territorial reorganizations of the caliphal period
346
- with
FROM ‘aBBASID BAGHDAD TO UMAYYAD CORDOBA,
75 O-IOOO
governorships both large and small tightly controlled by central govern-
ment, and
many
of the local fortifications of the
first fitna
simply taken
over by the state - ‘Abd al-Rahman and his successors had not succeeded fully in
undermining that other core Spanish presupposition, that prac-
tical politics
was
local. In
both these respects, the Visigothic inheritance
of al-Andalus comes out in the Taifa period.
succeeded in establishing a tax-based Spain since the
Roman
Taifas; but they did not
state,
The amirs and
caliphs
such as had not existed in
empire, and this indeed continued under the
manage
to
move
their
Andalusi population to
the assumptions that prevailed in Egypt or Iraq, even in the fragmented
tenth century, that only the control of the state mattered, and that a
land-based local politics was marginal.
loios as
moved
the state faltered, in the
in the 8 80s and, earlier, in the 710s, Spain’s localities at
centre stage.
this time,
When
When
a degree of reunification belatedly
once
came
with the Almoravids at the end of the eleventh century, the
Christians had taken Toledo and the whole balance of power had shifted.
347
and the Economy: Eastern Mediterranean Exchange Networks, 600-1000
The
State
Being a tradesman in Constantinople around 900 was by no means a straightforward process. According to the Prefect), a set of official regulations
keepers and
many
operate, and
artisans
had to
silver-dealers in the
perfumers
in the
sell
had
their
from
to be
wares
Book of the Eparch
this period,
members of
(or the
merchants, shop-
a guild (systema) to
in specific places, the gold-
Mese, the merchants of Arab
silk in the
Embole, the
Milion beside Hagia Sophia, the pork butchers
Tauros. Ambulant
sellers
and
in the
were banned; they would be flogged, stripped
of guild membership, and expelled from the city. Sellers of silk could
not
make up
clothes as well; leather sellers could not be tanners.
guilds, such as the
to
do
guild
down
their
merchants of Arab
silk
Some
or the linen merchants, had
buying collectively, with the goods then distributed
among
how much money
to keep
members according
to
they had put
in,
way
competitive buying. Sheep butchers had to go a long
into
Anatolia to buy their sheep, to keep prices down; pork butchers, by contrast,
had
to
buy
pigs in the city,
and were prohibited from going
out to meet the vendors; so also were fishmongers, shore, not if
silk
sea.
The eparch,
merchants (divided into
who were all
on the
the city governor,
five
who had had
buy on
to be informed
separate guilds) sold to foreigners,
prohibited from buying certain grades of
bread prices, by which bakers had to
sell,
silk.
and the
He
determined
price of
innkeepers sold; and he also determined the profits that
made -
to
wine the
many vendors
grocers were allowed a 16 per cent profit, but bakers only 4 per
cent (with another 16 per cent for the pay of their workmen), over and
above the price they paid
in the state grain
warehouse.
Later medieval western towns often had quite elaborate guild regulations like these,
archies in trades.
aimed
at
maintaining monopolies and internal hier-
The Book of
the
Eparch stands out, however (apart
348
THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY from
in its early date), in the
degree of state control
assumes. The
it
regulation of profit was particularly important here, and also the regulation of the
ways
were allowed to buy
sellers
controlled because
was
their goods. Silk
production and distribution reflected directly on
its
imperial prestige (the regulations for linen merchants were looser).
Above
however,
all,
had
for Constantinople afford.
it
was
vital that the
food market was controlled,
to be fed reliably, at prices the inhabitants could
Bread was no longer
Roman
free, as in the late
empire; that had
stopped abruptly by imperial decree when the Persians took Egypt in
6i8 (above. Chapter
Constantinople was
ii).
much
not need Egyptian grain any more, and could provision
Aegean and southern Black Sea hinterland. seen,
it
even at
was
still
very substantial in
low point
its
size;
in the seventh
it
was the
and eighth
well have surpassed
it
did
it
from
itself
its
we have
All the same, as
largest city in
Europe
and was now
centuries,
growing again, reaching maybe 100,000 inhabitants
may
now;
smaller
in 900.
in size in the tenth century, but
it
(Cordoba shrank
in
the eleventh, leaving the top spot to the Byzantine capital again.)
Emperors and eparchs could not afford the trouble from that
would
inevitably appear
if
its
inhabitants
there were food shortages -
and
these,
indeed, were seen by the urban population as the fault of public author-
Trade was independent
ities.
were closely linked to the the rules in the
as
an aspiration, and
ascribe this sort of
fury.
silk in
state.
We
it is
terms of trade
can of course doubt
Book of the Eparch were, but
all
prohibited
in Constantinople, but the
how
effective
they are very striking
at least true that narrative sources regularly
power
Cremona
to officials. Eiutprand of
968, but
it
was discovered and
The Byzantine government had
did buy
confiscated, to his
the infrastructure to
make
its
laws
obeyed, at least sometimes. This introduces us to a standard feature of both Byzantine and Arab
exchange,
its
close link to the state. This varied, certainly.
It
was prob-
ably greater in Constantinople than in the Byzantine provinces; to have been greater in
Egypt than
in al-Andalus;
and
it
seems
state control
was
always more likely to be enforced in the arena of urban provisioning
than in that of the international luxury trade interest
goods
risk-taking. turies
apart), for that trade relied so
Arab port
much on
authorities in the tenth
even then regularly assigned
(silks
and
official prices to
these were only guides to market prices,
349
and other
state-
private mercantile
early eleventh cen-
imported goods, but
which varied by supply and
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 550-IOOO demand. But grain
in
Constantinople was only one out of several com-
modities which were bought from government warehouses; in Egypt,
was
too, flax (for linen), one of that region’s principal productions,
also
sold to merchants (whether for internal sale or for export) by state offices,
and some of the major linen-weaving
and
centres, such as Tinnis
Damietta, were largely publicly owned. Egypt, as already implied, had in every period a rather
more dominant
state sector
than existed in some
other regions, but the existence of operations on this scale
Commerce
itself
might be
in the
striking.
is
hands of independent merchants,
but they operated in a framework in which the public power had a considerable say. And, above
all,
were huge sources of demand.
states
Egyptian documents from the decades around looo show merchants regularly (and sometimes unwillingly) selling to the
and, even artisans
when
this did
on great
own
who were
itself;
not take place, the focusing by merchants and
political centres
such as Constantinople, Baghdad,
Eustat-Cairo and Cordoba was because these buyers
government
cities
had so many
rich
paid by the state, bureaucrats or soldiers and their
dependants.
As we have
seen,
and
as
we
shall see again, after the
end of the
Roman
West, which was a strong and centralized state and which
empire
in the
moved
large quantities of
goods around on
its
own
behalf,
exchange
in
post-Roman kingdoms depended for its intensity on the wealth of landowners - aristocrats, churches and kings. The richer landowners
the
were, the more exchange there was, and the more complex
patterns.
its
This was broadly true in the eastern Mediterranean as well; but state
power, based on tax-raising, continued here, and
was normally on
a
somewhat
state
buying-power
larger scale than that of private land-
owners. Eurthermore, private wealth allowed people access to state office,
and thus access
taxation. This
to the greater
was so even
owners were usually
less
in the Islamic
as a whole,
it is
demand
Byzantine and Arab East.
its
and
soldiers.
Where
demand, and thus exchange,
private landed wealth
trajectory to the wealth of the state,
and
to that of officials
the changing wealth of the state sector that
best guide to the changing scale of
well,
world, where private land-
automatically linked to political power, and so
could be seen as a rival source of
Taken
emoluments made possible by
local variation
analyses. But broadly the
it
350
in
the
in the
different
must have affected demand
adds a further
two moved
had a
is
level of
tandem
in
as
complexity to our
most of the
East,
and
THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY the State system
about the
is
also rather better documented.
latter in this
The gap
in
I
shall be saying
more
chapter as a result.
our evidence for the landed aristocracy matches the very
serious gap in our seventh- to tenth-century evidence for the peasant
majority in the East. The millions of documents regularly produced for
governments and private individuals have almost
been
all
lost.
land documentation that
Only
for
we can
in
Byzantium and the caliphate
Egypt do we have the sort of local
find in Erancia
few cases the reconstruction of peasant
in a
and
Italy,
thus allowing
societies, as in the case of
the eighth-century Coptic village of Jeme, in western Thebes in
Upper
Egypt; and the uneven publication of Egyptian documents in Arabic
means
that
we cannot as yet easily do this
archaeology
is
for the period after 800. Rural
currently poorer for the period after
before, too, in nearly every region.
650 or so than
for
We looked at Byzantine and Andalusi
and 14, and I shall of course be referring to some aspects of peasant economy and society in this chapter, for they aristocracies in Chapters 13
will inevitably
impinge on issues of wealth-creation, taken as a whole:
and the higher aggregate demand was, the more the peasantry was exploited -
put simply, the richer
elites
were (whether from tax or
an equation which must be understood to underlie But
we
shall
detail of
have to wait for future research before
most eastern peasant
we have
confront the
600-650, so
society
also seen in the last four chapters.
whole chapter.
we can
social realities after
compare them with those of the West. Urban as
this
rents),
is
as to
better attested,
One urban
society
is
particularly clearly documented, the Jewish sector of the city of Eustat in Egypt,
whose genlza or storehouse of waste paper
would not destroy on),
founded
in
the
word
(kept because Jews
of God, and thus any paper with writing
1025, preserves thousands of texts, which begin to be
numerous around 980. Most of rather than from the tenth, but
I
these are eleventh-century or later, shall use
some
early eleventh-century
geniza texts here as well, as they transform our understanding of
urban
societies
how
could function at the very end of our period. Despite the
wealth of the eastern Mediterranean, then, our surviving information
about the socio-economic history of the period 600-1000 than
it is
for the West.
I
is
even
shall focus here, necessarily briefly,
regions in turn: Byzantium, with
its
seventh-century
crisis
bittier
on three
and ninth-
century revival; Syria and Iraq, rivals throughout, where economic pro-
tagonism moved decisively from the
351
first
to the second in 750;
and
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 550-IOOO Egypt, the region with the most continuity. international
As we saw
commerce which
We
linked them.
caused the Byzantine state to change markedly..
and mostly demonetized tax structure, focused
tained
look at the
Chapter ii, the military disasters of the 6ios and 640s
in
own goods
shall then
structure,
adopted a localized
It
matching a localized military
on defence. Never again would the
long distances on any scale, even
itself as a fiscally
if
state transport
its
Constantinople main-
supported focus for commercial demand.
It is
also likely that the landed aristocracy, never as rich as in the West, lost
some ground, given
its
850 or
invisibility in the sources before
so,
and
given the constant raiding that will have reduced agricultural productivity in
much
of Anatolia until the frontier stabilized in the eighth
when our
century; as noted in Chapter 13, even in the tenth century,
sources
was
all
agree that a process of local affirmation of aristocratic
firmly under way,
it is
across the whole empire as
we know about some areas of the seventh
hard to argue that they were as dominant
was normal
in the
West. The tiny amount
peasant society at least shows that there were indeed
the empire
and eighth
where
centuries.
aristocrats did not
full
Law,
a private
in parts of the
cultivation in
Anatolian plateau.
handbook of agrarian law from
also be located in Anatolia it
may
(as
in
in the years leading
to the Persian invasions, indicating that aristocrats never
wholly hegemonic
control in
Theodore of Sykeon had
communities already
largely independent peasant
have
The lands west of Ankara described
the early seventh-century Life of the ascetic
up
power
If
the period
had been
the Farmer’s
650-850, can
the absence of reference to olive-
imply), then such peasant communities continued
to exist there after the invasion period as well. In both texts, the state
remains present, unquestioned, as a tax-raising and judicial power.
There were also considerable wealth differences
in each,
with richer
peasants dominating the community and leasing land to poorer peasants.
But external landowners are relatively unimportant in the earlier
and absent
in the later.
This
is
text,
not a guide to the empire as a whole,
or even to the whole of Anatolia (aristocrats were rather strong in
Cappadocia, further
east, in
both the fourth to sixth centuries and the
ninth to eleventh, so plausibly in between as well); but the patchiness of local aristocratic
dominance
is
made clear by these texts, and
certainly increased in the crisis centuries.
352
this
almost
THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY Corresponding to the
difficulties
experienced by the Byzantine state
and aristocracy, the seventh and eighth centuries show, particularly clearly in fact, a crisis in urbanism. Archaeologists
about whether there was already a dip
in
urban
and historians argue Byzantine
vitality in the
lands after 550; but no one any longer seriously argues that there was
not a systemic
makes 650
in
show
this
seventh century. Urban archaeology
crisis in the early
too clear. Building cannot be shown to have continued after
most of the dozen or more
areas of systematic
with decent excavation; most
cities
abandonment
in the
same period,
as with the
particularly well-excavated street of shops in Sardis, in the Anatolian
lowlands close to the Aegean, which were abruptly deserted or the gymnasion in
Ankara whose burning can be
the Persian sack of 622, for a Persian ring-stone
burnt
level.
am
I
precisely dated to
was excavated
too,
and can
also recover
It is
was on an
is
too great to be
significant that the best counter-example,
Gortyn on Crete,
island,
and thus
raids: here Heraclius
quake, and a
late
walls,
(610-41) reconstructed the
(now often still
some
an earth-
all
we
get
city,
is
and
above the old town.
state continued, as
we have
called kastra) could
had bishops (although
still
hill-top fortifications
were
is
seen.
Even small
hill-top
have a political-military
these, as
preferred to live in the capital). There that
city after
seventh-century artisanal quarter, probably extending
hills
The Byzantine and also
from Persian/Arab or Avar/Sclavenian
sometimes enclosing only portions of the ancient
sometimes on
cities
safer
has recently been excavated. Elsewhere,
later as well,
new
have
cities
from being sacked), but the
accumulation of evidence in the Byzantine lands gainsaid.
in the
normally cautious about drawing too catastrophist
conclusions from anecdotal examples like these (prosperous
abandoned areas
61 os,
in the
we have
role,
also seen, often
some evidence, furthermore,
citadels for islands of surviving
settlement in the ancient cities below, as at Euchaita and Amorion, both
on the Anatolian plateau, or
at Corinth in central Greece, or at
on the south coast of modern Turkey. Whether was
sufficiently dense
cannot yet be
said: of these,
likely. Overall,
Some holds.
and economically
however,
this scattered
occupation
diversified to be called ‘urban’
Amorion and Corinth
we have
Myra
to recognize a
are perhaps the
new urban
most
typology.
ancient cities were wholly abandoned or reduced to small strong-
Some developed this
scattered pattern, with greater or lesser levels
of organization or urbanization.
A
few continued to be active as urban
353
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST,
55 O-IOOO
though on a considerably reduced scale, like Ephesos, Miletos and Athens on the Aegean coast - Ephesos’s new walls left much of the
centres,
old city centre outside them, but land; the city
sum
a large
enclosed a square kilometre of
still
recorded by Theophanes as having a major
is
in taxes, in
795-6. And
may
a handful of cities
seen rather less change, though excavation
is
less
good
in
yielding
fair,
well have
them
precisely
because of the urban continuities there: Thessaloniki, Iznik (ancient Nicaea), Izmir (ancient Smyrna), Trabzon, major political centres in
each case. This
not total urban collapse, but even on an optimistic
is
reading of the evidence cities lost all
The
common to most ‘successful’
entrepot,
is
the
main exception.)
army and
too.
demand
It
looks as
and administrative
local military
joined the
civil
These towns thus remained
to retain their
urban
When Byzantium
the state focused
if
centres;
bureaucracy, they
may
were
as yet
far fewer of
perhaps some
them than
in 600.
number
They increased
their
of active cities
own
sizes again,
hard to be sure exactly when from the archaeology;
the eleventh century
and also
well have gone to such
achieved greater military and political stability again,
did not greatly expand, either. it is
its
sufficiently potent centres of
slowly after 750, more visibly after 850, the
although
on
landed aristocrats
if
characteristics: markets,
artisanal specialization. But there
is
early Byzantine
that they were thematic centres. (Ephesos, long a commercial
is
towns
that four-fifths of Byzantine
or most of their urban characteristics.
significant feature in
towns
main
we might propose
shows
in Hierapolis
it
better than the tenth, although in Sardis,
on the western edge of the Anatolian plateau,
it
already visible before 1000. But the Byzantine empire never again
Roman urbanism
re-created the density of late
Our
evidence for
logical,
commerce outside
both mirrors
this picture
in its territory.
the capital, also largely archaeo-
and nuances it. The seventh century saw
the abrupt end of the Aegean’s
main
industrial tableware production,
Phocaean Red
more
local imitations; painted
Slip
ware, and
its
reasonable quality sometimes replaced their distribution
localized
ERA
2,
we
localized,
and
example
(for
in
some
in Crete),
but
places (notably in
handmade pottery, indicating the end of production. Amphora production, for oil and wine, also
inland Greece) professional
was very
it
wares of
and
all
find
is
simplified; the standardized
was replaced by
Aegean globular amphora,
a variety of related but
more
local types.
developments, into the eighth century, imply a breakdown in
354
These
demand
THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY for goods,
and thus the weakening of concentrations of wealth, whether
public or private. But this
had an
is
not the whole picture. Constantinople
which began around 600 and continued
two
for
many
(GWW),
centuries. In the next
centuries there are sporadic finds of this pottery type in a wide range
of places across the Aegean,
had
White ware
industrial ceramic production, of Glazed
itself
its
own
down
productions). These
and even Cyprus (which
to Crete,
show
that the
Aegean did not
certain level of medium-distance exchange. This
(probably) eighth-century Rhodian Sea
supported by the
is
Law, another
manual, which discusses the relationship between
lose a
private legal
ships’ captains
and
merchants on ships, and which presumes as standard cargoes an array of goods that are hard for archaeologists to find: slaves, linen, as well as
wine and
oil in
silk,
grain,
(presumably) post-LRA 2 amphorae. Seventh-
to ninth-century saints’ lives also regularly feature shipping, often but
not only for grain. The Aegean was by now, as
demand
ople’s agrarian hinterland; the else,
kept ships on the sea.
we have seen,
Constantin-
of the capital, even
if
nothing
GWW tableware was probably one of the
things the capital sold in return.
The Byzantine empire
work seas
at
low point thus never
its
of exchange that covered
heartland, the
its
entirely lost a net-
Aegean and Marmara
and the coasts around them. This was so even
if
most
duction had simplified, sometimes radically. This seems to else
we know about
structures, but that
the empire: that the state
it
was
still
local pro-
had localized
dominated by a powerful
what
reflect
own
its
capital.
Argu-
ably, the local differences in productive professionalism
around 700
power on
the ground,
reflect areas
of greater or lesser aristocratic
although the evidence further.
is
not yet good enough for
The Aegean-wide exchange we do
our written sources
stress
see
this to
be developed
was not run by the
independent merchants
in the
state;
period before
Book of the Eparch, for all its regulatory interest, does in 900. But state-fuelled demand was the most solid agent of buying power all the same; and this commerce focused on the capital first, 800, just as the
although secondarily, in other surviving centres as well, Thessaloniki,
Ephesos or Smyrna.
As we move in the
into the ninth century, one visible change
numbers of coins found on
find coins
up
to Constans
II
nothing, for a hundred and
in
sites. It is
normal
is
an increase
in excavations to
around 660, and then nothing, or almost
fifty
years; even
355
though every emperor
still
THE EMPIRES OE THE EAST, 55O-IOOO minted coins, they vanished from circulation, and
were
that they
commonly
at all
we could not conclude
available outside the capital. This
changed from the 820s onwards. At Corinth^ nearly four times as many coins are
known
for Theophilos
(829-42) as for
all his
predecessors put
together after Constans; those for Leo VI (886-912) are six times as
numerous
as for Theophilos, those for Leo’s son Constantine VII double
and the
again,
figures
go on up from
linked to a revival in taxation and often ascribed to Nikephoros shift
depended on a more
I
there. This
army pay
in
can most plausibly be
money, which
(802-11: above. Chapter ii); such a
reliable supply of metals, but also
(and furthered) market exchange, sufficient to In the ninth century, too,
most
is
we come upon
move
presumed
the coins around.
larger-scale finds of
GWW
outside the capital, for example at Mesembria, a Byzantine port in
modern
Bulgaria,
and even
in field survey, in the countryside outside
Sparta; in the tenth, this extends to Thebes. Local imitations of Constantinople pottery begin to be found at Athens, and, significantly, at Preslav in
independent Bulgaria. Large-scale ceramic production at Corinth also
began by the tenth century, and so did the amphorae of the Canos area, in the Sea of
Marmara, destined
for the
newly systematic export of
wine. The wine trade could already extend far afield, indeed,
consignment of wine-amphorae, marked with
found
in a
wreck
off south-west
was from the Crimea,
Turkey dating
if
the large
names,
their shippers’
to
as the excavators think. Linen
local
around 880,
really
was exported from
Bulgaria and the southern Black Sea (as also from Egypt) to the capital as well,
and both Constantinople and Thessaloniki made
beginning to
glass.
We
are
move into the complex Byzantine productions of the central
Middle Ages. In the ninth century,
and
still
more
in the tenth, the state
was
getting
stronger and richer in Byzantium. In the tenth, so was the aristocracy, in
some areas - often away from
the
Aegean focus of the archaeology,
but including in southern Greece, where already in the 880s the wealthy Danelis (see Chapter 13) had access to elaborate linens and
silks,
and
the textile workers themselves,
whom
century
complaints about ‘the powerful’, was
later,
Basil
II,
in his
she gave to Basil
I
and Leo VI.
worried that they would monopolize rural markets, too. in this set of
whole
list
of examples
is
What we
A
see
an increasingly elaborate and diversified
agrarian and artisanal productions, with an increasingly wide and
complex
distribution, to
and from the
356
capital, certainly, but
between
THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY provinces as well: Thessaloniki was a particularly important entrepot.
This was again,
made
possible by elite
demand, which was
and was also furthered by
production and exchange.
direct elite involvement in artisanal
was ever a natural location
there
If
medium-distance exchange, of course,
it
was the Aegean,
locked and protected, and studded with islands, as
900 merely saw
of the
crisis,
invasions. But the growing
two
The years around
it is.
demographic expansion, which our period, begins to be more
the Byzantine state
two
further in the
still
centuries after the Persian
power of
is
for
largely land-
a return to normality in this respect; they point
abnormality, the
that exchange
clearly increasing
up the
and Arab
would push
centuries to come. After 1000, a
quite likely to have already started in
visible in
our documentation, as does a
trend to reclaim uncultivated land; the agrarian base of the empire
was
The eleventh century shows some
clearly expanding.
agricultural
specializations as well, not least in mulberry trees for silk in various
parts of the empire: these too for
must have existed already before 1000,
Byzantium was certainly producing
old view that the empire twelfth centuries
is
now
its
own
silk in
saw economic stagnation
our period. The
and
in the eleventh
decisively rejected; the roots of the generalized
economic expansion of that period lay yet only see occasional signs of
in ours,
And
it.
even though
we can
as
that expansion affected areas
outside the empire as well: by the early eleventh century the Byzantines
were exporting
silk to
Syria did not for the
Egypt. This
most part
Byzantine empire. After 661 caliphate,
we
shall
come back
to.
see the seventh-century crisis of the
was the
political centre of the
as also in the regional religious centre, Jerusalem.
was never a huge is
a point
Umayyad
and that period saw major monumental building in the capital,
Damascus,
but
it
is
city,
which partly
reflects
partly also due to the fact that the
getting taxes
from the provinces of the
problems of water supply,
Umayyads had
caliphate. But
still
difficulties
enough came
Syria to ensure the wealth of the caliphs themselves,
and rural palaces
Damascus
and
their
into
urban
survive in the landscape of Syria and Palestine.
The Arab conquest was anyway quick enough for Syria not to suffer in its basic infrastructures. Most of the numerous excavations in both Syria and
Palestine,
both urban and rural, show continuities that extend to
750 at least, particularly in inland areas. In and around the city of Madaba, for example, in what is now northern Jordan, Christian
357
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO churches were founded into the late eighth century, with impressively
show both wealthy patrons and
decorated mosaic floors which
artisans: in the city, in rural monasteries,
changed
Cities
in structure.
to fall out of use, as the
Their
and
skilled
around.
in villages
Roman monumental centres
Arabs had a different ceremonial
tended
style,
with
fewer religious or political processions and a focus on the enclosed public space of
mosque courtyards. But they continued
demographic and productive
Roman
centres;
to be active
public buildings were
replaced by artisan workshops, colonnaded streets were replaced by
rows of shops, often monumentally
built (particularly, as
Chapter 12, by Caliph Hisham, 724-43). So north of
Madaba
complexes were
kiln
economy of the
Roman
built in a
800 or
Galilee area until
so; at
(modern Bet She’an) there were by 700 or so
in
Gerasa (modern Jerash)
made Gerasa ceramics
temple, part of a network which of the
at
we saw
theatre
and
a
a major feature
nearby Scythopolis
kilns in the theatre
and
amphitheatre, linen workshops in a bath complex (Scythopolis linen
was well known already shop complexes on the
in the
site
Roman
empire), and one of Hisham’s
of a sixth-century hall. These patterns are
repeated, in greater and lesser detail, in twenty other
duction of glass, dyeing (and thus
work. Substantial
in recent archaeological
found
in
some
monumental
cities,
too;
buildings,
textiles), iron,
the pro-
cities;
copper are
attested
all
town houses have been
elite
and of course the Arab period had
mosques and governors’
its
own
palaces.
This picture was clearly very different from that in the Byzantine heartland, although the sources - almost
all
archaeological - are the
same. There are almost no usable written sources on these issues for Syria
and
Palestine, in fact, although the Syriac chronicles for Edessa
also paint a glowing picture of the
of the wealth of
its
Christian
landowner and a tax reputedly
nuance
The
elites:
official for
and
Athanasios bar Gumoye, a great in
Egypt around 700,
nine inns in Edessa.
Two
changes
continuing
elite
and rural prosperity, however.
that the coast of Syria
and
Palestine, a
this picture of
export area under the
Roman
abandonment of marginal
linked to the Mediterranean;
it
major
oil
and wine
empire, saw stagnation under the
Umayyads, the weakening of major coastal the
activity of that city
‘Abd al-Malik
owned 300 shops and
first is
commercial
lands.
such as Antioch, and
cities
Umayyad
Syria
was not
closely
hardly even had any economic links with
Egypt, although some Egyptian products
358
still
came
in
through the major
THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY surviving coastal entrepot, Caesarea in
-
this
is
the second change - Syria
economic
The productions
unit.
and
what
is
Palestine
now
But actually
Israel.
were no longer a
single
that can be best traced by archaeolo-
once again mostly ceramics, remain of very high quality
gists,
Umayyad levelled,
period, and
aimed
show
at elites
localized than in the
industries that
and non-elites
Roman
in the
were large-scale and many-
alike;
much more
but they were
period. Gerasa pottery rarely reached the
Mediterranean coast, or ‘Aqaba on the Red Sea, or northern Syria, for example; even Jerusalem, only loo kilometres away, largely had
own -
again, high-quality
- ceramic
tradition.
its
So the Syro-Palestinian
economy remained prosperous and complex under the Umayyads, but it was much more internally fragmented, and cut off from its neighbours. It was, in fact, even more internally fragmented than the crisis-bound Byzantine empire, as
seems on the basis of the archaeology of the
it
moment. This economic fragmentation further underscores the difficulty the
Umayyads had
own
in centralizing the fiscal
political heartland,
system of the
state,
although they were certainly more successful
here than elsewhere. But the complexity of (almost sections of Syria local
and Palestine also points
respect to merchants than the
mad had
It is
visible in the
that
is
often said that the Arabs gave
Romans had, which is true; Muham-
It is
much
often also said that this ideological shift
monumental
building,
from colonnaded
mosques (above. Chapter unused buildings
we should
lo);
streets
shifts in the
and
will get taken over for private uses,
focus
theatres, etc., to
and so
it
was
here.
also not overstate the mercantile element in elite activity.
first
and foremost;
patricians in this period
commerce,
already
a city remains economically active,
if
Athanasios bar Gumoye, notwithstanding
all
is
old public centres; this seems less likely, however. These
changes are better explained as the normal result of
landowner
of the West, or
changing forms of cities, with more artisanal and commer-
cial activity in
above
elites,
been a merchant, and there was never in the Islamic world any
even Byzantium.
But
the different
at the continuing force of
stigma attached to wealth ‘from trade’, unlike in
of
all)
demand, and thus of the continuing wealth of urban
to say the local landed aristocracy.
more
even in their
it
is
all his
likely
shops, was a great
indeed that most urban
(who were anyway mostly
still
Christians) were
landowners, and at most used landed capital to get into if
they wanted. This would be so
359
later, too, in
‘Abbasid Iraq,
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO where such
would usually be Muslims, and
elites
where ‘ulamd’ biographies show land
as mercantile activity as
wealth. Even the Jewish rnercantile elites of Fustat in
who may
well have gained their initial wealth entirely in the
commercial
sector,
bought land or tax-farming concessions with
their
land remained overwhelmingly the chief source of wealth
profits, for
Exchange was, and remained, only a spin-off of agricultural
overall.
wealth, even around the great
and
post-‘Abbasid Iran,
elite
the basis for
Egypt,
much
as
in
still
more
Umayyad
in
cities
of the second half of our period,
Syria.
The year 750 marks a change in the economy of Syria and Palestine. The ‘Abbasid takeover marginalized the region politically, and, with the fiscal centralization
of the caliphate from the 780s onwards, Syrian taxes
were firmly directed to into the ninth
Iraq. Cities
which stayed
as prosperous as before
and tenth centuries were rather fewer, Ramla near Jerusa-
lem, Tiberias on Lake Galilee, Caesarea, ‘Aqaba, Aleppo, Damascus,
entrepots or major local governmental centres.
quake which significantly,
She’an
hit the Galilee area in
were often not
rebuilt
a particularly impressive sight, with white limestone
is
roads. Syria
(for the
North
lying across black basalt
in the late tenth century)
Aleppo was sometimes independent
This, plus the wars fought over
But
now
columns
would henceforth be mostly governed from elsewhere, from
Baghdad, Cairo, or ople; only
earth-
749 left cities in ruins, which, and can thus be excavated; Bet
(including those of Hisham’s shops) even
perity.
The devastating
it
was by no means
centralization brought with
in
it
it
end of our period.
in the tenth century,
economic
crisis
a widening of
more evidence of exchange with
at the
Iraq:
Constantin-
sapped
its
pros-
even then, and ‘Abbasid
economic horizons, with
new polychrome
glazed ware
spread from Iraq into Syria/Palestine from 800 onwards, the beginning of a
new
international taste in fine pottery
whole Mediterranean, Muslim and Christian regions
inate the is
which would by 1100 domalike. It
for this reason that entrepots flourished under the ‘Abbasids; inter-
regional networks were beginning to develop again, west to Egypt (via
Caesarea), south
down
the
Red Sea
(via
‘Aqaba), east to Iraq (via
Aleppo). This network would continue even after the ‘Abbasid caliphate collapsed, as
we
shall see in a
The ‘Abbasids, of political
course, invested in Iraq. Iraq
and economic centre
created a
fertile
and
moment. had been
for millennia; the Tigris
irrigable basin
•360
a
major
and Euphrates
matched only by the Nile
for
its
THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY The Sassanians were only
agricultural wealth.
develop
irrigation,
its
rulers to
with the great Nahrawan canal, probably built
which brought
the sixth century,
most recent
the
in
network of smaller
Tigris water to a
canals north and east of the capital, Ctesiphon, situated just south of
what would become Baghdad. An early and influential 1950s of the
field
survey
Nahrawan area by Robert Adams indeed saw the Sassanian period
as the
economic height for
however prosperous, dating of
number
failing to
620S-630S,
crises of the
sites in
Iraq, with the pre-tenth-century caliphate,
in
match Sassanian
which canal dykes were not maintained. The
Adams’s work, and thus
assumptions about the
his
of settlements that were actually occupied in each period, were
however more influenced by his than a
levels after the political
field
over-literal readings of narrative sources
survey would be today
The land north of Raqqa
in
one were possible
(if
modern
eastern Syria, a
in Iraq in 2007).
more
short-lived
‘Abbasid capital on the Euphrates, showed a clear ‘Abbasid-period settlement peak in a
more
recent field survey.
The Umayyads, anyway,
and even more the ‘Abbasids, were committed canal-builders and land reclaimers, as
we saw
the
and the ‘Abbasids were particularly
in
Chapter 14;
was
to build dykes
and
to desalinate land in
marsh areas of the south that they imported the
slave gangs of the Zanj. olis
it
active in southern Iraq,
of
Baghdad
The ‘Abbasid construction of the huge metrop-
762 required systematic provisioning, and
after
it
was
who bought Iraqi land with his tax
in the interests of every public official
profits to
large-scale African
develop that land with an eye to the urban market. Samarra, at
the northern end of the
Nahrawan
the mid-ninth century.
The sharecropping contracts discussed
canal, only
added to that market
in
in legal
sources from ‘Abbasid Baghdad, which presumably best reflect the Iraq the legists lived in, irrigation
network
show is
landlordly investment; state investment in the
assumed
as well, largely
through wage-labour;
the legists say less about the Zanj. Wage-labourers were also used in agriculture,
which shows that some landowners were
directly, a sure sign of a market-orientated
the expansion of Iraqi rice cultivation,
cultivating estates
approach.
One
result
was
which was a ninth-century
phenomenon.
Tax revenues only went itself
created a stimulus to Iraqi agriculture, and the Iraqi commercial as a whole.
Baghdad (and
also an artisanal
hub which was
economy was
to the capitals, but their resultant vast size
to a lesser degree other Iraqi cities) for a century
361
unmatched anywhere
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO in the world. Silk, cottons, glass,
paper (the Baghdad paper-mills were
795, using technology brought from Samarkand and, before that, from China) were all made in the city. Baghdad was a focus for
founded
in
internal Iraqi exchange,
and
also
an entrepot for interregional commerce
between the provinces of the caliphate, which was by
now moving
ceramics or cloth across the whole terrain from Iran to Egypt. Indeed, this
commerce went further;
the
1960S-1970S excavations of the Iranian
show
port of Siraf (as yet only partly published)
that the caliphate
opened up to Indian Ocean and Chinese trade on a large
scale
had
by the
The Seven Voyages of Sinbad in the Thousand and One Nights symbolizes this for most of us, but that is perhaps late eighth century.
matched by the remarkable
collection of plausible
and implausible
(some of them first-person experiences) made by the Iranian
stories
ship captain Buzurg ibn Shahriyar in the 950s,
who
discusses wonders,
strange customs, storms and remarkable animals right across to the
South China Sea. The trade thus established continued for the the
Middle Ages.
Baghdad’s wealth, and also region had lost the
rest of
Nahrawan
its
political
Iraq’s, faltered in the tenth century.
and
fiscal
The
dominance by now. The cutting of
canal in 937 for short-term military reasons was soon
reversed, but the precedent
was a bad one; the
city
and the canals
were refurbished several times (most committedly by the Buyid ‘Adud al-Dawla
in
981-3), but Iraq’s prosperity did not again match that of
the ninth century. All the same, that prosperity
Baghdad remained one of the western
None
city,
had been so great that
principal cities of Eurasia, larger than any
and a major entrepot into the twelfth century
at least.
of these regions matched the stability of Egypt. Egypt
Roman
was the
empire’s richest province by far, with the most complex
economy, and
it
remained so
in the
post-Roman world
teenth century. In the caliphate, too,
if it
into the four-
was surpassed by
Iraq, that
was only
in the
950 or
The power-house of the tenth- to fourteenth-century Mediter-
so.
‘Abbasid century, and
it
had regained
ranean exchange system, which was not driven by that of
Rome
was the
relative reliability of the Nile flood,
or the caliphs, was Egypt.
The
its
primacy by
fiscal factors as
was
basic reason for this
which allowed continuous
cropping of agricultural land and produced wheat yields of around ten to
one (three or four to one, with fallow periods, being the best that dry
362
THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY farming could produce
in the
Middle Ages). Egypt’s canal system has
also almost always been regularly maintained; the country has almost
always been governed by a single political authority, which helps, and it
was so throughout our period and beyond. The
certainly
large yields
of Egypt’s agricultural land, not only in wheat, but also wine and flax,
allowed a whole hierarchy of non-cultivators to be fed from the labour of the peasantry, including landowners, tax officials and soldiers, of course, but also chants.
complex networks of
can be plausibly argued that in the
It
of the population of Egypt lived in
cities,
the ancient or early medieval world,
think that
dropped
it
later; if
it
shopkeepers and mer-
artisans, later
Roman empire
a figure that
and there
is
is
not
unparalleled in
much
reason to
had, the drop had certainly been reversed
by looo. Certainly the rather restricted archaeology cities
a third
shows dense private housing,
in
Arab-period
in
apartment buildings, from the
seventh to the tenth century: in Alexandria, Eustat, nearby Saqqara, and
Akhmim
in
Middle Egypt.
Egyptian agriculture was carried out through a hierarchy of substantial villages,
whose head-men
also handled tax-raising, subordinate in
this respect to provincial capitals.
good
for
Roman
Arab Egypt, show
period,
revolts show).
its
and not relaxed
The records of
later (as eighth-
were always peasant landowners, and the
and
little
and ninth-century tax
in Egypt,
elites
however; there
which ran
villages
were
more. Post-conquest documents imply
that great landowners were notably fewer
period than under the later
which are
systematic nature, inherited from the
Landowning was fragmented
usually rich peasants,
taxation,
Roman
and
less rich in the early
empire, and this did not change
850 three developments
until the late ninth century. After
Arab
led to larger
landholdings again: more Christians converted to Islam, thus gaining access to state patronage,
which was by now sometimes expressed
in
terms of grants or leases of state land; more Arabs began to acquire land as well (for a long time off state salaries, as
Arab immigrants had stayed
we saw
financial administration
taxes, rights effective
in
in Eustat
and
Chapter 12); and, from 800 or
began to farm out the rights to
lived
so, the
collect local
which could under certain circumstances be turned
landholding over wider areas. Tax-farming turned into
ownership
less
often in Egypt than
for the state never relaxed
its
grip
it
into full
did elsewhere in the Islamic world,
on the mechanisms of taxation, but
certainly helped the establishment of local control. Eor the
363
first
it
time in
THE EMPIRES OE THE EAST, 55O-IOOO
many centuries
Egypt, a late ninth-century estate (day ‘a) could consist
in
of a whole village (indeed, by the eleventh century day‘a could simply
mean
‘village’).
This was not universal, and fragmented ownership sur-
vived past 1000 in Egypt, as did direct tax-paying, but a clear change visible here at the
is
end of our period.
This weakening and renewed strengthening of a landowning aristoc-
which
racy,
paralleled elsewhere (for example, in Byzantium) as
is
have seen, had than
it
less effect
on the
rest of the
we
Egyptian economy, however,
did in other regions, precisely because of the continuing strength
of the tax system, which independently brought wealth into the
and, above
all,
Eustat. This
was
the basis for an active exchange
cities,
network
which, throughout our period, unified Egypt into a single economic whole. The Nile helped here, as an easy and cheap routeway which ran
by or close to nearly
all
the population of the region.
fine pottery of
we can
result,
which were available from north to south.
trace artisanal productions
The
As a
Aswan
in the far
south can be found up to the
Mediterranean, i,ooo kilometres away, throughout the early Middle Ages, a unique achievement in scale and continuity in our period. The
Aswan
kilns continued to
the end of our period
produce Red
ware
Slip
and beyond, too, centuries
in a
Roman
after tastes
style until
had changed
elsewhere, although increasingly alongside other ceramic types, whiteslipped and painted wares, and, after 800, polychrome glaze, following Iraqi fashion. tively say the
And, although archaeology cannot track
same
period in which
its
sale
is
we can
tenta-
and wool production had always
for cloth; linen
been substantial in Egypt since
it,
Roman
times,
and there
not attested in documents.
A
is
never a
cache of
late
ninth-century papyri from the Eayyum, a large agricultural basin to
shows a
set of
buying and
selling
the west of the Nile 150 kilometres south of Eustat,
Arabic-speaking cloth merchants and related
up and down the Nile from Qus far north.
The main
figure of this
Madinat al-Fayyum, the main
in the
officials
south to Alexandria in the
papyrus
city of the
set,
Abu Hurayra,
lived in
basin, in the 860S-870S,
although others were based in Eustat, which was clearly a major node in the
whole exchange process.
These wide exchange networks were not
We
can see an exchange hierarchy
all
that Egypt had, either.
in ceramics,
with local productions
Aswan hegemony, and cloth prowith many local centres too (based on
(based on local clays) fitting into the
duction was certainly associated
364
THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY local flax
and sheep),
Qus
Tinnis and
as well as
for linen,
were differences here
well-known major
and Bahnasa
Middle Egypt
in
And
There
for wool.
and convenience,
in status, price, taste
elaborate commercial systems.
artisanal cities like
as in all
whole
the Egyptian system, in the
period 650-1000, was by far the most elaborate anywhere in Europe
and the Mediterranean. Continuous urban demand saw
demand was
and also
also, of course, for food,
diversified artisanal
certainly for
documents are about other matters, reason to doubt
it.
One
was
was only
it
was supplanted by paper, a
it
The geniza documents of illuminate a world that
late tenth, for
but, given the rest, there
of these goods
production based in the Delta; centuries that
more
goods than cloth and pottery, too; we can say
about them between the sixth century and the
little
The
to that.
still
is
our
no
papyrus, an industrial
in the late ninth
and tenth
linen by-product.
the late tenth century
and onwards thus
had been economically complex
for centuries,
not to say millennia. But there were also changes at the end of our period. Already in the late ninth century,
we can see signs of a larger-scale
investment in artisanal production that seems to be new. The governor
Ahmad
ibn Tulun (868-84),
who
ruled Egypt
more or
less
autono-
mously, invested privately in linen according to early tenth-century
and so did
narratives,
lesser officials.
The
industry appears in these narratives, as as a
major
textile centre. It
certainty, but Ibn
and dated Tinnis
and the
is
also did in the
hard to trace
Tulun upgraded textiles survive
state factories
it
largely state-run Tinnis linen
its
it
earlier
Eayyum
letters,
than 850 with any
infrastructure with public
money,
from the 880s. These are luxury items,
were substantially devoted to the production of
court fabrics; but the Delta linen towns also sold on the open market,
and by the tenth century exported cloth (Tinnis is
the
is
on an
island,
main novelty
and
is
also a port)
here. Since the
it
is
and to
Iraq.
The word
‘export’
Arab conquests, Egyptian production
and consumption had mostly been centralization,
too, to the Mediterranean
internal.
Even with ‘Abbasid
fiscal
hard to find very much reference to exports and
imports in our evidence.
Demand
inside the region
enough to make interregional exchange
was evidently steady
less necessary,
except for the
luxury trade, which always existed. But in the tenth century our evidence for
it
increases,
ports were
Tunisia and
full
and by the end of the century Alexandria and other of ships,
Sicily;
moving goods from Egypt
from the
latter
to Palestine,
two, other ships went westwards
365
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO to al-Andalus.
be
made up
Egypt exported not only made linen cloth but also
in Tunisia
and
Sicily; sugar,
another industrial product, was
goods exported from Egypt,
also an Egyptian speciality. But the range of
and
also imported,
was by
the end of our period very substantial indeed.
969 meant that Egypt, Tunisia and Sicily were while under the same government, which facilitated this; but Egypt
The Eatimid conquest for a
in
was the major motor of this commerce thanks of
its
flax, to
to the continuing strength
and promoted.
internal market, as the Fatimids recognized
Joseph (Yusuf, or 1040)
is
family
the
first
in
Hebrew, Yosef) ibn Ya‘qub ibn ‘Awkal
really large-scale
may have come from
his father’s time;
he spent his
of Cairo just outside
it.
life
He and
both Egypt and abroad, above
from Egypt, buying
and
in the
it
in the geniza
970-
documents. His
Iran initially, but were settled in Fustat by
and
at Fustat
Tunisia and
from small towns it
new Eatimid capital
in their headquarters,
all in
Fayyum and sending
in the
ran an import-export business,
his sons
employing numerous secretaries
flax
merchant
(fl. c.
down
dria (thus bypassing the linen factories
Sicily.
and agents
They exported
in the hinterland of
from Fustat
the Nile
on the other
in
Bahnasa
to Alexan-
side of the Delta)
and
then to the west. They also exported dyestuffs, madder (Egyptian-made), indigo and brazil-wood (both imported); imported pepper and spices,
and Egyptian-made sugar; and more expensive pearls; 83 different
Ocean
the Indian
commodities
trade; Fustat-Cairo
mercial node between the Indian it
in all.
The business bought
ners, gold
The imports were
largely
from
was becoming the principal com-
Ocean and
remained for centuries, although that
speciality.
luxuries, in particular
which
the Mediterranean,
latter trade
was not Ibn ‘Awkal’s
from
Mediterranean part-
in return,
its
(North Africa was the contact point for the Sahara gold
trade), copper, lead, olive oil
(still
an important Tunisian product),
by-product soap, wax, animal-hides, and
silk.
its
This sounds solid enough,
but Ibn ‘Awkal’s business was in reality rather more delicate than that.
The geniza
letters are full
of descriptions of the difficulty agents had in
moment to get a decent profit; and Ibn ‘Awkal, like every other merchant, had to make informal deals with friends, clients and even rivals, who were on the spot, trusting them to act in his selling at exactly the right
interests.
from Samhun ibn Da’ud ibn
1000
in
We
This did not always work.
which
a
by
al-Siqilli (‘son
have a long indignant
of the Sicilian’) from around
now probably ex-friend,
other things that he had
made
a loss
letter
or client, complains
among
on Ibn ‘Awkal’s brazil-wood; that
366
THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY he has had to of
all,
sell
Ibn ‘AwkaPs pearls without taking any profit; worst
had not paid Samhun’s creditors despite promises,
that the latter
and despite
all
Samhun was doing
that
latter’s reputation;
and
that the Fustat merchant
But most
the sender
letters to
him
to the detriment of the
‘Awkal had been
overall, that Ibn
no reason and high-handed
fact.
for
into the bargain. There
was an
is
with
critical
no reason to think
especially sympathetic character, in
him were highly courteous, and explained how
had protected
his interests, often in adverse situations (war,
water damage, low prices), but usually with success. Ibn ‘Awkal did not trade with Iraq or further
and for
little
east, or
with Byzantium,
even with Syria/Palestine, but he can in other respects stand
an entire network of (usually smaller) Fustat merchants, above
the diversification of his activities. pillar of the Fustat
He was
also,
may
it
all in
be added, a
Jewish community, and a local representative of the
important yeshivas (religious academies) of Baghdad and Jerusalem; had he been Muslim, he would have been a leading
He was tive. it
socially central, that
is
internal to the country.
of the entire Ibn ‘Awkal dossier
all.
much
cities
The
it
was Nile
real-life feel
it
was important,
The economic
all
the same,
The continuing
and Egypt compensated, weakening of
this basic
and would remain
history of each of these regions
seventh and the tenth centuries, but for all that.
traffic,
between the
it
had
was
economic
fact;
so.
different
between the
structural elements in
as a
motor of exchange, though
this
for the
common
and eighth
had
its
own
diffi-
centuries. In Syria, aristocracies stayed
prosperous until 750, but were state
temporary
compensation was
rather less pronounced in Byzantium, where the state
market by the Umayyad
as
strength of the state in both Byzantium
local aristocratic wealth,
culties in the seventh
looo
in
of the world of the geniza letters leaves
such an effect on the reader that one can forget but
that
However active the Mediterranean network was,
and towns, that dominated Egyptian exchange,
as in 700.
is
Most Egyptian commerce remained
or any other external exchange network,
major
of the ‘ulamd\
to say, not just economically representa-
The only misleading aspect
deals with external trade at
member
less integrated into a single regional
than
Umayyad governors managed
in
Egypt; after 750, the reverse occurred, with local foci of prosperity slipping, but a fiscal-led integration of regional Iraq, finally,
commerce developing.
both aristocracies and (overwhelmingly) the
367
In
state increased
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO and
their force in the late eighth century,
set the
region up as a major
and commercial focus for a century and a
agrarian, artisanal
We could
which the region slipped back again.
the West, to this gallery of examples too,
half, after
add al-Andalus, over
where a
in
set of localized
aristocracies of varying wealth existed throughout, but the state
became
notably stronger in the tenth century (above. Chapter 14), allowing the
economy
integration of the
some export
Iraq)
the
same could be
though there we can
The ninth century internal
in
many
an
see
said of the Tunisian heartland of
effective state already in the ninth.
places (except perhaps Syria)
saw more
exchange than the eighth, the tenth century everywhere (except
saw more than
the ninth.
These broadly drawn trends occurred these regions; but they
had an
effect
especially in the Mediterranean.
network was that of the
The
Roman
9;
economies of
first
great Mediterranean trade
empire. As the empire fragmented,
West from 450 onwards, by 600, and snuffing out by 700, as we saw in detail
reaching low levels
Chapter
in the internal
on interregional exchange, too,
Mediterranean exchange lessened: slowly
in
and qirmis (crimson dye)
specializations, silk, saffron
among them. Much Ifriqiya,
of the whole peninsula and the creation of
in the
rapidly in the East in the seventh century, in the context
of the great wars of the 610S-640S, and the fiscal decentralization of
both Byzantium and the caliphate thereafter. In the eighth century there
was
less
Mediterranean-wide trade than there had been for over a millen-
nium. Not none; there was always a small-scale network of boats nosing
from port to
port.
The Aegean,
as
we have
seen, maintained a certain
enclosed identity as the focus for one level of Byzantine exchange. So did the Tyrrhenian Sea, in the triangle between Sicily, fortified
as
by the continuing force of the
we saw in Chapter
9.
As we saw
mick has pinpointed the route from important sea route it is it
the route
still
open
Rome, Calabria and
city of
Rome
in that chapter too,
Rome to
as a market,
Michael McCor-
Constantinople as the most
in the eighth century. It
is
not chance that
which linked these two more localized maritime networks;
must have been further reinforced by the
fact that Sicily
was
still
a
Byzantine province in that century, and probably one of the richest ones.
We
must recognize,
Mediterranean, as also Italy
and Francia
too, that a luxury trade always existed in the
in the
Indian Ocean, bringing
in return for
silk
timber and slaves. But, as
seen, luxuries are marginal items to the
368
economy
and
spices to
we have
also
as a whole. In the
THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY eighth century, outside restricted areas, the bulk trade in food and
goods had gone, even
artisanal
Arab-ruled provinces of the
in the
southern Mediterranean, which were always in our period the richest.
The
seas
must have been
relatively quiet.
was slowly
In the ninth century this
the Adriatic route after
750 or so
The
reversed.
one small sign of
is
Venice focused on the luxury trade mentioned
must have been expanding
rise it:
earlier,
of Venice and small, because
although
this
for Venetian wealth to increase as fast as
it
did in the ninth century (below. Chapter 22); Venice traded with Byzan-
tium and also with Alexandria, from where henceforth the
patron
city’s
Tunisian conquest of a great deal closer to
saint,
the
body of St Mark,
The ninth-century
820s.
allowed for more movement, for
Sicily
Tunis than
much exchange between
in
stole the
it
the
it
was
to Constantinople,
Sicily
was
and there was
two regions henceforth; we have seen them
operate as a pair in their links with Egypt two centuries
later,
and that
pairing began here, at the latest. South Italian ports like Amalfi and
Naples benefited from Arab connections which were
now
nearer (they
indeed colluded in Arab attacks on the Italian mainland), and Amalfitans
were regularly to be found
Arab world, we
Inside the
Egypt and the Aegean a century
in
find
more casual
along the African coast, using Tunisia and the route
from Egypt
to Spain;
references to
movement
halfway points
in
centralization, even
if
Sicily as
and ‘Abbasid
later too.
focused on Iraq, helped to link Egypt closer to Syria, a link which
remained, for autonomous Egyptian rulers after the 860s tended to
the luxury trade,
movement was doubtless still largely in but there was more of it, in ever more complex patterns;
and not
was luxury,
control Syria as well. All this
all
of
it
large quantities of olive
oil,
the 880s, oil that probably
as with the
captured off
came from
In the tenth century there
Arab merchant Sicily
ships carrying
by a Byzantine
fleet in
Tunisia.
were two further developments. One was
that sections of the Mediterranean
which had hitherto been
relatively
cut out of these developing systems, like southern France, were brought in as well; several
Arab wrecks from the mid-tenth century have been
found off the French coast, apparently from Spain, containing amphorae (for oil?), tableware,
copper or bronze, and
of a protagonist as yet in the ninth century,
glass. is
Byzantium, too,
much more
less
visibly so in
the tenth, selling quality silks and timber in the Egyptian market, and, later, cheese, a
major source of protein
369
for Egyptians;
on the south
THE EMPIRES OF THE EAST, 55O-IOOO Turkish coast, Antalya became an important entrepot for trade with Syria
and
Palestine,
and south to Alexandria. The development of the
port of Almeria in 955 by the Andalusi caliph ‘Abd al-Rahman
III
was
intended to focus and expand the Spanish contribution to this exchange
we can see it did just that; Almeria makes frequent geniza documents around 1000 and later. Though
network, and as far as
appearance
in the
from Alexandria
certain routes (such as
to Tunis)
were doubtless more
prominent than others, one gains the impression that by the century one could
sail
almost anywhere
else
late tenth
from almost anywhere in the Mediterranean to - not always directly, but without very much
difficulty.
The second development, already indicated by oil-amphorae and cheese,
that
is
these references to
became more normal to transport
it
bulk goods again, for a relatively large-scale market. Tunisian olive
reached both Egypt and Italy by 1000, just as
it
had done
in
oil
400,
although grain was never again a major item of international exchange; that
had depended on the
any natural interchange, since the back of
oil,
we
also, as in
Roman
needs of the
fiscal it
was produced everywhere. Probably on
400, find Tunisian glazed pottery in Italy
by the end of the tenth century. And, above
by a sector of Egyptian merchants, by 1000 be
made
into linen cloth in Tunisia
Egyptian linen factory towns,
had become
ships that
empire rather than
and
testifies to
large-scale
all,
the astonishing choice
at the latest, to
Sicily rather
send flax to
than in the great
a set of commercial relation-
and symbiotic,
as well as
complex and
competitive. Bulk trade did not dominate everywhere yet, or ever; the same,
it is
here that
we can speak
all
of real interregional/international
exchange systems^ rather than the thin luxury-based links of two centuries earlier.
cycle
By the tenth century, the second great Mediterranean trade
had properly begun, and would continue to the
In the eleventh century,
would begin
newly active
Italian ports,
late
Middle Ages.
Genoa and
Pisa,
to take over the western part of these Mediterranean
networks by force and direct them northwards; the Crusades had similar results in the East; but the trade cycle
remained, and even expanded,
thereafter.
The tenth century thus saw Mediterranean trade reach that
North Sea trade already had
ter 9),
and indeed surpass
it.
in the eighth
the complexity
and ninth
(see
Chap-
Egypt’s agricultural wealth and productive
complexity lay at the heart of
it.
Even
370
after Italian fleets
had
partially
THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY taken over the role of middlemen, including for the Arab world, by I
loo, Egypt was
still
the
hub of this exchange,
as well as being the nodal
point for luxury goods coming in from the Indian Ocean; the
motor
that ran the entire medieval trade cycle.
the tenth century
began to
sectors at least, as
complex
that relations of mutual economic dependence less risky, solid
was arguably
What happened
in
was that the economies of other Mediterranean regions
some
be, in
it
enough
to be built on. This
was
as that of Egypt, so
became more
reliable,
the basis of the exchange
of bulk goods in every period of history. All the same,
made
earlier: in
we must end
account by repeating a point already
this
every part of the Mediterranean, the most important
exchange systems were
inside,
not between, regions. City-country
exchange, and micro-regional agricultural and artisanal specializations, lay at the heart of this, not the
wharves of Venice or Almeria, Tunis or
Antalya, Palermo or Alexandria.
Nor
are
we
looking at self-sustaining
exchange processes here; however active the merchants of Fustat and Venice were, these would not develop for
nomic development
essentially
many
centuries. Internal eco-
depended on the force of internal
demand, and thus on the wealth of
elites,
and thus on the extraction of
surplus from the peasantry. These increased in the ninth and tenth centuries, in the
Mediterranean as
in northern
Europe, creating a more
complex and colourful environment, and some cloth) that could be
cheap enough to be bought
artisanal products (like in villages;
nonetheless signs of exploitation as well as dynamism.
back to
this issue in the
there
more evidence
is
but they are
We
shall
come
north European context in Chapter 22, where
for
its
effect
on the peasant majority.
371
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PART
IV
The Carolingian and Post-Carolingian
West, 750-1000
The Carolingian Century, 751-887
In one of the few non-diplomatic letters of
Charlemagne (768-814) that
has survived, the king wrote to his wife Queen Fastrada in 791. Charles relates that his son, Fastrada’s stepson Pippin king of Italy
has told him of a victory against the Avars of what
and
lists
the bishops, dukes, counts and vassals
larly well in the
war. (The
is
(781-810),
now Hungary,
who performed
omits their names, unfortunately;
letter
only survives as a model for future writers.) The text then
Charlemagne and
religious litanies that
particu-
days, probably immediately after the
lists
it
the
his court
performed for three
news of the
victory, including a
prohibition on eating meat or drinking wine, which however people
could buy out of with a graduated payment according to wealth. Charles asks Fastrada to take advice about performing similar litanies, and ends
with an injunction to send him more regular communications.
The tone of most of
this text
hardly intimate;
is
it
reads like a ruler
communicating with a high-ranking subordinate, which a queen indeed was. There
no reason
is
to think that
it tells
relationship between the couple. But in
and
religious ritual
Carolingian actively
it
reflects
politics. It also
what
else
its
us
much about
the personal
mixture of military action
we know
of the tone of early
shows that Charlemagne, even when not
campaigning (he was probably forty-three
in
791, fairly old for
campaigns, though he did lead armies for another decade and more), received and expected up-to-date and detailed information from his generals: this information-exchange
was
structures of the Carolingian century.
mation, but, as far as
we can
that this letter has survived not.
It
a regular part of the political
The Merovingians had such
see, less systematically;
when
it is
infor-
also significant
equivalent Merovingian letters have
has survived by chance, but in the context of a vast increase in
surviving information about the political process in Francia, which
375
THE CAROLINGIAN AND reaches
PO
S
T- C AR O L I N G I AN
height in the 830S-840S.
its
It is
vingians articulated politics through as
drinking,
it is
much
(he
which
lasted
century and beyond, and which had
many
in this chapter
earthy,
throughout the Carolingian ramifications, as
we
shall see
Charles Martel (717-41) took over the office of maior of the
5
),
civil
war of 715-19
he re-established the practice of annual
had been intermittent
that
was rather
and the next.
Frankish kingdoms by force in the
Chapter
penitential ritual as this.
claimed), but he introduced an ecclesiastical and moraliz-
ing edge to political practice
When
Mero-
also unlikely that the
and loved hunting and swimming, and roast meat - less so
Charlemagne was not unusually pious jokes, songs, sex,
WEST, 75O-IOOO
(see
above.
summer campaigning
at best for over seventy years.
Between 720
and 804 there were only, probably, eight years without a campaign, and in some years there were two or three. Charles fought on all his borders, reabsorbing Provence and blocking Arab advances from Spain as he did so, taking
over Frisia, and re-establishing Frankish hegemony in Alsace
and Aquitaine. Most important, however, was the
he
total authority
established in the Frankish heartland, thanks to this military aggregation,
and
to
its
success - Charles never lost a war.
The Merovingian
kings were only puppets by now, and the lay aristocracy and the episcopate both followed Charles; he overthrew any potential rivals without
qualms or (apparently) Pippin
III
This continued under his sons
difficulties.
(741-68) and Carloman
ship just as the Merovingians
I
(741-7) - they divided the mayor-
had divided the kingship,
resigned his office, apparently willingly, and went to
monk
at the
until
Carloman
Rome, becoming
a
monastery of Monte Cassino. So did the annual campaigns,
which included the subjection of Alemannia
in the
bloody battle of
Canstatt in 746, extended to Italy in 754-6, and continued with the
full
reconquest of Aquitaine in a sequence of invasions in 759-69. In his last years, after 737, Charles Martel ruled without a king.
Facing revolts. Pippin and Carloman re-established one, Childeric
III,
in
743. Nonetheless, after Carloman retired, in the context of disturbances
caused by family ask
(in
the
rivals.
words of the
Pippin wrote to Pope Zacharias (741-52), to official
forty years later) ‘whether at that time
was good or not
that the kings in Francia
had no royal power’. Zacharias correctly replied
better to call not’,
it
Royal Frankish Annals, written some
him king who had
the royal
and Pippin took the throne
in
376
‘that
it
was
power than the one who did
751, the
first
Carolingian king.
THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 751-887 Childeric
was tonsured - that is, had his Merovingian royal
- and imprisoned
hair
removed
monastery. (The Carolingians henceforth wore
in a
short hair and moustaches.) Later Carolingian sources of course depict this as a
straightforward succession, buttressed by concord and cere-
monial, including the agreement of the Frankish magnates and a formal anointing by Boniface archbishop of Mainz. Pippin was indeed the
first
Frankish king to be anointed; although this followed Visigothic practice in the late seventh century
the innovation clearly
through a new
and
it
(and also the traditions of the Old Testament),
shows the need
to
make
set of ecclesiastical rituals.
But
the Carolingians special,
in reality this
was
a coup,
presented immediate problems of royal legitimacy. Pippin was
able to reinforce the rituals of 751
when the new pope Stephen II (752-7)
came north
753-4, the
to the Seine valley in
first
time a pope had ever
travelled north of the Alps, to ask for help against the
him
re-anointed that king
king,
and Pippin duly invaded
Lombards; Stephen
Italy, twice.
and pope needed each other, the pope
The
fact
is
to gain protection
against attack, the king to gain legitimate authority; for the Carolingians,
although the strongest aristocratic family in Francia by far since the 680s, were not royal until two successive popes - importantly, an exter-
moral power - said they were. The two processes
nal, non-Frankish,
went
together. Pippin
and Carloman were already more concerned than
Charles Martel had been with church reform, and called at least four
church councils
in
742-7, the
first
since the 670s; this intensified after
751, under the aegis of Chrodegang bishop of Metz
(d.
766), a leading
adviser of Pippin. In 765 Pippin also introduced compulsory tithes to
which dramatically increased the wealth of the episcopal
the church,
hierarchy everywhere in Francia.
The help
the church gave Pippin in
751 was already paying off, on a substantial scale. This was the pattern Charlemagne inherited in 768, together with brother Carloman early death
was
(768-71): the two got on badly, and Carloman’s
II
was perhaps not unplanned. Charles Magnus^
initially called this to distinguish
him from
his
own
‘the Great’,
son Charles,
but already in the ninth century the adjective began to be used to his especial charisma,
their epithet
that
and he
is
one of the few people
absorbed into their
French and English.
One
two exceptionally
became reduced
his
own name,
mark
in history to find
‘Charlemagne’ in modern
of the early signs of this charisma was the fact
forceful rulers, Charles Martel
to predecessors,
and are hard
377
and Pippin
III,
to see clearly in our later
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
P O ST- C ARO LI N G I AN
WEST, 75O-IOOO
eighth-century sources. Charlemagne followed Pippin’s political path,
but across his long reign transformed
European least,
it,
transforming the parameters of
he did so, for a longer period - three centuries at
politics as
arguably - than any other single early medieval ruler.
The
first
element in
this
was simply war, which
two generations, but
the practice of the previous
Four areas stand out
Saxony was pagan;
first
and location of border wars it
was
it.
Saxony,
is
for over
two
also not a single polity, but rather
a collection of small tribal territories
assembly and fought
greatly extended
Charlemagne’s wars. The
in
Francia’s northern neighbour, centuries.
certainly continued
which met
in larger or smaller
in a single
annual
groupings according to choice
and need. Charlemagne from 772 onwards set out to conquer it. He started, programmatically, by sacking the major Saxon cult-site, the Irminsul,
and taking home a
rich booty, but
to complete his task (in 804; there
was
Charlemagne thought he had won,
in
conquer precisely because
was
it
it
took him over thirty years
also a period of peace,
when
785-93). Saxony was hard to
and
disunited,
was the theatre of
it
considerable violence, not least for the 4,500 Saxon prisoners massacred in
782
after a
Frankish defeat. The conquest was by 780 associated
with a conscious process of Christianization;
this
was one of the few
conversion processes openly brought about by force in our period.
More
important perhaps, Frankish conquest resulted in a social revolution, in
which members of the Saxon aristocracy were given for the
first
time landowning rights over their free neighbours, alongside Frankish
incomers and a newly endowed Saxon church system. Saxony remained marginal to Carolingian
developed further, and itself in
it
but the wealth of that aristocracy
would be
the basis for tenth-century kingship
we shall see in Chapter 18. was Lombard Italy, and it was an
East Francia, as
The second area
Charlemagne was asked as Pippin
had been;
Lombard kingdom Conquering
Italy
this
in
was
it),
but
capital, Pavia,
it
for his help
easier task. In
by Pope Hadrian
I
(772-95), just
time he went the whole way, and annexed the
773-4
in
an unusual summer and winter war.
mother Bertrada and
his cousin
Adalard, were
turned out to be straightforward once the
fell,
773
a controversial decision (several of Charlemagne’s
advisers, including his
against
politics,
for the
kingdom was
Lombard
sufficiently centralized for
resistance to cease almost completely. Again, wealth flowed north to
Charlemagne’s treasury.
Italy
was, however, not absorbed into the
378
THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 751-887 Frankish lands in the taine
way Saxony would be (and Alemannia and Aqui-
had already been). Charlemagne took the
Franks and Lombards’, reflecting the fact that tually separate,
one
and Pavia remained a separate
in the Carolingian
kingdom;
after
to Italy, Charlemagne’s son Pippin.
of ‘king of the
title
remained concep-
Italy
political centre, the only
781 a subordinate king returned
Lombard
would
Italy
nevertheless
be a source, not only of wealth, but also of governmental expertise, for Francia.
As noted
Chapter
in
6,
only the duchy of Benevento remained
independent; in the face of Frankish power
its
duke, Arichis
II,
took the
of prince in 774.
title
Of
the old areas of Merovingian rule, the last one
autonomous was Bavaria. Duke Tassilo protege of Pippin
III,
his
III
still
to remain
(748-88) had begun as a
mother’s brother, to
whom
he swore an oath
757 at adulthood; but he stopped participating in Pippin’s 763, and ran an independent politics for two decades; he was
of fidelity in
wars
in
particularly close to the last
Lombard king, Desiderius.
After 781 Charle-
magne sought to rein him in, and he threatened invasion in 787. Tassilo’s aristocracy persuaded him to capitulate, and he became Charlemagne’s vassal, or
sworn follower. This was not enough, however, and
he was victim of a show Bavarians,
Lombards and Saxons,
cooperation,
A
trial for disloyalty.
condemned him
to death.
tribunal of Franks,
Charlemagne then commuted
tonsured and confined in a monastery. The
trial
like Childeric in
of Tassilo in
the Carolingians as different from their predecessors.
by historians
that,
788
a rarely invoked image of multi-ethnic
penance and he was,
this sentence to forced
in
whereas the Merovingians
It
itself
751,
marks
has been noticed
killed those
who
lost royal
favour, the Carolingians often simply imprisoned them, and confis-
cated their land. This kill
opponents, or
Byzantine practice:
condemnation
is
an exaggeration; the Carolingians often did
else
blinded them (following both Visigothic and
cf.
above. Chapter ii). But the ritual of a legal
to death, followed
by the ‘milder’ sentence of blinding or
imprisonment, did become rather more common, and the deaths by
slow torture of the sixth and seventh centuries virtually disappeared.
Imprisonment did not always work (people escaped), and death might well then follow, but these changes do
show
a
growing
belief that a
show of legal process and an elaborate ritual of political exclusion were good ways to marginalize opponents, and that killing was not always necessary. They fit in with other Carolingian changes, as we shall see.
379
THE CAROLINGIAN AND In the
P O ST- CARO
LIN G AN WEST, 75O-IOOO I
meantime, Bavaria and the Bavarian aristocracy (who survived
almost without exception, apart from the ruling Agilolfings) were
absorbed directly into the Frankish
political system.
The absorption of Bavaria brought Carolingian borders eastward the lands of the Avars,
now
by
far less great
and Avar wars began
than
it
had been
to
Avar power was
in 791.
in the early seventh century,
but
Avar khagan remained enormous. In 795-6 three
the wealth of the
armies were sent eastwards to the Avar royal residence, the Ring, located
somewhere on
Hungarian
the
plain.
The sack of
booty on such an immense scale that
and
their
them
enriched the Carolingians
magnates (including the pope) for a generation - Einhard said
in his Life left
it
the Ring produced
of Charlemagne that ‘no one can
recall
richer or better stocked with resources’.
any war
.
.
.
that
The Avars were not
conquered, but they soon disappeared, their place taken by newer Sclavenian polities, (see
who remained on the Frankish/Bavarian borderlands
Chapter 20 for the term Sclavenian).
By 804 the lands ruled by Charlemagne were half again as large as in 768, and over twice the size of those ruled by Charles Martel at his death. Nearly
all
borders were further away than in 768, even that of
Spain, where northern Catalonia
and 801. This was a
had been taken from the Arabs
fairly thin strip,
in
785
however, and Charlemagne’s bolder
attack on Zaragoza in 778 led to one of the few military setbacks of the reign, the attack
on the
retreating Frankish rearguard
by the Basques
western Pyrenees. The Carolingians had
at Roncesvalles in the
new
neighbours now, the Danes, the Arabs, the Beneventans, and half a continent of Sclavenian tribes from the Baltic to the Adriatic. these gave rich pickings,
stopped as a policing,
result.
It
fairly far
tribute from, their
still
away. Expansion
independent neighbours,
has been plausibly argued that this had bad conse-
quences for the Franks, for their aristocracies inside,
of
Carolingian military activity largely became one of
and extracting
for a generation.
and they were mostly
Few
now had
to aggrandize
not outside, the Frankish kingdoms; kings themselves had greater
difficulties as a result.
had other roots
But
as well.
this
too was a generation away in 804, and
Charlemagne’s
last
decade was one of relative
peace, and unheard-of prosperity for the ruling
elite
of Francia by early
medieval standards. It
is
worth
insisting a little
more on
Charlemagne had conquered new
the roots of this prosperity.
territories,
380
and
seized, not only exten-
THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 751-887 sive booty, but the royal treasure of
two
peoples, the
Lombards and
the
Avars: essential resources for royal generosity in gift-giving, to aristocrats
and
to foreign rulers,
their predecessors.
He
also
which the Carolingians needed
now
as
much
as
controlled the royal land of Italy and
the ducal land of Aquitaine and Bavaria, and the confiscated land of rebels across the
also a
whole of Saxony and
network of new
(to a lesser extent) elsewhere;
offices, counties,
and
abbacies and bishoprics, to add
to those in the Frankish heartland. (Over all Charlemagne’s lands, there
were some 600 counties and 180
dioceses.) All of these could be given
out to his supporters as honores, ‘honours’, as both royal land and offices
were
teries,
which
when
called.
So could the extensive lands of churches and monas-
the Carolingians disposed of without
all
they needed. Royal wealth was thus the wealth of aristocrats as
well, as long as such offices
many qualms
men were
in the king’s favour.
The lands and
were revocable; Charlemagne gave few permanent landed
and church land
preferring to distribute royal
beneficia or ‘benefices’. Aristocrats their sons, but
had
court, in order to
to remain
do
so.
And
hoped
as
temporary cessions,
to keep these
committed to the king, there
and pass them
whom
The
great that
was by the 790s possible
effect the
it
self-confidence of the Frankish elite
new chosen people
imagery was standard
in
magne was commonly otherwise,
it
may
in these
he liked to his court,
including poets and intellectuals from outside Francia, and as he chose.
to
faithfully attending
was so much wealth around
decades that Charlemagne could attract
gifts,
endow them
became
sufficiently
for writers to describe
in succession to the Jews;
them
as in
Old Testament
Carolingian political programmes, and Charlecalled
David by court
intellectuals.
Hence or
be added that the Carolingians were notably tolerant
of Jews, and Charlemagne’s son Louis the Pious (814-40) in particular
protected them, to the great distress of writers like Agobard archbishop of
Lyon
(d.
840),
who came from ex-Visigothic
Spain, and had inherited
the anti-Semitism of late Visigothic political culture. In less religious
imagery, Einhard preserves for us with some smugness a Byzantine proverb,
‘[if]
you have a Frank
as
your friend, [then] he
is
not your
neighbour’, which he actually cites in Greek; the Franks were proud of their greed
and aggrandisement, and regarded
it
as a proof of their
virtue.
The court crystallized in two further ways in the 790s. The first is that in the years 794-6 Charlemagne founded his own capital, at Aachen in 381
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
PO
S
T- C AR O LI N G I AN
the heart of Pippinid northern Austrasia,
and
son Louis endowed
his
it
political
survives.
more and more time here
and administrative focus
still
moved around,
ations of courtiers
The second in a
still
(it
As Charlemagne grew
was
is
ceremony
came
that in in
The importance of honorific. But
nition of
it
Aachen
as a natural
in
this title
by the Byzantine in
812
backdrop a
which he was anointed
new
(as
after
a stable
two gener-
it,
for politics.
emperor,
title,
by the pope.
(again)
should not be exaggerated;
Charlemagne was proud of
which he achieved
became
for the first time in Frankish history.
800 Charlemagne obtained
Rome,
it
taking their court with them, but
to see
Ardennes
close to the
one of the best royal hunting reserves), and
forest,
Kings
and across the next decades he
with ambitious buildings, one of which,
the cathedral-scale palace chapel, older, he spent
WEST, 750-IOOO
was only
it
and was keen to get recog-
one might say, the
menacing the
emperors,
‘real’)
still-Byzantine enclave of
Venice. Imperial imagery began to infuse Carolingian legislation after
800
as well.
The
truth
is,
to his military successes,
though, that already by the
Charlemagne had achieved
late
a western
wide dominance, and a near unanimity of support from political centrality, that
is
to say, that
Roman emperor
since the
no one had matched
Valentinian
I.
780s, thanks
European-
his subjects, a in those lands
Even the strongest Merovin-
gians, Clovis or Dagobert, did not rule as widely or enjoy such longlasting success. Charles Martel’s military
machine, and the luck of four
almost unbroken generations of single rulers (for Charlemagne’s sons,
between
whom he fully intended to divide his lands,
all
predeceased him
except Louis), were the basis of this success, but Charlemagne’s charisma
capped
It
it.
The question would then be what he would do with
cannot be denied that Charlemagne - and
his advisers, but
it.
animated
beyond doubt by the king himself - had a conscious and ambitious political project. In the or, a
widest sense,
much commoner word,
it
was one of ‘reform’
(renovatio),
‘correction’ (correctio), of the inner
well as the external acts of lay and ecclesiastical subjects alike. clear in
one of Charles’s
relatively early legislative acts, the
life
It is
as
very
General
Admonition of 789. In this widely circulated text, the king re-enacted canons from church councils to provide a template for the proper activity of clerics, but also instructed the laity in the necessity of concord, justice, the avoidance of perjury, the avoidance of hatred, and, overall, the necessity of the preaching of the Christian faith. These
382
were keynotes of
THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 75I-887 the moral reform
matched by
programme
They were
of the Carolingian period.
a systematic education
programme, which was
General Admonition) largely the work of the most influential
(as
of the
was the
intellectual
generation of the Carolingian reform project, the Northum-
first
brian Alcuin
804). Alcuin
(d.
was
at
Charlemagne’s court for most of
786 to 796, and then continued teaching in one of the several monasteries Charlemagne gave him, Saint-Martin in Tours. As the king the period
open
said in an
letter
good behaviour and
spiritual
literary education, for
was
full
understanding were impossible without a
‘knowing comes before doing’, and even the Bible
of figures of speech which had to be decoded.
promoted basic and
clerics
of the 780s or 790s, also written by Alcuin,
literacy,
aristocrats: a
The Carolingians
but expected more, especially from leading
proper understanding of the Bible and of
theology, without which a path in the Carolingian political world could
not properly be walked.
The
successes
and
failures of this project
discussed; but that there were successes
Carolingian
elite
is
have been very intensively
not at
issue.
The whole of the
cared about theology, or had to pretend they did.
794 an assembly of bishops and magnates at Frankfurt could devote much of its time to discussing heresies, Adoptionism and the
Already
in
Byzantine rejection of Iconoclasm (the Franks had greater sympathy
with the Iconoclasts), for the
and 840s, the whole
the 830s
first
time in the West in two centuries. By
political process, including
coups and
civil
wars, could be seen in theological terms. By then, there were two dozen or
more
political actors
who were
also active writers, participating in
what were often pamphlet wars about
Some
them were
of
the theology of political practice.
lay aristocrats, including
Dhuoda
(d. c.
of the sometime royal chamberlain Bernard of Septimania
(d.
843), wife 844),
who
wrote a handbook on correct behaviour for her son, suffused with biblical
imagery and citing an array of church fathers, which were
evidently available to her in Uzes, far in the south of the Frankish lands.
This will
all
be discussed in the next chapter, but
it
marks the Carolingian
period out. Exactly
Many
of
why its
this project
developed
is
rather harder to understand.
The Carolingians had to identify with church that gave them legitimacy as a ruling
roots are obvious.
the church, for
it
was the
family; the coup of 7 5 1
was still in living memory at the time of the General
Admonition. The church councils, which had become commoner again
383
THE CAROLINGIAN AND after the 740s,
P O ST- C ARO L I N G I AN
and which continued without
natural source of moralizing enactments, royal legislation already under Pippin to
Old Testament parallels,
as
a break thereafter,
many
III.
WEST, 75O-IOOO
of
were a
them absorbed
into
Frankish self-confidence led
we have seen, and also to Roman parallels,
thus encouraging people to look back to the fourth to sixth centuries,
when
correct belief
was
a burning political issue (see above. Chapter 3).
Although the Merovingian period was not an age of
programmes
in Francia, seventh-century Visigothic
showing that an overtly moralized early
in
(d. c.
explicit ideological
medieval western
politics already
Spain had been,
had potential roots
and Theodulf bishop of Orleans
soil;
826), the major theologian of Charlemagne’s reign,
gothic origins.
(It
must be
said,
was of
however, that the Franks,
borrowed from the Visigoths, did not borrow the Gothic
Visi-
they
if
zeal for
we have already seen.) Once Alcuin, Theodulf, Deacon from Lombard Italy, the Franks Angilbert of Saint-
religious exclusion, as
Paul the
Riquier and Einhard, and others, combined in Charlemagne’s court in the 780s
and 790s,
a critical
mass of intellectual debate and competitive
writing ensued, enough to expand and continue for another three generations.
But
is
it
hard not to see a plan at the back of
Charlemagne who gifts that
was
It
and gave them such big
they stayed in or near the court for decades. Programmatic
legislation, too, his
invited these intellectuals,
this.
although not, of course, composed by him, went out in
name, and was new. The successes of the 770s
seem already
(particularly in Italy)
was
to have persuaded the king that he
special,
and that
he had a mission, not just to rule the Franks and their neighbours, but to save their souls. Fie
more
may have been
ecclesiastical political
educated to
this in the already
environment of Pippin’s reign - however
incompletely; Charlemagne could appreciate poetry and theology, but
he never fully learned to write. All the same,
own
choice.
Justinian; his son Louis,
The
seems to have been
Charlemagne thus matches Justinian
moral-political practice (although he
there).
it
famous
fascination with
him
had a
is
an innovator
better sense of
for not smiling,
was
in
humour than
a better parallel
that has resulted in such a dense his-
toriography, unbroken across the centuries but elaborate now,
as
his
if
possible even
more
not entirely unjustified.
All kinds of legislation
were commoner under Charlemagne. Royal
assemblies produced capitularia, ‘chapter-collections’ or ‘capitularies’.
These varied
in their formality
(some were
384
official
written texts;
some
THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 75I-887 seem
to have survived only because participants took private notes of
some were
their content); they also varied in their aim, for
for local representatives,
guidelines
some were one-off enactments, but others were
systematic additions to existing law, Frankish or Lombard. But there
were many of them; the standard capitulary edition has the reign of
Italy, for
earlier
from
Charlemagne alone, plus some enactments that survive
more fragmentary form. Some from
eighty-five
in
come
of the impetus for this must have
they start in the late 770s, and are matched in frequency
than that only by the Lombard laws of Liutprand; church council
legislation,
which partly overlaps with capitulary
legislation (as
with the
General Admonition^ and the 794 synod of Frankfurt), was another model. Charlemagne also reissued the Lex Salica in a new edition,
which was widely copied
conquered peoples such as the Saxons. Not copied,
When
it is
worth
and made laws
in the ninth century,
many
stressing;
all
capitularies
for
newly
were widely
survive in only a single manuscript.
Ansegis, abbot of Saint-Wandrille on the Seine, went looking for
capitularies to turn into a rearranged collection to present to Louis the
Pious in 827, he only found (or used) twenty-nine of them, and only one (the
General Admonition) from before 803. As in the
before the Theodosian Code,
was hard
it
to be sure
Roman
empire
what laws had been
passed, even though the Carolingians, Roman-style, regarded ignorance
of the law as no excuse. But
some were very
carefully circulated, such
law of 803, which survives in fifty-three too), one of which states that Stephen
as the capitulary adding to Salic
manuscripts (Ansegis used
count of Paris had
his
it,
copy of
it
read in a public assembly there, and
names on
local political leaders signed their
it.
Such a mixture of oral
publication and formal subscription was probably
major enactments. The capitulary
up
Pious, at least
to 830,
‘habit’
and then
in
common
for the
continued under Louis the
West Francia and
Italy until
the late ninth century; in East Francia, too, the acts of church councils
continued to be recorded. In the ninth century, informal capitulary collections begin to be Italy;
commoner
as well, particularly but not only in
they seem to have been intended for use in court.
were ‘complete’
sets (capitularies tended, after all, to
they do attest to a recognition that a wide range of
and that
it
was
useful to be informed about
None
of
them
be repetitive), but
new law now existed,
it.
These laws, and the other sources for Charlemagne’s reign such as annals and letter collections,
show that the government of the Carolingian 385
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
P
O S T-C ARO LIN G I AN WEST, 75O-IOOO
lands was essentially based on old foundations, but that these were fairly carefully reshaped as required.
The network of public assemblies
that
were crucial for the Merovingians and the Lombards remained crucial in the Carolingian period.
Royal assemblies were held
just before the
campaigning season every year and were the points of reference for army muster as well; kings could
call
smaller or larger assemblies later in the
year, too, to prepare policy for the next year or
business.
Major
and
political figures, lay
ecclesiastical,
larly.
These were venues for genuine discussion, not
tions;
Hincmar archbishop of Reims
Organization of the Palace (which lost text of
attend
all
c.
812 with the same
(d.
was urgent
attended regu-
just royal instruc-
882) in his 882 treatise
itself
title)
there
if
On
the
drew on Adalard of Corbie’s
indeed
tells
us that kings did not
assembly discussions, but instead stood outside glad-handing
- and Hincmar was one of the major advisers of King Charles the Bald (840-77), as Adalard had been for his cousin Charlemagne, so
whichever wrote
this
would have known. Early
in Charles the Bald’s
war of 841-2, Charles’s follower and cousin Nithard (d. 845) records in his contemporary history how Charles’s May 841 assembly argued about which way the king reign, during the preparation for the civil
and
his
army should march; Charles went with
the minority, not the
majority, view - wrongly, in fact, Nithard said - but, either way, he
had the
benefit of hearing real argument.
participation in assemblies,
and
Even without that argument,
in the rituals
normal
in all of
powerfully reinforced a sense of collective participation in public
These national assemblies were matched assemblies, placita, meeting
two or
in every
them,
affairs.
county by local
three times a year under the count’s
presidency, in which local elites were brought into the
same public
network; these heard reports of national deliberation (Count Stephen’s Paris gathering of 803
was one
such),
and decided on court
cases.
The
Carolingians regularized these assemblies, too, for example determining that local judicial experts should be called scabini everywhere,
the early ninth century they were indeed
Channel to
Italy. It
was
coming
to be,
which by
from the English
also county assemblies that administered the
taking of oaths to the king, another older tradition systematized in this period.
Charlemagne
Hesse and Thuringia second revolt, by
instituted these in in
785-6;
in
789 after regional revolts in 793 he had them repeated after a
his disinherited eldest
son Pippin in 792, since some
of the rebels said they had not sworn in 789, perhaps because they were
386
THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 751-887 too young (not that this did them killed).
These were the only revolts
much good; Charlemagne had them in Francia in his reign,
and they seem
to have been fairly small-scale, but the king’s response
man
formal oaths more systematic. Every free
had in
to swear,
and
names had
their
was
over the age of twelve
to be recorded by counts
802 these obligations were further extended,
make
to
and
as oath-swearers
missv,
had
swear a much more detailed oath to the emperor. Oaths mattered
to
in this
world; oath-breakers were perjurors, and risked damnation, not just secular penalties - dispossession, mutilation
and sometimes death. They
made to men who
could be dangerous: Charlemagne banned oaths of association
anyone except the king and one
and
lord,
in
806 enacted that
did so should beat each other and cut off each other’s hair (or, in extreme cases,
slit
their noses).
Oaths to the king further added to the
intensity
of ritual at even the most remote assembly, and to the local presence of royal authority.
The Carolingian empire was huge, in
Europe has ever been except
of
Napoleon and
Hitler,
and
larger than
any subsequent
for brief years at the height of the
societies of
Provence and
Italy.
How
it
could
all
one part of
it;
was an almost impossible
challenge.
was army muster; and the
so
or emperor, whether at
it
did
urban
to the old
be controlled, without
the elaborate fiscal and administrative system of the the caliphate,
power
also extremely diverse, stretching as
from the half-converted and roadless lands of Saxony
state
Roman
Assembly
empire or
politics
was
palace, the court of the king
Aachen or elsewhere, was furthermore a magnet
for the ambitious in every period, as they
came
preferment. Kings did not just give
they received them too, the
‘annual
These
gifts’
gifts
gifts;
to seek justice, gifts or
of horses and the like presented at each general assembly.
seem
to have
had a military edge
associated with the fact that soldiers
to them,
and were probably
on campaign had
to bring their
equipment and three months’ provisions with them, not a small
invest-
ment. Rather than a proto-tax system, which cannot be identified in the Carolingian period (kings were not short of resources even without taxation, until late in the ninth century), this
was another element
in the
gift-exchange of political participation. Palaces were also the focus of a particularly large as
we
amount
of collective and increasingly moralized ritual,
shall see further in the next chapter; the other elements of Carolin-
gian political aggregation had clear roots in the Merovingian period,
but this was largely new. But kings did not
387
move around
the
whole of
THE CAROLINGIAN AND the empire, except
P
O ST- C AR O LIN G AN WEST, 75O-IOOO I
when on campaign; Charlemagne, Louis and
Louis’s
sons seldom strayed out of the three great ‘royal landscapes’, of the Seine valley, the Middle Rhine valley, and between
of royal and ex-Pippinid estates around Aachen.
went
ever
there; the kings
One way aristocrats.
had
to reach
them
them the core block
Not
every local leader
too.
they did so was by strategically placing their most trusted
Counts tended to be from long-standing
after conquests, as in
Alemannia
local elites, except
after Canstatt, or in Italy in the early
ninth century; so did bishops. But beside these local
and
elites,
inter-
locking - and intermarrying - with them, there were also greater families, those of the Reichsaristokratie, the ‘imperial aristocracy’, as Gerd Tellen-
bach called them
and
fifty
in
He and his successors identified between forty who could be found in any part of the empire,
1939.
such families,
and whose members could move around
some
facility.
Most
of
(or be
moved around) with
them were from the old Pippinid heartlands of
Austrasia, extending southwards into the Middle Rhine and northern
Burgundy, though they could come from anywhere except
few
if
could
Italy.
Very
any of these families were newly created; but the Carolingians
make favoured members
them
of
rich
and powerful beyond any
previous imagining, even though Merovingian aristocrats could already be pretty rich, as is
we saw
in
the ‘Widonid’ family (as
Chapter
we
call
originating in the Middle Rhine
5.
A
well-known example of these
them - surnames did not
and Moselle
valleys; they
yet exist),
seem
in the
eighth century to be linked to Milo of Trier (see Chapter 8) and to an
important church in Mainz. Under Louis the Pious and his sons, they are found simultaneously in the far west of
duchy of Spoleto
in the central
modern France and
in the
Appennines of Italy, running the frontier
marches facing Brittany and Benevento respectively, while keeping their
Rhineland
links,
where they controlled the major monastery of
Hornbach. They did not follow a simple family crisis
political line (in the
of 833-4, which set Louis the Pious against his sons,
of Vannes fought a battle for Louis against his brother
Guy count
Lambert marquis
was
killed),
and they could be unscrupulous about establishing themselves
locally,
of the Breton march, fighting for Louis’s son Lothar, and
as in distant Spoleto,
where they ran a
largely
autonomous
politics. All
the same, they were loyal to Carolingian ideals, including Carolingian
unity -
Guy
887, tried to
III
of Spoleto
make
(d.
895), after Carolingian
power ended
in
himself king in both West Francia and Italy, and was
388
THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 751-887 crowned emperor
actually
in 891.
Without that
range of their power would have ceased to for the family
there
is
and, indeed, did cease,
not attested after the 890s outside the Rhineland (though
remained important: the Salian dynasty of German kings was
it
probably descended from deal, but the reverse
was an immense racies
exist,
unity, the geographical
is
it).
Kings relied on families such as
true too; in
many respects
the Carolingian empire
power of
oligarchy, and, given the rooted local
both large and small,
it
had to
The point
be.
this a great
aristoc-
will be explored
further later.
Not
all
like this. all
royal dependants in the provinces were from great families
The Carolingians made considerable use of
of whom were rich, but
ties
all
of whom
had
royal vassals, not
particularly close ceremonial
to the kings, in rituals of personalized oath-swearing
and homage.
These could be local men, called to the palace and the army, or aristocrats,
both rich and middling, brought
in
from outside;
either
else
way,
they are invoked in legislation as the sort of men kings could particularly rely on. (Aristocrats had,
and
relied on, their
own
Vassalage was the lineal successor of the personal
vassals as well.)
fidelity
of the
Mero-
Lombard Italy; what was new about it was once might be moved around. It is this movement of
vingian world and of
again that vassals
men, of
families,
which marks the early Carolingians out from
their
predecessors.
The kings
also, systematically, sent representatives to the provinces.
These representatives, missi, were the king’s eyes and
ears.
They had
Merovingian and especially Lombard antecedents too, but Charlemagne regularized them, and the Frankish heartland missatica, territories in
which
was
in
802 divided into
pairs of missi, a count
regularly toured, to hear appeals against local counts
and a bishop,
and
others. Italy
and most of the other conquered lands had missi of their own. Missi were not often outsiders to their territory - local archbishops were popular missi, for example - but they again owed loyalty and responsi-
whom they were expected regularly to report, in writing if necessary. We have some of the court cases in which bility directly to the king, to
they held local officials to account, such as the 804 case at Rizana in Istria in
against gized,
which three missi heard the complaints of 172
Duke John
of Istria’s trampling of local customs; John apolo-
and the customs seem
to see missi
and
local leaders
to have been restored.
It
would be wrong
their territories as fully institutionalized, but kings
389
THE CAROLINGIAN AND certainly regarded it
them
O S T- C ARO LI N G I AN WEST, 75O-IOOO
normal
until late in the ninth century, except,
And we
certainly have chance-surviving evi-
as
seems, in East Francia.
P
dence of regular written communication, to the provinces and back again, whether through people called missi or other officials, such as the
from Hetti archbishop of Trier
instruction
Toul
in
817
telling
him
bishop of
(as missus) to the
to mobilize against the revolt of
King Bernard
of Italy, that very day; or the letters Louis the Pious sent in 832 to
two
tell
vassals to stand by as messengers in case his missus or his count
needed to send a message to the emperor; or the demand made by Charles the Bald to his churchmen in 845 for systematic information
about to
his monasteries,
fulfil;
Reims
or the
lists
of
which Abbot Lupus of
men who swore
in 8 54, attached to a
Ferrieres sought actively
Charles the Bald at
fidelity to
copy of a capitulary by Archbishop Hincmar,
who was probably himself the local missus. Men must have been moving around the queen
entire time, looking for the king/emperor, or sometimes, the
(this
was not straightforward,
for they
informing them; Hincmar indeed supposes the Palace that receiving
bishops had their politics,
them was
too),
and
the Organization of
task. (Aristocrats
and
networks, to keep abreast of
the roads
filled
On
major royal
a
own communications
which presumably
in
moved about
still
more.) Without this
presumption of regular and detailed communication, again not new but
would not have been
greatly extended, running the empire
Did
this
complex network of instructions and accountability actually
work? There are two views. One
is
of the Carolingian administration their advisers
move
that the complexity
was
self-supporting.
flexibility
The kings and
quickly; Louis the Pious’s muster against Bernard in 817, for fast that
it
caught the rebel entirely by surprise. The
‘system’ of the capitulary legislation or of Hincmar’s tion of the Palace it
and
were constantly innovating and retouching, and could
example, was so
for
possible.
was more
could be moulded to
flexible in reality, fit
On
and that was a strength,
the diversity of the provinces.
centrality of the royal court (or, after 840, courts) ished, as all political leaders or
rich royal monasteries,
circle
as they did the elaborately is
good evidence
and even book-buying, which backs
ment up. This was further extended
the
remained undimin-
moralized programme of Carolingian correctio; there
network of
And
would-be leaders continued to
around kings into the 880s, imbibing
for aristocratic literacy
the Organiza-
this argu-
into the provinces thanks to the
from Corbie
390
in
modern northern
THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 751-887 France to
on into
many
St.
Gallen and Reichenau in modern southern
Italy,
Germany and
and the even denser network of cathedral communities,
of which had extensive libraries, and trained intellectuals
who
could and did debate about theology and politics until the end of the ninth century, with effects on political practice in
The other view and
that this
is
ecclesiastical alike,
was
all
a sham.
The
cases.
aristocracy, secular
were corrupt and out for themselves, from top
to bottom. Theodulf of Orleans wrote a
(among other things)
some
poem around 800
against
which would have been incom-
judicial corruption,
prehensible to the people of his south French missaticum^ given the
degree to which litigants apparently pressed
gifts
on him; many of the
abuses missi are recorded as correcting were in fact the oppressive acts of other missi\ Adalard of Corbie’s younger brother
Wala
(d.
836),
when
a missus for Italy in the 820s, uncovered an elaborate cover-up of the
expropriation and later murder of a
bottom
in the Italian
major court of
Lyon
protect
for providing ‘a wall’
aristocratic
marked by As
tell us.
from top
to
was
criticized in
about 827 by Agobard
between the emperor and criminals,
‘to
correctio'; there are plenty of other
examples of
bad behaviour from the period, which was
in fact also
a notable oppression of the poor, as capitularies themselves for the imperial project,
830s and was only his adviser
stretched
kingdom; Matfrid count of Orleans, one of the
figures of the 820s,
them from
widow which
fully
it
was already
disintegrating in the
maintained after that by Charles the Bald and
Hincmar; most other Carolingians soon moved towards the
rougher realpolitik of the tenth century. In any case, the ambition of Carolingian reform legislation betrayed constant repetition betrayed
its failure.
its
(Maybe
Michael Wallace-Hadrill thought, writing account: ‘had [Hincmar’s programme]
would have been in their rhetoric,
a police-state.’)
and
hopeless naivety, and
in
this
was a good
its
thing,
an otherwise sympathetic
worked
out, Carolingian society
The Carolingians were unusual only
in their military success,
ninth century, leaving the empire open to
which petered out
civil
in the
war and demoralizing
(because unremunerative) defence against external attack.
The
interest of the Carolingian period lies in the fact that
both of these
views are largely accurate. Aristocrats are always violent, corrupt and greedy, but they were at least aware of the ideology of public responsibility in this period,
strably
- linked
and presumably - sometimes, it
as with
Dhuoda, demon-
to their desire for personal salvation after death,
391
which
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
P
O S T- C ARO LI N G I AN WEST, 75O-IOOO
The
they certainly always also possessed.
state
was ramshackle and
too large for the governmental technologies of the period, but the same, constantly striking
document
in resolutely local
we have examples
how
often
it
makes
its
presence
it is, all
felt
even
Throughout the ninth century,
collections.
of peasants appealing to public courts against their
lords, in Italy, Francia, Septimania
(modern Languedoc), over personal
status, rent levels or seized lands; they
do so
that they bothered to
at
all,
almost always
in a political
lost,
but the fact
system so obviously run
by the aristocracy, implies that they knew the system could
sometimes work as later.
far
it
was supposed
There was a constant
dialectic
patronage powers, and local
empire (royal power
fell
and such cases are much rarer
to,
between the
state,
with
its
immense
throughout almost the whole
societies,
back only
at least
at the edges, like eastern Bavaria,
Spoleto or Catalonia). Local powers had to pay attention to kings, and accept their political guidelines, including whatever ideological pro-
grammes they had, not no means did
all
least
because kings were also dangerous, and by
the things their
own programmes
enjoined.
We
shall
explore these contradictions, and their ironies, further in this chapter
and the next.
Charlemagne died emperor by
in
814, and Louis the Pious,
his father the year before, his
himself as a
new broom, and summarily
in
been crowned
immediately marched north to
Aachen from
sub-kingdom
who had
Aquitaine to take over.
He
represented
expelled his sisters, led by
Bertha, from the palace, where they had been acting as a sort of collective
queen for
their father since his last wife died in 800.
The imagery of
Louis’s early years stresses his moralism, as opposed to the sexual licence
of his father’s reign; Charlemagne had had a string of mistresses up to
and his daughters, whom he would not allow to marry, had lovers too - Bertha’s was the court scholar Angilbert, by whom she was his death,
the
mother of the historian Nithard. Louis’s own sex
an adult, was
in fact as far as
we know
life,
once he became
restricted to the
marriage bed,
unlike most male Carolingians, but his criticism of the sexual immorality
of the palace (the ideal moral centre of the polity, thus very vulnerable to such criticism, as
we
shall see in the
next chapter) was a standard
part of ninth-century political rhetoric, and Louis’s
and
own court in the
830s. Louis
would be applied back
was committed
his first substantial political initiative
392
to
to monastic reform,
was two reform councils
at
THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 751-887 Aachen
extended
how
816-17, which revised the Rule of Benedict of Nursia and
in it
to
all
the monasteries of the empire. In
would be divided
the empire
at his
817 he also set out death between his three sons,
which excluded from the succession Bernard, son of
who was
his brother Pippin,
already king of Italy (812-17); Bernard unsurprisingly re-
volted, with the support of not a
few Frankish magnates (including
Theodulf of Orleans), but, as we have seen,
818 and condemned to death, but, following the pattern, this sentence
was commuted
He was tried in common Carolingian
failed.
to blinding,
from which however
he died anyway. After 818, Louis understandably had
and the next decade can be seen confidence.
Wars were
little
opposition for some time,
as the apogee of Carolingian self-
now, and the emperor’s attention
small-scale by
was focused on an elaborate and complex court
marked by regular embassies from
Aachen,
different neighbours, another dense
(many of them
set of capitularies
politics in
collected by Ansegis in 827),
and
an administrative reordering under the arch-chancellor Helisachar (814-30),
who had come
with Louis from Aquitaine, and the arch-
chaplain Hilduin, abbot of Saint-Denis and four other monasteries
(819-30). The emperor’s control of court ritual was marked above
by
his decision in the
822 general assembly at Attigny to perform
penance for the death of Bernard, imitating Theodosius
I’s
all
a public
penance of
390, according to one of his biographers. At the same time, he called
back the (male)
and possible
was
relatives he
rivals
had exiled from court, notably
his cousins
Adalard and Wala; Carolingian family reconciliation
to be complete.
The calm of
the 820s was, however, broken abruptly in 829-30.
Court factions were
crystallizing around,
on the one
side, Louis’s oldest
son Lothar (817-55), already emperor (since 824) but with a
and, on the other, Louis’s second wife Judith
remit confined to
Italy,
and her family.
828 Lothar’s father-in-law
his associate
In
political
Matfrid of Orleans had
Hugh count
of Tours and
lost their offices. In
829 Bernard
of Septimania, count of Barcelona, was brought in as chamberlain, an office traditionally very close to the
queen, and was for a few months
regarded as ‘second to the king’; he was (for unclear reasons) a highly controversial figure, however, and by 830
was accused of adultery with
Judith. Lothar gained the support of his brothers Pippin king of Aquitaine (817-38)
and Louis king of Bavaria (817-76)
393
to set in
motion
in
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
PO
S
T- CARO LI N GIAN
WEST, 75O-IOOO
April 830 a quiet coup, significantly also supported by the old guard of the court, Helisachar, Hilduin
and Wala. Bernard
and Judith was
fled
temporarily exiled, until Louis the Pious regained control in October
and brought Judith (but not Bernard) back. and much the same occurred;
this time, the
an army to meet Lothar and
emperor Louis marched with
who were
his brothers,
At the meeting-point,
Gregory IV,
in Alsace.
Lies’, Louis’s
army melted away,
in
In 833 tensions rose again,
joined by Pope
later called the ‘Field of
joining Lothar,
and Louis was deposed
favour of Lothar. This time his public penance was not voluntary; the
do was refuse to take monastic vows when he was confined Saint-Denis. But, as in 830, Lothar and his brothers fell out - Lothar,
best he could in
like his father,
was too
clearly
committed to being the dominant Carolin-
gian - and Louis was restored in 834. at
Metz
in 835,
He was
ceremonially re-crowned
and re-established himself, confining Lothar
to Italy
on any of Lothar’s
again, though Louis did not take violent revenge
supporters (they merely lost their lands and offices north of the Alps,
and some of them, such remained
as Hilduin,
in control until his death in 840.
The events of 830-34 imperial government and lands.
soon got them back). Louis then
They have
certainly greatly disrupted the balances of
the patronage networks of the Carolingian
also been typically seen until very recently as a sign
of imminent Carolingian breakdown, perhaps fuelled by aristocratic hostility,
and
also as a sign of the
weakness of Louis
‘the Pious’ himself.
Louis was not, however, either pliable or accommodating, any more
than his sons were - hence, indeed, the fact that the uprising occurred twice;
and
sense of a his
aristocratic reactions to the crisis
new
opportunity. Einhard
(d.
show alarm
840), by
now
rather than any in retirement in
monastery of Seligenstadt near Frankfurt, although a supporter of
Louis (he preserved in his written in 830), prudently
letter collection a fell ill
very rude letter to Lothar,
during both
crisis
moments, but then
might be taken the wrong way by the kings, and
was worried that
this
wrote to friends
at court to ask
them
to ensure that his loyalty
was
recognized, by Louis the Pious, but also by Louis of Bavaria (whose
power-base was close to Seligenstadt), and even by Lothar; one a
dependant
in
833 asks him to give the ‘customary
arily victorious Lothar,
and to report back on
gifts’
how
letter to
to the tempor-
Lothar received
them. Einhard was, thanks to his long-standing palace connections, a
major local patron and
political intermediary,
394
and
it is
clear in his letters
THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 751-887 of these years
how much
mediation would need to be done
in a
period
of sharp political swings, for the kings could and did remove the ben-
than fully loyal. So Einhard
efices of the less
833 wrote to a friend asking him to intercede with Lothar for a certain Frumold, who had in late
been given a benefice near Geneva by Charlemagne but was too travel to court
long
and commend himself
way from
again,
to the
new
ruler
ill
to
(Geneva was a
Seligenstadt; Einhard’s patronage stretched widely); or
around the same time, to another courtier who might, he hoped,
persuade Eothar to
let
an aristocrat and
his brother
hold benefices jointly
kingdoms of both Eothar and Eouis of Bavaria. That Einhard
in the
kept these
they were normal, and also, perhaps,
letters indicates that
successful: his
younger contemporary the poet Walahfrid Strabo
(d.
849)
wrote a prologue to Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne noting rather wryly
how well the author had kept ‘a certain remarkable and divinely inspired distance’
from the
himself, in fact,
crises of Louis’s reign.
who was
exiled
from
Louis of Bavaria in 839-42; Walahfrid
hard
it
was
thus doubly a witness to
to avoid trouble in the 830s. This
which magnates would
was not
how
a crisis period
easily seek to exploit.
probably best to see the
It is
monastery of Reichenau by
his is
This was unlike Walahfrid
crises of the
830s as a product of two
underlying problems, a struggle between court factions, and the normal tensions any ruling Carolingian
had with adult sons
itching to succeed.
This confluence was only exacerbated by arguments over theology and political ethics,
and the more mundane
fourth son, Charles, in 823,
who would
into the partitioned empire (he
fact that Judith gave Louis a
have to be
was given Alemannia
fitted
somewhere
in 829, a politically
tangential area, but in a significant year - Nithard later thought that this
was the excuse
that Louis’s father
Louis’s
for Lothar’s first rebellion).
Charlemagne managed
It
has at least to be said
his sons better,
and so did
own sons: Lothar, Louis and Charles each weathered the rivalries
of their adult sons without ever losing the initiative. Misjudgements in the crucial years around
830 seem
to have
marred Louis the Pious’s
standard toughness. After Louis’s death in 840, however, to see
how
his heirs fell into civil war. Pippin of
it is
not hard
Aquitaine had died in
838, allowing Louis to substitute Charles as his heir in the western part of the empire (at the expense of Pippin’s son Pippin the Younger), which
ought to have made things
easier;
German’, as historians from
but Charles ‘the Bald’ and Louis ‘the
now on 395
call
them, were not at
all
inclined
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
P
O S T- C AR O LI N G AN WEST, 75O-IOOO I
to let Lothar have the leading role
because of this that
civil
which he regarded
war ensued
in
841-2.
as his right.
It
was
A bloody but inconclusive
841 scared the Frankish magnates, however another sign that they were by no means ready to exploit crisis - and
Fontenoy
battle at
in
Lothar, driven out of Aachen in 842, agreed peace; the empire was divided again, rather carefully, at the Treaty of Verdun in 843. Charles
took West Francia (including Aquitaine), Louis East Francia (including Bavaria, Alemannia and Saxony), Lothar the lands around Aachen,
Burgundy, Provence and estates
were
thickest,
Italy.
The Frankish heartland, where royal
was divided neatly
one
into three; each brother got
of the ‘royal landscapes’, and was in addition assigned the outlying
kingdom idiotic
which he was
in
on
a
map, much
the extent to project;
it
which
all
The
fact that the division looks
Merovingian divisions often had, underlines
three brothers
still
saw
the empire as a
common
perhaps also shows that none of the parties really thought
would be permanent. tion
as
strongest.
was permanent, however. The only major excep-
It
was the lands around Aachen, named Lotharingia
son Lothar
II
(855-69)
it
after Lothar’s
who inherited them, which were divided between
Charles and Louis at Lothar IPs death. (Aachen became marginalized after that, as a borderland; in the tenth century Lotharingia
into East Francia.)
the same.
all
Verdun should not be overstated
We know
that
was absorbed
as a dividing point
West Francia eventually became
‘France’,
East Erancia became ‘Germany’, but contemporaries did not, and the
imagery of a single Francia under several rulers survived 1000, as
The
we
shall see in
until after
Chapter 18.
division of the empire
was
a return to the
norms of
the sixth
and
seventh centuries, and was regarded as inevitable and indeed appropriate
by nearly everyone;
after
all,
Charles Martel and Pippin
divided their lands temporarily, and Charlemagne It
was
also a return to the bickering
III
had both
would have done
so.
and occasional warring of the
decades around 600. Lothar’s northern heartland around Aachen looks the quietest, though this
may
be because the two major continuators of
Royal Frankish Annals^ the Annals of Saint-Bertin and the Annals of Fulda, were written in Charles’s and Louis’s kingdoms respectively.
the
Louis the German, too, seems to have been in
full
control of East Erancia,
at least after his
bloody quelling of a peasants’
revolt, the Stellinga, in
Saxony
Louis spent his long reign (he died in 876) fighting
in 842.
on the eastern
frontier, particularly against the
396
Bohemians, and the
THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 751-887 increasingly powerful
Moravian
rulers Rastislav (846-70),
who was
captured and blinded by the Franks, and his successor Sviatopluk or
Zwentibald (870-94): these princes had expanded political
vacuum
in particular,
their
power
into the
that followed the collapse of the Avars. Zwentibald,
fought the Franks as an equal, and had considerable
influence over eastern Bavarian aristocrats by the mid-88os. But the
importance of the eastern frontier, and the traditional nature of the
campaigns
there,
allowed Louis to sustain a military effectiveness
focused on offensive war that had not been
by
one
his three sons in
level, for
very
little
of
857-73. East Francia was harder to
had been part of the
it
lacked good communications or west; Louis probably had
went
since Charlemagne’s
which he faced down successive
time. Hence, doubtless, the ease with revolts
known
little
cities
on
empire, so
it
except in the far south and far
Saxony,
direct control in still-peripheral
and
rarely
like
any Carolingian king, when he did go
there. All the
Roman
rule,
same, he ran placita there and did there,
justice,
most notably
in 852;
and, although he did not issue capitularies, and seems to have had a simpler administration than his brothers, his bishops, headed by the influential archbishops of
Mainz on
the Rhine
- a
Roman
city,
and
in
a Carolingian royal heartland - behaved just like other Carolingian ecclesiastical first
communities, holding councils and making law. (Louis’s
appointment to Mainz was indeed the
influential theologian
and
commentator Hraban Maur, 847-56.) This, plus Louis’s armies, made the East Erankish kingdom a still-functioning heir of that of biblical
Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. In Italy, too, Lothar’s son Louis
of the
kingdom (with
recorded
difficulty,
II
(840-75),
the imperial
and seems
title)
who was
in sole control
by 850, operated without an
to have been
effective ruler.
certainly a practitioner of Carolingian reform,
and
He was
as early as
enacted capitularies and conciliar legislation to combat abuses, the of an Italian sequence that
Angilberga
(d.
891),
would only end
an unusually
in 898.
influential
He and
850 first
his wife
queen, had a more
hands-on control over government than most Carolingians; Louis was secure
enough to promote Lombard
a century, alongside three or four
aristocrats for the first time in half
major families of the Reich saristokratie
(including his wife’s kin, the ‘Supponids’).
He was
clearly the heir of
kings like Liutprand, while also taking seriously his imperial letter to the
title;
in a
Byzantine emperor, he claimed to represent the whole
397
THE CAROLINGIAN AND Carolingian dynasty. Louis
P
II,
O S T - C AR O L I N G I AN WEST, 750-IOOO
uniquely
among
Carolingian rulers, could
take the risk of a long unbroken period (866-72) campaigning abroad,
who had
against the Arabs
taken Bari in southern
he took Bari
Italy;
back but was then imprisoned by Prince Adelchis of Benevento (853-78) in 871,
who had no
far south. This
was
reason to welcome Carolingian power stretching so
a humiliation for Louis,
- but he was
and he had
unopposed
north of
to counteract
it
too, then, the
norms of Carolingian power were not
still
to be re-crowned
in the
Italy.
Here,
yet under threat.
Charles the Bald faced by far the greatest problems out of the Carolingians of this period. This, plus the extensive documentation for his reign,
has meant that he
is
the best-studied later Carolingian, although he
also the least typical. For a start, his
was the only kingdom
848 and then intermittently
effectively until
843 with contested Aquitaine rather
who
another claimant. Pippin the Younger,
was
until his
in
death in about 864.
Secondly, he had to face the most systematic external attack, from
Viking raiders. The Vikings
in
Francia and England were mainly from
Denmark (Norwegian Vikings went mostly They were standard war-bands of an
to Scotland
and
Ireland).
on the
early medieval type,
scale
of early Anglo-Saxon armies, although they were never as large as
Frankish ones, even
when
they got bigger later in the century. They were
private enterprises, in that they were not under the control of the kings
of
Denmark
this
(at least,
upbraided them, and
is
what
the latter said
when
was plausible enough, given the
it
royal strength: see Chapter 20).
the Franks
limits
They were pagan, so were
on Danish
less inhibited
than Christians about sacking churches, major wealth depositories, to the particular horror of ecclesiastical writers. ships: this
was the big
difference
which was otherwise very run, far
up
from
similar, for
rivers into Francia, before
Major Viking
raids
began
in 834,
And
local Frankish border raiding,
it
allowed the Vikings to
as well as also
knowing
and a
as early as
more widely,
841 Dorestad was given
faithfully
much
knew Dorestad
his
of Frisia, and defended
well
was busy
in
Frisia after that as well,
in benefice
Danish royal family-member, and then to
Rorik controlled
and
with an attack on the Rhine port
that the Frankish political system
834. They attacked Dorestad and,
hit
any defence army arrived.
of Dorestad; ship-owners were also merchants, and
-
they were based on
by Lothar to Harald,
younger brother Rorik. it
for the Franks
more
than not, for most of the period 845-75. Almost certainly as
a result. Vikings
seldom came further up the Rhine to bother Lothar’s
398
THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 75I-887 and Louis the German’s heartlands, except
881-3.
for big raids in
Charles the Bald, however, had to face regular attacks on his long
and up the
coastline,
and Garonne, without
Seine, Loire
a break
841. Charles could never get rid of them; they were a permanent in his side.
from
wound
Vikings soon over-wintered at river-mouths as well. Charles
them
alternately fought
off
and bought them
off with tribute (the least
popular but most effective response); twice at the end of his reign he actually organized a general tax to
pay them. Most
effectively of
all,
perhaps, he fortified bridges over the Seine in 862 and the Loire in 873, to block their path.
into England,
The major Viking push for fifteen years
which eased the pressure on Francia a
years. But the Vikings never really
The aura the Bald,
this
865 was
in Charles’s last
went away.
of military failure, or at least
and
little
after
thus
crisis,
hung over Charles
must be one of the main reasons why he had greater
with his aristocracy than did his brothers and nephews.
difficulties
Charles’s anti-Lothar alliance with his brother Louis broke the 850s, and in 854 Louis the German’s son Louis the
down
in
Younger went
to Aquitaine to test out the seriousness of invitations to his father by
Aquitanian aristocrats. disaffection
It
was much stronger
was a bad period
(it
and Pippin the Younger had reappeared magnates, lay and
ecclesiastical,
German
still
in.
Charles
and most of
showed
who was from
least
and Louis
the uncertainties Charles
866),
in terms of Vikings,
in Aquitaine),
had support, not
his other bishops,
then, but by 858
were prepared to
had
‘the
and numerous
invite
Louis the
from Hincmar of Reims
retreated; but the episode
to face.
which included the powerful Robert (d.
weak
turned out to be
The pro-Louis group,
Strong’, count of
Anjou
a major Rhineland imperial aristocratic family,
the ‘Rupertines’ or ‘Robertines’, gave in,
and retained
their honores.
Charles did not have to face a revolt like this again, but he had to negotiate with critical aristocrats on other occasions too, such as when, at the
end of
his reign,
he occupied Italy (and took the imperial
after the death of the son-less Louis
II
in 875,
title)
while simultaneously
attacking in 876 - and losing - against Louis the Younger (876-82),
who had succeeded his father in most of East Francia.
Charles was trying
to assert himself as the
dominant Carolingian, without securing
Hincmar was
and several of Charles’s magnates thought he was
furious,
his base.
over-stretching himself. But Charles died in 877, and normal politics
resumed.
399
THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO S T- C AR O LI N G AN WEST, 75O-IOOO I
Charles did remain hegemonic over his aristocracy.
power-bases of
his
most useful
fideles,
new name
who was his mainstay of support in the far south after who was made
(d.
built
up the
such as Robert of Anjou, at least
before 858, or Bernard marquis of Gothia, a
he patronized Boso
He
for Septimania,
865. In particular,
887), brother of Charles’s second wife Richildis,
chamberlain of
sub-kingdom of Aquitaine
in
son Louis ‘the Stammerer’ in his
his
new
872, as well as count of Bourges and
Vienne, and in 876 Charles’s viceroy in Italy and husband of Louis
II’s
only daughter, Ermingard. But he also removed honores from magnates at will,
and moved them around; when Robert died
Vikings, his son
Odo
in battle against the
did not inherit Anjou, and lost others of Robert’s
counties in 868 - he did not return to royal favour until 882,
became count of
Bernard of Gothia,
Paris. Similarly,
who
when he
rebelled in
878 against Louis the Stammerer (king of West Francia 877-9), was
summarily stripped of
his lands
and
offices,
and never got them back.
Charles was generous with land; he gave out far more estates in
full
property than did other Carolingians, not just benefices; but he took
them back
as well with
some
ease.
Charles also threw himself into the complexities of Carolingian correctio
and Carolingian
as another
ritual.
Aachen, including
ceremonial, as
He its
developed his palace of Compiegne buildings; he created
when he hosted a month-long synod
at
some
Ponthion
original in
June-
July 876, after his imperial coronation, wearing Frankish costume at the start
but Byzantine costume plus a crown at the end. Imperial echoes
were already
visible in the
864 Edict of
Pitres,
most substantial of his many
capitularies, the
which draws substantially on the Theodosian Code
(as well as, explicitly,
on Ansegis). Charles was
trative refinement as
was
as concerned for adminis-
his father; Pitres, for
example, also involved
which coin-hoards show to have been
a coinage reform,
implemented. His missi
still
ran as in Charlemagne’s day.
effectively
And
Charles
had a court almost
as full of intellectuals as Charlemagne’s, including
Hincmar
who wrote much
at
hand
of Reims,
for advice,
wanted or not,
of his legislation and
as well as writing
was always
some of the longest
and twenty years of the Annals of Saint-Bertin. The core of Charles’s ruling was not undermined, for all political tracts of his generation,
his military difficulties;
and
his
ambition as a reformer was more elab-
orate than any other Carolingian after 840. Even Charles the Bald, then, despite
many
problems, remained on top of his kingdom in most
400
THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 751-887 respects, in different
but with a similar
ways from Louis the German and Louis
result.
The Carolingian
project
was
still
II
in
of Italy,
operation
into the late 870s.
But
it
five
kingdoms, with
did not last a decade more. In
by
the empire broke
six or seven claimants, only
male-line Carolingian. This as a takeover
887-8
was seen
as
one of
up into
whom
was a
an end even by contemporaries,
reguli, ‘kinglets’, as the
Annals of Fulda put
it.
His-
torians have understandably sought long-term explanations for
mostly in the
‘rise’
and growing autonomy of major
it,
aristocratic families,
was these who provided the new kings of 888, the ‘Robertine’ Odo of Paris in West Francia, the ‘Widonid’ Guy of Spoleto in West Francia
for
it
and then
Italy,
Boso’s son Louis in Provence, the ‘Unruoching’ Berengar
of Friuli in Italy, and the ‘Welf’ Rudolf, from
Queen
Judith’s family, in
Burgundy. All these were however families very close to the Caro-
by marriage
lingians, linked
in the last three cases (Louis
and Berengar
had Carolingian mothers). Only one of them, too, had any serious track record of disloyalty: Boso, tradition in lasted until
887-8
What
broke with the whole Carolingian
879 and declared himself king in the Rhone valley (he only 882 as king, for all the Carolingians combined against him).
The others show no the
who
power on
signs of seeking
crisis itself,
their
own
which forced them onto the centre
account until stage.
destroyed Carolingian power was simply genealogy. There had
always been too
many
division the family
Carolingians, given the presumption of political
had inherited from the Merovingian
past. Rulers
had
developed methods of excluding minor branches from succession, either
by force
(as
with Carloman
Bernard) or by agreement to be
major players
son Drogo, or Pippin of
with Adalard and Wala,
in their cousin’s court, or
Pippin, count of Beauvais, crat; his heirs
(as
I’s
who
Italy’s
son
who were content
Bernard of
Italy’s
son
effectively turned into a regional aristo-
were the central medieval counts of Champagne), or
through a growing concern to exclude illegitimate children. Even then, there were
still
a large
number
of them; as late as 870 there were eight
legitimate adult male Carolingians, kings. In 885, however, there
all
kings or ambitious to
become
was only one. None of Lothar’s sons had
legitimate male heirs; nor did Louis the German’s; Charles the Bald’s
son Louis had three, but two were dead by 884 and the third, Charles ‘the Simple’,
born posthumously, was only eight
401
in 887.
One by
one, as
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
P O ST- C ARO LI N G I AN
the Carolingians died in the 8 80s, Louis the
WEST, 75O-IOOO
German’s
son
last surviving
Charles ‘the Fat’, king of Alemannia (876-87, emperor 881) inherited
kingdoms,
their
until
he reunited the whole empire in 884 for the
first
time since 840. Charles the Fat has had a bad press. This
is
and was linked to some
over-pragmatic showings against the Vikings, as
when Odo
of Paris
fought off a big siege in 885-6, but Charles paid them to go away;
and
coloured above
is
illegitimate
by hindsight, for he was overthrown by
all
nephew Arnulf
few weeks before
in 887, a
his
his death in 888.
Charles was more able than this implies. But everybody must have
known
world was
that the
likely to
change, for Charles was
and
ill,
himself had only an illegitimate son, Bernard. (Boso indeed must have seen
it
coming
in 879:
predictable.) Lothar
most of these genealogical problems were by then
II
had spent most of
son Hugh, and
his illegitimate
Charles the Fat had no his legal heir.
failing, as
rivals,
Hugh, who had
Charles and blinded in 885;
his reign trying to legitimate
we
shall see in the
but even he could not
make Bernard
visible royal ambitions,
was caught by
and
this,
also Arnulf ’s succession,
that Bernard could well have tried to succeed
against Arnulf, and rules fast
enough
to
was
killed, in 891),
make
anyway
illegitimate sons
previously been kept
(he did rebel
normal royal
so that he could remarry and aim for legitimate sons;
who had
means
but Charles did not change the
he tried in 887 to divorce his wife Richgard, as Lothar
Arnulf,
next chapter;
away from
II
heirs. Instead,
had
it
central
also tried,
was then
that
power on
the
Carinthian borderlands of eastern Bavaria, staged his coup and took the East Frankish throne. This coup
made the decisions of the most powerful
aristocrats of the other sections of the empire easier; Arnulf
standing in West Francia, Burgundy and
Italy,
had some
but his genealogical claims
did not seem so strong to most political actors outside the eastern
kingdom, and someone had to
rule.
When
they did, they varied in their
most of the Carolingian
effectiveness; but they did not use
political
practices discussed in this chapter.
More important than
the
‘rise’
of an aristocracy
regionalization. This, paradoxically,
Kings could confiscate benefices and feared this.
We
840s
clearer, for the
is still
saw
this in
was
was
its
growing
a reflection of royal power.
offices,
honores, and aristocrats
Einhard’s letters in the 830s; Nithard in the
whole of 840-41 was a phoney war
in
which
Lothar and Charles prowled around each other trying to tempt followers
402
THE CAROLINGIAN CENTURY, 75I-887 frora each other by promises, threats cess,
and an appearance of future suc-
which would be convincing enough
to persuade worried aristocrats
to tolerate losing honores temporarily in order to gain
move
the German’s failed structured.
into Charles’s
Each king who did
would bring
all
was usually
lands of the other. full
hoped
in
later.
Louis
858 was similarly change that
for a catalytic
a rival’s followers running in, as at the Field of Lies in
833; this seldom happened (887 instead
this
kingdom
more
the only parallel), so
is
what happened
that the followers of one king lost honores in the
They were more
keep the land they held in
likely to
property, as Matfrid of Orleans did in the case of his family land in
when he followed Lothar to Italy in 834, or as a group of aristocrats in East Francia did in 861 when Louis the German abruptly
northern Francia
expelled
them from power. This land could remain very widely spread,
as in the case of the ‘Lfnruoching’ Everard
marquis of
father of Berengar, future king of Italy, 888-924),
made with a
book
Italy
his wife Gisela, disposes
collection
and
between
Friuli in Italy (the
whose
his sons
will of
863-4,
and daughters of
rich treasures, but also estates stretching
up through Alemannia to what
is
now
from
Belgium. Such wide spreads
favoured support for a single political system, as has already been noted for the ‘Widonids’. But Everard
and Gisela gave
at least their
younger
sons more geographically restricted territories; they also included explicit provisions for
what might happen
if
made
political tension
necessary to divide this land up further. The family regionalized a result; Berengar’s brother
Rudolf
(d.
it
itself as
892) spent his career, not in
Italy,
but in Artois and on the English Channel. Similarly, the ‘Welfs’, whose lands lay both in Alemannia and in Burgundy, had to choose between
Charles and Louis in 858;
it
may
who
possibly be that those
chose
Charles kept some of their properties in East Francia, but henceforth their careers
became
would be
entirely restricted to
totally separate
stayed with Louis.
The
from that of
their brothers
honores and their properties
as they
had been
smaller, this
since
and cousins who
in
it
was
is
to say,
sensible to have both
one kingdom, not widely scattered
Charlemagne’s time. As kingdoms became
would become
Aristocrats always
their history
tensions between the Carolingians, that
persuaded prudent imperial aristocrats that their
Burgundy, and
still
truer.
wanted to leave
all their
power-bases -
properties, benefices, rights over monasteries, counties
fully
- to
owned
their sons.
This was only assured for their properties, but already in Charlemagne’s
403
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
P O ST- C ARO LI N G
I
AN WEST, 75O-IOOO
time a loyal aristocrat could assume that his son might well inherit his
The county of
county.
example, was probably held by a single
Paris, for
family between the 750s and the 850s;. kings restricted themselves to
choosing which heir took
it
moved counts around more than all
The sons of Louis
over.
the Pious actually
and grandfather had, but
their father
the Carolingians recognized that the sons of counts should normally
get a county
contracted
it
somewhere^ and
as the
might well be that
this
geography of practical
might be
politics
in or near their father’s
county or counties. The sons of counts sometimes actually feuded against
men who were given their father’s counties,
as
happened on the Bavarian
eastern frontier in 882-4, admittedly a marginal area.
The memory of former power
lingered too;
of his father’s Loire counties back in 886, a father’s death
full
- and very usefully timed, given
and somewhat wild
Odo
of Paris got
some
twenty years after his
his takeover of the
West
Frankish throne in 888. This further aided the process of regionalization.
Odo’s father Robert had moved without
difficulty
from the Rhineland
when long-distance career moves were still move to Burgundy in 858 was more controversial,
to the Loire in the 840s,
normal, but the ‘Welf’
and
after that
such
shifts
were
rare, or else resented as the irruptions of
outsiders. (Perhaps only Boso,
Rhone
valley
brother,
and
Italy, is a
and anyway
who moved from
Lotharingia to the
counter-example, but he was a queen’s
a mould-breaker in other
ways
too.)
When Charles
the Fat inherited seven separate kingdoms, separate political
networks
visibly
continued to operate in most or
would have taken
a Charles Martel-style
the Fat did not have time for that. in 888.
to unify them,
They went
make
that break-up
possible, once the Carolingians died off.
was attached only
underrated, for a
of them; by
now,
it
and Charles
their separate
ways again
These were, genuinely, long-term causes for the break-up of the
empire. They did not
identity
war
all
power
new
its
more
By
likely,
but they
made
it
then, a sense of empire-wide
to the Carolingian family (and, not to be
army-muster). But aristocratic networks were prepared
regionalized politics; which
which faced them now.
404
was
fortunate, for
it
was
this
and
Intellectuals
Politics
Early in the morning in late January 828, Einhard met Hilduin of Saint-Denis sitting outside Louis the Pious’s bedchamber in Aachen,
waiting for the emperor to get up. This was Hilduin’s job; as imperial arch-chaplain, he formally controlled access to Louis. But Einhard had
come
to see Hilduin.
They chatted while looking out of the high window
into the rest of the palace, perhaps the
window which Notker
880s would claim that Charlemagne had
built so that
was going on everywhere
(see
in the
he could see what
above. Chapter 10). Einhard had a bone
to pick with Hilduin, however.
Hilduin had in 826 initiated a fashion for buying
relics
from Rome,
acquiring the body of St Sebastian for one of his monasteries, Saint-
Medard
at Soissons. In
a professional thief
sent his
Peter
own
from
and
827 Einhard had imitated him, with the help of dealer, the
Roman deacon Deusdona, and had
notary Ratleig to steal the bodies of Sts Marcellinus and
their
tomb on
the Via Labicana outside
Rome and
them north. After Ratleig crossed the Alps, he no longer had
bring
to hide
them, and in a public procession, in front of crowds of bystanders, he
brought them to central Germany, where most of Einhard’s properties
He took them to their destined church in Einhard’s planned retirement home of Michelstadt in the Odenwald forest; but the saints were.
did not like
it
there,
and demanded
in
dreams that they be transferred
to Einhard’s other church at Seligenstadt near Erankfurt,
which Einhard
when he did, and had continued numbers, up to when Einhard wrote his
duly arranged. Healing miracles began
without a break, often in great account of these events
in late 830.
had gone to Rome with St Marcellinus;
But Hilduin’s servant Hunus,
Ratleig,
who
had stolen from him some of
and when Einhard met Hilduin the rumour had already
spread that Hilduin had both bodies at Saint-Medard. The rumour was
405
THE CAROLINGIAN AND almost worse than the
own
P
O S T- C AR O LI N G I AN WEST, 75O-IOOO
fact, for
Einhard’s reputation and that of his
Einhard had to get them back. Hilduin admitted he had
relics;
Marcellinus, rather grudgingly (one must note that Einhard was writing
account after Hilduin’s
this
fall
from power
October 830). The
in
relics
were brought from Soissons to Aachen, and Einhard received them
in
April 828. There, they certainly reversed the rumours, for, in a sense
now in the centre
of the empire;
they were (Einhard says) met by crowds, and Louis and
Queen Judith
thanks to Hilduin, Einhard’s
relics
were
themselves visited them and gave them
continued after Einhard rejoined both the end of the year. Einhard
long route
home
made
Miracles began again, and
gifts.
the
to his fellow saint.
sets of relics at Seligenstadt at
most of
Soon
it;
Marcellinus took a
after Easter, as
Einhard
happily records, his friend the palace librarian Gerward was staying outside town, and was told the palace news: ‘At present the courtiers
and miracles happening
are mostly talking about the signs
house by means of the saints points of his
.
.
.’
It
in
Einhard’s
must have been one of the high
life.
This account foregrounds the importance of the palace, the import-
ance of public
ritual,
and the importance of
intellectuals, in the Carolin-
gian political world, for Einhard was the biographer of Charlemagne
and had been
a
mainstay of court society for three decades by now, and
Hilduin was no minor scholar: in 828 he had just painstakingly translated a
Greek
the Byzantine
we
shall
works of
St
Dionysios (that
emperor Michael
II
to Louis, into Latin. In this chapter
text, the
look at these three issues
in turn,
is,
and then
St Denis), sent
at
some of
by
their
implications.
The royal or imperial the core political
and
Aachen or elsewhere, was centre of the Carolingian lands, a whirl of activity palace, whether at
noise, as Paschasius Radbert’s Life of
Every political actor had to go there case
was
this
if
called,
which
a
Hincmar’s
Merovingian tradition writ (or Adalard’s)
officials,
to the hunters
had to come
On
As usual with the Carolingians, large,
(in
and also systematized.
the Organization of the Palace can
headed by the arch-chaplain
and the arch-chancellor
in Einhard’s
by the arch-chaplain or the count of the palace
the king needed to get involved.
was
palace
when
often, just as every victim seeking royal justice
there, to be interrogated
to see
Adalard of Corbie complains.
(in
charge of church
charge of the writing
list
the
affairs)
office), in order,
down
and the falconer, and there are consistent indications that
406
INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS this
was
a real hierarchy
- although
it
could always be modified, as
Bernard of Septimania, as chamberlain
in
829-30
when
charge of the
(in
palace commissariat under the queen, and fourth-ranking
official,
according to Hincmar/Adalard) was seen as ‘second to the king’ after Louis. Notker, although he never
went to
court, could imagine that the
palace hierarchy was preserved in dining etiquette, with Charlemagne served by dukes, dukes served by counts and aristocrats, and so on
through court scholars, and greater and certainly
had an ever-changing
lesser palace officials.
etiquette of behaviour,
knowing. And
down
The court
which no aspiring
had an organized, explicit, patronage network. Hincmar/Adalard even supposed - certainly overschematically - that officials were deliberately appointed from different politician could risk not
regions, so that everyone could use a
it
kinsman or
their locality to facilitate access to the palace.
the death of a bishop,
all
someone from
at least
Notker imagined
that, at
names forward
aspiring applicants put their
through those closest to the emperor. Einhard, although never a palace official in a formal sense, routinely acted as a patron,
(it
seems)
and he
is
seen in his letters requesting the kings, either directly or through current
approve the appointment of an archbishop or an abbot,
office-holders, to
or the renewal of a benefice, or simply to hear an appeal. This was a
competitive and often unscrupulous world of favours, structured by court procedures.
The palace was thus hub. But after
it
was
780 or
so,
also the
a worldly (and corrupt,
priest
vicious) political
moral centre of the empire, particularly once,
Charlemagne embraced the task of moral
was not chance that the senior Carolingian palace affairs: these
and
correctio.
It
handled church
official
were the court’s special concern. Louis the Pious was a
even more than he was a king, at least in that he promoted religious
learning, according to one of his biographers. penitential fasting at court, as
which he extended
we saw
Charlemagne
at the start of the last chapter,
to the entire empire in
805 to combat a famine; Louis
did the same in 823 in the face of dangerous portents.
century Irish tract
On
instituted
the Twelve Abuses of the
World
The seventh-
circulated very
widely in Carolingian Europe, and Abuse 9, ‘the unjust king’, argues that if kings were oppressive and unjust, and if they did not defend the church, then famine, invasion and ruin would follow.
A
succession of
ninth-century writers composed treatises for kings on just rule, culminating in Hincmar’s
On
the Person
and Ministry of the King, and most of 407
THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST, 75O-IOOO them quoted Abuse
They held
own and
9, alongside, at great length, the
that the king should start with controlling himself
and
his
behaviour, before he could properly govern others, through law its
enforcement. The whole empire was at risk
king/emperor could appoint his bishops in the
if
he did not. The
was never contested
(this right
Carolingian period), but they, conversely, were responsible for
and that included royal
policing the moral world,
and
Old Testament.
actions, both private
public. Bishops often took this role very seriously, particularly in
829-34 and
the crisis years of
public
The
war period of 840-43, when the
good was obviously threatened. political
contradiction.
much
the civil
the
and the moral
The
roles of the palace did not
and the
secular
spiritual
same way. Einhard regarded same way
spiritual patrons in just the
Sts
have to be
in
could be seen to work in
Marcellinus and Peter as his
as the
emperors were
patrons, and his heartbreak over the death of his wife
Imma
his secular
836 was
in
only worsened by the realization that his spiritual patrons had failed
him, in not answering his prayers. Thus at moments of crisis the Carolingian world could lay
itself
personal morality,
these panics centred
who (as
on queenly
ran his palace in his
was Charlemagne
Bernard
in
political
permanent ambiguity of female power and the
profile of queens, the
new emphasis on
open to moral panics. Given the high
it is
not surprising that
sexuality.
last years,
many
Charlemagne’s daughters,
were accused of fornication
himself). Judith
of
in
814
was accused of adultery with
830, an accusation which recurs in every account of the
period, favourable or hostile -
it
must have been
a very high-profile
charge - and which was theorized by Paschasius Radbert in the 850s as
marking a
total reversal of the right order of the world, a sign
that Louis the Pious,
govern. Lothar
II
who
above
could not control his palace, was not
fit
all
to
accused his wife Theutberga of sodomy and incest (see
below); Charles the Fat his wife Richgard of adultery with, again, his principal counsellor. Bishop Liutward of Vercelli; Arnulf’s wife
was accused of adultery doubtless
too.
queens was under threat:
them
it
were children
less in
first,
was
to criticism.
queen-mothers was rulers
would be wrong
except the
all false
that exposed
It
Uota
to see these accusations,
as signs that the political role of
their high profile, not their
The Merovingian
weakness,
tradition of powerful
evidence in the Carolingian period, for few
at their accession (there
would be more of them
the late tenth century); but Carolingian queens were
408
in
more prominent
INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS during their husbands’ been.
lives
Conversely, except
than their Merovingian predecessors had
when
rulers
themselves sought
(perhaps
unwisely) to use queenly impurity as an excuse for divorce,
all
these
accusations had as their primary target, not the queen but the king/
emperor, whose capacities as a corrector of his people were thus cruelly exposed. Control, or the appearance of control, was necessary at
all
times.
Both harmony and tension were mediated by elaborate
whether regular
(as
with the ceremonial associated with assemblies or
Easter celebrations), or specific to the occasion. Einhard
brought
his saints to Seligenstadt
when he
first
prepared ‘those things that ritual
stipulates for the reception of saints’ bodies’,
masses.
rituals,
and then performed two
When he got St Marcellinus back from Hilduin, the latter organ-
ized a choir to chant an antiphon; Einhard’s party then proceeded,
chanting, to his
own
chapel,
which attracted
a large crowd;
when he
joined the bodies again in Seligenstadt, he again prepared the process
own
carefully.
According to
his
for ritual
was always
means of
make
sure that
were properly things into kingliness
it.
a
account, that
One
and
of the
and
this
is
important:
self-presentation (Einhard
no one could doubt the treated),
is,
saints
were
his
wanted
to
and that they
different observers could read different
most elaborate secular
and royal order was regular hunting;
rituals that expressed it
recurs with almost
obsessive frequency in the annals of Louis the Pious’s reign, for example, especially after
major events, and
Einhard to have gone hunting 828.
It is
just after
interesting, then, that the
hunts in 830-34;
it
is
it is
significant that Louis
he had seen the
is
said
by
latter’s relics in
Annals of Saint-Bertin do not mention
not that Louis did not hunt then (one of his
biographers explicitly says he did in 831 and 834), but rather that a ritual of order did crisis,
not seem appropriate to the annalist in a period of
even though Louis was presumably himself trying to present 831,
for example, as business as usual. Louis’s
were particularly prone to be read
822 and 833, ways. In 822 at Attigny
two penances,
in different
in
he performed a voluntary penance whose orchestration he controlled, to cauterize the
wound
caused by the death of Bernard of
Italy;
but did
end the matter? In 833 Bernard’s death was as fresh as ever the indictment proposed by Lothar’s bishops; it is as if Attigny had
this really
in
not occurred. Paschasius Radbert, for his part, in his Life of Adalard,
could not ignore Attigny, for
it
had brought Adalard back to court.
409
THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST, 750-IOOO
how
but he contested
contemplated
his willingness
had gone out on
and perceived
‘all
Louis
his unwillingness.’
a limb in 822, probably with success at the time, but
hindsight and hostility could see
it
Louis’s deposition penance in 833.
was written up
Louis really was:
in control of the ritual
and
as failure,
The
as leading directly to
an interesting
latter, in
reversal,
by Louis’s enemies, but as forced and
as voluntary
therefore invalid by his friends.
Every major event
Carolingian period, whether involving ritual
in the
make
or not, was written up by writers to
political points of this type;
they either upheld or subverted the correct order of the empire. This
means
that
‘really’
happened. But what
was
particularly
by every
is
abundantly clear
that the ninth century
is
- the public sphere, one Carolingians used the word publicus extensively) - was
which the ceremonial
a period in
could say (the
wide and important.
political actor,
It
terrain
was
terrain
which had to be claimed
even though he (or she) could not fully control
the perceptions of the audience of each ritual act, given that the audience
what
often enough, impossible to enter in detail into
it is,
who would
ultimately determine whether the act
was
it
worked
properly or not. There always had to be a process of negotiation. This is
why,
was
for example, Charles the Bald at the
876 Ponthion synod, which ended the proceedings
largely devoted to ecclesiastical court cases,
with an elaborate procedure intended to fact that
he was
crown, as fetch
now
we saw
Queen
the emperor: he
make
real to the
Franks the
wore Byzantine costume and a
in the previous chapter, then
papal legates went to
own crown, and
then the same legates
Richildis with her
performed the closing
liturgy.
Did
this
work? Hincmar, who wrote
this
up for the Annals of Saint-Bertin^ was greatly hostile to most of the decisions of the synod, but he was clearly impressed by the ritual: he
was himself the writer of elaborate coronation
rituals,
understand the internal structure and the roots of annalist,
anyway opposed
where much
less
to Charles,
them
this one.
and also writing
The Fulda
in East Francia,
was known about the Byzantine empire, dismissed
Charles’s ‘Greek customs’ in
who were
and he could
two
lines;
but
it
was men
like
Hincmar
Charles’s intended audience, not the Frankish East,
this ritual
had
and
for
a considerable success.
This large and moralized political arena was also populated by lectuals, at least three generations of
patronize them in the 780s.
It is this
them
after
group of
410
(in
intel-
Charlemagne began to nearly every case)
men
INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS which
really characterizes the Carolingian period as different
from
its
predecessors; in other respects, the politico-cultural world of the sixth to early eighth centuries
was
still
fully operative.
The importance of
intellectuals for the political practice of the ninth-century
great as or greater than the ninth century
it
would ever be again
matched the French Revolution
intellectual political activity. This did not better, of course,
but
self- justifications
for
To have had an
in the
it
make
West was
as
Middle Ages, and
as a focus for collective political actors
behave
greatly increased the range of the excuses
and
bad behaviour, which also mark out the period.
education was, simply, enough for prominence.
It is
not
that aristocrats did not sneer at the low-born, as with Louis the Pious’s
biographer Thegan’s highly coloured hostility to Archbishop Ebbo of
Reims
for his servile birth
who was compared
(Thegan claims), or with Liutward of Vercelli,
to the biblical villain
both ended their
annalists;
Haman
by one of the Fulda
political careers in disgrace,
too - Ebbo was
one of the few people to face punishment for having supported Eothar in
833-4. Neither of
and
intelligence,
these, all the same,
was a major
writer.
Education
however, linked Einhard and the poet and
liturgist
Walahfrid Strabo, whose backgrounds were relatively undistinguished, with genuine aristocrats such as Hraban Maur, Hincmar, or the theologian Gottschalk
(d.
c.
Hincmar’s enemy), as well
869: Walahfrid’s friend, but Hraban’s and as,
of course, incomers from England, Ireland
or Spain, with no roots in the Frankish lands, from Alcuin and Theodulf at the start of the Carolingian period to the theologian (d. c.
John the Scot
877) at the end.
Part of this sense of collectivity derived from being educated together, at
Aachen
itself
or Tours or Corbie or
St.
Callen or Fulda (where
Einhard, Hraban, Walahfrid and Cottschalk had
any of two dozen other active
centres.
all
been trained) or
Much of it, however, was
because
such writers had a communality of knowledge, of the Bible, canon law, Virgil,
Augustine, Gregory the Great, Isidore, Bede, and the rest of the
knew what they were each talking about. And their peers did too; as we have seen, aristocrats
Eatin church fathers: they
they could assume that
had to be
literate to
be able to operate politically in this period. Hincmar
could write highly erudite texts for Charles the Bald and expect him to pick up the allusions; Charles sought books on his as
when Eupus abbot of Ferrieres
sent
him
a
(d.
own
behalf as well,
862), one of his most loyal scholars,
sermon of Augustine against perjury. Aristocrats had libraries;
THE CAROLINGIAN AND Marquis Everard of taries, several
for him),
two or
P
O S T- C A R O L I N G I AN WEST, 75O-IOOO
863-4
Friuli’s
will
had
bibles, biblical
commen-
law books (including, probably, one Lupus had collected
works by Vegetius, Augustine and
three histories,
Isidore, several saints’ lives,
and more. Most of these books were not ninth-
century texts, but they attest to the same interests that our ninth-century writers demonstrably had. There
which extended
a long
was
way beyond
a
common intellectual community,
the writers of the period.
This community could sustain some quite elaborate theoretical interventions. Late in 828 Louis the Pious called four church councils for the
following year, in Mainz, Paris, Lyon and Toulouse, to discuss the ‘anger of God’ -
some
how
unspecified natural disaster - arid
he could be
placated. According to Paschasius Radbert’s Epitaph of Arsenius (an
often obscure biography, in dialogue form, of Wala), this involved specific requests for advice.
Wala duly responded with
a schedula,
which
he formally presented in one of the 829 councils: this seems to have criticized
uncanonical episcopal elections and the lay control of church
lands. Interestingly, Einhard presented a at
almost the same moment, and
to the
same generalized request
we do have circle
the
summary
very likely to have been in response
for opinions.
We
of a similar pamphlet
do not have
composed
these, but
in Einhard’s
around the same time, which denounces oppression and the
range of standard
enough
set of
sins,
misdeeds
certainly heartfelt
in particular it is
of a possessed
true,
on Einhard’s
the second critique to the girl,
full
hatred and mistrust, a generic
and maybe
Louis, but
less useful to
part. In a bizarre framing, he attributes
demon Wiggo, speaking through
the
mouth
and the capitula to none other than the archangel
Gabriel, appearing in a
man,
it is
pamphlet of capitula to Louis
dream
(in
the guise of St Marcellinus) to a blind
recently cured at Seligenstadt. Louis’s decision to
open up debate
allowed criticism to come from some unusual sources.
We
must not overstate the success of
Einhard remarks sorrowfully that or urged to do by this small
this sort of discursive initiative.
‘of the things that [Louis]
book he took
the trouble to
was ordered
fulfil
very few’.
The 829 council of Paris listed many things that the Frankish people and king could and should do as well, but what Louis actually did was appoint Bernard of Septimania as chamberlain, a cure worse than the disease to
most observers. Wala (though not Einhard) went over
to
camp
at
the other side, and, together with Paschasius,
was
in Lothar’s
the Field of Lies; but Louis’s temporary overthrow
412
was not reassuring
INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS to
Wala
at
all.
Paschasius’ account portrays himself and
Wala dumb-
army melted away: ‘they had flown completely around, like chickens under wing without serious counsel struck at the ease with which Louis’s
.
and careful arrangement
.
and, worst of
.
Wala’s advice! Aristocrats were not taking
were simply engaging
to say; they
moral implications.
It
.
would be
a
it
.
all,
without listening to
seriously enough, that
without considering
in politics,
common moan of intellectuals
is
its
at later
times of political change as well. All the same, scholars elaborated both
key ceremonies of 833-4: Agobard of Lyon drafted part of
sides of the
the core accusations against Louis in his forced penance of 833; after
Louis’s restoration the emperor
written
down by
had
his
own
version of the
833-4
crisis
and abbots, and formally read out
his bishops
the Thionville assembly in 835; meanwhile,
Hraban Maur
in
at
834 had
written a tract on the duties of sons, which Louis reprised in instructions sent to Lothar in Italy in 836.
above
all
by
Whether or not magnates were governed
realpolitik, they felt a strong
need to express their
choices in moralized terms, and writers sought to argue about
political
them
Lupus and then Hincmar would do the same
a result. Nithard,
as
for
Charles the Bald later as well.
Did the increasingly elaborate education of Carolingian inclusive, or exclusive?
It is
not wholly
to be
it
the
departed from the
the huge majority of the population of the western
and southern parts of the empire; the seen as a separate language for the
Carolingian period.
aim
The more complex
clear.
Latin used by the educated strata, the further
Romance spoken by
elites
earliest
first
form of French came
to be
time by authors precisely in the
And a high percentage of the Carolingian elite spoke
German; ninth-century
texts for the first time regularly describe people
as bilingual, including
Charlemagne, Louis the Pious and Wala, which
implies that plenty of people were not. (Einhard fact that the
demon Wiggo spoke
spoke German.) a court
and
It
was most struck by the
Latin, for the girl he possessed only
might be that the complex Latin of our texts was only
clerical language, a
increasingly un-French
‘mandarin’ language, pronounced in an
way because
of the influence of the Anglo-Saxon
Alcuin, and therefore deliberately closed to most people, including even
most
aristocrats.
But at
least
among
the aristocracy there
dence of a wider awareness of Latin than
that.
Lupus of
is
good
evi-
Ferrieres could
be trained for several years at Fulda in the 830s without ever having to
413
THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST, 75O-IOOO German; Latin was
learn in the
hegemonic
in this large
monastic school
middle of Germany, which had lay students too. Everard’s books
show what an read
totally
less today),
inherited
might read or
aristocrat
and
notable that he expected his daughters,
it is
some of them,
(many would
at least listen to
to
do so
as well: Judith-was given
who
some August-
Lombard law code. And Dhuoda, down in Uzes, clearly shows in her Handbook someone who has bought the whole Carolingian package: not only had she read the Bible, some church fathers and some Christian Latin literature, but she could manipulate it with sophistication. It may have been wasted on her son William (see ine,
some Alcuin, and
the
below. Chapter 21), but
by him. Dhuoda she
was married
is
its
very survival implies that he kept her text
seen as being from the high Reich saristokratie because
in
824
to Bernard of Septimania, in
given the striking absence of her
thought William should pray
way, a dense or so,
literary
own kin among the
for,
Aachen, too; but,
lists
of relatives she
one might wonder about
education was available to a lay
that. Either
woman
only twenty-five years after Carolingian schooling started,
which, given the patriarchal values of the period, must surely it
by 810
was normal
for aristocratic
men, and not necessarily
mean
that
just the top
families either.
Conversely, this was, overall, overwhelmingly an
elite
affair.
The
Carolingians did sometimes contemplate general schooling, but they did
not seriously develop the Bible into
it.
Similarly, there
were some
efforts to translate
German (though certainly not into proto-Erench), but they
did not get past Genesis and the Gospels, for the most part in poetic versions. Indeed, the
wide peasant world was hardly
in the field of vision
of any Carolingian king or intellectual except for preaching (a genuine
commitment, but one which only reached of
wonder
at ignorance, as in
local beliefs in
a minority), or else as a source
Agobard of Eyon’s exasperated attack on
weather magic. Too great a separation would be an
exaggeration; Agobard also inveighed against the idiocy of widespread beliefs that a cattle
plague had been caused by malign dust sent by Prince
Grimoald IV of Benevento, but a chance remark of Paschasius Radbert
shows that Corbie
intellectuals
had been panicked by that
too. Similarly,
Einhard’s descriptions of the miracles and visions of Sts Marcellinus and Peter
and
their
sensibilities
popular reception show no break at
and those of the peasants around
all
between
his
Seligenstadt. Education
did not separate people from the religious culture around them, which
414
INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS did not fundamentally change from the sixth century to the tenth (above,
Chapter
But the imagery of correctio and the need for education w^as
8).
confined to the aristocracy and to priests,
growing
number
in
founded, were the lowest
some
reached. There are
documents) that these
in this period as
down
Local
clerics, the political actors.
more
the social scale
rural churches it
were
even theoretically
signs (for example, in the signatures to Italian
priests
could at least write, and bishops certainly
expected them to be basically educated, often in a cathedral school. But
even the
common assumption in church statutes that priests would know was not
the Psalter
necessarily true of the majority,
control of their daily activities and culture priests
came from
their localities,
local elites,
and
their social
who
not to the bishops
was
and
little
detailed
in practice possible;
most
networks were linked to
sought to
command
them. The
Carolingian project reached local societies through the structures of public justice, not through those of moral reform.
The educated, even
elled,
if it
political
world was nonetheless dense and many
only included
start of the process,
saw
elites.
The court of Charlemagne,
lev-
at the
commentary and
legislation, theology, biblical
poetry written; under Louis and his sons, the genres of educated writing increased further, with works on liturgy, history and political theory as
These were sought
well.
after.
Hraban Maur,
the great biblical
tator of the 820S-850S, dedicated his (rather daunting)
and kings, including
a
commentary on
Judith in the key year of 834.
mous
the
books to queens
Book of Judith
The Carolingian world
commen-
sent to
Queen
also copied enor-
quantities of texts, usually patristic writings but also including
pre-Christian Latin works (these were only a small proportion of
Carolingian copying, but
it
is
because of that proportion that most
classical Latin literature survives). Scholars
for texts to copy; a
wrote to each other begging
dozen of Lupus of Ferrieres’s
are requests for books,
some very
letters in the 8 3 os-8 5 os
like the letter to
specific,
Pope
(855-8) asking for the commentary of Jerome on Jeremiah ‘starting with the seventh book and continuing to the end’ - for many
Benedict
texts
III
were defective or corrupt, and
them and
intellectuals
to find the best versions.
sought both to complete
They were helped by
advance, the fast and easy-to-read Caroline minuscule
out over older cursive hands in the
late eighth
script,
a technical
which won
century and had become
uniform across most of the empire by the early ninth. Libraries of laymen could reach
fifty
books, as was the case with Everard of
415
Friuli,
but the
THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST, 75O-IOOO larger monastic libraries could have hundreds,
more than one work. This added
many
them containing
of
communality of
to the sense of the
culture, for writers in the different parts of the empire could increasingly
assume that they had the same
texts to hand.
This was the essential context for the growing importance of theological debate. This ical circles first
is
already visible in the 790s, for Carolingian polit-
were then flustered by the discovery of Adoptionism, the
new western
heresy for nearly four centuries, associated with two
Spanish bishops, Elipand of Toledo and Felix of Urgell
(it
used the image
of adoption of the Son by the Father to explain Christ’s humanity).
They
also reacted very negatively to the Byzantine repudiation of Iconoclasm at
Nicaea
have
full
in
787 (above. Chapter
access to the Byzantine debate,
principles (Greek
was
relatively
not
ii). Carolingian theologians did
little
and did not understand
known
its
in Carolingian Francia),
but the continuing status of Byzantine theology ensured attention to the issue,
and Theodulf of Orleans,
in the Libri Carolini,
condemnation of the veneration of
rival
790-93. The
religious images in
794 formally rejected both doctrines, and Alcuin length against Adoptionism in 800, to match the work of his
synod of Frankfurt wrote
wrote a detailed
at
in
Theodulf. These were, emphatically, not widespread disagree-
ments;
it
would be
tionists in the
surprising
if
there were
more than
a
dozen Adop-
Carolingian lands (outside the ex-Visigothic far south), or
hardline Iconoclasts for that matter. But they mattered to the state, and also to theorists.
Theodulf took the trouble to create an Iconoclast
programme
pictorial
Pres near Orleans, theorists (mostly
for the apse of his private chapel at Germigny-des-
which
still
survives (see Chapter 10),
from Spain) argued
and Iconoclast
into the 820s, with Bishop Claudius
of Turin going so far as to attack pilgrimages, and the veneration of the cross and of relics, as idolatrous - this to
have brought him condemnation
went too
far,
however, and seems
in his turn.
Carolingian thought never claimed to be novel; in
Roman, Byzantine and
central medieval thought,
fact, like
was
it
most
late
explicitly the
opposite, the return to older authority, often cited at great length. But
Charlemagne and Alcuin made tuals to
accumulate
political
thought off in
it
or not.
The
in
‘virtual’
it
possible for a critical
Aachen and argue, and
this
schools of the ninth century,
all
in
416
intellec-
took theology and
new directions whether writers community of
mass of
liked (or realized)
the great monastic
and cathedral
communication with each other.
INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS continued that
mass.
And
the importance of theory to the polit-
kept debate in the public eye, doubtless encouraging
ical elite
People
critical
made
further.
it
very individual choices sometimes, like the deacon Bodo,
who
839 converted to Judaism and fled to Spain, to the horror of Louis the Pious and his courtiers. And every so often a court scholar,
in
went outside the bounds of debate, and were condemned
writers
church councils, as Amalarius of Metz was
at
Quierzy
views on the liturgy, or as Gottschalk was at Mainz in in
849 for
cantly,
his
was
views on predestination
(a
839 for his 848 and Quierzy in
condemnation which,
referred to in the Annals both of Fulda
at
and of
signifi-
Saint-Bertin).
These deserve some attention. Amalarius of Metz Lyon, was the main
(d.
850), successively archbishop of Trier and
liturgical expert of the early ninth century,
intermittently patronized by both in the 820s,
Charlemagne and Louis. Out of
which he circulated
widely and revised in response to queries, criticisms and
from Rome, three times
Lyon
office
he wrote the Liber Officialise a detailed exegesis of the
allegorical significance of every act of the liturgy,
to royal
and was
and episcopal
in the
next decade or
attention,
so.
new information
This brought him back
and when Agobard was expelled from
835 for supporting Lothar, Amalarius was appointed to replace him. This good luck was also bad luck, for Lyon seems to have been in
solidly city,
behind Agobard, and Florus of Lyon, the major scholar
the
already thought that Amalarius’ allegories were ridiculous insults to
the intelligence. Allegory
the
left in
word
was only supposed
to be applied to the Bible,
of God, which liturgical practices were not; and
some of
Amalarius’ attempts at symbolic meanings were simply bizarre - indeed,
maybe
heretical.
Both Agobard and Florus wrote
Amalarius, savagely pointing out his errors. This was to Quierzy in 838, to
answer
this criticism
and to
by authority. Amalarius replied that ‘whatever read deep within This was
fatal;
my own
-
in other
why
he was called
justify his
arguments
have written
I
have
words, he had no authority.
he was condemned for heresy and was himself expelled
from Lyon, although did, after
spirit’
I
against
tracts
all, still
his
works continued
to circulate widely (the liturgy
need explication).
Gottschalk was a more serious scholar; he was trying to
make
sense of
Augustine’s theology of predestination, which he certainly did through
appeal to authority, but which he interpreted in a novel way: that
humans could
separately be predestined to salvation and damnation.
417
THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST, 75O-IOOO and that Christ’s crucifixion only affected the former, not the
Even
after his
condemnations
this split the intellectual
world
Ratramn of Corbie, Prudentius of Troyes
of the 840s and 850s. Florus,
and Lupus of
848-9,
in
latter.
some
Ferrieres supported Gottschalk, at least to
extent;
Hincmar and Hraban vehemently opposed him. So did John the Scot, though his tract on the subject was itself controversial. The debate spun out of control in the 850s, and at least different views
a stop to at the
it
on
in 860,
it,
five
church councils came to
Bald and Lothar
until Charles the
II
together put
with a rejection of some of Gottschalk’s key positions
synod of Tusey. As with Amalarius, an apparently arcane disagree-
ment became
Roman
the stuff of high politics; Francia briefly
became the eastern
empire of Nicaea and Chalcedon, when correct doctrine was
crucial for the stability of the state.
The
one: he
When and
resonance of Amalarius’ condemnation was a simple
political
was both
beneficiary
and victim of the aftershocks of 833-4.
he was dismissed from Lyon, indeed, Agobard was called back,
it
is
hard not to
experience at Quierzy old opponents. But
feel that if
Louis the Pious had not wanted to reintegrate
it is still
a theoretical one; Florus
Amalarius might have had a different
significant that the public debate
undoubtedly held
his
was
entirely
views sincerely (he had
protested to the Thionville assembly against Amalarius’
initial
appoint-
ment), and Amalarius’ chosen defence, once he was forced to give
would have sunk him, no matter what politics
it,
the political context. ‘Practical’
and abstract theological debate could run along
parallel lines,
reinforcing each other, thanks to the intensity of the moral imperatives
of correctio.
map
The Gottschalk dispute
is
a different case, for
it
did not
straightforwardly onto other political rivalries. Here, however, the
whole
intellectual
underpinning of
the Carolingian reform project. Authority
was not an
issue here (both
issue of predestination bit into the
sides rooted their
arguments
in Augustine); but
if
Gottschalk’s hardline
predestination was to prevail, which (unlike that of porters) ignored the need for faith action, to get into heaven, then pointless. This
many
and good works, that
much
of his supis,
human
of the Carolingian project
was
was one of Hincmar’s core concerns, and, although
extensive arguments were not always coherent, his personal influence
The Carolingian
it
was this, plus doubtless
with Charles the Bald, that
project could not, he
to be ruined by an intellectual
was
won
the day for him.
in effect arguing,
argument devoid of
418
his
be allowed
social context.
Of
INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS
many
course,
would have seen
himself,
was
disagreed with him; but
all
of them, including Gottschalk
the project as sacrosanct.
moral purpose
Its
at the root of their theological interests themselves,
whatever the
theological conclusions they each reached.
One
essential element in the Carolingian politico-cultural
Rome. Rome did not contribute much just discussed, but
to the intellectual elaborations
had an authority that went back
it
Carolingian kingship, and the king/emperors treated
most emperors were crowned of
Rome,
the Patrimony of St
the empire.
much
20,000-25,000 people, its
own
a
with great care:
Rome, after all. For a start, the territory Peter, was not formally incorporated into also local
on Rome, but they never
attempts) seldom had
it
to the start of
in
The Carolingians, and
Spoleto, leant
world was
powers
fully controlled
say in papal elections.
huge and rich
city
marquis of
like the
and
it,
Rome
(despite
was, with
by western standards, with
political procedures, a set of rituals as elaborate as those of
Aachen, an equally complex network of factional politics
official hierarchies,
and a dense
which the Carolingians openly admitted they did not
understand. They constantly sent representatives to try to
work
but only too often, as the Royal Frankish Annals put
in 823, they
‘could not determine exactly
it
it
out,
what had happened’. The ever-changing
succession of popes (there were twenty-one in the ninth century) meant that the factions
had to be understood anew
popes, like Hadrian
Nicholas
I
I
(772-95), Paschal
I
at
each election.
And tough
(817-24), Leo IV (847-55),
(858-67), John VIII (872-82), had unpredictable political
positions, at least to Frankish eyes.
Hadrian and
Leo
his successor
III
(795-816) were very close to Charlemagne, and keen to do what he asked in return for a free hand (and armed support when needed)
Rome and
central Italy. This
was
a position shared by
many
of their
successors; the presence of Gregory IV (827-44) at the Field of Lies
well have been his
own
By contrast. Paschal
I
choice, but he
in
may
was part of Lothar’s entourage.
seems to have executed two
officials in
823 (the
year of the Annals quote cited earlier) because they were supporters of
Lothar; Paschal, a major church-builder, was locally controversial, but
he was probably
power
less
controversial in seeking to undermine a Carolingian
that seemed, in those years at least, too close (above.
ter 10).
Chap-
Lothar reasserted that power after Paschal’s death, but from
then on, in practice, the Carolingians usually restricted themselves to intervening
when
factional struggles
seemed too out of control.
419
THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-C ARO LINGI AN WEST, 75O-IOOO The all,
detail of
papal authority vis-a-vis the Franks fluctuated. Over-
what
the Carolingians did not care
the popes thought, any
more
than the Merovingians had done, as long as they maintained their
which was not
legitimization of Carolingian power, hostility to
Alps.
And
in doubt.
Papal
Iconoclasm, for example, had no effect whatsoever over the the Franks could easily look
that they did not understand
down on Roman
intrigue, given
complexity. (Admittedly, sometimes
its
they were right, as in the gothic events of Christmas 896,
corpse of Pope Formosus (891-6) was dug up by his
Stephen VI and put on
trial;
when
the
enemy and successor
but that horrified the Romans, too - Stephen
did not survive another year. Normally,
Roman violence to losers had its
own stately logic.) But the intensity of the Carolingian theoretical debates of the second quarter of the ninth century, and the perpetual pacing of
church
politics
through appeals to episcopal councils, gave the popes a
new prominence as the final court of appeal in the Latin church. Nicholas I in particular
found that his judgement was sought, for example over epis-
copal depositions, or in marriage cases (as also over theological issues
we shall see in a moment), and
- Gottschalk appealed to him
after
Tusey for
example, though Nicholas died before he heard the case. In return, Nicholas, in his conflicts with the Byzantines over the legitimacy of Patriarch Photios and the conversion of Bulgaria (above. Chapter 13),
which were international problems
specific to
links with the eastern patriarchates, sought
Hincmar and other Frankish
bishops,
who
Rome, given its continuing
and obtained the support of even wrote treatises for him.
Nicholas used the legal superiority of the papal effect, in a
Carolingian world attuned to such issues. His successors did
not, however, at least not so effectively.
emperors
office to considerable
in
to
make
875 (he would have liked to the south of Italy), but choosing them, as
after the death of Louis
persuade them to fight Arabs
John VIII sought
II
in
opposed to crowning them, was out of his control.
When the Carolingian
project receded at the end of the century, the international standing of the papacy lost force again, even
if
the pope’s legal
powers remained.
All these different trends converged in the great querelle over Lothar IPs
divorce from Theutberga, in 857-69. This ought to have been simple.
Lothar had married Theutberga, from the prominent aristocratic family of the ‘Bosonids’, in 855 but soon turned against her and sought in 857 to return to his former partner
Waldrada, with
Hugh. Marriage law was tightening up
420
whom he had had a
in the ninth century,
son,
however;
INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS Charlemagne could put away
He came up
a wife, but Lothar
had to have reasons.
with the claim that Theutberga had had anal sex with her
brother Hubert, had become pregnant as a result (impossibly, of course; his supporters
sodomy and an ordeal in 860, tery.
invoked witchcraft), and had aborted the foetus:
infanticide all at once.
in 858, but
incest,
Theutberga proved her innocence
Lothar staged a show
where she was forced to confess her
in
trial at a
council in
Aachen
and
retire to a
monas-
guilt
This was carefully ratified at a synod in 862, in which Waldrada
was proclaimed queen; papal
Metz
legates agreed at
the following year,
where Theutberga confessed again; Lothar’s two senior archbishops, Gunther of Cologne and Theutgaud of Trier, then took the case to for final ratification in 863. But Nicholas
a
coup de
theatre, he annulled the
Italy,
his
where he and
Nicholas’s perhaps
refused to support them; in
synod of Metz, demanded that Lothar
take Theutberga back, and deposed the
Lothar never got
I
Rome
two archbishops themselves.
marriage dissolved, and died of fever in 869 in
his brother Louis
more
II
of Italy were trying to ‘persuade’
pliable successor
Hadrian
II
(867-72) to
change the judgement.
The malignly for
Theutberga was so extreme that
failure. it
inventive humiliation Lothar it is
and
his advisers devised
hard not to be pleased at
That apart, however, the case had important implications.
involved realpolitik:
if
Lothar had no legitimate male
Carolingians would take over Lotharingia, and indeed in uncles Charles the Bald and Louis the ingly, the latter in,
German
its
First,
heir, other
869-70
his
did just that. Unsurpris-
supported Theutberga; Charles took her and her brother
and Hincmar,
as his
major
theorist,
whereas Lotharingian bishops wrote
wrote a long
tract in her favour,
tracts against her. But,
once again,
there were issues of principle: of the inviolability of marriage; of the finality of a successful ordeal
(Hincmar and Nicholas thought the case
should have stopped in 858); of the disaster for the body politic
if
a
queen confessed such misdeeds (Lothar’s supporter Adventius bishop of
Metz argued
that Theutberga’s confession alone
was enough
her as queen); of the disaster for the body politic
enough
if
a king
to get into this kind of marriage difficulty in the
first
to disbar
was weak place;
of the rights of the pope as supreme judge in the West. Except the these were
all
issues that
had been
it
was the
last,
explicit or implicit in Carolingian
theorizing in recent decades, and, as in the 830s
Amalarius,
and
theoretical issues
421
which were
crisis,
or as with
at the front of the
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
And
debate.
this time,
who
axe to grind over
it
PO
S
T- C AR O LI N G I AN
was theory which won; Nicholas
political
and
one), his synod
environment of the
expected
had no
I
should succeed in Lotharingia, but his violent
condemnation of Lothar (who, he correctly
women, not
WEST, 75O-IOOO
could not,
his archbishops,
be got around.
8 60s,
had misused two
said,
in the
No one in Francia had
Nicholas was genuinely trying to exert a real authority
this;
over at least the sectors of Frankish politics which came into an ecclesiastical remit,
and
outraged, and sentence
.
.
this, as
we have
we have
was
seen,
Gunther of Cologne was
a lot.
the text of his rejection of Nicholas’s ‘abusive
delivered against us without justice or reason
.
the canonical laws’.
Nicholas followed
and Louis and
and against
Hincmar had no sympathy with Gunther, but when this
up
865 with disrespectful
in
letters to
Charles
also, in a separate case, reversed the deposition of a
bishop of Soissons by senior Frankish prelates including Hincmar, the tone of his account changes substantially too. But the Frankish
were too committed to correct
legal
procedure by now,
so,
elite
when an
obstinate pope stuck to legal decisions which the Franks themselves had
asked
for,
they were stuck too. At least until the pope died, for Nicholas
was unique
in this period;
Hadrian
II
totally failed to prevent Charles
and Louis from taking over Lotharingia, and retreated over the appeal of another deposed bishop,
meantime
The
a theoretical debate
of Laon, in 871-2. But in the
had caused the
kingdom.
eclipse of a
three major political systems of the ninth century, Francia, Byzan-
tium and the caliphate, or another, and
The
Hincmar
it is
fact that they
had an
all
worth looking
intellectualized politics in
them comparatively
at
were roughly simultaneous seems to
for a
me
one form
moment.
to be chance;
nothing links together the military success and sense of ecclesiastical mission of Charlemagne, the stabilization of the reduced Byzantine
empire
in the eighth century
the capital by
Baghdad and
800 or
the
which allowed
and the
so,
enormous
for the revival of writing in
fiscal centralization
intellectual activity of the
All the same, their contemporaneity at least
makes
which funded
‘Abbasid period. it
harder to see
each of them as unique, as historians often do. Medieval governments characteristically religious all
saw themselves
moralism (governments
as
still
legitimized do);
by
their
superior
and strong governments,
three of these were, could develop a considerable density of
and
intellectual initiatives.
moral
But they were by no means identical, for
422
as
all
INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS
more
that; their differences are, indeed,
interesting than their similarities.
In Byzantium, an educated ruling class steadily developed across the
ninth and tenth centuries. This class was very largely a secular
elite;
Byzantine education, and some ninth-century institutional reform as well (notably in the field of law), were aimed at reviving .traditions, state
Graeco-Roman
which included the assumption that the men who ran the
should have a developed literary culture. But that culture had a
strong religious element by now; and this in turn was linked to the religious
importance of the emperor as the focus of Orthodoxy and as
the centre-point of elaborate political rituals. the Byzantines did not have the political
We saw in Chapter
and moral urgency that can be
seen in Carolingian correctio. That urgency perhaps in part the relatively recent roots of the Carolingian project.
knew
that they
half of
it
had
Christian,
a millennium of imperial
and that
its
revival
came from
The Byzantines
power behind them, over
ought to be enough, given
success in the past; but Frankish religious self-esteem late eighth century,
13 that
Roman
was new
in the
and very much bound up with Charlemagne’s
in his
own
task.
The Byzantine
belief
uniqueness and Louis the Pious’s sense of his personal moral state
was
also, of course,
more
solid than the
Frankish one, and education and literary culture could build up slowly over several centuries, unlike the three-generation history of the Carolingian experiment. If the Byzantines felt less need of urgency, given that
they were, in their
own
minds, simply rediscovering their
they were not necessarily
The ‘Abbasids were, role in it
human
worked
wrong
Roman
past,
in that.
in a general
way, as convinced of
their central
religious salvation as either of the other two; but the
in the caliphate
was
was
different.
The
way
religious centrality of the
750 (above. Chapter 14); only the mihna of 833-47, introduced by al-Ma’mun, sought to reinstate it, without success. The absence of a specialized priesthood in Islam meant caliph himself
slipping after
that the interpreters of the sole guardians
Muslim
religion,
who
effectively
became
its
by 850, were much more loosely defined as an educated
class, the ‘ulamd’.
Education trained one for
statecraft, in the ninth-
century caliphate as in ninth-century Byzantium, in the increasingly elaborate traditions of adab, but
one for religious authority.
On
it
also, often simultaneously, trained
the other hand,
personified that authority in Islam;
philosophical rhetorical
skill
it
was
no formal hierarchy
religious
knowledge and
that established one as a religious leader.
423
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
PO
T- C AR O LI N G I AN
S
WEST, 75O-IOOO
not one’s appointment as emperor, patriarch/pope, bishop or abbot.
The
result
ing, but
was a
plurality of voices,
which seldom moved the
which
at its best
was highly
stimulat-
any particular direction
state in
after
847. Indeed, the caliphs and other political leaders were largely cut out of moralized politics from then on, except in the Fatimid caliphate; as a
although education, including religious education, was a core
result,
training both for a political career
and
for religious prominence,
it
did
not produce the equivalent of the political intellectuals of the Carolingian
on
court, simply because attendance
was not so
policies,
essential for moralists.
powerful intellectuals
politically
Nizam al-Mulk
(d.
and involvement
rulers,
in their
There were certainly some
in the Islamic
world; one thinks of
1092), vizir to the Seljuk Turks and an important
men
theorist of government;
of course, Alcuin and
like
Hincmar
part and parcel of being a
him match Photios
Byzantium, and,
But political power was not
in Francia.
Muslim
in
intellectual;
it
was simply the most
remunerative career path. Moral reform did not proceed through the state, as
and
as
it
it
did in Byzantium, given the emperor’s religious centrality,
Arab
did in the West.
that of Constantinople -
systematically written
The
had
up than
less
of a religious charge,
either in
Byzantium or
and Arab
solidity of the Byzantine
ceremonial - as elaborate as
political
and was
less
in Francia.
political systems (in
each case
derived from a complex tax structure, absent in the West), reinforced in the
Arab case by
between the caliphal and post-
a steady separation
and the question of
caliphal political system
religious salvation, thus
gave plenty of space to the idea that education was a passport to political
prominence; but
it
did not produce the conclusion that a specifically
religious education for the elite state,
was
essential for the survival of the
or that the task of the state was in large part the salvation of the
community of project.
the realm. This
The Carolingian
successful indeed,
seemed actually
marks the
state
was, for over a hundred years, very
and so confident of
possible.
originality of the Carolingian
itself
The network of
that the task of salvation
intellectuals that
surrounded
three generations of Carolingian rulers existed precisely for this purpose.
So did the public space of in the East,
was
at least as
as in Byzantium,
and
at
political ritual,
which, although simpler than
charged with meaning, watched and analysed
key moments
obvious case) was perhaps even more
were theorized, moralized,
(as in
so. All
833-4, to name only one
major
political
in ninth-century Francia, often
424
moments
with compet-
INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS ing interpretations. There intellectual,
was space
men who were important
in Francia for the
pure political
heard
in its councils
in the state,
because of their knowledge and intelligence, even though they never
just
had an administrative
way
role in
it,
like
Einhard or Lupus of Ferrieres,
in a
unknown in Byzantium or the Arab world; and there were, for a time, many more Hilduins or Hincmars, men who held official positions but who also had a political or moral programme, than there were Photioses or Nizam al-Mulks. that
was
one looks
If
rare
if
not
at the Carolingian
of the early medieval West,
reform programme from the standpoint
can sometimes seem
stately: as the
product
of the most successful political regime in Latin Europe between
400 and
1200
(at the earliest),
self-confidence
and
it
does not seem surprising that
as dense a cultural activity as
it
had
it
did. If
as
much
one looks
at
same programme from the standpoint of contemporary Constan-
that
tinople or Baghdad, then its
it
roots,
and - of course - temporary.
structural
weakness of
(The over-anxiousness
God
But
all is
in
Essentially, given the underlying
western medieval
also forgivable;
it
polities, this latter is true.
must have been hard to have
an audience to one’s every action as the Carolingians
as attentive
believed.)
seems over-anxious, hyperactive, shallow
it
it is still
interesting, indeed striking, that the Carolingians
achieved so much. In the moralization of Erankish politics, in the education of at least
two generations of
lay aristocrats, as also in the
increasing systematization of government, the Carolingians had an effect: different
from the Byzantines or the Arabs, but an
effect all the
same.
The Carolingian
project receded in the 8 80s, even before the
Charles the Eat in 887. Hincmar,
who
fall
died in 882, was the last political
leader really to be committed to theory, just as Charles the Bald
probably the
last
king
who
really
of
wanted
to read
it.
The
latter
was
may
be
the crucial point. Tenth-century Erankish bishops presided over reform councils, but they
were mostly
local,
and
less
connected to royal
politics,
except occasionally in late tenth-century Germany; education (and
manuscript copying) continued but
it
in
monasteries and cathedral schools,
did not have an effect on political decisions after the 870s.
ecclesiastical
world did not change so much, that
political context
is
The
to say; but the
changed substantially. The optimism and confidence of
the Carolingian century, the sense that
what Frankish
politicians decided
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
PO
S
T - C A R O L I N G I AN
WEST, 75O-IOOO
mattered to God, was what kept the reform project going; and the failure of the dynasty in the years 877-87, followed by a politics in the
non-Carolingian successor
states,
much
less
ideologized
pushed reform onto the
local stage of episcopal pastoral activity.
Successful political systems could nonetheless return to parts of the
Carolingian programme. The early eleventh century in Germany, and also the late tenth century in England, both
reform imagery as part of high
was
politics.
there waiting to be used, even
could not re-establish the
critical
if
saw
partial revivals of
The programme,
that
is
in order to return.
And
to say,
the smaller polities of the future
mass of competitive writing which
marks the middle decades of the ninth century; that would need environment, the towns and the
moral
money economy
a
new
of the twelfth century,
the political presupposition that kings
and
bishops were in partnership, with kings choosing bishops but bishops
having the right to ‘correct’ kings,
moral
rule,
and prosperity
in
both
ail in
this
the aid of both effective
and
world and the next, continued
to be axiomatic in western politics, at least as an aspiration, until the late eleventh later.
and
it
century at the
earliest,
and
in
many respects
for a long time
This presupposition was pushed centre stage by the Carolingians,
had
a long legacy.
426
The Tenth-century Successor
States
Gerbert of Aurillac, arguably the leading intellectual of the tenth-century
He was born around 940
West, had a remarkable career.
seems, a non-noble family, and educated in his
to, as
it
home-town monastery
of Saint-Geraud at Aurillac, a regional pilgrimage centre but isolated
mountains of south-central France. Around 967 he was talentspotted by Count Borrell of Barcelona, and trained in Catalonia for
in the
some on
years; he
accompanied Borrell to
to the entourage of
Rome around 970 and moved
Pope John XIII and the emperor Otto
(936-73) as a teacher, of mathematics, astronomy, logic and rhetoric - basic I
elements in the central medieval curriculum. In this role he
Reims
in
The only break here was
982-4, when he impressed the emperor Otto
philosophical and debating
skills,
to flee
II
at
ently.
He
and he had
Otto IPs death. From then on, as
his letters,
both on behalf of
his
mother the queen-regent Theophanu of
was an
active
patron Adalbero and independ-
operated in support of the infant Otto
Duke Hugh Capet
in
interests,
surviving as a collection for the years 983-97, show, he political dealer,
his
was made abbot of Bobbio
Bobbio, however, Gerbert offended vested
back to Reims
(973-83) with
according to his pupil the historian
Richer, our source for most of this, and Italy; at
to
972, and was for two decades both a renowned teacher and
the private secretary to Archbishop Adalbero. in
moved
III
(983-1002) and
in East Francia
West Francia, the main
and
rival to the
Italy,
his
and also
West Frankish
king Lothar (954-86). Adalbero and, secondarily, Gerbert facilitated
Hugh
Capet’s non-hereditary succession as king of West Francia (987-
96). After Adalbero’s death in 989, Gerbert
archbishopric, but largely to
Hugh
chose Arnulf, King Lothar’s illegitimate son,
undermine support
Lower Lotharingia
(d.
might have expected the
991),
for Lothar’s brother Charles,
who was 427
duke of
fighting for the throne. This
was
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
P O ST- C AR O
LIN G I AN WEST, 75O-IOOO
once handed Reims to Charles.
a miscalculation; Arnulf almost at
he captured Charles and Arnulf in 990,
Hugh deposed
When
the latter for
treachery in a synod at Saint-Basle-de-Verzy, organized by Gerbert,
Hugh had
who
now succeeded him as Pope John XV, who
archbishop (991-7). But
objected to the deposition.
The West Frankish
bishops argued that
was canonical, but pressure
built
and
after
it
Hugh’s death he
left
promoted away from Reims; 999, to the papacy
itself.
to the archbishopric of
He
up on Gerbert,
Saxony and the court of Otto
for
Here he became the still-young emperor’s tutor
III.
in
Reims
not consulted
in
997, and was
Ravenna, and then,
died in 1003 as Pope Silvester
II.
Gerbert’s career had serious setbacks, but the favour of the great
always
set
him
right again. If
dealer, playing a later, for
complex
himself alone.
one reads
political
It is
his letters, they
game
for himself
true that he
was
and
also, increasingly, of
wind
so close to the
Hugh
in his dealings that
and Adalbero, and,
consistent, in his support
of the Ottonian king/emperors (even though he the time)
show an assured
was
in
West Francia
at
Capet. All the same, he sailed
one constantly might expect,
if
know how his career would end, that he would come a man with no social background, entirely reliant on patronage,
one did not unstuck:
playing high politics in a period of switchback political
an archbishop
in
shifts,
and made
dubious circumstances - such a situation destroyed
we saw in Chapter 17, and Gerbert was incredibly lucky not to fall too. What saved him was his scholarship: Gerbert was always welcome as a court intellectual. He wrote letters Ebbo of Reims
in the 830s, as
asking for manuscripts (particularly of mathematical works, and of Cicero) as systematically as Lupus of Ferrieres had done a hundred and fifty
years before. His skills ensured that he could and did travel with
ease across every part of the old Carolingian empire. Gerbert illustration that
many
aspects of the ninth-century political
tual practice described in the last chapter
century
One was
programme. Even second-level on
their
wrote to
invite
lecture kings III
an
intellec-
had by no means gone away a
later.
But there are differences.
Otto
and
is
in the fate of the Carolingian
intellectuals like
moral duties
Lupus had been able
in the ninth century; but,
to
when
Gerbert to be his tutor, Gerbert replied, not with
moral advice, but with an enthusiastic evocation of the mathematics he could teach him. (The Saxon historian Thietmar bishop of Merseburg, d.
1018, remembered him for the astronomical clock he built for Otto
428
THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES at
Magdeburg.) None of
his letters
admonish the
make practical suggestions, ask for although in many ways as ambitious as the formation,
compared Otto
great; they give in-
favours.
The Ottonians,
Carolingians (Thietmar
to Charlemagne), did not inherit their moralized politics,
except to an extent with Henry
II
after
1002; they barely even issued
any laws. The rhetorical frame of ruling had changed. And so had
its
Among non-royal political operators, Adalbero and Herbert were by now rare in their interest in more than one kingdom (Reims was near
scale.
a
boundary, and Adalbero had close kin
certainly
were not
West Frankish and
Italy,
interested;
in Lotharingia). Historians
Flodoard and Richer, the tenth-century
historians, recount almost nothing of East Francia or
in the East the
Saxon historians Widukind and Thietmar
similarly only chronicle East Erankish affairs, adding Italy,
somewhat
when Otto I conquered it in 962. The only exception was Liutprand of Cremona (d. 972), the historian of Italy, who paid attention
perfunctorily,
to East (but not West) Frankish politics because he
Otto
I,
The
for
in exile in Frankfurt.
future countries of Italy, France
then. This see,
was writing
was not complete,
not only took over
as well, without
‘France’
it
Italy,
and Germany were diverging,
as Gerbert shows.
Otto
I,
too, as
we
shall
but was a player in West Frankish politics
seeming inappropriate.
and ‘Germany’ did not yet
exist;
And
the separate concepts
nor even, except occasionally,
did ‘West’ and ‘East’ Francia, the terminology historians currently use;
both were normally
just Francia^ or
eastern kingdom, to reflect the
Ottonians. (‘France’ contrast in the
among and so a new
region
Francia et Saxonia in the case of the
Saxon
origins
and
political base of the
of course simply the French for Francia; by
is
German
lands, the Frankish heartland
was only one
the old ethnic territories of Saxony, Alemannia, Bavaria, inclusive
nicum, though not
name
eventually appeared, the
until the eleventh century.)
regnum Teuto-
But the lack of interest
of the historians reflects a slow cultural separation. For Flodoard and Richer, Francia
was
‘really’
(northern) France; the East Eranks were
Transrhenenses, from over the Rhine, or else the inhabitants of Ger-
mania^ the old
Roman geographical term. For Widukind, similarly. West
Francia was Gallia^ proto-French the Gallica lingua^ and Francia was seen as ‘really’ being in the East. foreigners
the
is
When
Thietmar says that
the greatest punishment’, he certainly
West Franks. The
by
would have included
political history of these three regions will
429
‘rule
have to
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
P O ST- C ARO LI N G I AN
WEST, 75O-IOOO
be discussed separately as a result. But the procedures of political practice
had not diverged very
of the chapter
greatly, all the same,
and
in the last section
shall discuss these for all the post-Carolingian regions,
I
seen as a whole.
East Francia was easily the most powerful of the successor states. This
was not because of its in the centre
infrastructure.
and south, and
rivers: for centuries, the
and expert
single
the kingdom,
were
a
was heavily
forested, particularly
communications were dependent on
its
only practicable north-south route, except for
travellers,
which was
and East Francia’s major
It
was the Rhine corridor
also the
cities,
main ex-Roman
west of
in the far
region, with roads
Cologne and Mainz. Saxony and Bavaria
month’s travel apart, and had
little
to
do with each
other; rulers
based in one tended to leave the other alone. But the regional political system created by Louis the
German
decades around 900, and could
largely survived the troubles of the
still
be used by the Ottomans, and
indeed for another century or more on from them.
who
Arnulf of Carinthia (887-99),
seized
power from
his uncle
Charles the Fat, ruled from Bavaria. Fie was clearly the senior ruler of his time in all the Carolingian lands;
Burgundy (888-912) and Berengar
he was the lord of Rudolf I
of Italy (888-924), and had per-
haps even been offered the throne of West Francia
took
Italy briefly
his
894-6 he
by new regional
a
in
896
young son and successor Louis the Child
last eastern
The years 896-911 saw filled
in 888. In
and made himself emperor. But he had a stroke
and soon died; and (900-9 1 1 ), the
king of
I
Carolingian, never
power-vacuum
made much
in the eastern
rulers, called dukes: of
Bavaria
impression.
kingdom.
It
was
(in particular the
duke 907-37), of Alemannia (now increasingly particular Burchard I, d. 911), of Saxony (in particular
‘Liutpolding’ Arnulf, called Swabia: in
the ‘Liudolfing’ Otto, d. 912), of Lotharingia (at least after 903, under
the ‘Conradine’ Gebhard, d. 910), land,
which seems
and even of the East Frankish heart-
to have crystallized as a
duchy under Gebhard’s
nephew Conrad around 906. Bavaria and Swabia had been Carolingian kingdoms with their own local political structures (and an autonomous political past),
how
it
and
is
it
was possible
relatively easy to see, particularly in Bavaria,
for a local ruler to
move from being
a
duke
in
Bavaria to being duke o/^the region; Arnulf ran Bavarian-wide assemblies
and armies, appointed
his
own
bishops, and even briefly called himself
430
THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES Saxony was harder,
king, in 918.
mous
region,
Brun
(d.
it
had never been
a unified autono-
and Duke Otto’s father and brother Liudolf
866) and
(d.
880) had, although each were called dux, only a frontier
command; but ians or Slavs
to be
for
that
and
more or
command
involved successful wars against Sclaven-
and Otto by
a military machine,
less in full
his
control of Saxony, which he passed on to his
son Henry. Lotharingia and the Frankish heartland took longer these were core Carolingian territories
and
still
it is
power of
a sign of the
too had more or
Conrad
Mainz
respectively;
as a political concept that they
‘royal’
duchy, was a natural successor
(911-18), but he failed to gain the respect from
I
his ducal ex-peers that
he hoped
Arnulf of Bavaria; he also
for, in particular
Henry of Saxony and
lost Lotharingia to the
Charles the Simple (898-923). et
for
hegemonic dukes by Louis the Child’s death. The
less
Frank Conrad, ruler of the most to Louis, as
duchy
the
still,
contained the largest
concentrations of royal lands, around Aachen and
but
come
death had
When
West Frankish king
he died, the magnates of Francia
Saxonia chose Henry of Saxony as the new king (Henry
I,
919-36),
possibly even at Conrad’s suggestion, and certainly with the agreement
of Conrad’s brother and heir, Eberhard duke of the Franks
The Swabians and Bavarians were, however,
(d.
absent.
East Francia at this point could have been easily divided into three, as
it
had been
traditions, after
all,
and
a
Saxon king was
Frankish, so not obviously
Henry proceeded with not to claim too
two southern duchies had
in 876; the
more
‘royal’
far
much authority, and he established pacts
make them, however, and Henry
own
also not
than a Swabian or a Bavarian.
implicitly of quasi-equality, with the other dukes.
to
(at least)
their
away - and was
was probably not anointed
care; he
939).
king, so as
of ‘friendship’,
They were prepared
also established
momentum by
retaking Lotharingia in the 920s. Saxon armies were, furthermore, active against Slavs, and above
all
against the
Magyars or Hungarians,
a
who had overthrown Moravian power in the decade after 894 and established themselves in what is now Hungary. The latter were very effective raiders across much of central Europe and semi-nomadic people
Italy in the early tenth century,
(not least in Bavaria,
and Henry achieved considerable
on the front
line of their attacks)
status
by defeating them
933 and quietening them for two decades. Henry’s supremacy was also, like Arnulf ’s, recognized in Burgundy (though not Italy). When he in
was succeeded by
his
son Otto
I
in
431
936, Otto could choreograph an
THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-C ARO LINGI AN WEST, 750-IOOO election
and coronation
in
Aachen
itself,
with a very formal anointing
by the archbishop of Mainz, and a banquet the king’s deputy (a rege secundus) in his
him dinner, the
which
in
all
home duchy
four dukes, plus
of Saxony, served
clearest sign of subjection.
Otto when he inherited the throne had brothers, for the
kingdom
the eastern
since the 870s (and the last until 1190);
had excluded them from succession,
revolted, fortunately (for Otto) not at the
Hermann
in the
won
it
directly himself.
They were almost
inside
Saxony
the wars,
itself;
Henry
I,
only
was
and was able
to
Frankish heartland, he abolished the
him and Hermann, and
Otto consistently chose
from the ducal
all
from
and found consider-
time,
after Eberhard’s death in battle against
ruled
Henry
Thankmar and Henry,
of Swabia (926-48), a Conradine put in by
consistently loyal to the king. But Otto
title
same
from other dukes and from
remove dukes everywhere;
time in
in a deliberate departure
Carolingian norms. In 939-41 two of them,
able support both
first
his
families that
dukes from
now on.
had already emerged,
which did not give him a wide range of choice; the Ottonians, unlike the Carolingians, could not create a
But often Otto chose his
Henry his
own
new Reich saristokratie on any scale.
relatives, his
now-reconciled brother
Bavaria (947-55), his son Liudolf in Swabia (948-53),
in
youngest brother Brun, archbishop of Cologne, in Lotharingia
(954-65), before going back to more local families. Liudolf revolted in
953-4
as well. But his revolt, although widely
supported, was subverted by the
last great
Hungarian invasion, which
Otto destroyed on the Lechfeld outside Augsburg, on the Swabian
hegemony was unquestioned.
border, in 955. After that, Otto’s
It
extended to West Francia, as already shown by the synod of Ingelheim in
948, in which King Louis IV (936-54) brought his grievances against
Duke Hugh
the Great
the East Frankish king
himself to Italy,
by Berengar
II
(d.
956) to Otto’s
and the papal
first in
own
legate.
951-2, when
assembly, to be judged by
Otto was also able to extend
his overlordship
(950-62), then in 961-2,
was recognized
when he annexed
the Italian
kingdom and was crowned emperor. Otto was strong enough to spend most of the rest of his reign in Italy, and was, in the last two decades of his life,
by
far the
was not wrong structure his
to
most powerful
make
the
was strong enough
son Otto
II
(973-83),
ruler of the tenth century
- Thietmar
Charlemagne comparison. Otto’s
political
to survive the relatively lacklustre reign of
who was 432
unsuccessful in his wider forays.
THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES outside Paris in 978, and, most disastrously, the Arabs in
982
in the far
south of
Italy,
royal minority of the three-year-old Otto
when he was
near Crotone; and the long
(983-1002). The younger
III
Ottos, however, had Otto IPs mother Adelaide
Theophanu
defeated by
999) and wife 991) to look after them: tough queens-regent in the
(d.
(d.
Merovingian mould, and themselves proof of the now-established cenLiudolfing/Ottonian family as East Frankish kings. At
trality of the
Otto
death without children the magnates of the eastern kingdom
Ill’s
Hermann
hesitated between
II
of Swabia and Ekkehard, marquis of the
Saxon march of Meissen, but without much
plumped brother’s
difficulty in the
Henry IV of Bavaria (Henry II, 1002-24), who was Otto Ps grandson and Otto Ill’s male-line heir. There was no doubt at
for
any of these royal accessions that East Francia was a system, which by
How
end they
this
now
single political
included Italy as well.
system actually worked
is
more of
a problem.
The Mero-
vingian and Carolingian assumption that assemblies were the key
moments
of political aggregation
new Saxon
was
certainly maintained,
and indeed
Magdeburg and Quedlinburg attracted aristocrats and bishops from all over the kingdom at the big Easter feasts. Royal diplomas show that the legitimacy of royal heavily stressed: the
royal centres of
grants of land and rights were important throughout the kingdom, too.
But Ottonian local control was more mediated than their predecessors.
the
The king/emperors chose
two southern duchies controlled
all
Bavaria; indeed, Otto Ps son Liudolf
it
the dukes, but the dukes of
the ex-royal land of Swabia
implying that
with
little
were
all
if
all
Hermann had had
and
when he succeeded Hermann
Swabia had to be married to Hermann’s daughter succeed, ‘with the duchy, to
had been under
his property’, as
in
Ida, in order to
Widukind put
sons, Liudolf might have been a
land. Inside duchies, assemblies, army-muster
and
it,
duke
justice
under ducal control; there had never been many royal missi
in Carolingian East Francia,
and the court chaplains the Ottomans
sometimes sent out were very ad-hoc representatives. Kings chose bishops too, often from the court chaplains; an episcopal presence in the royal entourage interest
back into
was important, and they could
their duchies.
families, except for the
the kings could
also carry royal
But they, too, tended to be from local
key archbishops of Cologne and Mainz. The best
do was to undermine ducal power, sometimes by dividing
duchies (Carinthia was carved off from Bavaria in 976, Lotharingia was
433
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
O ST- C AR O LI N G AN WEST, 75O-IOOO I
Upper and Lower from
split into
autonomous
ing the
P
interests of
the late 950s) and, often, by encourag-
both bishops and other local magnates,
especially through grants of judicial immunity. In the end, the default
Ottonian
political practice in the outlying duchies,
and
also in Italy,
and rule. This, plus assembly ceremonial and frequent royal presence - for the Ottonians moved around a lot, far
was simply
more than
to divide
the Carolingians had,
and could be found
in
most places
except Bavaria - was a large part of Ottonian government, outside
Saxony
at least.
All the same, the Ottonians
had major
strengths, too: in their royal
land, in the still-surviving Carolingian heartland regions
and Mainz-Frankfurt, to which they added
their
own
around Aachen
family heartland
south of Saxony, between Hildesheim and Merseburg; in their
in the
powers of patronage, to
benefices, duchies, bishoprics, which, as with
the Carolingians, kept their courts essential locations for the distribution
of political power; in the silver-mines providentially discovered in their
Saxon heartland around Goslar about 970, which funded the kings for two centuries; and, above all, in their large army. The core of the latter
was Saxon, and
Henry
I
aimed
at
the East
was honed on the eastern marches, which under
it
and Otto
I
had become
tightly organized military territories
eastward aggression. The Slavs of the Elbe-Oder lands (roughly
Germany of 1945-90) were largely subjected, and they and their
eastern neighbours paid tribute; the
from
this,
Saxon aristocracy gained massively
which helped the loyalty of most of them, but the king/
emperor kept control of the whole process. (Dukes of Saxony developed again in the tenth century, once the Liudolfings/Ottonians had become kings, but they
were
essentially based in the eastern marches,
and did
not yet displace direct royal power.) The core Saxon army was sup-
plemented by units from everywhere
when the Ottonians fought as
is
elsewhere,
drawn
largely
Erankish kingdom
from church lands,
seen in the Indiculus Loricatorum^ a rare administrative
from the tenth century, an army-list Otto
else in the East
II
in
document
for the reinforcements called for
by
southern Italy in 981. The Ottonians never lost control of
army-service from the whole kingdom. Even the great Slav revolt of
983, after Otto’s Italian defeat, which drove the Saxons out of
much
of the land beyond the Elbe and held off their advance for a century, did not break the Ottonian grip All
this
made
possible
on the army and on the Saxon
Ottonian
434
supremacy,
despite
the
frontier.
relative
THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES simplicity of the political structures in
no sign of slipping
The kingdom of
in
looo.
had
It still
its
down
Rome, an institutionally coherent polity whose peninsula stretching
Italy, the Italian
was the opposite to East Francia, kings were weak.
much of their realm, and it showed
to
capital at Pavia, the location of the royal
court and an increasingly active centre of judicial expertise. Italian court-case records are elaborate and relatively in the eleventh century,
and appeals
homogeneous
until late
were normal. Most such
to Pavia
court records are of county-based judicial assemblies, which were thrice-
(who continued
yearly public meetings headed by counts or royal missi to exist in Italy,
though the
inside Italy’s strong
assembly
more
office
was by now
network of
regular,
and
had
this
cities:
politics of East Francia, but
a local one), usually held
was much more
localized,
lay notaries. Italian revenues
who were
from
tolls
conquering
in
away from
way
as
it
had been
This institutional coherence coincided with a politics.
been
The
local,
of
aristocracy of the eighth-century
in
Saxon
the
what
Emilia, around the capital. Italy
962, in the same
full
and royal lands were also more
frontier at least, particularly in the royal heartlands of
Eombardy and
much
generally literate, as well as
systematic and larger-scale than in Germany,
called
were
also explicitly judicial; such assemblies
semi-expert lay iudices, judges,
with the
parallels
are
now
was worth
773-4.
much more regionalized Eombard kingdom had
and modest in its wealth. The Carolingians introduced Franks
from the great northern
aristocratic families,
who owned more
widely,
such as the ‘Widonids’ in the southern duchy of Spoleto and the ‘Supponids’ (kin to
Eouis IPs queen Angilberga), as
we saw
in
Chapter 16. But
these families failed in the early tenth century, or else localized themselves, or else both, as
from Bavaria
first
with the ‘Bonifacian’ counts of Lucca, a family
documented
in Italy in 812,
who became
entirely
regionally focused, as marquises of Tuscany for the period 846 to 931, after
which they were overthrown and died
out. After
gian period in which incomers monopolized almost
Lombard
an early Carolin-
all
families re-emerged in the later ninth century
who might
secular offices,
and onwards,
gain lands and offices on a substantial scale, as with the
Aldobrandeschi
in
southern Tuscany, proteges of Lothar
or the Canossa in eastern Emilia, proteges of
Chapter 21); but these, too, usually had major
435
I
and Louis
Hugh and Otto
I
II,
(see
interests only in three or
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
P
O S T- C AR O LI N G AN WEST, 75O-IOOO I
four contiguous counties, and most of the aristocratic players of the tenth century had interests in only one. Italy outside the royal heartland
was divided
marches as was East Francia:
into duchies or
north-east, Spoleto in the south,
Turin
in the
north-west (the
first
Tuscany
Friuli in the
in the centre, Ivrea
two of these had Fombard antecedents,
the others were Carolingian or post-Carolingian). These
autonomous
political structures
and then
and armies,
had semi-
as did their analogues north
of the Alps. But the particular point about Italy
was that the
solidity of
the majority of counties, usually coterminous with the local bishopric
and centred on that secular
a city
and
where most
local political players lived,
ecclesiastical aristocracies
single city-territories as their
meant
could very easily focus on
major points of reference, bypassing even
and Tuscany, but their constituent elements, such as Verona, Padua, or Pisa - and, in the royal heartland, Parma, Bergamo, Milan - began to have their separate the marches. In the tenth century, not only Friuli
histories.
They were
identities
and
territories
for the
institutionally
political rivalries
connected to Pavia, but city-focused
mattered rather more. These localized
were more coherent than
most part
less
dominated by
in
most of East Francia, and were
single families than in
They therefore absorbed more of the
political interests of local
and kings and even marquises intervened outside.
Beyond the
city
West Francia.
in
them very
largely
powers,
from the
network, only Tuscany survived as a
fully
coherent regional territory into the eleventh century. This was the backdrop for the political shifts of the tenth century.
Berengar marquis of Friuli was the
first
make
to
Charles the Fat was overthrown; he faced no
less
himself king after
than
five rivals in his
Guy and Fambert of Spoleto (889-95; 891-8), north, as we have seen, and later Fouis III king of
thirty-five-year reign,
Arnulf from the
Provence (900-905 ), and Rudolf II king of Burgundy (922-6). Berengar I
survived the early deaths of the
three
first
and blinded the fourth;
between 905 and 922 he enjoyed the widest and most uncontested power of any king of his time. But he was not actually very popular outside his
own power-base
in north-east Italy (all his rivals except
actively supported in the north-west;
Tuscany usually remained
nor was he a great military leader (he and,
later, to
Rudolf of Burgundy).
He
lost battles to the
initiated in the
local structures of defence, concentrated
owned
fortifications, to
Arnulf were
on
cities,
which he often gave
436
neutral);
Hungarians,
900s a trend to
or else on privately
judicial immunities.
Guy
THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES and Louis
and then Berengar, also granted comital
III,
walls of cities to bishops, thus breaking
up comital
rights inside the
jurisdiction further.
This should be seen as Berengar exercising a well-structured and largely successful political protagonism, to reward support both inside
outside his heartland; but
it
already referred to. There
and
also strengthened the trends to localization little
is
sign under Berengar
I
of either a
Carolingian programmatic politics or the ceremonial royal assemblies of the Carolingian and Ottonian systems north of the Alps. Even the
on Berengar from around 915 (an atypical but not both Charlemagne and Otto I had them) makes no reference
verse panegyric
unique
text;
ended badly, when
to such initiatives. Berengar
up
aries stirred
new
a
Hungarian mercen-
his
and Rudolf’s invasion, the Hungarians
revolt
then sacked Pavia, and in 924 Berengar was, unusually for the period,
murdered.
The
magnates were
Italian
925 they
tried
still
Hugh, count of
decades, 926-47. Hugh,
looking for an effective ruler, and in
Arles,
who had no
who
ruled energetically for
local power-base, operated
two
from
the royal heartland around Pavia, and sought systematically to control the marches by choosing their rulers. In this respect he operated in
almost exactly the same
moved
way
as his
younger contemporary Otto
I:
he
established families around (more than Otto did, in fact), and
appointed his
own
kin, as
with his brother Boso and illegitimate son
He
also relied
his relatives or
from more
Hubert, successive marquises of Tuscany (931-69).
on
greatly
a
network of bishops, whether
who had considerable powers (as with his son Boso, bishop of Piacenza, who was also arch-chancellor in Pavia). Again, we lack much evidence for a more public, assembly-based politics (except local families,
although this might be expected to have been normal
in the field of law),
at least in Pavia.
Our main
narrative source for
Hugh, Liutprand of
Cremona, systematically disregarded the standard markers of royal imacy when he discussed the Otto
I,
Hugh,
Italian kings, faithful protege as he
are absent in our other evidence as well.
Italians,
and he
fell
when the Erankish army
too, in the end,
himself with no supporters. Berengar after
We
gain the sense that
outsider to the local political preoccupations of the
of Ivrea invaded with an East
I
was of
but clear signs of royal ceremony, or political aggregation around
Hugh remained an
Otto
legit-
II
exiled Berengar marquis
945 and Hugh found ruled under the hegemony of in
951, and was easily removed in 962.
437
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
A political
P
O ST- C AR O LI N G AN WEST, 75O-IOOO I
system which has both wealth and institutional coherence,
but whose rulers are relatively marginal politically and have tary support,
Berengar
by
rule
II
is
mili-
both attractive and easy to conquer, as Rudolf, Hugh,
and Otto I found in turn.
now
little
arguable, though, that Ottonian
It is
suited Italy best. Otto
I
and Otto.
spent
Ill
some time
in
nine and five years respectively, but kings were present in the
Italy,
kingdom
itself for less
than a third of the period 962-1000, and in the
eleventh century the figure dropped precipitously.
moted episcopal immunities where counts were
The Ottonians proand appointed
strong,
and endowed counts where bishops were strong: an ad-hoc procedure aimed
do much armies, rare,
to
beyond the Alps. They did not
at reducing local power-bases, as
they imported no
else;
when
families.
The
strength of their
made explicit opposition trouble in Rome, which he tried
they were present in the country,
although Otto
make
new
III
had considerable
his political base in
998-1001,
rhetorical attempt at a renovatio of the
in a
Roman
romantic and largely
empire. But most of the
time they were absent, and the local politics of the Italian bishops
and urban aristocracies could continue with
little
external interference,
linked together essentially by the Pavia-focused network of judicial
assemblies and also by the regular seeking of diplomas granting lands
and
rights
from the king/emperors beyond the Alps. This was a pattern
which would Italian city
wars of the 1080S-1090S forced
persist until the civil
communities to think about ruling themselves; on the other
hand, the coherence of city territories was, after 1000, the crystallization of even smaller lordships with rights (see below.
Otto I and
III
intervened directly in
autonomous
political
Roman politics, and all three Ottos
Rome. The independent
Benevento had held Charlemagne it
eroded by
Chapter 21).
also sought to intervene south of
war,
itself
off,
principality of
but in 849, after a ten-year
divided into two, Benevento and Salerno, and
from Salerno by the 860s. These three
Capua
split off
principalities then variously
combined, fought each other, and fought the small ex-Byzantine states in the
same
area, Naples, Amalfi
They were not very
civil
and Gaeta,
internally coherent as polities,
for
two
city-
centuries.
and already
in the
mid-tenth century they were dividing into smaller lordships, with the exception of Salerno. They were also militarily weak: Louis
II
had
already sought to dominate them in the 860S-870S, though he failed; the
Byzantines had also, more definitively, annexed the southern portions of
438
THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES Salerno and, in particular, of Benevento in the 880S-890S. The southern principalities thus
and,
looked
they did not become so,
if
away from
the
new
like possible
was only because they were so
it
main Ottoman power-bases, and because Otto
Conversely, however, inside southern
This
independent princi-
Italy, the
own ruling dynasty was the unchallenged political model. doubtless why Rome, under four generations of the Theophylact
family
ruler,
982
under its
is
well.
IPs
far
was so traumatic.
defeat
pality
conquests to the Ottonians,
It
(c.
904-63), moved
in the direction of the dynastic pattern as
was one strong enough even
Marozia senatrix
et patricia
to tolerate an independent female
(c.
925-32), one of a small handful
were
in the tenth century (the others, discussed later,
who
Rus); her son Alberic (932-54),
Mercia and
in
overthrew her, called himself
princeps, prince, in clear imitation of the princes just to the south. These rulers chose their bishops
- that
Capua-Benevento and Salerno in the north. Alberic
is,
did,
the popes - just as the princes of
and
drew back from the
also just as the Ottonians did
pattern, however,
when he was
not only succeeded by his son Octavian (954-63/4), but persuaded the
Roman in
aristocracy to elect the latter pope,
which they
did, as
John
956. Rome’s traditions and papal-orientated bureaucracy
episcopal leader leader.
Otto
I,
But
this
brought renewed
as rival families
century. Otto violent
more appropriate
I
and
III
in the long
only exacerbated this in their
Roman
to be
faction-fighting
Gerbert), for the it
own
high-handed,
and temporary interventions. But although the king/emperors
Rome, where they needed
but
John’s overthrow by
rival pontiffs across the rest of the
could and did give up on the south of
solve
made an
term than a princely
instability, after
supported
XII,
first
Italy,
they could not give up on
crowned emperor. Otto
III
tried to
by choosing non-Italian popes (including
time since the mid-eighth century. This failed,
would be imitated by Henry
III
with unpredictable
in the 1040s,
future effects.
West Francia was
easily the least successful of the post-Carolingian
kingdoms. Even the shadowy kingdom of Burgundy
managed an
in the
essential durability (except in the south,
and also dynastic continuity, between 888 and
its
Rhone
valley
ravaged by Arabs)
absorption into the
East Frankish kingdom/empire in 1032. West Francia, however, com-
bined the personalized kingship of the Ottonian East with the political
439
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
P O ST- C ARO LI N
- a
instability of early tenth-century Italy
G I AN WEST, 750-IOOO
Already by the
fatal mixture.
940s the kings of the West had hardly any authority, and for the next
hundred and In
fifty
years they hardly gained any more.
Odo
888 the ‘Robertine’
of Paris took the throne of
West Francia
(888-98). The only surviving western Carolingian, Charles the Simple,
was
Odo
a child,
and an adult was needed to confront the Vikings.
In
889
held substantial assemblies, and counts and bishops from as far
south as Barcelona and Nimes came to them; but his non-Carolingian
blood did not help
his authority
south of the Loire, in Aquitaine and
elsewhere, and by 893 lack of success against the Vikings allowed
Archbishop Fulk of Reims
900) to get away with setting Charles as
(d.
Odo and
king against him. Civil war followed;
Charles
made peace
in
897, and Charles was recognized as Odo’s heir, in return for Odo’s brother Robert being recognized as in sole control of the family counties
and monasteries between the Seine and the Loire and around
When
Paris.
Charles succeeded as king (898-923), he was thus cut out of a
large section of the traditional royal lands in the Paris region.
The counts
943) themselves distant Carolingians, for the former was grandson of Bernard of Vermandois, Heribert
I
905) and his son Heribert
(d. c.
II (d.
of Italy - had occupied most of the royal properties in the Oise valley
north of Paris, too; Charles was political base,
for the royal properties
make good
It is
not surprising
his control of Lotharingia,
around Aachen would have increased
political influence dramatically.
of the
with Laon to the north-east as a
extending to Reims whenever he could.
that he spent the 910s trying to
and
left
West Frankish aristocracy
But he did not have the
for this enterprise,
his
full
wealth
support
and they also seem
to have resented his Lotharingian advisers. In
of [West] Francia’ revolted, as
made Robert king
920 ‘almost all the counts Flodoard of Reims put it, and in 922 they
against him. Robert
year, but the Franks
was
killed in battle the next
would not take Charles back, and chose instead
Rudolf duke of Burgundy, Robert’s brother-in-law (923-36). Charles
was captured by Heribert
II
of Vermandois, and died in prison in 929.
Charles was not an entirely useless king. His Lotharingian adventure
was
at least a sensible strategy,
even
if
a desperate one.
He
also
vision to deal with the Vikings of the Seine by recognizing settling their leader
manni
them and
Rollo as count of Rouen in 911. The Vikings (Nort-
in Latin) of the Seine
and held
had the
more or
less
off future attacks; they settled
440
respected their side of the deal,
down and soon began
to behave
THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES in
ways analogous
prone to
civil
and ‘Normandy’, though
to other Frankish magnates,
war, remained fairly firmly in the hands of
One was
But Charles had several insurmountable problems. very
count/duke.
its
that he
had
land in West Francia as a whole; in the two decades preceding
little
898 the counts and dukes of both the north and the south had occupied
most of
it
for their
own
purposes, except in the Paris heartland region,
which Robert and Heribert divided with him. The second was that he and
his successors
had no power
to choose counts
and dukes, unlike the
kings of East Francia and Italy; no tenth-century
had any unless
on the succession of
significant effect
its
ruler died without heirs. This
recently, for Charles the Fat exercised
a
West Frankish king
major county or duchy,
power had been in the 880s, but
it
it
lost
only
had now
gone, with the consequence that the territorial chequerboard of West
Frankish politics was strategically uncontrollable except by war; only
some of the bishops and abbots of the north, notably
the major regional
power of Reims, could
The
the magnates of
usually be chosen by the king.
West Francia were themselves
898 Robert, Heribert
I,
Baldwin
II
third
was
that
regionalized; already in
count of Flanders, Fulk of Reims,
Richard the Justiciar duke of Burgundy, William the Pious duke of eastern Aquitaine and
Odo
count of Toulouse had interests that were
restricted to the counties they controlled
bours, and not to the
kingdom
and
their
immediate neigh-
was
quite like the East
as a whole. This
Erankish or Italian situation, and
it
was Charles the Simple’s task
establish the political centrality of his assemblies, as
would do. But he had not to create
the landed resources to
do
to
Henry of Saxony
it,
and
his attempts
them were unsupported.
923 at least had a new landed base, in the duchy of Burgundy, and was strong there. But he also largely remained there;
King Rudolf
in
Elodoard’s Annals describe him as having to be ‘summoned’ to the West
Erankish heartland, not that far away, by Heribert of Vermandois or Robert’s son
Hugh
the Great
wars. At his death in 936, exile in all,
England to
rule.
(d.
Hugh
when he was needed
to fight
recalled Charles’s son Louis
IV from
956),
Louis had effectively no land or power at
and strove constantly, but without
success, to establish himself
who had become
‘duke of the [West] Eranks’ in
independently of Hugh, 936.
Hugh
Otto
I
more
even imprisoned him in 945-6, an action which brought firmly onto the scene,
and resulted
in Louis’s
appearance at
Ingelheim in 948 to seek Otto’s judgement against Hugh. (Hugh was
441
THE CAROLINGIAN AND excommunicated
for
P O ST- C ARO LI
make peace with Louis
he did
Louis died in 954, leaving a
in 950.)
Lothar (954-86), as king; Lothar’s mother
son,
thirteen-year-old
but paid no notice, although
later in the year,
it
N G I AN WEST, 75O-IOOO
Gerberga was regent for several years. But Hugh’s death king respite, as his
own eldest son Hugh Capet was only eleven. Gerberga
and Hugh Capet’s mother Hadwig were Otto
whose authority
I,
confirmation of the
grew up
fell
title
at its height in these years;
Brun of Cologne,
of duke on
Hugh Capet 978-80,
the latter in
who
it
often
is
orchestrated the
Lothar as he
in 960.
but with Otto
I
and Otto
II,
like that of sixty years earlier,
protagonism was
his greater
based on no greater strength on the ground.
Hugh
who
Hugh Capet
an attempt to regain Lotharingia. But
young
they were also sisters of
next decade, and
in the
out not only with
war with
fighting a in
their brother
West Francia
in
sisters;
West was
in the
was exercised through found
956 gave the
in
When
son Louis
his
V died
987, Archbishop Adalbero of Reims argued successfully for
in
we have seen. The running sore of Carolinwas ended when Charles of Lotharingia was
Capet’s succession, as
gian-Robertine rivalry
captured in 990, and male-line ‘Capetians’ then ruled West Francia/
France without any significant break until 1792, a record unsurpassed, as far as
I
know,
except in Japan.
in all history,
This was not the end of royal trouble,
all
the same. Adalbero (or
Gerbert) could already in 985 write a brief ‘secret and
anonymous letter’,
probably to the archbishop’s Lotharingian kin, saying that ‘Lothar king of Francia in
and
fact’; this
name
was 751
only;
all
not in name,
it is
true, but in
deed
over again, on the surface. But time had not
stopped for the Robertines a block of
Hugh
is
either.
Hugh
the Great’s power-base
around twenty counties stretching from
was
Paris to Orleans
in
and
west to Angers: a substantial area of land by tenth-century West Frankish standards. But during
Hugh
Capet’s minority the formerly subordinate
counts of the western half of this block, notably those of Angers and Blois,
local
gained effective independence, and began to operate their
and regional
politics;
Fulk Nerra of Anjou (that
Angers; 987-1040) was famously insubordinate to
Robert
II
(996-1031), and
Champagne around 1021,
Odo
thus
II
is,
own
the territory of
Hugh
Capet’s son
of Blois (995-1037) also took over
hemming
the Robertine/Capetian heart-
land in from both sides at once. The already small geographical scale of the political
and military operations described
the 920s became,
if
possible, smaller
still
in Flodoard’s
Annals
in the eleventh century.
in
Royal
THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES traditions such as assembly
looo than size of
before.
and army-muster had even
West Francia north of the
less force after
Loire, an area
much
the
Saxony, was by 1025 the terrain of six or seven effectively inde-
pendent
‘principalities’, Brittany,
Anjou, Normandy, Blois-Champagne,
Flanders, with the kings in the middle and the archbishops of the edge. South of the Loire there were
more
Reims on
again.
The Merovingian-Carolingian system of counties was stronger in West Francia than in the East, and there were no strong traditions of ethnic difference, except in Brittany, politics in the
eastern that
which was
absorbed into Frankish
fragmented tenth century, and, by now, Normandy. The
model of the ethnic duchy had
was
finally
less force here.
Each
political unit
larger than a single county, as all the small principalities north
of the Loire were,
and could
was thus
created, painstakingly, territory by territory,
back into
risk falling
its
constituent parts again, as the
Robertine lands were doing by 987. In the south, too, the ‘Guilhelmid’ counts of the Auvergne (see Chapter 21) had accumulated a string of counties in eastern Aquitaine and called themselves ‘dukes of the
Aquitainians’ by 900, but the west of Aquitaine, notably the counts of Poitiers, did
why
not recognize their authority, and there was no real reason
they should;
when
of Poitiers took the if
they took
it
927 the Auvergne dukes died out, the counts but could only exercise power in the Auvergne
in
title,
militarily,
and so on. Actually, the
Poitiers
dukes were
and William IV (963-93) and William V (993times, wider authority than anyone north of the
quite successful in this,
1030) exercised, Loire by now.
at
The regional church councils which preached
aristocratic violence
and
in
favour of the ‘Peace of God’ in the
against last half
of the century in Aquitaine were partly taken over by William
994 and turned,
in
effect,
assemblies, the only ones
still
V
after
back into Carolingian-style large-scale in existence in
West Erancia by the end of
the tenth century. But the core of William’s
power and land was
still
Poitou, and elsewhere he had to gain the fidelity of counts and other local lords,
by force or persuasion or ceremony. This was a
we can see in a surviving agreement around 1025 between William and Hugh of Lusignan (a powerful
had constantly to be reinforced, of
fidelity that
lord in Poitou
itself)
as
which discusses
in great detail the tense, prickly,
and armed stand-offs between the two reached. This was so everywhere.
sides before settlement
The counts of
was
Elanders, the count/
dukes of Normandy, the counts of Anjou, the counts of Toulouse, the
443
THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST, 75O-IOOO counts of Barcelona,
manage
quite large, did
powers
the different
to establish real
much
and
lasting
in their principalities. Others,
And
best intermittent overlords.
involution in
of
and
however, were at a further
West Francia, when counties themselves began
powers:
judicial
hegemonies over
looo or so there was
after
own
break up into smaller lordships, each with their military
some of them
ruling collections of counties,
all
all
huge empire reduced to the
to
localized political,
the political system of Charlemagne’s
few
scale of a
villages.
This process, the
so-called ‘feudal revolution’, will be looked at again later.
The
little
of French history-writing over
Middle Ages, which begin for these purposes around lOOO
the central
or a
hegemony
twentieth-century
late
made the West Frankish experience seem the typical
before, has
post-Carolingian development. As should be clear to readers of this chapter,
it
was
typical, for is
true,
Still less,
fidelity;
was more
and
local in
identity
as
we
shall see,
was the
only affected parts of West Francia
power was highly
oaths of
and
it
not.
was
and even
in Italy, too,
looo than 900. But
still
tied
up of
local, built
in
up with being
‘feudal revolution’
Everywhere,
itself.
lands, rights, armies
in
some of East
most places
it
and
Francia,
it
aristocratic status
close to kings, or at least
major
regional powers such as the duke of Bavaria, the marquis of Tuscany or
Even
the count of Flanders.
in Italy,
although identities could be closely
tied to city-territories, the institutional force of the
as an inheritance
elements of a lingians
kingdom remained,
from the Lombard and Carolingian periods. And
common
political practice, also inherited
and only partly modified
after
from the Caro-
900, existed throughout the
post-Carolingian lands, even in the West. Let us end this chapter by
looking at
how some
of
The tenth century gave
them worked.
less
space to Carolingian-style political theology.
There was some: Abbo of Eleury Carolingian legislation to isolated in his
(d.
1004), in particular, could praise
Hugh Capet and Robert II;
commitment. (The West Erankish kings around 1000
were also not the most suitable recipients of such also patronized in England,
next chapter.) Conversely,
which was it
in
The educational
ideas; but
different, as
would be wrong
absence that the tenth century had writing.
but he seems fairly
we
Carolingian centres such as
St.
shall see in the
to conclude
moved away from
traditions of the ninth century
Abbo was from
this
the world of
had continued
Gallen, Corvey and Reims, and indeed
444
THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES extended geographically, to remoter locations such as Gerbert’s Aurillac,
and to the new south-east Saxon royal heartland,
Some
dersheim, Magdeburg.
rhymed prose of
the Lotharingian Rather, bishop of
Verona
(d.
974),
Saxon historian Widukind of Corvey
knowledge (and pretentious
after 973), the
Italian
Quedlinburg, Gan-
of the literary results were striking: the
the heavy use of Sallust in the (d.
in
Liutprand bishop of Gremona
Greek
use) of
in the
972), and the Virgilian poetry
(d.
and - most unusual of all - Terence-influenced play-writing of the Saxon Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim niece)
975). Hrotsvitha and her patron (Otto Fs
(d.
Abbess Gerberga show that the
And
could be formidably educated.
women
of the Saxon aristocracy
named
the people
all
in this para-
graph, although undoubtedly trained in ecclesiastical milieux, had close court connections, usually but not only with the Ottonians. Translators are certainly
more commonly
referred to in tenth- than in
ninth-century sources, even for kings and dukes. Otto
thought not to have to translate for
him
known in
Latin, for example, because Liutprand
Rome
But
in 963.
it is
more
simply avoiding giving away that he did not have rhetoric in Latin, as well as ruler of
Rome, was
making
literary figures he
ing (in Latin)
was
him (and
and
it
would be odd
as regular a
means of
earlier,
even outside Italy with
letter collection
edited
it
its
it
all.
communication
had been
widespread lay
shows how dense
Capet, Lothar’s wife
Queen Emma,
in the
in the ninth
literacy. Gerbert’s if
he subsequently
a political correspondence
could be in the 980s. Gerbert and the people he wrote
Hugh
who
Furthermore, writ-
(probably a working collection, even
for publication)
II,
he had patronized so
if
political
new
worthwhile
it
to his son Otto
could not understand at
tenth century, alongside spoken messages, as
and
control of public
a Saxon-speaker. Hrotsvitha thought
certainly educated),
many
full
had
Otto was
likely that
the political point that he, the
dedicating her verse Gesta Ottonis to
was
sometimes
is
I
sent terse
and
Adalbero,
for,
practical mes-
sages to each other and to other significant political players, very fre-
when Hugh, now king, writes in December 988 to the empress Theophanu about her health, promises peace, and proposes a quently - as
diplomatic meeting in the next month,
enough that most certainly did not
aristocrats
match the
century. All the same, this
all in
were no longer
literary
it,
445
It
fully literate,
commitment common
was not an
romantic historians have described
eight lines.
‘oral’ culture, as
except in so far as
is
likely
and they
in the ninth
some more all
cultures.
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
PO
S
T- C A R O L I N G I AN
WEST, 750-IOOO
including our own, are essentially oral. And, whether with writing or
without
it,
some
aspects of tenth-century government could be (by early
medieval western standards) tightly organized and monitored. Berengar of Ivrea’s poll tax to pay off the Hungarians in 947
Another, perhaps more striking,
important Saxon border
headed by important
is
Otto
castle, the
Ill’s
decision in
is
one example.
997
to defend an
Arneburg, with four-week garrisons
local aristocrats,
who had
to
hand over
to each
when a handover slipped up and the Slavs sacked the emperor demanded an accounting. Meissen was similarly
other in relays; castle, the
garrisoned in the next decade. This represents systematic government, at least in
Saxony, and
it
was experienced by the and
just their ecclesiastical brothers
lay aristocracy too, not
sisters.
Side by side with this daily communication, tenth-century polities
maintained the large-scale public arena of political action of the Carolingian world. Assemblies were probably smaller in West Francia, whether for political or judicial purposes; indeed, judicial assemblies died out in
much
of the western
who
magnates
kingdom by 1000 or
Hugh Capet was
elected
more
‘court’, a rather
assembly surviving
restricted
in Italy, or
so.
The 987 assembly of
called a curia by Richer, a
word than placitum,
the large judicial
than the universalis populi conventus^ the
‘meeting of the whole people’, referred to often by
Widukind
for the
East Frankish lands. Even in West Francia, though, the peace councils of William
V of Aquitaine
and others could sometimes revive the image
of wider public participation; and elsewhere
kingdom-wide
political
all
the
members
of local or
communities could meet together and become
the audience for political acts,
which had power simply because of the
size of the audience.
These acts could be very elaborate. Otto referred to,
I’s
coronation, already
was one, potent with images of Carolingian legitimacy and
supremacy. There was a stateliness about
many
of them, a rule-
boundedness, which has been influentially characterized by Gerd Althoff in his
phrase Spielregeln, ‘the rules of the game’, rules which everyone
in the
community knew, and which held
This was
all
the
off
more necessary because
open disagreement
the single court hierarchy of
the Carolingian world had, in reality, gone; there were by players,
whose
relative position could
in public.
now
far
no longer be established from
above. Equality between kings was carefully choreographed, as
Otto
I
and Louis IV
in
948
sat
down 446
more
at the
synod of Ingelheim
when at the
THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES same moment, or
as
when
kings met at the boundaries of kingdoms:
Charles the Simple, for example, met Henry their fideles, in a their
own
I
921, each watched by
in
boat on the Rhine, to which they had each come in
separate boats. In a parallel case, Rudolf of West Francia met
Duke William II of Aquitaine at the River Loire in 924, when Rudolf was threatening
war
him
to get William’s submission to
Messengers
as king.
crossed by day to negotiate, then William crossed at night, got off his
and met the still-mounted king on
horse,
the kiss of peace; this
was the
crucial element that
process, involving a symbolic river-crossing
but taking place in the dark, so
must have
from
foot,
whom
he received
began the submission
and a posture of inferiority,
less publicly visible (the
negotiations
largely been about that). Subjects regularly greeted their lords
kneeling, or even prostrate
on the ground
when particularly when askdid kings,
(as also
kneeling or prostrating themselves before altars):
ing for favours, but even in normal greeting, as with the story by Rodulf
Glaber
(d.
1047) of the unfaithful Heribert
of Vermandois receiving
II
Charles the Simple’s kiss of peace while prostrate in 923. kings (or even, later, counts)
came
to cities there
rituals of greeting, in a tradition surviving
And when
were regular adventus
from the
Roman
empire and
Rome had by far the most elaborate Rome’s own status, but all cities had their own,
continuing to the modern period. ones,
which signalled
when the cives fortiores, leading citizens, of Pavia came out to greet King Hugh ‘by custom’ in about 930, according to Liutprand, or when as
Louis IV was formally received at his accession in 936 at Laon and
nearby
cities,
according to Richer. All of these
reconstructions, but the imagery
was
latter
accounts are literary
a recognizable
and
Rituals could also be used to humiliate. Prostration
commonly used by people kings could demand very
a strong one.
was
particularly
confessing crimes and seeking pardon; and specific public humiliations, like the
dogs
which the leading supporters of Duke Eberhard of the Franks had to carry publicly into
Magdeburg
in
937
Carolingian antecedents (under Louis saddles), but as a sign of royal right,
of the guilty,
it
after a II
of Italy
must have had quite an
icler,
when Dudo
had
would have been
it
effect.
conversely, this
is
the
is
that they
work
of the
Norman chronof Normandy’s follower, when kissing
of Saint-Quentin
supposes that in 911 Rollo
revolt. This
and of the subjection and penitence
The point about elaborate systems of rules, can be subverted to make points. Sometimes writer, as
minor
447
(d. c.
1020), the
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
P
O ST- C ARO L N G AN WEST, 75O-IOOO I
I
Charles the Simple’s foot to represent the formal submission of Rollo’s Vikings, pulled the foot up into the air to kiss
it:
Dudo
here simply
wants to convey Viking/Norman egalitariarlism and disrespect. More
complex was Duke Hermann Billung of Saxony’s decision an assembly
in
Otto
city of
I’s
throne after Otto and,
when he
laid
on
allies.
had
realized he
rely
own
had
came
Ill’s sisters,
and
ate
it
had been
himself with his
and he
for these stories,
critical
comment
certainly
making
were potentially replaceable
Hermann’s
(in
that Otto
I
case,
more
had been too long away
and the claim that the duke of Saxony himself had, or should
have, considerable formal power. Watchers points were being made; Ekkehard
Magdeburg (though
by an angry Otto
I.
was
knew
killed for
not, interestingly,
it,
that these sorts of
and the archbishop
Hermann) was
heavily fined
As with the Carolingians, once again, public
always had audiences,
who
a feast that
Hermann and Ekkehard were
Ekkehard’s case, certainly), and also
ambiguously) the
of
seeking the
agendas, inevitably, but his close relatives were anxious
points: about the fact that the Ottonians
in Italy,
slept in his bed; or
who was
commandeered
lost,
Otto
to call
to the electoral assembly at Werla,
on Thietmar of Merseburg
witnesses in each case.
(in
and
of Meissen in 1002,
death,
in the palace for
We
his
Ill’s
968
Magdeburg, where he was received by
the archbishop, dined in the emperor’s place,
when Marquis Ekkehard
in
who needed
to be persuaded of arguments,
acts
and
could be convinced by creative reworkings of the rituals they were
new
familiar with. This in turn generated like the
Peace of God councils:
I
and public procedures,
rituals
have described these in terms of Carolin-
gian antecedents, but they were also seen as collective religious responses
and counters
to aristocratic violence, organized locally (as
lence), rather
hierarchies.
was the
than necessarily as the product of traditional political
As the tenth century moved
into the eleventh, the readings
of public acts by local political actors could change quite a in the
West Erankish
Rome was centre
vio-
still
lot, at least
lands.
one element of legitimization.
and the location
for imperial coronation,
It
was
still
a pilgrimage
and most major
political
players found themselves there at one time or another. Popes, too,
maintained some of their of law. Both John
XV
late
Carolingian authority, at least in the
and Gregory
V
demanded
of Reims’s deposition in 991, and got their
Gerbert himself, as Pope Silvester
II,
448
way
field
the reversal of Arnulf in the
end
(his
enemy
reconfirmed him in office in 999).
THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES Agapitus
Earlier,
II
Arnulf’s predecessor
suaded to reverse
had
demanded
at least initially
Hugh was deposed
same when
the
947; although he was per-
in
949, his opinions mattered, and his
his position in
agreement needed to be obtained. Not many bishops were actually
deposed
in this period, but they
were
politically
important in every
Rome in certain limited respects.
kingdom, and they answered to
Tenth-
century popes were not usually protagonists; they were mostly in rather
weak positions
inside the city of
Rome, and,
rather than act, they reacted
to requests, usually along the lines the powerful wanted. But
to
make
on
decisions
their
as over Arnulf of Reims,
-
it
was hard
to force
own, against the
who had no
them
if
interests of the
significant support
to change their minds,
they were
powerful -
among the
laity
and the powerful
might have to back down. The Latin church thus maintained the skeleton ‘international’ values
and procedures that had begun
in the Carolingian
period.
One more
respect in
which
dynastic. This
was
political practice
changed was that
it
became
a recognizable Carolingian inheritance, too; the
Carolingians themselves had a strong dynastic consciousness, and the families of the Reich saristokratie
inheritance to land,
were also conscious of
their rights of
which included an expectation that sons would
we saw
succeed fathers in office at least somewhere, as
in
Chapter 16.
In the tenth century, however, nine of the great Carolingian aristocratic families gained the royal less
title,
at least for a time,
thought they might join them; and
autonomy
in a
many
and others doubt-
others gained practical
duchy, march, or accumulation of counties, which they
could expect to pass to their heirs in a regular way. They appropriated
some of the public rituals described above; they also appropriated a much more direct sense of hereditary entitlement than aristocrats had had in the ninth century.
The West Frankish kings could not
comital succession at
all,
as
only with some care, or in died without sons, a result,
it
when
was possible
and even the Ottonians did so response to revolt - or else when magnates
noted
for the first time to suppose that dukes or counts this
East, Lothar in the West), as
Queen-mothers reappeared
we have
earlier,
they could manipulate marriage alliances. As
might inherit as children; and
forces, as
intervene in ducal or
seen,
and
as
it
was
also true of kings (Otto
had not been
III
in the
in the ninth century.
important and recognized political
a less contested force than
the powerful queens of the century before.
449
Women
were some of
were sometimes
THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST, 75O-IOOO
when
powerful even
of Quedlinburg Italy in
kings were adults: Otto
III
used his aunt Matilda
when he went
999) as a regent in the north
(d.
we
998. And, interestingly,
to
begin to find quite a few active
duchess-mothers and marquise-mothers as well: powerful dealers for their deceased
husband’s families,
Guy
for her son
like
Bertha (d.‘926), regent of Tuscany
Hadwig, widow of Hugh the Great,
after 915, or
956-60, or her daughter
politically active in
Beatrice,
who
Lotharingia for a decade after her husband’s death in 978.
how
little
hostility
expressed towards these ruling
is
our sources, even though our writers are female
fragility.
The one exception
who
misogynist,
is
full
It is
women
ran Upper interesting in
most of
of patriarchal cliches about
Liutprand of Cremona, a selective
frequently explained female
power
as the result of
sexual licence; but his targets were essentially Italian, and this can be linked to his desire to delegitimize
may
all
aspects of Italian independence.
It
be that the weakening of the heavily moralized politics of the
female power
Carolingian period
left
censure, outside the
work
A more
less
exposed to suspicion and
of Liutprand.
meant a
dynastic set of political assumptions also
more rooted
in the control of specific lands. Aristocrats
politics
needed
still
Konigsndhe, ‘closeness to kings’, to keep their power and wealth and to gain more, except, increasingly, in West Francia, but they looked to the royal court from a clearly defined regional base by
not it
shift
now, which would
geographically except in very rare cases, and which would,
own
grew, result only in a greater domination of their
effects this
local
would have on
domination
itself,
aristocratic identity,
we
shall
which deals with the aristocracy.
West Frankish
kings, as
and on the structures of
It
had an had
effect
on wider-scale
politics
led to the eclipse of the relevance
we have
seen.
They
also contributed to
the readiness of Italian magnates to cope with absentee kingship,
focus instead on the Ottonians
much more
The
look at in more detail in Chapter 21,
as well, however. Regional interests
of the
region.
if
localized rivalries.
had to deal with five separate
Even
political
and to
in East Francia,
networks. Bavarian,
Swabian, Frankish, Saxon and (crystallizing more slowly) Lotharingian, with their
own
identities
their neighbours.
actually not
and
Thietmar
much about
loyalties
tells
us
I
had been
in
(relative) lack of interest in
about
Italy or
West Francia, but
Bavaria and Swabia either,
about the most immediate Saxon
Otto
little
and
rivals to the east,
Bavaria in the 960s and not
450
much
less
than
such as the Poles.
Italy,
Hermann
If
Billung
THE TENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSOR STATES might well
still
have staged
his critical
ceremony
in
Magdeburg. One
long-term result of this localization of identity was that, everywhere,
was not
it
quite as entirely essential as in the past to go to kings, or to
dukes or marquises or counts, to gain social status and legitimacy as an aristocrat.
was or
no
still
contest: significant players
it
oneself. In East Francia there
needed
offices
and Konigsndhe
ducal equivalent, and so would they for another century and more.
its
But
At a pinch, one might claim
it
would be
Francia. In the
who were eleventh.
just possible to
West
imagine the choice by now, even
there were already
beginning to go
it
The parameters of
alone,
some people
in East
in the tenth century
and there were many more
political
power
itself
in the
would change when
they did.
The tenth century has had historians: should
it
a problem of double vision in the eyes of
be seen as a post-Carolingian century, prolonging
ninth-century political structures and values (although, in the eyes of
some, not so politics
prelude to the often quite different
effectively), or as a
and polemics of the centuries
stops in 1000, as this does, attention to the
is
century does indeed seem to
looo or 1050?
A book which
probably inevitably going to pay more
of these, and
first
after
I
have done so here. But the tenth
me more
eleventh, including in the fragmented
‘Carolingian’ than does the
world of West Francia: even a
small western principality like Anjou or Catalonia was
still
using
many
Carolingian public procedures in the late tenth century, and Tuscany or
Saxony, or the Ottonian kingdom/empire as a whole, was using nearly all
of them.
political
violence,
me -
if
Above and
do not want
and indeed the
stability,
But the
I
and
to argue here for a simple
last
and unchanging
couple of pages have argued the opposite.
parameters of the tenth-century world, including
a fair
its
measure of cynicism and opportunism, seem to
one has to choose - to look backwards rather than forwards.
all,
the tenth-century emphasis
large-scale collective rituals
on the public world of assemblies
would
lessen in the future.
It
was
already beginning to disappear in the last decades of the tenth century in
West Francia;
in Italy
it
would continue
for another century, but
disappear quite fast around 1100; in East Francia rather longer at the level of the kingdom, but
some of
the localities.
Assembly
it
would
persist for
would fade much
politics slowly
faster in
turned into the politics
of royal and princely courts, groups selected by rulers rather than being
451
THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-C ARO LINGI AN WEST, 750-IOOO representatives (however
communities.
A
much
in practice aristocratic ones) of political
sense of belonging, of loyalty,
become more personalized
as these
and of hierarchy would
changes took place, and the lord-
dependant relationship would come into the foreground more, gaining as
did a
it
more elaborate ceremonial and
etiquette.
These are markers
of the central Middle Ages, not the early Middle Ages; and they were
hardly more than at their beginning in looo.
One
result of that
change
is
Francia but to an extent also in
Italy,
tenth. History-writing in Italy after
attention to the politics of the gets
remembered
seldom looked back much to the
looo
kingdom
in tiny vignettes,
is
very localized, and pays
in the kings of his
mation, and
it is
own
little
at all; the tenth century only
such as Hugh’s lustfulness, or Otto
saving of his second wife Adelaide from Berengar
West Francia, writing only
West
that the eleventh century, at least in
II.
a generation after Richer,
is
I’s
Rodulf Glaber
in
at least interested
time, but before the 990s has almost
no
infor-
again expressed in isolated stories, Heribert IPs capture
of Charles the Simple, or Lothar’s
war against Otto
II,
or the
Arab
capture of Abbot Maiolus of Cluny in 972; his highly detailed account of his
own
times needs no back history to explain matters, and
would not have explained them,
maybe
it
to his eyes. This reordering of historical
consciousness marks the failure, in the west and the south of the Frankish lands, of the Carolingian political
of legitimization: too
much
world and
its
of the past did not
traditional
methods
mean anything any
more. Only Charlemagne survived, as an increasingly mythic and dehistoricized figure, flanked in
and Clovis:
safe
not explaining players in
still
some areas of West Francia by Pippin
III
symbols of the distant past, legitimizing the present but
it.
The tenth century was thus
eclipsed;
cannot easily be understood. But
this
some of its major
would not have been
anyone’s mind in 1000, when, to a Cerbert or a Thietmar, the world,
even
if
dangerous and unpredictable, was carrying on
452
just fine.
800-1000
‘Carolingian’ England,
990 or 991,
In
landowner named Wynflsed made a plea against
a
Leofwine (possibly her stepson) before the English king ^^thelred about the ownership of two estates set of witnesses, the king’s
archbishop of Canterbury the
powerful mother ^Ifthryth
and
a bishop
(see
below), the
and an ealdorman,
Anglo-Saxon equivalent of a Continental duke or count. Leofwine
insisted that the matter be first
the
She had a heavyweight
in Berkshire.
Sigeric,
II,
heard
at a shire
assembly (scirgemot),
Anglo-Saxon equivalent of the county-level placitum
lands; this
was correct
in law, but
was
Frankish
in the
also important to Leofwine,
presumably, because the twenty-five-year-old king might not easily judge against his mother, even in the period before 993 arily
not part of his court. The
much, however,
move
when
she was tempor-
of venue did not help Leofwine
for after ^Tthelred formally
committed the case to the
Berkshire assembly, with his seal and (apparently verbal) instructions, the queen-mother
and swore
and twenty-four named men and
would
risk a
huge
if
was pointed
the case reached the oath-swearing
moment, he
and
fine,
parties (though that had,
handing over the land,
which Wynflsed
still
appeared
It
in favour of Wynflsed’s
out to Leofwine that,
women
one
ownership of the land.
also the feels,
end of
‘friendship’
long gone).
in return for the
He
therefore conceded,
gold and silver of his father,
had. She was very reluctant to return
which had probably sparked
between the
it; it
was
this
off Leofwine’s occupation of the land.
But the document relating the case (an original
text)
ends here, and
we
cannot follow the parties further. English court cases often ended in deals; Leofwine had done quite well to get this rather half-hearted one, given the odds against
him
(perhaps he was even in the right over the money, hence the court being
prepared to broker an arbitration). But
453
it is
equally important that the
THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST,
75 O-IOOO
deal took place in public, in the Berkshire judicial assembly.
By the
later
tenth century, England, like the Carolingian lands, had a network of public assemblies a large
number
whose main purpose was
of locally powerful people.
the local bishop
and ealdorman,
to hear disputes in front of
By law,
these should include
as usually in Francia; in the event
two
MUgar by now the
bishops and an abbot presided over this one, and the king’s reeve
was
there too (probably he
was the
shire reeve, the ‘sheriff’,
king’s direct representative in the locality,
the king than
was the ealdorman). And
more
it is
clear just
witnesses that the assembly was substantial in of
the local notables of Berkshire
all
directly responsible to
from Wynflaed’s
size. It will
have consisted
who could get there, the
‘good men’
as the text called them, including the aristocracy, the thegns of the
county. This assembly heard local disputes, and also did royal business.
The
was royal
case
and was decided
in origin,
undoubtedly have wished, but
his will
as the king
would
was carried out by the whole
county community. This balance between royal power and collective validation
is
very Carolingian in
an oath. As we influence at
shall see,
work
here.
it
But
is
style; so is the large
likely that there
we
are also in 990.
regular royal-controlled public politics
is
penalty for losing
direct Carolingian
By now,
had vanished
this sort of
most of the
in
Carolingian lands, either because kings were themselves weak, as in
West Francia, or because
(as in Italy in particular,
but also parts of East
now had a rather intermittent image of how the local judicial
Francia) local assemblies and courts by relationship to kings. Charlemagne’s
assembly should work had come to be perpetuated only in England, even though no part of England was ever under Carolingian is
the paradox
which we
narrative of ninth-
shall explore in this chapter: first,
and tenth-century English
politics; then,
rule.
through a
through a
discussion of political structures and Carolingian influences
and
finally
This
on them;
through an analysis of English difference. For, however
influential Continental practices
had become, the structures of English
society remained distinct too.
We
left
Cenwulf
Anglo-Saxon England (d.
in
Chapter 7 with Offa
(d.
796) and
821) of Mercia dominant south of the Humber. After
Cenwulf’s death, however, Mercian hegemony quickly broke
under a
series of short-lived kings,
from
rival families.
down
Ecgbert of Wessex
(802-39) defeated the fourth of these, Wiglaf (827-40),
in
829 and
ruled Mercia directly for a year. Wiglaf recovered his throne in 830, and
454
‘CAROLINGIAN’ ENGLAND, 80 O-IOOO in
836 could
call all the
bishops of the southern English to his court, as
had the eighth-century Mercian kings, but from now on there were two major powers
in the south,
England was more or
less
Mercia and Wessex. By 840 Anglo-Saxon
back to the situation
with four roughly balanced kingdoms, for
it
was
in in
we must add
700, in
fact,
to these
two
East Anglia, ill-documented but by far the most economically complex
kingdom, and Northumbria, which Eardwulf
in the early ninth century
810) and his son Eanred
relative internal peace.
it
had
also contributed to the definitive eclipse
Mercia, and Essex, Sussex and Kent
autonomy, ruled
as
it
firmly developed
and linked the episcopal network more
of the smaller kingdoms, with the Hwicce
after 825, ruled stably
810-40) had a period of
The Mercian supremacy had
the structures of royal power, closely to government;
(c.
under
first
now
finally attached to
attached to Mercia, and then,
by Wessex. (Only Kent maintained a certain
was by Cenwulf’s brother Cuthred,
d.
807, then
informally controlled by Archbishop Wulfred of Canterbury, d. 832,
and then
825 governed by three West Saxon sons of kings
after
turn.) All the
same, eighth-century Mercian power had not changed the
geopolitics of England,
kingdom framework. civil
in
which could
easily revert to the older four-
In the mid-century
Northumbria
fell
back into
war, and Mercia and Wessex were increasingly clearly the major
kingdoms, cooperating quite closely on occasion, under Berhtwulf (840-52) and
his
probable son Burgred (852-74) of Mercia, and ^Tthel-
wulf (839-58) of Wessex,
who
married his daughter to Burgred and
helped him fight the Welsh. yEthelwulf had a wider prestige too, for in life
late
he married Charles the Bald’s daughter Judith; but he was happy
to concentrate
on controlling southern England. At most he nibbled
at
Mercia’s boundaries, taking over Berkshire in the 840s, although he retreated
from London, leaving
it
and
its
wealth as an isolated outlier
of Mercian rule.
What changed
this political pattern
was the Vikings. They raided the
English coasts from the mid-83os, just as they did in West Erancia and elsewhere; they were particularly active in Kent and East Anglia, and
they stepped up their attacks in the 850s, by
when
they were over-
wintering in some places. But, whereas in Erancia they always had to leave temporarily politics
when a royal army finally appeared, the scale of insular
- and armies - was
far smaller,
lose to Viking ones, as Berhtwulf of
and Anglo-Saxon armies could
Mercia found
455
in
851 and a Kentish
THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST, 750-IOOO
army found them
The Vikings had eventually
in 853.
the chance for
more permanent
gain, for
realized that this gave it
was
in
England that
leading Danish Vikings grouped together in a ‘Great Army’, micel here in the
Old English of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
Army numbered
in the
raiding parties, and
thousands, rather than the hundreds of earlier
was
larger than
collective leadership, but
866-7 it
it
The Great
in 865.
it
had
it
a
acted as an effective conquering force. In
conquered Northumbria,
took East Anglia, again
any Anglo-Saxon army;
killing its
killing its king,
two warring
kings; in
869
Edmund, who was afterwards
venerated as a martyr; in 870-71 the West Saxons under ^thelwulf’s sons ^Tthelred
managed
I
(865-71) and Alfred (871-99) only
to hold the
Army
Mercia, leaving Ceolwulf south. In
876-8
873-7
off for a time; in
ll (c.
somehow,
just, it
took half of
874-8) with only the north-west and the
attacked Wessex again and cornered Alfred in the
it
Somerset marshes (the location of the famous, but sadly only eleventhcentury, ‘Alfred and the cakes’ story), before the latter
an army together
in
878 and defeat the Vikings
at
Edington
This was a key battle for Wessex. The Viking leader to
make
managed
to call
in Wiltshire.
Guthrum was
forced
peace, and even accepted baptism, retreating to East Anglia,
which he turned
into a stable Viking
kingdom. Thereafter, the wars
stopped for over a decade. Alfred was
London
in
left in
886. His
Viking onslaught.
control of
all his
father’s lands, to
kingdom was thus
And
which he added
the only one fully to survive the
he was probably also, by his death, the only
Anglo-Saxon king. Ceolwulf’s successor vTthelred
II
of Mercia
91 1), Alfred’s son-in-law, was called king on occasion, but entitled
dux or ealdorman
status of a
(d.
is
879-
usually
our sources; Mercia was slipping into the
sub-kingdom of Wessex, certainly
political choice.
Eadwulf
in
(c.
as a result of Alfred’s
The only other autonomous Anglo-Saxon
ruler
was
912) in Bernicia in northern Northumbria, where the
Vikings did not reach; his family’s rule survived off and on up to the
Norman
Conquest, but they
may
were Danish kings, of course,
not have used the royal
in East
title.
There
Anglia and in York (and also
apparently collective leaderships in the Live Boroughs of Danish Mercia).
We
do not know much about
were certainly they
less
their political infrastructures.
powerful in Denmark than anywhere in England, so
would not have brought strong
the kings of
York
Kings
leave
much
ruling traditions with them; only
impression in our (largely West Saxon)
456
‘CAROLINGIAN’ ENGLAND, 80O-IOOO evidence, and even then not until after 919, with Rognvald
and Sigtryg
Army had moved from conquering to ally
weaker.
had had
It
Alfred’s survival, for
ruling, in fact,
it
920)
Once
the Great
became
strategic-
927), both from a Dublin-based family.
(d.
(d. c.
to divide up; this fact in itself probably explains
Guthrum
were establishing themselves
him
did not have with
the Vikings
Northumbria; and the Vikings
in
in
who Eng-
land not only never united again, but also seem to have ruled stable polities than the increasingly coherent
kingdom
in
West Saxon
southern and western England. Alfred
on
success in 878 to luck, but he built
decades, above
all
- necessarily -
(plus
less
Mercian)
may have owed
this systematically in the
in military preparedness:
his
next two
he seems to
have developed a large-scale military levy from the population, and he
network of public
certainly established a dense
fortifications, burhs,
throughout southern England, defended by public obligation, which was sufficiently effective to
hold off a second large-scale Viking assault
892-6. Alfred died ‘king of the Anglo-Saxons’, words,
‘of the
Danish
rule’;
or, in the
in
Chronicled
whole English people except that part which was under
he
may have
been the
first
king to see himself in ‘English’,
not West Saxon or Mercian, terms, as his neat footwork with respect to y^thelred of Mercia’s
made
autonomy
also shows. But
it
was the Vikings who
that choice possible for him.
Alfred’s son at first in
Edward
‘the Elder’
(899-924) began to counterattack,
border wars, and then, after y^thelred of Mercia’s death,
systematically. In
911 Edward and
Mercians (911-18)
his sister ^thelflsed.
in succession to her
husband
y^lthelred,
Lady of the
moved
east-
wards, and had taken East Anglia and the Live Boroughs by ^^thelflsed’s death. In this period
Wessex and Mercia were
alliance of near-equals; but in
Mercia, sweeping aside core of the English
919 Edward
^Elthelflsed’s
still
operating as an
also fully
annexed English
daughter y^lfwyn. In the 910s, the
kingdom thus took shape, with
finality, for
across
the next century Alfred’s dynasty never lost control of Mercia
and
eastern England again, except for a brief conquest of the east Midlands
940 by Olaf Guthfrithson, king of Dublin and York, reversed in 942. Northumbria was a different matter; the English kings and two in
Norwegian
families fought over
it
the last Scandinavian king of York, Eirik
Stainmore
in the latter year.
927-54, before ‘Bloodaxe’, was killed on
for nearly thirty years,
But most of Northumbria was always a
peripheral, only half-controlled, part of England across the next
457
two
THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST, 75O-IOOO centuries,
and indeed
for a long time after,
and
arguable that these
it is
wars were only really fought for the increasingly rich trading entrepot of
York
itself.
Edward’s son ^^thelstan (924-39) and
his successors
indeed seem to have regarded successful war against, and hegemony over, kings in in
Wales and of Scotland
Northumbria,
as
is
as being as important as their rule
represented by the increasingly grandiloquent
claims in their documents. vElthelstan was ‘king of
931, 'basileus of the English and
imperator became increasingly
political
kingdom
common from now on too.
Overall, apart
of the tenth century, the
shift
of England, as being complete in military-
terms by 919.
Edward and was above
all
^thelflsed’s conquest of midland a
West Saxon conquest.
aristocracy, quite as families of
much
as the kings,
and
seems to be both
origin.
in the
next generation the
also, significantly,
Mercia
A surviving Mercian-focused
and quite
visible
and eastern England
involved the West Saxon
It
ealdormen of East Anglia and
were predominantly of West Saxon affinity
from
surrounding peoples’ in 938, and
all
from York, one could regard the major invention of the
Britain’
all
were tense or disputed between brothers, as
effective
when
successions
924 or 957-9, in each of which the Mercian-supported brother ended up as king, but the West in
Saxons had the
strategic edge,
lined
The Wessex dynasty thus created
further.
it
as the Carolingians
their aristocratic
had done, and
None
did not manage.
and
as their
placements under-
a Reichsaristokratie,
Ottoman contemporaries
of vTthelstan’s successors - his brothers
Edmund
and Eadred (939-46, 946-55), Edmund’s sons Eadwig and Edgar “ ~ (95 5 9 957 75 )? Edgar’s sons Edward ‘the Martyr’ and ^Tthelred II ?
(975-8, 978-1016) - were over eighteen at their accessions except Eadred, but, almost uniquely in history, this did not result in a weakened political system.
The
influence of queen-mothers, notably
Eadred’s mother Eadgifu (d. c.
(d. after
Edmund and
966) and ^thelred’s mother ^Tlfthryth
1000) was very considerable, which helped the continuity of royal
power, as often as important.
in Erancia.
But the loyalty of the leading ealdormen was
Under Eadgifu
of iTthelstan ‘Half-king’
(that
(d. after
is,
Edmund, Eadred, Edgar)
the family
956), ealdorman of East Anglia from
932, came to dominate in Mercia and East Anglia; Eadwig’s brief reign
saw
the emergence of a rival family, that of ^Tlfhere, ealdorman of
Mercia
(d.
983). These
two
families,
both West Saxon, thereafter shared
power, along with a handful of other inter-related ealdormen.
458
We
can
‘CAROLINGIAN’ ENGLAND, 800-IOOO see
them as an oligarchy, ruling through a succession of young kings with,
apparently, considerable coherence.
And
they needed to be coherent.
down, they could not hope
the English political system broke
to remain
as powerful, given the geographical range of their landholding
office-holding, extending as
and to royal generosity
to
in
of southern,
the Elder’s conquests
meant amity. Eadwig
shift
alignments; his reign was
and new
ordinarily large-scale royal gift-giving, result.
Edward
and
thereafter.
that this coherence necessarily
seems to have tried to
much
did in each case across
and eastern England, thanks
central
Not
it
If
in particular
marked by
extra-
families appeared as a
Eadgifu and vElthelstan ‘Half-king’ responded by setting up Edgar
Mercia against him, apparently without violent
however,
conflict
unlike in contemporary succession disputes in Erancia; the
two brothers
reigned together for two years until Eadwig died, and his protege
^Ifhere actually joined Edgar, presumably
Mercian
clientele.
Edgar and
in order
not to lose his
own
his supporters then patronized a large-scale
monastic reform movement, which after 964 converted even cathedral churches into monasteries, under Dunstan of Canterbury (d. 988), yEthelwold of Winchester (d.
all
992),
of
(d.
984) and Oswald of Worcester and York
them monk-bishops; free-standing monasteries were
founded and patronized by kings and
aristocrats, including the rival
Eenland houses of Ramsey (968) and Ely (970). The landed these increasingly rich houses
Edward
was
the Martyr in particular
or taking back, monastic lands. in
saw
controversial,
trouble, with aristocrats taking,
Edward was
actually
murdered II
in 978,
and
his
mother ^Elfthryth. But none of these tensions resulted
more than sporadic
into the 990s.
politics of
and the reign of
obscure circumstances, a bad start to the reign of ^thelred
(but not Edward’s) in
itself
also
violence,
^thelred
II
and the ealdormanic oligarchy survived
was by then strong enough
to end
it.
^Elfhere’s
probable brother-in-law and heir in Mercia, ^Ifric, was expelled for treason in 985;
when
^Ethelwine, the powerful son of yEthelstan ‘Half-
king’, died in 992, his sons did not succeed
1006,
all
^Ethelred
then,
who
in East Anglia;
most of them permanently.
the old families were gone, II,
him
decisively broke with the
930S-940S
system of vEthelstan and Eadgifu; his later proteges were tunately, they also
saw
seem to have been
all
It
by
was
political
new. Unfor-
less effective. ^Ethelred’s reign also
the return of Viking raiding, sporadic
from 980 and serious
after
990; from 1009 the invading armies were ever more successful, and
459
THE CAROLINGIAN AND English defences ever (d.
1014),
who had
P O ST- C ARO LI N G
more
led
AN WEST, 75O-IOOO
1013 King Svein of Denmark
feeble. In
some of
I
the earlier raids, engaged in a full-scale
conquest of England, which was completed, in 1016 by his son Cnut
(1016-35).
The wars and
which the southern English had managed to
instability
avoid for a century returned a hundredfold in the loios. The sense of political collapse that
is
so visible in the bitter pages of the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle for these years has few parallels in the whole of English history since. But
Cnut nonetheless managed
We
kingdom from
^Tthelred.
factions in that
kingdom, and maybe the
identity stick in the face of
must not underestimate the
more
achieved, in the generations since
difficulties in
and the military ineptness of
how and why
look at
The
structures of
and
Edward
stable
stresses
and
making an English
local loyalties. All the same,
ence that could outlast the destruction of
will
to inherit a rich
it
had
the Elder, a structural coherits
ruling elites by vTthelred
their successors.
The
chapter
rest of this
this occurred.
government did not change much
century, except that royal entourages seem to have
in the early ninth
become more com-
plex in that period, with increasing numbers of officials travelling the
country and having to be Alfred. Exactly
fed.
Major
shifts
seem to have begun with
how this worked will never be fully known. Anglo-Saxon
sources are never generous, including by early medieval standards; even
those for Alfred, although father
and
who was
more numerous than
his son, are very
much
for the reigns of his
the mouthpiece for Alfred himself,
not only the patron of writers but an author in his
well aware of the possibilities of political spin,
and
own
visibly skilled in
covering cynical political calculation with a moralistic veneer. clear,
however,
is
that Alfred
of the Carolingian court. a letter
He
right,
was very influenced by the
What
is
political values
sought intellectuals from Erancia;
we have
from Archbishop Eulk of Reims rather reluctantly granting
Alfred’s request for
Grimbald of Saint-Bertin
Charlemagne was available
in
in 886. Einhard’s Life of
England, and was one of the models used
by Alfred’s Welsh protege Asset
in his
own
Life of Alfred.
That
text,
written in Alfred’s lifetime, creates an image of Alfred heavily influenced
by hagiography, including an chastity,
and another
years (the illnesses
illness (piles)
debilitating disease
may
which protected
his youthful
which undermined him
in later
well have been real, but their role in Asset’s text
460
‘CAROLINGIAN’ ENGLAND, 800-IOOO parallels hagiographical writing), as well as a
heavy emphasis on Alfred’s
learning and spiritual commitment. Alfred
was indeed unusually well
educated, even by Carolingian standards; he thought
it
essential to
sponsor translations into Old English of some of the fundamental Latin Christian works of the early Middle Ages, such as Gregory the Great’s
Pastoral Care, to
make them
accessible to the
own work.
three of these translations are his
Anglo-Saxon
and
Alfred’s often fairly free
shows
translation of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy familiar with a biblical
elites,
a king fully
and theological conception of kingship, prag-
matic (kings need resources) but also self-aware (when the rich and
who do
powerful go abroad and meet people realize
how much their position is owed
know
not
‘to the praise
them, they
of foolish people’).
Alfred looked systematically to the Bible; his law code goes further even
than those of Charlemagne in
its
insertion, as a preface, of a set of
from the laws of Moses
extracts
Exodus, which were evidently
in
intended to have at least meta-legal force. This sort of literary royal ideology was unparalleled in England before Alfred’s generation, but
it
has direct roots in the thought-world of Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald.
The Carolingian reform programme thus took root just the
decades in which
it
in
was running out of steam
England during
Alfred also borrowed political practices from the Erankish world. of the clearest is
the
first
law
is
the collective oath of loyalty
lingian legislation (Alfred states just before that
presume to is
set
down
many
in writing at all
typical Alfredian disinformation);
One
sworn to the king, which
and which looks
in Alfred’s code,
But
in Erancia.
of
straight
back to Caro-
law that he ‘dared not
my own
[laws]’ but this
one of the tenth-century develop-
Edmund’s code of about 943, quotes directly from a capitulary of 802. In England, indeed, that law was interpreted rather ments of
this law,
more harshly than of aristocrats that rarely
The
in Erancia, for the next century
who
lost all their
happened
great emphasis
related to this too.
on the oath
Channel, as far as
Carolingian or the
to the
we can
see.
Ottoman world.
Wynflsed-Leofwine case seems
in the
detail of Alfred’s
army reforms, looks back
scattered with cases
land for breaking their oath, something
in either the
The
is
own
government, including
his
Anglo-Saxon past rather than over the But the precedent he
set
allowed his
tenth-century successors, as they developed the increasingly coherent
and self-confident southern English
461
state,
to
draw from Erankish
THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGI AN WEST, 75O-IOOO example wherever necessary, alongside extensions of indigenous prac-
Edward
tice.
Saxon
and
the Elder
his successors
spread the pattern of West
Mercian regional
shires across Mercia, obliterating the old
isions (in a particularly overt act,
div-
perhaps dating to the 920s, the old
Mercian royal centre of Tamworth was actually bisected by the boun-
and Staffordshire, thus marginalizing
daries of Warwickshire after); the
seems increasingly
it
had a similar system of
new subdivision
in
Mercians had
likely that the
Conversely, the
fortified centres before as well.
of the shire, the hundred, seems to have been a Erankish
import, not a West Saxon one, and
it
too was established in the tenth
century. Tenth-century assembly politics (the king’s
own
large consulta-
assembly, the shire assembly, the hundredal assembly) similarly had
Anglo-Saxon - indeed,
common Germanic
visible judicial activity of these bodies,
direction, the king’s seal influence.
of
for ever
burh network of Wessex was extended to Mercia already
the 9 1 os, although
tive
it
it
So does royal
in itself
and
and attached
- roots; but the increasingly their association
with royal
instructions, betrays Erankish
legislation, as already implied; Alfred’s revival
probably shows his awareness of Carolingian law-making,
and the numerous codes of the 920S-1020S resemble Frankish capitularies,
in
sometimes quite closely. As with Edmund
1009 decreed a three-day
in
94 3 when ^Tthelred II ,
fast in great detail in his
seventh code, as a
response to the great Viking invasion of that year, he was directly
echoing Charlemagne.
These Frankish influences are not surprising. (More surprising
is
how
seldom they were noticed before the 1970s.) Carolingian Francia was
much more powerful than any English kingdom, and its governmental technologies were so much more sophisticated, that, once the idea of so
borrowing developed,
it
could continue for a long time.
this the increasing integration of the tenth-century
into Continental politics.
Edward
the Elder
We must add to
West Saxon dynasty
was the
first
Anglo-Saxon
king to engage systematically in marriage alliances abroad, and his
daughters ended up married to Charles the Simple,
Otto
I;
^Tthelstan intervened in
West Frankish
Hugh
the Great
and
politics, sheltering his
nephew Eouis IV in his years of exile, and sending armies twice to the Continent. The English kings were increasingly regarded by the Franks as political players,
and mutual
interest increased: Asser
and the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle include an account of the 887-8 Frankish succession crisis;
Flodoard and Thietmar both include
462
(a
few) English events in
‘CAROLINGIAN’ ENGLAND, 800-IOOO their chronicles. Cultural relationships
sometimes spent time
developed as well. English
from Grimbald
Archbishop Wulfstan of York for both y^thelred
II
also a rousing social
work
is
(d.
1023),
Abbo
who
to
and
political critic in the
in
to Fleury
England
in
of Fleury in 985-7.
wrote several law codes
and Cnut and some compilations of
own, was
his
Hincmar mould, and
his
by the idiom of Carolingian correctio. The
clearly influenced
later tenth-century
88os to
in the
monk
came
to learn local practices); Continental intellectuals their turn,
Oswald did
in Continental monasteries, as
Fleury and Dunstan in Ghent (vElthelwold, too, sent a
clerics
monastic reform
in
England was
sister to that of
Gorze, or that favoured by the abbots of Cluny (see below. Chapter
and the new English national monastic
21),
Concordia^ drawn up by ^thelwold in the
drew from contemporary example
in
late
rule, the Regularis
960s, both explicitly
Ghent and Fleury and owed
wider ambition to the unification of monastic practices
its
motion by
set in
Louis the Pious after 816. This international dimension, so visible in tenth-century England,
does bring a paradox
the same. For tenth-century Francia, as noted
all
at the start of the chapter,
was by no means
still
Carolingian in
aspiration. In Alfred’s time the values of Charles the Bald
were
still
alive,
and Hincmar
but they were far weaker on the Continent by the time
came
of vTthelstan or Edgar. Carolingian institutions, rituals, values
England not practice, but
(or not only)
through the observation and emulation of
and
it is
likely
enough that one had existed
in
since Alfred’s time. Alcuin (himself Anglo-Saxon, of course)
well
to
through books. Wulfstan owned a copy of Ansegis’s capitu-
lary collection,
tainly
its
known, Theodulf and Amalarius were
Hincmar may have been striking that the English
was
But
it
This
this literature so seriously.
part have been the legacy of Alfred’s highly moralized kingship;
cer-
and
available,
as well, at least second-hand.
took
England
is
still
may it
in
must
also have been a spin-off of the self-confidence of the tenth-century political
creators
community, whose members, however
and maintainers of the
stable polity in Britain since the
largest, strongest,
Romans
left,
fractious,
were the
and most
internally
and proud of
Tenth-century English government was both more and
it
too.
less
coherent
than that of the Carolingians. Although Old English, not Latin, was the
main language of
legislation
wider dissemination
and much theology, implying
in the country, the English court
463
a desire for
seems to have used
THE CAROLINGIAN AND writing
less;
PO
T - C AR O L I N G I AN
S
WEST, 750-IOOO
royal orders seem to have been largely (although not always)
verbal across the century, and writs, written orders, only clearly survive
from T^thelred IPs making,
it is
reign.
For
the elaboration of tenth-century law-
all
never explicitly referred to in our surviving court cases,
and one has to look hard even to
find implicit echoes;
it
often matches
the political theology of Charlemagne’s reign, rather than his practical institutional changes, although v^thelstan
did consciously innovate in their laws.
government, often written up relative
and some of
The
in recent years,
sophistication of English
has to be set against the
roughness of some ‘administrative’ practices:
habitants of Thanet robbed
some York merchants
simply ravaged the island; ^Tthelred
II
his successors
when in
the in-
969, Edgar
similarly sacked the diocese of
Rochester in 986, and, later on, Harthacnut (1040-42) sacked Wor-
1041 because two tax collectors had been
cestershire in
killed
in
Worcester cathedral. Conversely, there
clear evidence of royal strength.
is
The importance
of oaths to the king enormously widened the scope of ‘treason’ in the
and
period,
seems to have been easier
it
people to lose their lands and
lives
in
England than elsewhere for
because of the king’s displeasure.
Monastic reform was very heavily dependent on royal authority, and enhanced that authority
And
in its turn.
990s ^Tthelred
in the
II,
in
order to pay off the Vikings, instituted a tax system that in a few years
was capable of generating considerable sums;
went way beyond
this
anything the Carolingians ever attempted (Charles the Bald had begun the
same process, but only
managed such for
it
to run at
it
twice).
How
it
seems), and in a period of continuous military
and demoralization, cannot be explained
any other post-Roman generated,
which was necessary
without a very developed writing-based administrative
all,
successful; eleventh-century English taxation
it
the Anglo-Saxon state
a task, given the detailed assessment
infrastructure (as
defeat
tried
among
state
managed
in the
at present.
brought
was
was more elaborate than
West
until after
Domesday Book
was organized harshly; people who could not pay
who
it
1200, and
other things, the most systematic governmental
survey before the late Middle Ages,
people
But
of 1086. Taxation
it
lost their lands to
could pay in their stead, and collective rejection of taxation
reprisals, as at
here as elsewhere, ation continued.
It
Worcester
in
1041. The
late
Anglo-Saxon
state,
was heavy-handed and not notably benign. But further increased royal wealth,
464
tax-
and thus power, by
‘CAROLINGIAN’ ENGLAND, 800-IOOO
money
the time that Cnut’s conquest allowed the
England, and
it
made
was conquered,
that
William
I
in
possible the enduring solidity of the English state
by Svein and Cnut
first
1013-16, and then by
in
1066.
The tenth-century English kingdom had seen,
raised to stay in
one that saw
its
identity
and
we have much tied up
a rich aristocracy, as
political future as very
with the success of the West Saxon dynasty. In Wessex, and also in English Mercia, entirely
it
new, for
from Edward the
had deeper
its
is
new
much
of the country
it
was
wealth in Danish Mercia and East Anglia derived
911-18 and partial expropriation whose power in turn had presumably in most
Elder’s conquest in
of the political elites there, cases been
roots, but in
as well, a product of the Viking conquest of
869-78.
It
interesting to realize, however, that despite the great importance of
that conquest as a catalyst for the creation of a southern English state,
the effect of the Vikings themselves It is
not clear that either Danish or
settlement
many
was very
on the country (in
is
north-west England) Norwegian
extensive; Scandinavian place
areas, particularly
A
names
are dense in
Danish Mercia and Yorkshire, but
mostly to indicate the renaming of estates by peasant immigration.
very difficult to see.
this
new owners, not
a
seems
mass
distinctively Scandinavian material culture
seem
also hard to find in the archaeology; the settlers
whose
Christian fairly quickly; even Danish law,
to have
existence
is
is
become
implied by
the later use of the term ‘Danelaw’ for northern and eastern England,
seems, in the rare compilations that mention
it,
to have been
Anglo-Saxon law elsewhere. There must have been some
much
like
clusters of
people with a Danish culture and identity in later tenth-century England,
and there were certainly plenty of (Oswald was one), but, different either.
aristocrats with
overall, the eastern
Danish ancestors
‘Danelaw’ was probably
less
from Wessex and English Mercia than Northumbria was from
What
the Vikings
left
for the
West Saxon incomers was
a
more
complicated and fragmented estate structure, with more space for a
landowning peasantry (although even
Army’s conquests); and,
in the
this
may
predate the Great
southernmost part of Northumbria, the
notable cosmopolitanism and openness to long-distance links of tenth-
century York. Eor the
rest,
it is
the
West Saxon
aristocratic stratum,
overlaying the Viking period, that remains the most visible, at least
south of the Elumber.
The coherence of
the English
kingdom
465
is
perhaps best expressed in
THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGIAN WEST, 75O-IOOO one of the witnesses to
The
Battle of
its late
text celebrates the fight to the death
Maldon. This
Ealdorman Byrhtnoth of Essex and invading Vikings at
poem known
tenth-century defeat, the
Maldon
in
his
his
991. Byrhtnoth, an ally of the family of
kingdom
and an important patron of Ely abbey;
death came as a considerable shock. The
anonymous
best heroic style by an
by
entourage against the newly
vTthelstan ‘Half-king’, had been one of the major figures of the since the start of Edgar’s reign
as
poem
is
written up in the
poet, probably (though this
is
debated) shortly after the battle. Byrhtnoth’s troops have the same personal attachment to him that heroic warbands had in earlier poetry,
but there are differences.
One
is
that he has with him, a county levy
Essex, heir to the collective defensive levies set a core
who
group of personally loyal dependants. Another
fight on,
as well as
that the
is
men
with proud speeches, around their dead leader are from
England
different parts of tage, as well as (a
up by Alfred,
from
men
(a
Mercian
Northumbrian hos-
aristocrat, a
of Essex) and also from different social classes
simple peasant, an old retainer): they are intended to represent a
cross-section of English, not just Essex-based, identity
and
they explicitly fight not just for Byrhtnoth but for ‘the vTthelred,
loyalty,
and
kingdom
of
my lord’s people and his country’. This kingdom-wide identity
(at least in the vision
of the
Maldon
poet) briefly unravelled in the chaos
of the early loios, when, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle grimly claims, ‘in
the end
that.
no
shire
would even help
the next’, but
There was no permanent regional breakdown
it
revived after
in at least
southern
England, no equivalent to the increasingly separate marches, duchies, counties of the Continent.
Nor
did private lordships develop; the shire
and hundred assemblies controlled nearly
all
justice right
up
to the
Norman Conquest. By 1066 even Northumbria was beginning (although with
difficulty) to
be incorporated into the political system.
there were local differences, as
Domesday Book shows,
and also
local loyalties
course,
rivalries. But,
the wide geographical spread of the land-
owning of the tenth-century ealdormanic
elite
continued throughout the
eleventh century as well, and in 1066 that spread the next level
and
Of
down, the thegns,
is
equally visible for
the basic aristocratic stratum of the
country. That landowning, fully matched by the spread of lands of cathedrals and monasteries, held the country together.
The newly minted
tax system simply added to this pre-existing coherence.
466
‘CAROLINGIAN’ ENGLAND, 80O-IOOO England may have been Carolingian
in its aspirations;
lasting solidity of the political settlement of
has so
little
parallel
the Elder’s reign
on the Continent that we cannot ascribe
Carolingian lesson so systematically learned.
must remain
Edward
but the long-
What
its
we do not have enough
speculative:
Anglo-Saxon England to be sure of any argument of myself, however, associate
it
to the
it all
roots really were
evidence for late this kind.
I
would
with a ninth-century development entirely
separate from Viking conquest and Alfredian ideology: the formation of exclusive rights to property.
We saw in Chapter 7 that early Anglo-Saxon
land-units can best be seen as territories from aristocrats, and, tribute,
thanks to royal
which could be quite
churches and monasteries, took
gift,
light. In
which kings and some
such
substantial, covering the territories of a
territories,
dozen
some
cases, a variety of people could live,
with,
it
which were often
later villages or
from
more
in
aristocrats to peasants,
seems, a variety of rights of possession; only the unfree seem to
have paid heavy rents and services to lords or masters. That was the situation in the late seventh century,
by kings to churches)
initially gifts
when our documents
(all
of
them
By 900, though, a list of rents Hampshire shows a village with
start.
surviving from Hurstborne Priors in
much more serious obligations: here, the ceorlas, free peasants, had to pay money and produce in rent, and also do labour service, ploughing and sheep-shearing. These detailed requirements show tight control, and they are the
first
what would become
signs of
the standard landlord-
tenant relationship in England: for the ceorlas of Hurstborne are best seen as tenants of the bishop of Winchester, the holder -
say
owner - of the
land.
sort of relationship
By the
late tenth to early eleventh century, this
seems quite generalized
Somerset, too, for this
is
we can now
in the
west Midlands and
the broad area of origin of a text, called
the Rectitudines Singularum Personarum, describing the standard dues
owed by
several strata of dependants
as a guide to
on an unnamed
estate,
apparently
good estate-management. By Domesday Book
in
1086,
such an estate pattern characterized the entire country, in the former Viking-ruled lands no
less
than in the west and south. The global wealth
deriving from rents and services
was by now both great and capable of
being described in detail.
These changes represent a revolution unfree, but also free, peasants ended
and
rulers,
in land tenure, in
up paying not
which not
just tribute to lords
but rents to landowners; these rents, importantly, were
467
just
much
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
PO
S
T- C AR O L I N G I AN
WEST, 75O-IOOO
The absence of any documented resistance to this process it was slow, certainly starting with the unfree (who were
heavier as well. indicates that
numerous), but then probably extending steadily to different groups of the free,
and
fringes
the centre of land-units,
first at
outliers,
into the central
Anglo-Saxon
and then coming to include
whose inhabitants paid lower rents and
Middle Ages. The more
most
territories for the
their
services well
influential inhabitants of early
part,
by contrast, ended up not as
tenants but as lords. Territories split up as time went on; a land-unit
covering a dozen later villages might turn into twelve smaller units,
which we can now
When
each covering a single village territory.
call estates,
held privately, these estates were characteristically in the hands
of thegns, whether they held the land outright their
(in gift
from the king,
former territorial lord, perhaps), or in lease from a church; the
relationship
is
particularly well
which kept
cathedral,
century cartularies.
from land-units
much
its
We
latter
documented on the lands of Worcester
leases
and recorded them
in
two
eleventh-
cannot easily date the main period of the
to estates, for the terminology of our
shift
documents remains
the same; but the break-up of larger units into village-sized blocks
seems, from documentary evidence, to be a feature of the ninth and tenth centuries. This
is
also the period of a generalized concentration of
settlement in the Midlands and central-southern England, into the lages at the centre of each of these blocks; this
was
vil-
a slower process, but
probably a related one. The Hurstborne document, however isolated,
would thus mark
a change that
was by then widespread, even, maybe,
already nearing completion: the creation of a landscape of estates, one
which had
for long been typical of Continental western Europe, but
which had not existed This
shift
ization of
But
its
One
it
is
in
England since the departure of the Romans.
as ill-documented as
was fundamental;
two paragraphs has
in the last
consequences are more
is
it
visible,
that disposable wealth
my
character-
to be seen as hypothetical.
and several of them are important.
was sharply concentrated, and
in
fewer
hands: those of kings, greater and lesser aristocrats and churches. As a result, an exchange
duction, are notably
economy, and more elaborate patterns of pro-
more
In the eighth, exchange
visible in the tenth century
was
still
than
in the eighth.
focused on a handful of ports, South-
ampton, London, Ipswich, York. In the tenth, York expanded dramatically, in
we
part thanks to the international links of the Viking world (as
shall see in the next chapter), but so also did a
468
network of inland
‘CAROLINGIAN’ ENGLAND, 800-IOOO centres, Lincoln, Thetford, Stamford, Chester, Winchester, and, to a lesser extent, a
Elder,
and
wide
their
burhs or boroughs of Alfred, Edward the
set of the
Danish opponents,
in particular the
network of county
towns, Eeicester, Worcester, Shrewsbury, Oxford. This can be seen as a capillary
urban network,
at least
one per shire and often more. And,
in
productive terms, wheel-thrown pottery with relatively wide distribution patterns begins to appear in the decades around 900,
the east
first in
Midlands, at Stamford, Thetford, St Neots, and then elsewhere;
refer-
ences to wool, England’s central medieval export strength, begin to
appear by the end of the century too. The tenth-century kings greatly increased the
money
supply, and exchange
for the tax system of the silver coin. initially,
was
it
was
still
widespread
990s to assume that taxes could be paid
That wealth may have been creamed
but
sufficiently
wealth.
The
off to
infrastructure for
Denmark,
its
in
at least
extraction from
the peasantry evidently existed fully by then. Rare excavations of thegnly residences, at also
Raunds
in
Northamptonshire and Goltho
show concentrations
in Eincolnshire,
of wealth that were invisible in the eighth
century; so do late Anglo-Saxon private churches, which were for the first
time becoming numerous, and which after 1000 were increasingly
built in stone.
This concentration of wealth was
all
the greater because of
its
geo-
graphical completeness, the second consequence of the estate-formation process.
Most
of England split into village-sized estates, or perhaps half-
or quarter-villages; any space for a free landowning peasantry virtually
vanished. This pattern was
less
regular in parts of the Danelaw, in
where some more independent peasant
particular the east Midlands,
groups persisted (many were called sochemanni^ ‘sokemen’,
day Book, indicating that they had
some autonomy from
lords, even
from Yorkshire to East Anglia, in itself
rights to seek justice with,
when they were tenants);
also
in
had more fragmented
the
Domesit
seems,
Danelaw,
estates,
which
gave more space for peasant landowning, and which allowed
for reduced subjection estate formation
on
estate outliers.
But even there, the process of
seems to have had the same sort of timescale; and even
there, the percentage of
landowning peasants was lower than on most
of the Continent. England had thus
moved from
being the post-Roman
province with least peasant subjection, in 700, to the land where peasant subjection
was the completest and most
Europe, by as early as 900 in
much
totalizing in the
whole of
of the country, and by the eleventh
469
THE CAROLINGIAN AND PO ST-CARO LINGI AN WEST, 75O-IOOO century at the latest elsewhere. The lordships of France based on private
not develop in England, but they hardly needed
justice did
were already
entirely subject to lords tenurially,
and many were unfree
and thus had no
(unlike in France: see Chapter 22)
peasants
to;
rights to public
justice either.
A third
consequence
is
that this crystallization of landed power, with
the substantial increase in dues
from peasants that came with
it,
greatly
favoured kings. Kings had had rights of small-scale tribute from most
kingdoms -
of the land-area of their
already conceded to churches.
indeed lay aristocrats
more the
all
all
When this
found
their local
the land
which they had not
turned into rent, churches and
power (and
their
own wealth)
certain, in the village blocks they controlled, but kings
main
beneficiaries.
were
still
By the tenth century, kings ended up with
a
high proportion of the land under their direct control. Although that
proportion was higher in some areas than in others, the tenth-century kings of southern England controlled, overall, a far higher percentage of the land-area of their
kingdom than did Charlemagne;
king/emperor was certainly
much
the Frankish
richer than they, but only as a result
of his rule over ten times the land-area of the realm of ^Tthelstan. English
kings thus had a uniquely favourable position in Europe: they could be
enormously generous, creating
unknown
a
new
aristocracy or giving
it
hitherto
wealth, whether on a large scale (yTthelstan ‘Half-king’,
vTlfhere of Mercia) or a small, while
still
as a result of the extensive lands they
maintaining overall dominance, still
owned. They thus kept the
strategic
upper hand, which was further safeguarded when taxation
came
Royal courts and royal power, as we have seen, remained
in.
central even in the mid-
and
late tenth century, characterized as
it
was
by royal minorities and the oligarchy of the queen and her leading aristocrats; this centrality
No
land.
one
in early
was
greatly aided by royal
dominance over
medieval Europe was ever as generous as Eadwig
documented land grants of 956-9, but his successors were not weakened, and ^thelred II rolled back the tide of generosity when he in his
took
offices
and often private property
off the
ealdormanic
elite
again;
Cnut’s conquest displaced more aristocratic families, and William Es did even
more completely. Kings could thus remain crucial to all
political
calculation in England, simply because of their undiminished powers of
patronage.
marks out
It is this,
its
above
all,
that
trajectory as separate
marks England
from that
470
in
as different,
and
any of the Carolingian
‘CAROLINGIAN’ ENGLAND, 80O-IOOO successor states.
The
‘politics of land’
here definitely favoured royal
power, and, eventually, central government. This was further reinforced by another special characteristic of England, already referred to: the tenth-century kings’ continuing relation-
ship to free society.
One consequence
of the exclusion of the peasantry
from landowning might have been that they were
also excluded
any relationship to the public world, as indeed happened cia,
and often elsewhere
we have
just seen,
more of them were tenants
were
at least
(this
was
still
West Fran-
Carolingian world too. In England, as
in the
of the king than
case elsewhere; royal dependants seem to have
other tenants
in
had more
rights than
so later in the Middle Ages), and they
all free
men
persisted as well.
The national emergency of
Alfred’s reign required a wider military participation than
was by now
necessary on the Continent, and burh defence was added to
skilled
was the
not subjected to private lords. But the traditional public
obligations of
public
from
commitments continued without
it;
these
a break, alongside the
more
military strike forces of the aristocracy,
whenever national
defence required. Similarly, even shire judicial assemblies had space for the free peasantry, and the basic law for the hundredal assembly indeed
presumed that
their attendance
was normal;
continued without a break thereafter, as
it
this public role for the free
did not in most regions of
the Carolingian world.
England’s development thus remains paradoxical.
pean country where
aristocratic
was most complete, while
It
became the Euro-
dominance, based on property
also being the post-Carolingian country
rights,
where
kings maintained most fully their control over political structures, both traditional (assemblies, armies)
dox seems
to
me
the oligarchical rest of
and new
(oaths, taxation). But the para-
expicable, nonetheless:
it is
the consequence of both
compact that allowed the West Saxon conquest of the
southern England in the 910s, and the crystallization of property
rights that
took place
in the ninth century
and into the
tenth. England’s
history as the longest-lasting state of medieval Europe began there.
471
20 Outer Europe
Anskar was a missionary sent by Louis the Pious to evangelize the Danes and Swedes, which he attempted 865. His saint’s
Rimbert,
is
life,
off
and on between 826 and
his
death in
written by a well-informed younger contemporary,
a rare account of an unsuccessful conversion process. In
Denmark, Anskar might have got somewhere, thanks of kings Horic
I
(827-54) and Horic
to the patronage
870), not Christians but
II
not unsympathetic either. But the mission only had patrons (both royal
and
not any powerful and committed converts, except
aristocratic),
among some
of the merchants of Hedeby, and in the confusion after
Horic IPs death
it
folded. In Sweden, Anskar’s
in the 840s, involved a
Birka, in his
main attempt, probably
meeting with King Olaf at the trading town of
which Olaf said he could not accept the mission without asking
own gods
through drawing
lots,
(placitum in Rimbert’s Latin) ‘for
any public business
is
more
and without asking the assembly
it is
the
custom
in the will of the
than in [that of] royal power’. The
lots
the assembly argued that the Christian
for [the Swedes] that
unanimous people [populus]
were negative, but an elder
god might help
in
in the face of
dangers at sea, and the populus agreed to accept the mission. Olaf agreed to ask another assembly in his kingdom to accept
assembly
politics
seems to have been more powerful
Denmark (though must note that
in
as well. This
Sweden than
there were certainly assemblies there too), but
in
we
both kingdoms the discussion was only about whether
to accept a Christian mission, not about
whether actually to convert en
masse, which did not happen in either. Even Christian, as
in
it
Hakon
I (c.
934-61) was
in
if
kings were personally
Norway, they could not
easily
demand conversion from their countrymen, and Hakon is praised for not trying to do so in a probably contemporary poem. The wider conversion process only began in the late tenth century in
472
Denmark, and
later
still
OUTER EUROPE Sweden and Norway:
in
was, in part, a consequence of stronger
it
kingship, although, by Continental European standards, only a
little
stronger.
When
trying to understand
European
societies outside the
ex-Roman
and Carolingian kingdoms of the West and South (and, eventually, Anglo-Saxon offshoot), we need to recognize the weakness of
their
political
structures straight away. Royal politics did not delineate the history of
the Scandinavians or Slavs with any consistency until the late tenth
century. Indeed,
Anskar, that rulers had any consistent ‘kingly’
like the Life of
were independent powers
jarlar, jarls or earls,
heim
district of
seem
to have
Norway
had
was
that there
not clear, despite the certainties of external texts
it is
no
clear distinction is,
dependent but autonomous aristocrats, too,
looo, for example, and the Slavs
until after
‘aristocrats’ in either, that
between
‘kings’
between independent
rulers,
Trond-
in the northerly
a very eclectic set of titles for rulers.
as yet
titles;
be
and leading
rulers,
and more subject
may
It
nominally
political leaders;
were probably leaders of followers rather than landlords
of tenants for a long time. In Wales, Scotland, and Ireland before 800,
we saw
as
Chapter
in
7, rulers
reges of our sources ruled tiny
power was more
were regularly called
kingdoms (except
‘kings’,
in Scotland),
but the
and
their
easily assimilated to that of the small-scale rulers
and
leading aristocrats of Scandinavia than even to Anglo-Saxon kings, never
mind Erankish
ones.
Some
towards more centralized
move
of these regions were beginning to
political systems
with stronger rulers by the
very end of our period, 950-1000: Poland, Bohemia, the core lands of
what
is
now
building’ Ireland;
Russia, and
was
and
had hardly
highly incomplete in
still
in
Denmark. Conversely,
Sweden
(as in
some of
this process of ‘state-
Norway, Scotland, Wales and
the smaller Slav communities)
it
started.
These were slow developments, and by no means consistent; kings
were stronger
do
in
Denmark,
for example, in
800 than
in
900. But they
act as a guide to comparison, in these non-Carolingian regions.
also give a justification for
cultures together.
I
do
my
decision to consider such heterogeneous
this partly to
avoid a
set of
fragmented chapters,
each of them short because the evidence for each region thinner in the pre-iooo period than
it is
is
so very
much
for Erancia, Italy, or England.
But the ‘outer European’ lands do have features shall see.
They
in
common,
as
we
So also does post-Visigothic northern Spain, which had very
473
THE CAROLINGIAN AND
some
different antecedents, but
considered here too.
who had
a
major
One
effect in
also in England, as
P O ST- C A R O L I N G
came from
of these
will then
move to
-
it
is
seen). Scandinavia’s internal history it is
Already
is
shall start
cannot
undeniable that the Vikings at
with Scandinavia, therefore;
we
moving westwards
and Spain. terms by far the richest part of Scandinavia
Sweden and Norway - and
politically the
this region
was the Vikings,
an extension of the North European Plain, and
forested, as are
and
We
in agricultural
is
features
the Sclavenian or Slav lands, before
to Britain, Ireland
Denmark
common
and
Russia and in Scotland, Ireland and Wales (as
we have
there.
AN WEST, 75O-IOOO
parallels all the same,
be reduced to the Viking label, but least
I
was both economically
it
most complex northern region
in the fifth
and early
sixth centuries
centres, as archaeology shows, particularly
not heavily
is
looo.
until well past
had some very
it
Gudme on
rich
the central island
of Eyn, where several dozen houses and a large hall have been excavated,
and
and elsewhere, so
also a wealth of gold finds, in cemeteries
unparalleled in northern Europe.
Roman
of these were locally made;
most
likely that
a royal or princely centre: not the only one in
Denmark,
others were imported from the
Gudme was
Some
far
empire.
It is
but one which well shows the wealth that Danish rulers could already lay their
hands on,
at least in the period of
This concentration of wealth
hundred and
fifty
years
more fragmented, power and
villages.
fell
west
back
Roman
after 550,
crisis.
and
next
in the
Denmark shows more muted, and probably structures, focused
Around 700, however, we can
on isolated ‘magnate farms’ see signs of a larger political
system in the south of the Jutland peninsula, in western Denmark; a central
power of some
town
sort created Ribe, a trading
parallel to the
king-centred emporia of eighth-century England, in 705-10, and in 737 the Danevirke, a defensive wall across the south of the peninsula,
was
substantially rebuilt. (These unusually exact dates by archaeological
standards are based on tree-ring dating.) Southern Jutland was the political
zone of the reges Danorum, which Erankish sources begin to
name from
the 770s; by the time of Godofrid
(c.
800-810), the kings
seem to have had a hegemony extending throughout the medieval
Denmark (which
also north into Vestfold
also included
around Oslo
territory of
modern southern Sweden), and
in
southern
Norway and
south
into the territory of the Sclavenian Abodrites. Godofrid even faced off
474
OUTER EUROPE Charlemagne, attacking Frankish
town
Hedeby, too. Horic
at
instability all
and
seem from
hegemony
infighting for
names
their
was
I
him
his son;
it
took
It is
Gorm
dissolved.
set
trading
fifteen years of
know the names
Danish kingdom
of rival kings for over
entirely likely that the unity of the previous century
958) and his son Harald Bluetooth (958- 9-i9- For tant critique of the idea of feud in this period see G. Halsall, in idem (ed.), Violence and pp. 49-61,
p.
422
ff.;
Italy:
Society in the Early Medieval West (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 1-45; though I use a different definition of ‘feud’ from him, I have followed his analyses. Eor Erankish feud, see J. M.
Wallace-Hadrill,
The Long-haired Kings (London, 1962), pp. 121-47;
P.
Halsall (ed.). Violence, pp. 60-75; P- Depreux, in D. Barthelemy ct